Dr. Garnet, announcing that he would ask Mr. Otis to testify a little later, handed Russell the weapon with which Mildred Brace had been murdered.
"Have you ever seen that dagger before?" he asked.
Russell said he had not. Reminded that Sheriff Crown had testified to searching the witness's room and had discovered that a nail file was missing from his dressing case, a file which, judging by other articles in the case, must havebeen the same size as the one used in making the amateur dagger, Russell declared that his file had been lost for three years. He had left it in a hotel room on the only trip he had ever taken to New York.
He gave way to Mr. Otis, who described himself as a commission merchant of Washington. Returning from a tour to Lynchburg, Virginia, he said, he had been hailed last night by a man in the road and had agreed to take him into town, a ride of six miles. Reaching Washington shortly before midnight, he had dropped his passenger at Eleventh and F streets.
"Who was this passenger?" inquired Garnet.
"He told me," said Otis, "his name was Eugene Russell. I gave him my name. That explains how he was able to find me this morning. When he told me how he was situated, I agreed to come over here and give you gentlemen the facts."
"Notice anything peculiar about Mr. Russell last night?"
"No; I think not."
"Was he agitated, disturbed?"
"He was out of breath. And he commented on that himself, said he'd been walking fast. Oh, yes! He was bareheaded; and he explained that—said the rain had ruined a cheap straw hat he had been wearing; the glue had run outof the straw and down his neck, he had thrown the hat away."
"And the time? When did you pick him up?"
"It was twenty minutes past eleven o'clock. When I stopped, I glanced at my machine clock; I carry a clock just above my speedometer."
Mr. Otis was positive in his statements. He realized, he said, that his words might relieve one man of suspicion and bring it upon another. Unless he had been absolutely certain of his facts, he would not have stated them. He was sure, beyond the possibility of doubt, that he had made no mistake when he looked at his automobile clock; it was running when he stopped and when he reached Washington; yes, it was an accurate timepiece.
Russell's alibi was established. His defence appealed to the jurymen as unassailable. When, after a conference of less than half an hour, they brought in a verdict that Mildred Brace had been murdered by a thrust of the "nail-file dagger" in the hands of a person unknown, nobody in the room was surprised.
And nobody was blind to the fact that the freeing of Eugene Russell seriously questioned the innocence of Berne Webster.
Hastings, sprawling comfortably in a low chair by the south window in the music room, stopped his whittling when Berne Webster came in with Judge Wilton. "Meddlesome Mike!" thought the detective. "I sent for Webster."
"Berne asked me to come with him," the judge explained his presence at once. "We've talked things over; he thought I might help him bring out every detail—jog his memory, if necessary."
Hastings did not protest the arrangement. He saw, almost immediately, that Webster had come with no intention of giving him hearty cooperation. The motive for this lack of frankness he could not determine. It was enough that he felt the younger man's veiled antagonism and appreciated the fact that Wilton accompanied him in the rôle of protector.
"If I'm to get anything worth while out of this talk," he decided, "I've got to mix up my delivery, shuffle the cards, spring first one thing and then another at him—bewilder him."
He proceeded with that definite design: at an opportune time, he would guide the narrative, take it out of Webster's hands, and find out what he wanted to know, not merely what the young lawyer wanted to tell. He recognized the necessity of breaking down the shell of self-control that overlaid the suspected man's uneasiness.
That it was only a shell, he felt sure. Webster, leaning an elbow lightly on the piano, looked down at him out of anxious eyes, and continually passed his right hand over his smooth, dark-brown hair from forehead to crown, a mechanical gesture of his when perplexed.
His smile, too, was forced, hardly more than a slight, fixed twist of the lips, as if he strove to advertise his ability to laugh at danger. His customary dash, a pleasing levity of manner, was gone, giving place to a suggestion of strain, so that he seemed always on the alert against himself, determined to edit in advance his answer to every question.
Wilton had chosen a chair which placed him directly opposite Hastings and at the same time enabled him to watch Webster. He was smoking a cigar, and, through the haze that floated up just then from his lips, he gave the detective a long, searching look, to which Hastings paid no attention.
Webster talked nearly twenty minutes, explaining his eagerness to be "thoroughly frank as to every detail," reviewing the evidence brought out by the inquest, and criticising the action of the jury, but producing nothing new. Occasionally he left the piano and paced the floor, smoking interminably, lighting the fresh cigarette from the stub of the old, obviously strung to the limit of his nervous strength. Hastings detected a little twitching of the muscles at the corners of his mouth, and the too frequent winking of his eyes.
Judge Wilton had told him, Webster continued, of Mrs. Brace's charge that he wanted to marry Miss Sloane because of financial pressure; there was not a word of truth in it; he had already arranged for a loan to make that payment when it fell due. He was, however, aware of his unenviable position, and he wanted to give the detective every assistance possible, in that way assuring his own prompt relief from embarrassment.
By this time, Hastings had mapped out his line of questioning, his assault on Webster's reticence.
"That's the right idea!" he said, getting to his feet. "Let's go to work."
They saw the change in him. Instead of the genial, drawling, slow-moving old fellow whohad seemed thankful for anything he might chance to hear, they were confronted now by an aroused, quick-thinking man whose words came from him with a sharp, clipped-off effect, and whose questions scouted the whole field of their possible and probable information. He stood leaning his elbows on the other end of the piano, facing Webster across the polished length of its broad top. His dominance of the night before, in the library, had returned.
"Now, Mr. Webster," he began, innocent of threat, "as things stack up at present, only two people had the semblance of a motive for killing Mildred Brace—either Eugene Russell killed her out of jealousy of you; or you killed her to silence her demands. Do you see that?"
He had put back his head a little and was peering at Webster under his spectacle-rims, down the line of his nose. He saw how the other fought down the impulse to deny, hesitating before answering, with a laugh on a high note, like derision:
"I suppose that's what a lot of people will say."
"Precisely. Now, I've just had a talk with this Russell—caught him after the inquest. I believe there's something rotten about that alibi of his; but I couldn't shake him; and the Otis testimony's sound. So we'll have to quitcounting on Russell's proving his own guilt. We've got that little job on our hands, and the best way to handle it is to prove your innocence. See that?"
The bow with which Webster acknowledged this statement was a curious mingling of grace and mockery. The detective ignored it.
"And," he continued, "there's only one way for you to come whole out of this muddle—frankness. I'm working for you; you know that. Tell me everything you know, and we've got a chance to win. The innocent man who tries to twist black into white is an innocent fool." He looked swiftly to Wilton, who was leaning far back in his chair, head lolling slowly from side to side, the picture of indifference. "Isn't that so, judge?"
"Quite," Wilton agreed, pausing to remove his cigar from his mouth.
"Of course, it's so," Webster said curtly. "I've just told you so. That's why I've decided—the judge and I have talked it over—to give you something in confidence."
"One moment!" Hastings warned him. "Maybe, I won't take it in confidence—if it's something incriminating you."
"Yes; you've phrased that unfortunately, Berne," the judge put in, tilting his head on the chair-back to meet the detective's look.
Webster was nonplussed. Apparently, his surprise came from the judge's remark rather than from the detective's refusal to assume the rôle of confidant. Hastings inferred that Wilton, agreeing beforehand to the proposal being advanced, had changed his mind after entering the room.
"Hastings is right," the judge concluded; "even if he's on your side, you can't expect him to be tied up blind that way by a suspected man—and you're just that, Berne."
Seeing Webster's uncertainty, Hastings took another course.
"I think I know what you're talking about, Mr. Webster," he said, matter-of-fact. "Your nail-file's missing from your dressing case—disappeared since yesterday morning."
"You know that!" Berne flashed, suddenly angry. "And you're holding it over me!"
Open hostility was in every feature of his face; his lips twitched to the sharp intake of his breath.
"Why don't you look at it another way?" the old man countered quickly. "If I'd told the coroner about it—if I'd told him also that the size of that nail-file, judging from the rest of the dressing case, matched that of the one used for the blade of the dagger, matched it as well as Russell's—what then?"
"He's right, Berne," Wilton cautioned again. "He's taken the friendly course."
"I understand that, judge," Berne said; and, without answering Hastings, turned squarely to Wilton: "But it's a thin clue. He admits Russell lost a nail-file, too."
"Several years ago," Hastings goaded, so that Webster pivoted on his heel to face him; "you lost yours when?—last night?—this morning?"
"I don't know! I noticed its absence this morning."
"There you are!—But," Hastings qualified, to avoid the quarrel, "the nail-file isn't much of a clue if unsupported." He approached cordiality. "And I appreciate your intending to tell me. That was what you intended to give me in confidence, wasn't it?"
"Yes," Webster answered, half-sullen.
Hastings changed the subject again.
"Did you know Mildred Brace intended to clear out, leave Washington, today?"
"Why, no!" Webster shot that out in genuine surprise.
"I got it from Russell," Hastings informed, and went at once to another topic.
"And that brings us to the letter. Judge Wilton tell you about that?"
Webster was lighting a cigarette, with difficulty holding the fire of the old one to the endof the new. The operation seemed to entail hard labour for him.
"In the grey envelope?" he responded, drawing on the cigarette. "Yes. I didn't get it."
He took off his coat. The heat oppressed him. At frequent intervals he passed his handkerchief around the inside of his collar, which was wilting. Now, more than ever, he gave the impression of exaggerated watchfulness, as if he attempted prevision of the detective's questions.
"Nobody got it, so far as I can learn," Hastings said, a note of sternness breaking through the surface of his tone. "It vanished into thin air. That's the most mysterious thing about this mysterious murder."
He, in his turn, began pacing the floor, a short distance to and fro in front of Judge Wilton's chair, his hands behind him, flopping the baggy tail of his coat from side to side.
"You doubtless see the gravity of the facts: that letter was mailed to Sloanehurst. Russell has just told me so. She waved it in his face, to taunt him about you, before she dropped it into the mail-box. He swears"—Hastings stopped, at the far end of his pacing, and looked hard at Webster—"it was addressed to you."
Webster, again with his queer, high-pitched laugh, like derision, threw back his head and took two long strides toward the centre of theroom. There he stood a moment, hands in his pockets, while he stared at the toe of his right shoe, which he was carefully adjusting to a crack in the flooring.
Judge Wilton made his chair crackle as he moved to look at Webster. It was the weight of the detective's gaze, however, that drew the lawyer's attention; when he looked up, his eyes were half-closed, as if the light had suddenly become painful to them.
"That would be Russell's game, wouldn't it?" he retorted, at last.
"Mrs. Brace told me the same thing," Hastings said quietly, flashing a look at Wilton and back to the other.
"Damn her!" Webster broke forth with such vehemence that Wilton stared at him in amazement. "Damn her! And that's the first time I ever said that of a woman. It's as I suspected, as I expected. She's begun some sort of a crooked game!"
He trembled like a man with a chill. Hastings gave him no time to recover himself.
"You know Mrs. Brace, then? Know her well?" he pressed.
"Well enough!" Webster retorted with hot repugnance. "Well enough, although I never had but one conversation with her—if you may call that bedlam wildness a conversation. Shecame to my office the second day after I'd dismissed her daughter. She made a scene. She charged me with ruining her daughter's life, threatened suit for breach of promise. She said she'd 'get even' with me if it took her the rest of her life. I don't as a rule pay much attention to violent women, Mr. Hastings; but there was something about her that affected me strongly, she's implacable, and like stone, not like a woman. You saw her—understand what I mean?"
"Perfectly," agreed Hastings.
There flashed across his mind a picture of that incomprehensible woman's face, the black line of her eyebrows lifted half-way to her hair, the abnormal wetness of her lips thickened by a sneer. "If she's been after this man for two weeks," he thought, "I can understand his trembles!"
But he hurried the inquiry.
"So you think she lied about that letter?"
"Of course!" Webster laughed on a high note. "Next, I suppose, she'll produce the letter."
"She can't very well do that."
Something in his voice alarmed the suspected man.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
Hastings smiled.
"What do you mean?" Webster asked again, his voice lowered, and came a step nearer to the detective.
Hastings took a piece of paper from his pocket.
"Here's the flap of the grey envelope," he said, as if that was all the information he meant to impart.
Webster urged him, with eyes and voice:
"Well?"
"And on the back of it is some of Mildred Brace's handwriting."
The old man examined the piece of paper with every show of absorption. He could hear Webster's hurried breathing, and the gulp when he swallowed the lump in his throat.
The scene had got hold of Wilton also. Leaning forward in his chair, his lips half-parted, the thumb and forefinger of his right hand mechanically fubbing out his cigar, so that a little stream of fire trickled to the floor, he gazed unwinking at the envelope flap.
Webster went a step nearer to Hastings, and stood, passing his hand across the top of his head and staring again out of his half-closed eyes, as if the light had hurt them.
"And," the old man said, regarding Webster keenly but keeping any hint of accusation out of his voice, "I found it last night in thefireplace, behind the screen, in your room upstairs."
He paused, looking toward the door, his attention caught by a noise in the hall.
Webster laughed, on the high, derisive note. He was noticeably pale.
"Come, man!" Judge Wilton said, harsh and imperious. "Can't you see the boy's suffering? What's written on it?"
"What difference does it make—the writing?" Webster objected, with a movement of his shoulders that looked like a great effort to pull himself together. "If there's any at all, it's faked. Faked! That's what it is. People don't write on the inside of envelope flaps."
His face did not express the assurance he tried to put into his voice. He went back to the piano and leaned on it, his posture such that it might have indicated a nonchalant ease or, equally well, might have betrayed his desperate need of support.
"This letter incident can't be waved away," Hastings, without handing over the scrap of envelope, proceeded in even, measured tones—using his sentences as if they were hammers with which he assailed the young lawyer's remnants of self-control. "You're not trifling with a jury, Mr. Webster. I believe I know as much about the value of facts, this kind of facts, as youdo. Consider what you're up against. You——"
Webster put up a hand in protest, the fingers so unsteady that they dropped the cigarette which he had been on the point of lighting.
"Just a moment!" the old man commanded him. "This Mildred Brace claimed she had suffered injury at your hands. You fired her out of your office. She and her mother afterwards pursued you. She came out here in the middle of the night, where she knew you were. She was murdered, and by a weapon whose blade may have been fashioned from an article you possessed, an article which is now missing, missing since you came to Sloanehurst this time. You were found bending over the dead body.
"Her mother and her closest friend, her would-be fiancé, say she wrote to you Friday night, addressing her letter to Sloanehurst. The flap of an envelope, identified by her mother and friend, and bearing the impression in ink of her handwriting, is found in the fireplace of your room here. The man who followed her out here, who might have been suspected of the murder, has proved an alibi.
"Now, I ask you, as a lawyer and a sensible man, who's going to believe that she came out here without having notified you of her coming? Who, as facts stand now, is going to believe anything but that you, desperate with the fearthat she would make revelations which would prevent your marriage to Miss Sloane and keep you from access to an immense amount of money which you needed—who's going to believe you didn't kill her, didn't strike her down, there in the night, according to a premeditated plan, with a dagger which, for better protection of yourself, you had manufactured in a way which you hoped would make it beyond identification? Who's——"
Wilton intervened again.
"What's your object, Hastings?" he demanded, springing from his chair. "You're treating Berne as if he'd killed the woman and you could prove it!"
Webster was swaying on his feet, falling a little away from the piano and reeling against it again, his elbows sliding back and forth on its top. He was extremely pale; even his lips, still stiff and twisted to what he thought was a belittling smile, were white. He looked at the detective as a man might gaze at an advancing terror which he could neither resist nor flee. His going to pieces was so complete, so absolute, that it astonished Hastings.
"And you, both of you," the old man retorted to Wilton's protest; "you're treating me as if I were a meddlesome outsider intent on 'framing up' a case, instead of the representative ofthe Sloane family—at least, of Miss Lucille Sloane! Why's that?"
"Tell me what's on that paper," Webster said hoarsely, as if he had not heard the colloquy of the other two.
He held up a trembling hand, but without taking a step. He still swayed, like a man dangled on strings, against the piano.
"Yes; tell him!" urged Wilton.
Hastings handed Webster the envelope flap. Instead of looking at it, Webster let it drop on the piano.
"One of the words," Hastings said, "is 'pursuit.' The other two are uncompleted."
"And it's her handwriting, the daughter's?" Wilton said.
"Beyond a doubt."
Webster kept his unwinking eyes on the detective, apparently unable to break the spell that held him. For a long moment, he had said nothing. When he did speak, it was with manifest difficulty. His words came in a screaming whisper:
"Then, I'm in desperate shape!"
"Nonsense, man!" Judge Wilton protested, his voice raised, and, going to his side, struck him sharply between the shoulders. "Get yourself together, Berne! Brace up!"
The effect on the collapsing man was, in a way,magical. He stood erect in response to the blow, his elbows no longer seeking support on the piano. He got his eyes away from Hastings and looked at the judge as a man coming out of a sound sleep might have done. For a few seconds, he had one hand over his mouth, as if, by actual manipulation, he would gain control of the muscles of his lips.
"I feel better," he said at last, dropping the hand from before his face and squaring his shoulders. "I don't know what hit me. If I'd—you know," he hesitated, frowning, "if I'd killed the woman, I couldn't have acted the coward more thoroughly."
Hastings went through with what he wanted to say:
"About that letter, Mr. Webster: have you any idea, can you advance any theory, as to how that piece of the envelope got into your room?"
Webster was passing his hand across his hair now, and breathing in a deep, gusty fashion.
"Not the faintest," he replied, hoarsely.
"That's all, then, gentlemen!" Hastings said, so abruptly that both of them started. "We don't seem to have gone very far ahead with this business. We won't, until you—particularly you, Webster—tell me what you know. It's your own affair——"
"My dear sir——" Judge Wilton began.
"Let me finish!" Hastings spoke indignantly. "I'm no fool; I know when I'm trifled with. Understand me: I don't say you got that letter, Mr. Webster; I don't say you ever saw it; I don't know the truth of it—yet. I do say you've deliberately refused to respond to my requests for cooperation. I do say you'd prefer to have me out of this case altogether. I know it, although I'm not clear as to your motives—or yours, judge. You were anxious enough, you said when we talked at Sloane's door, for me to go on with it. If you're still of that opinion, I advise you to advise your friend here to be more outspoken with me. I'll give you this straight: if I can't be corn, I won't be shucks. But I intend to be corn. I'm going to conduct this investigation as I see fit. I won't be turned aside; I won't play second to your lead!"
He was fine in his intensity. Astounded by his vehemence, the two men he addressed were silent, meeting his keen and steady scrutiny.
He smiled, and, as he did so, they were aware, with an emotion like shock, that his whole face mirrored forth a genuine and warm self-satisfaction. The thing was as plain as if he had spoken it aloud: he had gotten out of the interview what he wanted. Their recognition of this fact increased their blankness.
"You know my position now," he added, nolonger denunciatory. "If you change your minds, that will be great! I want all the help I can get. And, take it from me, young man, you can't afford to throw away any you can get."
"Threats?"
Webster had shot out the one word with cool insolence before the judge could begin a conciliatory remark. The change in the lawyer's manner was so unpleasant, the insult so palpably deliberate, that Hastings could not mistake the purpose back of it. Webster regarded him out of burning eyes.
"No; not threats," Hastings answered him in a voice that was cold as ice. "I think you understand what I mean. I know too little, and I suspect too much, to drop my search for the murderer of that woman."
Judge Wilton tried to placate him:
"I don't see what your complaint is, Hastings. We——"
A smothered, half-articulate cry from Webster interrupted him. Hastings, first to spring forward, caught the falling man by his arm, breaking the force of the fall. He had clutched the edge of the piano as his legs gave under him. That, and the quickness of the detective, made the fall more like a gentle sliding to the floor.
Save for the one, gurgling outcry, no wordcame from him. He was unconscious, his colourless lips again twisted to that poor semblance of smiling defiance which Hastings had noticed at the beginning of the interview.
Dr. Garnet, reaching Sloanehurst half an hour later, found Webster in complete collapse. He declared that for at least several days the sick man must be kept quiet. He could not be moved to his apartment in Washington, nor could he be subjected to questioning about anything.
"That is," he explained, "for three or four days—possibly longer. He's critically ill. But for my knowledge of the terrific shock he's sustained as a result of the murder, I'd be inclined to say he'd broken down after a long, steady nervous strain.
"I'll have a nurse out to look after him. Miss Sloane has volunteered, but she has troubles of her own."
Judge Wilton took the news to Hastings, who was on the front porch, whittling, waiting to see Lucille before returning to Washington.
"I think Garnet's right," Wilton added. "I thought, even before last night, Berne acted as if he'd been worn out. And you handled himrather roughly. That sort of questioning, tantalizing, keeping a man on tenterhooks, knocks the metal out of a high-strung temperament like his. I don't mind telling you it had me pretty well worked up."
"I'm sorry it knocked him out," Hastings said. "All I wanted was the facts. He wasn't frank with me."
"I came out here to talk about that," Wilton retorted, brusquely. "You're all wrong there, Hastings! The boy's broken all to pieces. He sees clearly, too clearly, the weight of suspicion against him. You've mistaken his panic for hostility toward yourself."
The old man was unconvinced, and showed it.
"Suspicion doesn't usually knock a man into a cocked hat—unless there's something to base it on," he contended.
"All right; I give up," Wilton said, with a short laugh. "All I know is, he came to me before we saw you in the music room, and told me he wanted me to be there, to see that he omitted not even a detail of what he knew."
Hastings, looking up from the intricate pattern he was carving, challenged the judge:
"Has it occurred to you that, if he's not guilty, he might suspect somebody else in this house, might be trying to shield that person?"
In the inconsiderable pause that followed,Wilton's lips, parting for an incredulous smile, showed the top of his tongue against his teeth, as if set for pronunciation of the letter "S." Hastings, in a mental flash, saw him on the point of exclaiming: "Sloane!" But, if that was in his mind, he put it down, elaborating the smile to a laughing protest:
"That's going far afield, isn't it?"
Hastings smiled in return: "Maybe so, but it's a possibility—and possibilities have to be dealt with."
"Which reminds me," the judge said, now all amiability; "don't forget I'm always at your service in this affair. I see now that you might have preferred to question Webster alone, in the music room; but my confidence in his innocence blinded me to the fact that you could regard him as actually guilty. I expected nothing but a friendly conference, not a fierce cross-examination."
"It didn't matter at all," Hastings matched Wilton's cordial tone; "and I appreciate your offer, judge. Suppose you tell me anything that occurs to you, anything that will throw light on this case any time; and I'll act as go-between for you with the authorities—if necessary."
"You mean——?"
"I'd like to do the talking for this family and its friends. I can work better if I can handlethings myself. The half of my job is to save the Sloanes from as many wild rumours as I can."
Wilton nodded approval.
"How about Arthur? You want me to take any questions to him for you?"
"No; thanks.—But," Hastings added, "you might make him see the necessity of telling me what he saw last night. If he doesn't come out with it, he'll make it all the harder on Webster."
"I don't think he saw anything."
"Didn't he? Why'd he refuse to testify before the coroner, then?"
Sheriff Crown's car came whirling up the driveway; and Hastings spoke hurriedly:
"You know he's not as sick as he makes out. He's got to tell me what he knows, judge! He's holding back something. That's why he wants to make me so mad I'll quit the case. Who's he shielding? That's what people will want to know."
Wilton pondered that.
"I'll see what I can do," he finally agreed. "According to you, it may appear—people may suspect—that Webster's guilty or shielding somebody else; and Arthur's guilty or shielding Webster!"
When Mr. Crown reached the porch, theywere discussing Webster's condition, and Hastings, with the aid of the judge's penknife, was tightening a screw in his big barlowesque blade. They were careful to say nothing that might arouse the sheriff's suspicion of their compact—an agreement whereby a private detective, and not the law's representative, was to have the benefit of all the judge's information bearing on the murder.
Mr. Crown, however, was dissatisfied.
"I'm tied up!" he complained, nursing with forefinger and thumb his knuckle-like chin. "The only place I can get information is at the wrong end—Russell!"
"What's the matter with me?" the detective asked amiably. "I'll be glad to help—if you think I can."
"What good's that to me?" He wore his best politician's smile, but there was resentment in his voice. "Your job is keeping things quiet—for Sloanehurst. Mr. Sloane's ill, too ill to see me without endangering his life, so his funeral-faced valet tells me. Miss Lucille says, politely enough, she's told all she knows, told it on the stand, and I'm to go to you if I want anything more from her. The judge here knows nothing about the inside relationships of the family and Webster, or of Webster and the Brace girl. And Webster's down and out,thoroughly and conveniently! If all that don't catch your uncle Robert where the hair's short, I'll quit!"
"What do you want to know?" Hastings countered. "You've had access to everything, far as I can see."
Reply to that was delayed by the appearance of Jarvis, summoning the judge to Arthur Sloane's room.
"I want to get at Webster," Crown told Hastings. "And here's why: if Russell didn't kill her, Webster did."
"Why, you've weakened!" the old man guyed head bent over his whittling. "You had Russell's goose cooked this morning—roasted to a rich, dark brown!"
"Yes; and if I could break down his alibi, I'd still have him cooked!"
"You accept the alibi, then?"
"Sure, I accept it."
"I don't."
"Why don't you?" objected Crown. "He didn't have an aeroplane in his hip pocket, did he? That's the only way he could have covered those four miles in fifteen minutes.—Or does his alibi have to fall in order to save Miss Sloane's fiancé?"
He slapped his thigh and thrust out his bristly moustache. "You're paid to fasten thething on Russell," he said, clearly pugnacious. "I don't expect you to help me work against Webster! I'm not that simple!"
The old man, with a gesture no more arresting than to point at the sheriff with the piece of wood in his left hand, made the official jaw drop almost to the official chest.
"Mr. Crown," he said, "get this, once and for all: a man ain't necessarily a crook because he's once worked for the government. I'm as anxious to find the guilty man now, every time, as when I was in the Department of Justice. And I intend to. From now on, you'll give me credit for that!—Won't you, Mr. Sheriff?"
Crown apologized. "I'm worried; that's what. I'm up a gum stump and can't get down."
"All right, but don't try to make a ladder out of me! Why don't you look into that alibi?"
Crown was irritated again. "What do you stick to that for?"
"Because," Hastings declared, "I'm ready to swear-and-cross-my-heart he lied when he said he ran that four miles. I'm ready to swear he was here when the murder was done. When a man's got as good an alibi as he said he had, his adam's-apple don't play 'Yankee Doodle' on his windpipe."
"Is that so!"
"It is—and here's another thing: when's Mrs. Brace going to break loose?"
"Now, you're talking!" agreed Crown, with momentary enthusiasm. "She told me this morning she'd help me show up Webster—she wouldn't have it that Russell killed the girl. Foxy business! Mixed up in it herself, she runs to the rescue of the man she——"
The sheriff paused, unable to bring that reasoning to its logical conclusion.
"No," he said, dejected; "I can't believe she put him up to murdering her daughter."
"That woman," Hastings said, "is capable of anything—anything! We're going to find she's terrible, I tell you, Crown. She's mixed up in the murder somehow—and, if you don't find out how, I will!"
"How can we get her?" Crown argued. "She was in her flat when the killing was done. We've searched these grounds, and found nothing to incriminate anybody. All we've got is a strong suspicion against two men. She's out and away."
"Not if we watch her. She's promised to make trouble—she'll be lucky if she makes none for herself. Let's keep after her."
"I'm on! But," the sheriff reminded, again half-hearted, "that won't get us anything soon. She won't leave her flat before the funeral."
"That won't keep her quiet very long," Hastings contended. "She told me the funeral would be at nine o'clock tomorrow morning—from an undertaker's.—Anyway, I've instructed one of my assistants to keep track of her. I'm not counting on her grief absorbing her, even for today."
But he saw that Crown was not greatly impressed with the possibility of finding the murderer through Mrs. Brace. The sheriff was engrossed in mental precautions against being misled by "the Sloanehurst detective."
He was still in that mood when Miss Sloane sent for Hastings.
The detective found her in the music room. She had taken the chair which Judge Wilton had occupied an hour before, and was leaning one elbow on an arm of it, her chin resting in the cup of her hand. Her dress—a filmy lavender so light that it shaded almost to pink, and magically made to bring out the grace of her figure—drew his attention to the slight sag of her shoulders, suggestive of great weariness.
But he was captivated anew by her grave loveliness, and by her fortitude. She betrayed her agitation only in the fine tremour in her hands and a certain slowness in her words.
On the porch, talking to Judge Wilton, he had wondered, in a moment of irritation, whyhe continued on the case against so much apparent opposition in the very household which he sought to help. He knew now that neither his sense of duty nor his fee was the deciding influence. He stayed because this girl needed him, because he had seen in her eyes last night the haggard look of an unspeakable suspicion.
"You wanted to see me—is there anything special?" she asked him, immediately alert.
"Yes; there is, Miss Sloane," he said, careful to put into his voice all the sympathy he felt for her.
"Yes?" She was looking at him with steady eyes.
"It's this, and I want you to bear in mind that I wouldn't bring it up but for my desire to put an end to your uncertainty: I'm afraid you haven't told me everything you know, everything you saw last night in——"
When she would have spoken, he put up a warning hand.
"Let me explain, please. Don't commit yourself until you see what I mean. Judge Wilton and Mr. Webster seem to think I'm not needed here. It may be a natural attitude—for them. They're both lawyers, and to lawyers a mere detective doesn't amount to much."
"Oh, I'm sure it isn't that," she flashed out, apologizing.
"Oh, I don't mind, personally," he said, with a smile for which she felt grateful. "As I say, it's natural for them to think that way, perhaps. Your father, however, is not a lawyer; and, when I went into his room at your request, he took pains to offend me, insult me, several times." That brought a faint flush to her face. "So, that leaves only you to give me facts which I must have—if they exist."
He became more urgent.
"And you employed me, Miss Sloane; you appealed to me when you were at a loss where to turn. I'm only fair to myself as well as to you when I tell you that your distress, far more than financial considerations, persuaded me to undertake this work without first consulting your father."
She leaned toward him, bending from the waist, her eyes slightly widened, so that their effect was to give her a startled air.
"You don't mean you'll give it up!" she said, plainly entreating. "You won't give it up!"
"Are you quite sure you don't want me to give it up? Judge Wilton has asked me twice, out of politeness, not to give it up. Are you merely being polite?"
She smiled, looking tired, and shook her head.
"Really, Mr. Hastings, if you were to desertus now, I should be desperate—altogether. Desperate! Just that."
"I can't desert you," he said gently. "As I told Mr. Webster, I know too little and I suspect too much to do that."
Before she spoke again, she looked at him intently, drawing in her under lip a little against her teeth.
"What, Mr. Hastings?" she asked, then. "What do you suspect?"
"Let me answer that with a question," he suggested. "Last night, your one idea was that I could protect you and your father, everybody in the house here, by acting as your spokesman. I think you wanted to set me up as a buffer between all of you on the one side and the authorities and the reporters on the other. You wanted things kept down, nothing to get out beyond that which was unavoidable. Wasn't that it?"
"Yes; it was," she admitted, not seeing where his question led.
"You were afraid, then, that something incriminating might be divulged, weren't you?"
"Oh, no!" she denied instantly.
"I mean something which might seem incriminating. You trusted the person whom it would seem to incriminate; and you wanted time for the murderer to be found without, in themeantime, having the adverse circumstance made public. Isn't that it, Miss Sloane?"
"Yes—practically."
"Let's be clear on that. Your fear was that too much questioning of you or the other person might result in a slip-up—might make you or him mention the apparently damaging incident, with disastrous effect. Wasn't that it?"
"Yes; that was it."
"Now, what was that apparently incriminating incident?"
She started. He had brought her so directly to the confession that she saw now the impossibility of withholding what he sought.
"It may be," he tried to lighten her responsibility, "the very thing that Webster and the judge have concealed—for I'm sure they're keeping something back. Perhaps, if I knew it, things would be easier. People closely affected by a crime are the last to judge such things accurately."
She gave a long breath of relief, looking at him with perplexity nevertheless.
"Yes—I know. That was why I came to you—last night—in the beginning."
"And it was about them, Webster and Wilton," he drew the conclusion for her, still encouraging her with his smile, regarding herover the rims of his spectacles with a fatherly kindness.
She turned from him and looked out of the window. It was the middle of a hot, still day, no breeze stirring, and wonderfully quiet. For the moment, there was no sound, in the house or outside.
"Oh!" she cried, her voice a revelation of the extent to which her doubts had oppressed her. "It was like that, out there—quiet, still! If you could only understand!"
"My dear child," he said, "rely on me. The sheriff is bound to assert himself, to keep in the front of things; he's that kind of a man. He'll make an arrest any time, or announce that he will. Don't you see the danger?" He leaned forward and took her hand, a move to which she seemed oblivious. "Don't you see I must have facts to go on—if I'm to help you?"
At that, she disengaged her hand, and sat very straight, her face again a little turned from him. A twitch, like a shudder cut short, moved her whole body, so that the heel of her slipper rapped smartly on the floor.
"I wish," she whispered dully, "I wish I knew what to do!"
"Tell me," he urged, as if he spoke to a child.
She showed him her face, very white, with sudden shadows under the eyes.
"I must, I think; I must tell you," she said, not much louder than the previous whisper. "You were right. I didn't tell the whole story of what I saw. Believe me, I didn't think it mattered. I thought, really, things would right themselves and explanations be unnecessary. But you knew—didn't you?"
"Yes. I knew." He realized her ordeal, helping her through it. "What were they doing?"
She held her chin high.
"It was all true, what I told you in the library, my being waked up by father's moving about, my going to the window, my seeing Berne and the judge facing each other across—her—there at the end of the awful yellow arm of light. But that wasn't all. The moment the light flashed on, the judge threw back his head a little, like a man about to cry out, shout for help. I am sure that was it.
"But Berne was too quick for that. Berne put out his hand; his arm shot across her; and his hand closed the judge's mouth. The judge made no noise whatever, but he shook his head from side to side two or three times—I'm not certain how many—while Berne leant over the body and whispered to him. It seemed tome I could almost hear the words, but I didn't.
"Then Berne took his hand from the judge's mouth. I think, before that, the judge made a sign, tried to nod his head up and down, to show he would do as Berne said. Then, when they saw she was dead, they both hurried around the corner to the front of the house, and I heard them come in; I heard the judge call to father and run up to your room."
She was alarmed then by the amazement and disapproval in his face.
"Oh!" she said, and this time she took his hand. "You see! You see! You don't understand! You think Berne killed her!"
"I don't know," he said, wondering. "I must think." For the moment, indignation swept him. "Wilton! A judge, a judge!—keeping quiet on a thing like that! I must think."
She let go his hand and, still leaning toward him, waited for him to speak. A confusion of misgivings assailed her—she regretted having confided in him. If his anger embraced Berne as well as Judge Wilton, she had done nothing but harm!
Seeing her dismay, he tried again to reassure her.
"But no matter!" he minimized his own sense of shock. "I'm sure I'll understand if you'll tell me more—your explanation."
Obviously, the only inference he could draw from her story as she had told it was that Webster had killed the woman and, found bending over her body, had sprung forward to silence the man who had discovered him. Nevertheless, it was equally evident that she was sincere in attributing to Webster a different motive for preventing the judge's outcry. Consideration of that persuaded Hastings that she could give him facts which would change the whole aspect of the crime.
Her hesitance now made him uneasy; he recognized the necessity of increasing her reliance upon him. If she told him only a part of what she knew, he would be scarcely in a better position than before.
"Naturally," he added, "you can throw light on the whole incident—light by which I must be guided, to a great degree."
"If Berne were not ill," she responded to that, "I wouldn't tell.—It's because he's lying up there, his lips closed, unable to keep a look-out for developments, at the mercy of what the sheriff may do or say!—That's why I feel so dreadfully the need of help, Mr. Hastings!"
She slid back in her chair, moving farther from him, as if his kindly gaze disconcerted her.
"If he hadn't suffered this collapse, I should have left the matter to him, I think. But now—now I can't!" She straightened again, her chin up, the signal with her of final decision. "He acted on his impulsive desire to prevent my being shocked by that discovery—that horror out there on the lawn. Things had happened to convince him that such a thing, shouted through the night, would be a terrific blow to me. I'm sure that that was the only idea he had when he put his hand over Judge Wilton's mouth."
"I can believe that," he said. "Tell me why you believe it."
"Oh!" she protested, hands clenched on her knees; "if it affected only him and me!"
Her suspicion of her father recurred to him. It was, he thought, back of the terror he saw in her eyes now.
"But it does affect only him and me, after all!" she continued fiercely, as much to strengthen herself in what she wanted to believe as to force him to that belief. "Let me tell you the whole affair, from beginning to end."
She proceeded in a low tone, the words slower, as if she laboured for precision and clarity.
"I must go back to Friday—the night before last—it seems months ago! I had heard that Berne had become involved in some sort of relationship with his stenographer—that she had been dismissed from his office and refused to accept the dismissal as final. I mean, of course, I heard she was in love with him, and he'd been in love with her—or should have been.
"It was told me by a friend of mine in Washington, Lucy Carnly. It seems another stenographer overheard the conversation between Berne and Miss—Miss Brace. It got out that way. It was very circumstantial; I couldn't help believing it, some of it; Lucy wouldn't have brought me idle gossip—I thought."
She drew in her under lip, to hide its momentary tremour, and shook her head from side to side once.
"All that, Mr. Hastings, came up, as a matter of course, when Berne reached here evening before last for the week-end. I'd just heard it that day. He denied it, said there had been nothing remotely resembling a love affair.—He was indignant, and very hurt!—He said she'd misconstrued some of his kindnesses to her. He couldn't explain how she had misconstrued them. At any rate, the result was that I broke our engagement. I——"
"Friday night!" Hastings exclaimed involuntarily.
He grasped on the instant how grossly Webster, by withholding all this, had deceived him, left him in the dark.
"Yes; and I told father about it," she hurried her words here, the effect of her manner being the impression that she hoped this fact would not bulk too large in the detective's thoughts. "The three of us had a talk about it Friday night. Father's wonderfully fond of Berne and tried to persuade me I was foolishly ruining my life. I refused to change my mind. When I went upstairs, they stayed a long time in the library, talking.
"I think they decided the best thing for Bernewas to stay on here, through yesterday and today, in the hope that he and father might change my mind. Father tried to, yesterday morning. He was awfully upset. That's one reason he's so worn out and sick today.—I love my father so, Mr. Hastings!" She held her lips tight-shut a moment, a sob struggling in her throat. "But my distress, my own hurt pride——"
"What did your father say about Mildred Brace?" Hastings asked, when she did not finish that sentence.
She looked at him, again with widened eyes, a startled air, putting both her hands to her throat.
"There!" she said, voice falling to a whisper.
Then, turning her face half from him, she whispered so low that he heard her with difficulty: "I wish I were dead!"
Her words frightened him, they had so clearly the ring of truth, as if she would in sober fact have preferred death to the thought which was breaking her heart—suspicion of her father.
"That was why Berne stopped the judge's outcry," she said at last, turning her white face to him; "he had the sudden wild idea that I'm afraid you have—that father might have killed her. And Berne did not want that awful factscreamed through the night at me. Oh, can't you see—can't you see that, Mr. Hastings?"
"It's entirely possible; Mr. Webster may have thought that.—But let's keep the story straight. What had your father said about Mildred Brace—to arouse any such suspicion?"
"He was angry, terribly indignant. You know I made no secret to you of his high temper. His rages are fierce.—Once, when he was that way, I saw him kill a dog. If it had—but I think all men who're unstrung nervously, as he is, have high tempers. He felt so indignant because she had come between Berne and myself. He blamed neither Berne nor me. He seemed to concentrate all his anger upon her.
"He said—you see, Mr. Hastings, I tell you everything!—he threatened to go to her and—— He had, of course, no definite idea what he would do. Finally, he did say he would buy her off, pay her to leave this part of the country. After that, he said, he knew I would 'see things clearly,' and Berne and I would be reconciled."
Hastings remembered Russell's assertion that Mildred had her ticket to Chicago.
"Did he buy her off?" he asked quickly.
"Oh, no; he was merely wishing that he could, I think."
"But he made no attempt to get in touch with her yesterday? You're sure?"
"Quite," she said. "But don't you see. Mr. Hastings? Father was so intense in his hatred of her that Berne thought of him the moment he found that body—out there. He thought father must have encountered her on the lawn in some way, or she must have come after him, and he, in a fit of rage, struck her down."
"Has Webster told you this?"
"No—but it's true; it is!"
"But, if your supposition is to hold good, how did your father happen to be in possession of that dagger, which evidently was made with malice aforethought, as the lawyers say?"
"Exactly," she said, her lips quivering, hands gripping spasmodically at her knees. "He didn't do it! He didn't do it! Berne's idea was a mistake!"
"Who, then?" he pressed her, realizing now that she was so unstrung she would give him her thoughts unguarded.
"Why, that man Russell," she said, her voice so low and the words so slow that he thought her at the limit of her endurance. "But I've said all this to show you why Berne put his hand over the judge's mouth. I want to make it very clear that he feared father—think of it, Mr. Hastings!—had killed her! At first, I thought——"
She bowed her face in both her hands andwept unrestrainedly, without sobs, the tears streaming between her fingers and down her wrists.
The old man put one hand on her hair, and with the other brought forth his handkerchief, being bothered by the sudden mistiness of his spectacles.
"A brave girl," he said, his own voice insecure. "What a woman! I know what you mean. At first, you feared your father might have been concerned in the murder. I saw it in your eyes last night. You had the same thought that young Webster had—rather, that you say he had."
Her weeping ceased as suddenly as it had begun. She looked at him through tears.
"And I've only injured Berne in your eyes; I think, irreparably! This morning I thought you heard me when I asked him not to let it be known that our engagement was broken? Don't you remember? You were on the porch as we came around the corner."
For the first time since its utterance, he recalled her statement then, "We'll have to leave it as it was," and Webster's significant rejoinder. He despised his own stupidity. Had he magnified Webster's desire to keep that promise into guilty knowledge of the crime itself? And had not the mistake driven him into false andvalueless interpretations of his entire interview with Webster?
"He promised," Lucille pursued, "for the same reason I had in asking it—to prevent discovery of the fact that father might have had a motive for wishing her dead! It was a mistake, I see now, a terrible mistake!"
"Can you tell me why you didn't have the same thoughts about Berne?" He was sorry he had to make that inquiry. If he could, he would have spared her further distress. "Why wouldn't he have had the same motive, hatred of Mildred Brace, a thousand times stronger?"
"I don't know," she said. "I simply never thought of it—not once."
Fine psychologist that he was, Hastings knew why that view had not occurred to her. Her love for Webster was an idealizing sentiment, putting him beyond even the possibility of wrong-doing. Her love for her father, unusual in its devotion as it was, recognized his weaknesses nevertheless.
And, while seeking to protect the two, she had told a story which, so far as bald facts went, incriminated the lover far more than the father. She had attributed to Sloane, in her uneasiness, the motive which would have been most natural to the discarded Webster. Even now, she could not suspect Berne; her only fearwas that others, not understanding him as she did, might suspect him! Although she had broken with him, she still loved him. More than that: his illness and consequent helplessness increased her devotion for him, brought to the surface the maternal phase of it.
"If she had to choose between the two," Hastings thought, "she'd save Webster—every time!"
"I know—I tell you, Mr. Hastings, Iknowneither Berne nor father is at all responsible for this crime. I tell you," she repeated, rising to her feet, as if by mere physical height she hoped to impress her knowledge upon him, "Iknowthey're innocent.—Don'tyouknow it?"
She stood looking down at him, her whole body tense, arms held close against her sides, the knuckles of her fingers white as ivory. Her eyes now were dry, and brilliant.
He evaded the flat statement to which she pressed him.
"But your knowledge, Miss Sloane, and what we must prove," he said, also standing, "are two different things just now. The authorities will demand proofs."
"I know. That's why I've told you these things." Somehow, her manner reproached him. "You said you had to have them in order to handle this—this situation properly. Now thatyou know them, I'm sure you'll feel safe in devoting all your time to proving Russell's guilt." She moved her head forward, to study him more closely. "You know he's guilty, don't you?"
"I'm certain Mrs. Brace figured in her daughter's murder," he said. "She was concerned in it somehow. If that's true, and if your father approached neither her nor her daughter yesterday, it does seem highly possible that Russell's guilty."
He turned from her and stood at the window, his back to her a few long moments. When he faced her again, he looked old.
"But the facts—if we could only break down Russell's alibi!"
"Oh!" she whispered, in new alarm. "I'd forgotten that!"
All the tenseness went out of her limbs. She sank into her chair, and sat there, looking up to him, her eyes frankly confessing a panic fear.
"I think I'm sorry I told you," she said, desperately. "I can't make you understand!" Another consideration forced itself upon her. "You won't have to tell anybody—anybody at all—about this, will you—now?"
He was prepared for that.
"I'll have to ask Judge Wilton why he acted on Mr. Webster's advice—and what that advicewas, what they whispered to each other when you saw them."
"Why, that's perfectly fair," she assented, relieved. "That will stop all the secrecy between them and me. It's the very thing I want. If that's assured, everything else will work itself out."
Her faith surprised him. He had not realized how unqualified it was.
"Did you ask the judge about it?" he inquired.
"Yes; just before I came in here—after Berne's collapse. I felt so helpless! But he tried to persuade me my imagination had deceived me; he said they had had no such scene. You know how gruff and hard Judge Wilton can be at times. I shouldn't choose him for a confidant."
"No; I reckon not. But we'll ask him now—if you don't mind."
Willis, the butler, answered the bell, and gave information: Judge Wilton had left Sloanehurst half an hour ago and had gone to the Randalls'. He had asked for Miss Sloane, but, learning that she was engaged, had left his regrets, saying he would come in tomorrow, after the adjournment of court.
"He's on the bench tomorrow at the county-seat," Lucille explained the message. "Healways divides his time between us and the Randalls when he comes down from Fairfax for his court terms. He told me this morning he'd come back to us later in the week."
"On second thought," Hastings said, "that's better. I'll talk to him alone tomorrow—about this thing, this inexplicable thing: a judge taking it upon himself to deceive the sheriff even! But," he softened the sternness of his tone, "he must have a reason, a better one than I can think of now." He smiled. "And I'll report to you, when he's told me."
"I'm glad it's tomorrow," she said wearily. "I—I'm tired out."
On his way back to Washington, the old man reflected: "Now, she'll persuade Sloane to do the sensible thing—talk." Then, to bolster that hope, he added a stern truth: "He's got to. He can't gag himself with a pretended illness forever!"
At the same time the girl he had left in the music room wept again, saying over and over to herself, in a despair of doubt: "Not that! Not that! I couldn't tell him that. I told him enough. I know I did. He wouldn't have understood!"