Gratified, and yet puzzled, by the results of his search of the upstairs rooms, Hastings was fully awake to the necessity of his interviewing Mrs. Brace as soon as possible. Lally, the chauffeur, drove him back to Washington early that Sunday morning. It was characteristic of the old man that, as they went down the driveway, he looked back at Sloanehurst and felt keenly the sufferings of the people under its roof.
He was particularly drawn to Lucille Sloane, with whom he had had a second brief conference. While waiting for his coffee—nobody in the house had felt like breakfast—he had taken a chair at the southeast end of the front porch and, pulling a piece of soft wood and a knife from his Gargantuan coat-pockets, had fallen to whittling and thinking.—Whittling, he often said, enabled him to think clearly; it was to him what tobacco was to other men.
Thus absorbed, he suddenly heard Lucille's voice, low and tense:
"We'll have to leave it as it was be——"
Berne Webster interrupted her, a grain of bitterness in his words:
"Rather an unusual request, don't you think?"
"I wanted to tell you this after the talk in the library," she continued, "but there——"
They had approached Hastings from the south side of the house and, hidden from him by the verandah railing, were upon him before he could make his presence known. Now, however, he did so, warning them by standing up with a clamorous scraping of his feet on the floor. Instinctively, he had recoiled from overhearing their discussion of what was, he thought, a love-affair topic.
Lucille hurried to him, not that she had additional information to give him, but to renew her courage. Having called upon him for aid, she had in the usual feminine way decided to make her reliance upon him complete. And, under the influence of his reassuring kindliness, her hesitance and misgivings disappeared.
He had judged her feelings correctly during their conference in the parlour. At dinner, she had seen in him merely a pleasant, quiet-spoken old man, a typical "hick" farmer, who wore baggy, absurdly large clothing—"for the sake of his circulation," he said—and whoseappearance in no way corresponded to his reputation as a learned psychologist and investigator of crime. Now, however, she responded warmly to his charm, felt the sincerity of his sympathy.
Seeing that she looked up to him, he enjoyed encouraging her, was bound more firmly to her interests.
"I think your fears are unfounded," he told her.
But he did not reveal his knowledge that she suspected her father of some connection with the murder. In fact, he could not decide what her suspicion was exactly, whether it was that he had been guilty of the crime or that he had guilty knowledge of it.
A little anxious, she had asked him to promise that he would be back by ten o'clock, for the inquest. He thought he could do that, although he had persuaded the coroner that his evidence would not be necessary—the judge and Webster had found the body; their stories would establish the essential facts.
"Why do you want me here then?" he asked, not comprehending her uneasiness.
"For one thing," she said, "I want you to talk to father—before the inquest. I wish you could now, but he isn't up."
It was eight o'clock when Miss Davis, telephone operator in the cheap apartment houseon Fourteenth street known as The Walman, took the old man's card and read the inscription, over the wire:
"'Mr. Jefferson Hastings.'"
After a brief pause, she told him:
"She wants to know if you are a detective."
"Tell her I am."
"You may go up," the girl reported. "It's Number Forty-three, fourth floor—no elevator."
After ascending the three flights of stairs, he sat down on the top step, to get his breath. Mr. Hastings was stout, not to say sebaceous—and he proposed to begin the interview unhandicapped.
Mrs. Brace answered his ring. There was nobody else in the apartment. The moment he looked into her restless, remarkably brilliant black eyes, he catalogued her as cold and repellent.
"One of the swift-eyed kind," he thought; "heart as hard as her head. No blood in her—but smart. Smart!"
He relied, without question, on his ability to "size up" people at first glance. It was a gift with him, like the intuition of women; and to it, he thought, he owed his best work as a detective.
Mrs. Brace, without speaking, without acknowledging his quiet "Mrs. Brace, I believe?"led him into the living room after waiting for him to close the entrance door. This room was unusually large, out of proportion to the rest of the apartment which included, in addition to the narrow entry, a bedroom, kitchen and bath—all, so far as his observation went, sparsely and cheaply furnished.
They sat down, and still she did not speak, but studied his face. He got the impression that she considered all men her enemies and sought some intimation of what his hostility would be like.
"I'm sorry to trouble you at such a time," he began. "I shall be as brief as possible."
Her black eyebrows moved upward, in curious interrogation. They were almost mephistophelian, and unpleasantly noticeable, drawn thus nearer to the wide wave of her white hair.
"You wanted to see me—about my daughter?"
Her voice was harsh, metallic, free of emotion. There was nothing about her indicative of grief. She did not look as if she had been weeping. He could learn nothing from her manner; it was extremely matter-of-fact, and chilly. Only, in her eyes he saw suspicion—perhaps, he reflected, suspicion was always in her eyes.
Her composure amazed him.
"Yes," he replied gently; "if I don't distress you——"
"What is it?"
She suddenly lowered her eyebrows, drew them together until they were a straight line at the bottom of her forehead.
Her cold self-possession made it easy, in fact necessary, for him to deal with facts directly. Apparently, she resented his intimated condolence. He could fling any statement, however sensational, against the wall of her indifference. She was, he decided, as free of feeling as she was inscrutable. She would be surprised by emotion into nothing. It was his brain against hers.
"I want to say first," he continued, "that my only concern, outside of my natural and very real sympathy with such a loss as yours must be, is to find the man who killed her."
She moved slowly to and fro on the armless, low-backed rocker, watching him intently.
"Will you help me?"
"If I can."
"Thank you," he said, smiling encouragement from force of habit, not because he expected to arouse any spirit of cooperation in her. "I may ask you a few questions then?"
"Certainly."
Her thin nostrils dilated once, quickly, andsomehow their motion suggested the beginning of a ridiculing smile. He went seriously to work.
"Have you any idea, Mrs. Brace, as to who killed your daughter—or could have wanted to kill her?"
"Yes."
"Who?"
She got up, without the least change of expression, without a word, and, as she crossed the room, paused at the little table against the farther wall to arrange more symmetrically a pile of finger-worn periodicals. She went through the communicating door into the bedroom, and, from where he sat, he could see her go through another door—into the bathroom, he guessed. In a moment, he heard a glass clink against a faucet. She had gone for a drink of water, to moisten her throat, like an orator preparing to deliver an address.
She came back, unhurried, imperturbable, and sat down again in the armless rocker before she answered his question. So far as her manner might indicate, there had been no interruption of the conversation.
He swept her with wondering eyes. She was not playing a part, not concealing sorrow. The straight, hard lines of her lean figure were a complement to her gleaming, unrevealing eyes.There was hardness about her, and in her, everywhere.
A slow, warm breeze brought through the curtainless window a disagreeable odour, sour and fetid. The apartment was at the back of the building; the odour came from a littered courtyard, a conglomeration of wet ashes, neglected garbage, little filthy pools, warmed into activity by the sun, high enough now to touch them. He could see the picture without looking—and that odour struck him as excruciatingly appropriate to this woman's soul.
"Berne Webster killed my daughter," she said evenly, hands moveless in her lap. "There are several reasons for my saying so. Mildred was his stenographer for eight months, and he fell in love with her—that was the way he described his feeling, and intention, toward her. The usual thing happened; he discharged her two weeks ago.
"He wants to marry money. You know about that, I take it—Miss Sloane, daughter of A. B. Sloane, Sloanehurst, where she was murdered. They're engaged. At least, that is—was Mildred's information, although the engagement hasn't been announced, formally. Fact is, he has to marry the Sloane girl."
Her thin, mobile lips curled upward at the ends and looked a little thicker, giving anexaggerated impression of wetness. Hastings thought of some small, feline animal, creeping, anticipating prey—a sort of calculating ferocity.
She talked like a person bent on making every statement perfectly clear and understandable. There was no intimation that she was so communicative because she thought she was obliged to talk. On the contrary, she welcomed the chance to give him the story.
"Have you told all this to that sheriff, Mr. Crown?" he inquired.
"Yes; but he seemed to attach no importance to it."
She coloured her words with feeling at last—it was contempt—putting the sheriff beyond the pale of further consideration.
"You were saying Mr. Webster had to marry Miss Sloane. What do you mean by that, Mrs. Brace?"
"Money reasons. He had to have money. His bank balance is never more than a thousand dollars. He's got to produce sixty-five thousand dollars by the seventh of next September. This is the sixteenth of July. Where is he to get all that? He's got to marry it."
Hastings put more intensity into his scrutiny of her smooth, untroubled face. It showed no sudden access of hatred, no unreasoning venom,except that the general cast of her features spoke generally of vindictiveness. She was, unmistakably, sure of what she said.
"How do you know that?" he asked, hiding his surprise.
"Mildred knew it—naturally, from working in his office."
"Let me be exact, Mrs. Brace. Your charge is just what?"
He felt the need of keen thought. He reached for his knife and piece of wood. Entirely unconsciously, he began to whittle, letting little shavings fall on the bare floor. She made no sign of seeing his new occupation.
"It's plain enough, Mr.—I don't recall your name."
"Hastings—Jefferson Hastings."
"It's plain and direct, Mr. Hastings. He threw her over, threw Mildred over. She refused to be dealt with in that way. He wouldn't listen to her side, her arguments, her protests, her pleas. She pursued him; and last night he killed her. I understand—Mr. Crown told me—he was found bending over the body—it seemed to me, caught in the very commission of the crime."
A fleeting contortion, like mirthless ridicule, touched her lips as she saw him, with head lowered, cut more savagely into the piece ofwood. She noticed, and enjoyed, his dismay.
"That isn't quite accurate," he said, without lifting his head. "He and another man, Judge Wilton, stumbled—came upon your daughter's body at the same moment."
"Was that it?" she retorted, unbelieving.
When he looked up, she was regarding him thoughtfully, the black brows elevated, interrogative. The old man felt the stirrings of physical nausea within him. But he waited for her to elaborate her story.
"Do you care to ask anything more?" she inquired, impersonal as ashes.
"If I may."
"Why, certainly."
He paused in his whittling, brought forth a huge handkerchief, passed it across his forehead, was aware for a moment that he was working hard against the woman's unnatural calmness, and feeling the heat intensely. She was untouched by it. He whittled again, asking her:
"You a native of Washington?"
"No."
"How long have you been here?"
"About nine months. We came from Chicago."
"Any friends here—have you any friends here?"
"Neither here nor elsewhere." She made that bleak declaration simply, as if he had suggested her possession of green diamonds. Her tone made friendship a myth.
He felt again utterly free of the restraints and little hesitancies usual in situations of this nature.
"And your means, resources. Any, Mrs. Brace?"
"None—except my daughter's."
He was unaccountably restless. Putting the knife into his pocket, he stood up, went to the window. His guess had been correct. The courtyard below was as he had pictured it. He stood there at least a full minute.
Turning suddenly in the hope of catching some new expression on her face, he found her gazing steadily, as if in revery, at the opposite wall.
"One thing more, Mrs. Brace: did you know your daughter intended to go to Sloanehurst last night?"
"No."
"Were you uneasy when she failed to come in—last night?"
"Yes; but what could I do?"
"Had she written to Mr. Webster recently?"
"Yes; I think so."
"You think so?"
"Yes; she went out to mail a letter nightbefore last. I recall that she said it was important, had to be in the box for the midnight collection, to reach its destination yesterday afternoon—late. I'm sure it was to Webster."
"Did you see the address on it?"
"I didn't try to."
He stepped from the window, to throw the full glare of the morning sky on her face, which was upturned, toward him.
"Was it in a grey envelope?"
"Yes; an oblong, grey envelope," she said, the impassive, unwrinkled face unmoved to either curiosity or reticence.
With surprising swiftness he took a triangular piece of paper from his breast pocket and held it before her.
"Might that be the flap of that grey envelope?"
She inspected it, while he kept hold of it.
"Very possibly."
Without leaving her chair, she turned and put back the lid of a rickety little desk in the corner immediately behind her. There, she showed him, was a bundle of grey envelopes, the corresponding paper beside it. He compared the envelope flaps with the one he had brought. They were identical.
Here was support of her assertion that Berne Webster had been pursued by her daughter aslate as yesterday afternoon—and, therefore, might have been provoked into desperate action. He had found that scrap of grey paper at Sloanehurst, in Webster's room.
Mrs. Brace did not ask Hastings where he had got the fragment of grey envelope. She made no comment whatever.
He reversed the flap in his hand and showed her the inner side on which were, at first sight, meaningless lines and little smears. He explained that the letter must have been put into the envelope when the ink was still undried on the part of it that came in contact with the flap, and, the paper being of that rough-finish, spongy kind frequently affected by women, the flap had absorbed the undried ink pressed against it.
"Have you a hand-mirror?" he asked, breaking a long pause.
She brought one from the bedroom. Holding it before the envelope flap, he showed her the marks thus made legible. They were, on the first line: "—edly de—," with the first loop or curve of an "n" or an "m" following the"de"; and on the second line the one word "Pursuit!" the whole reproduction being this:
edly dePursuit!
"Does that writing mean anything to you, Mrs. Brace?" Hastings asked, keeping it in front of her.
She moved her left hand, a quiet gesture indicating her lack of further interest in the piece of paper.
"Nothing special," she said, "except that the top line seems to bear out what I've told you. It might be: 'repeatedly demanded'—I mean Mildred may have written that she had repeatedly demanded justice of him, something of that sort."
"Is it your daughter's writing?"
"Yes."
"And the word 'Pursuit,' with an exclamation point after it? That suggest anything to you?"
"Why, no." She showed her first curiosity: "Where did you get that piece of envelope?"
"Not from Berne Webster," he said, smiling.
"I suppose not," she agreed, and did not press him for the information.
"You said," he went to another point, "that the sheriff attached no importance to yourbelief in Webster's guilt. Can you tell me why?"
Her contempt was frank enough now, and visible, her lips thickening and assuming the abnormally humid appearance he had noticed before.
"He thinks the footsteps which Miss Sloane says she heard are the deciding evidence. He accuses a young man named Russell, Eugene Russell, who's been attentive to Mildred."
Hastings was relieved.
"Crown's seen him, seen Russell?" he asked, not troubling to conceal his eagerness.
On that, he saw the beginnings of wrath in her eyes. The black eyebrows went upward, the thin nostrils expanded, the lips set to a line no thicker than the edge of a knife.
"You, too, will——"
She broke off, checked by the ringing of the wall telephone in the entrance hall. She answered the call, moving without haste. It was for Mr. Hastings, she said, going back to her seat.
He regretted the interruption; it would give her time to regain the self-control she had been on the point of losing.
Sheriff Crown was at the other end of the wire. He was back at Sloanehurst, he explained, and Miss Sloane had asked him to give the detective certain information:
He had asked the Washington police to hold Eugene Russell, or to persuade him to attend the inquest at Sloanehurst. Crown, going in to Washington, had stopped at the car barns of the electric road which passed Sloanehurst, and had found a conductor who had made the ten-thirty run last night. This conductor, Barton, had slept at the barns, waiting for the early-morning resumption of car service to take him to his home across the city.
Barton remembered having seen a man leave his car at Ridgecrest, the next stop before Sloanehurst, at twenty-five minutes past ten last night. He answered Russell's description, had seemed greatly agitated, and was unfamiliar with the stops on the line, having questioned Barton as to the distance between Ridgecrest and Sloanehurst. That was all the conductor had to tell.
"Mrs. Brace's description of Russell, a real estate salesman who had been attentive to her daughter," continued Crown, "tallied with Barton's description of the man who had been on his car. I got his address from her. But say! She don't fall for the idea that Russell's guilty! She gave me to understand, in that snaky, frozen way of hers, that I was a fool for thinking so.
"Anyway, I'm going to put him over the jumps!" The sheriff was highly elated. "What was he out here for last night if he wasn't jealousof the girl? Wasn't he following her? And, when he came up with her on the Sloanehurst lawn, didn't he kill her? It looks plain to me; simple. I told you it was a simple case!"
"Have you seen him?" Hastings was looking at his watch as he spoke—it was nine o'clock.
"No; I went to his boarding house, waked up the place at three o'clock this morning. He wasn't there."
Hastings asked for the number of the house. It was on Eleventh street, Crown informed him, and gave the number.
"I searched his room," the sheriff added, his voice self-congratulatory.
"Find anything?"
"I should say! The nail file was missing from his dressing case."
"What else?"
"A pair of wet shoes—muddy and wet."
"Then, he'd returned to his room, after the murder, and gone out again?"
"That's it—right."
"Anybody in the house hear him come in, or go out?"
"Not a soul.—And I don't know where he is now."
Hastings, leaving the telephone, found Mrs. Brace carefully brushing into a newspaper the litter made by his whittling. Her performanceof that trivial task, the calm thoroughness with which she went about it, or the littleness of it, when compared with her complete indifference to the tragedy which should have overwhelmed her—something, he could not tell exactly what, made her more repugnant to him than ever.
He spoke impulsively:
"Did you want—didn't you feel some impulse, some desire, to go out there when you heard of this murder?"
She paused in her brushing, looking up to him without lifting herself from hands and knees.
"Why should I have wanted to do any such thing?" she replied. "Mildred's not out there. What's out there is—nothing."
"Do you know about the arrangements for the removal of the body?"
"The sheriff told me," she replied, cold, impersonal. "It will be brought to an undertaking establishment as soon as the coroner's jury has viewed it."
"Yes—at ten o'clock this morning."
She made no comment on that. He had brought up the disagreeable topic—one which would have been heart-breaking to any other mother he had ever known—in the hope of arousing some real feeling in her. And he had failed. Her self-control was impregnable. There wasabout her an atmosphere that was, in a sense, terrifying, something out of all nature.
She brushed up the remaining chips and shavings while he got his hat. He was deliberating: was there nothing more she could tell him? What could he hope to get from her except that which she wanted to tell? He was sure that she had spoken, in reply to each of his questions, according to a prearranged plan, a well designed scheme to bring into high relief anything that might incriminate Berne Webster.
And he was by no means in a mood to persuade himself of Webster's guilt. He knew the value of first impressions; and he did not propose to let her clog his thoughts with far-fetched deductions against the young lawyer.
She got to her feet with cat-like agility, and, to his astonishment, burst into violent speech:
"You're standing there trying to think up things to help Berne Webster! Like the sheriff! Now, I'll tell you what I told him: Webster's guilty. I know it! He killed my daughter. He's a liar and a coward—a traitor! He killed her!"
There was no doubt of her emotion now. She stood in a strange attitude, leaning a little toward him in the upper part of her body, as if all her strength were consciously directed into her shoulders and neck. She seemed larger in her arms and shoulders; they, with her head andface, were, he thought, the most vivid part of her—an effect which she produced deliberately, to impress him.
Her whole body was not tremulous, but, rather, vibrant, a taut mechanism played on by the rage that possessed her. Her eyebrows, high on her forehead, reminded him of things that crawled. Her eyes, brilliant like clear ice with sunshine on it, were darting, furtive, always in motion.
She did not look him squarely in the eye, but her eyes selected and bored into every part of his face; her glance played on his countenance. He could easily have imagined that it burned him physically in many places.
"All this talk about Gene Russell's being guilty is stuff, bosh!" she continued. "Gene wouldn't hurt anybody. He couldn't! Wait until you see him!" Her lips curled momentarily to their thickened, wet sneer. "There's nothing to him—nothing! Mildred hated him; he bored her to death. Even I laughed at him. And this sheriff talks about the boy's having killed her!"
Suddenly, she partially controlled her fury. He saw her eyes contract to the gleam of a new idea. She was silent a moment, while her vibrant, tense body swayed in front of him almost imperceptibly.
When she spoke again, it was in her flat, constrained tone. He was impressed anew with her capacity for making her feeling subordinate to her intelligence.
"She's a dangerous woman," he thought again.
"You're working for Webster?"
Her inquiry came after so slight a pause, and it was put to him in a manner so different from the unrestraint of her denunciation of Webster, that he felt as he would have done if he had been dealing with two women.
"I've told you already," he said, "my only interest is in finding the real murderer. In that sense, I'm working for Webster—if he's innocent."
"But he didn't hire you?"
"No."
Seeing that he told the truth, she indulged herself in rage again. It was just that, Hastings thought; she took an actual, keen pleasure in giving vent to the anger that was in her. Relieved of the necessity of censoring her words and thoughts closely, she could say what she wanted to say.
"He's guilty, and I'll prove it!" she defied the detective's disbelief. "I'll help to prove it. Guilty? I tell you he is—guilty as hell!"
He made an abrupt departure, her shrill hatred ringing in his ears when he reached thestreet. He found it hard, too, to get her out of his eyes, even now—she had impressed herself so shockingly upon him. The picture of her floated in front of him, above the shimmering pavement, as if he still confronted her in all her unloveliness, the smooth, white face like a travesty on youth, the swift, darting eyes, the hard, straight lines of the lean figure, the cold deliberation of manner and movement.
"She's incapable of grief!" he thought. "Terrible! She's terrible!"
Lally drove him to his apartment on Fifteenth street, where the largest of three rooms served him as a combination library and office. There he kept his records, in a huge, old-fashioned safe; and there, also, he held his conferences, from time to time, with police chiefs and detectives from all parts of the country when they sought his help in their pursuit of criminals.
The walls were lined with books from floor to ceiling. A large table in the centre of the room was stacked high with newspapers and magazines. Dusty papers and books were piled, too, on several chairs set against the bookcases, and on the floor in one corner was a pyramid of documents.
"This place is like me," he explained to visitors; "it's loosely dressed."
He sat down at the table and wroteinstructions for one of his two assistants, his best man, Hendricks. Russell's room must be searched and Russell interviewed—work for which Hastings felt that he himself could not spare the time. He gave Hendricks a second task: investigation of the financial standing of two people: Berne Webster and Mrs. Catherine Brace.
He noted, with his customary kindness, in his memorandum to Hendricks:
"Sunday's a bad day for this sort of work, but do the best you can. Report tomorrow morning."
That arranged, he set out for Sloanehurst, to keep his promise to Lucille—he would be there for the inquest.
On the way he reviewed matters:
"Somehow, I got the idea that the Brace womanknewRussell hadn't killed her daughter. Funny, that is. How could she have known that? How can she know it now?
"She's got the pivotal fact in this case. I felt it. I'm willing to bet she persuaded her daughter to pursue Webster. And things have gone 'bust'—didn't come out as she thought they would. What was she after, money? That's exactly it! Exactly! Her daughter could hold up Webster, and Webster could hold up the Sloanes after his marriage."
He whistled softly.
"If she can prove that Webster should have married her daughter, that he's in need of anything like sixty-five thousand dollars—where does he get off? He gets off safely if the Brace woman ever sees fit to tell—what? I couldn't guess if my whittling hand depended on it." He grimaced his repugnance.
"What a woman! A mania for wickedness—evil from head to foot, thoroughly.Shewouldn't stick at murder—if she thought it safe. She'd do anything, say anything. Every word she uttered this morning had been rehearsed in her mind—with gestures, even. When I beat her, I beat this puzzle; that's sure."
That he had to do with a puzzle, he had no manner of doubt. The very circumstances surrounding the discovery of the girl's body—Arthur Sloane flashing on the light in his room at a time when his being awake was so unusual that it frightened his daughter; Judge Wilton stumbling over the dead woman; young Webster doing the same thing in the same instant; the light reaching out to them at the moment when they bent down to touch the thing which their feet had encountered—all that shouted mystery to his experienced mind.
He thought of Webster's pronouncement: "The thug, acting on the spur of the moment, with a blow in the dark and a getaway throughthe night——" Here was reproduction of that in real life. Would people say that Webster had given himself away in advance? They might.
And the weapon, what about that? It could have been manufactured in ten minutes. Crown had said over the wire that Russell's nail file was missing. What if Webster's, too, were missing? He would see—although he expected to uncover no such thing.
He came, then, to Lucille's astounding idea, that her father must be "protected," because he was nervous and, being nervous, might incur the enmity of the authorities. He could not take that seriously. And yet the most fruitful imagination in the world could fabricate no motive for Arthur Sloane's killing a young woman he had never seen.
Only Webster and Russell could be saddled with motives: Webster's, desperation, the savage determination to rid himself of the woman's pursuit; Russell's, unreasoning jealousy.
So far as facts went, the crime lay between those two—and he could not shake off the impression that Mrs. Brace, shrilly asserting Russell's innocence, had known that she spoke the absolute truth.
Delayed by a punctured tire, Hastings reached Sloanehurst when the inquest was well under way. He went into the house by a side door and found Lucille Sloane waiting for him.
"Won't you go to father at once?" she urged him.
"What's the matter?" He saw that her anxiety had grown during his absence.
"He's in one of his awfully nervous states. I hope you'll be very patient with him—make allowances. He doesn't seem to grasp the importance of your connection with the case; wants to ask questions. Won't you let me take you to him, now?"
"Why, yes, if I can be of any help. What do you want me to say to him?"
As a matter of fact, he was glad of the opportunity for the interview. He had long since discovered the futility of inquests in the uncovering of important evidence, and he had not intended to sit through this one. He wanted particularlyto talk to Berne Webster, but Sloane also had to be questioned.
"I thought you might explain," she continued hurriedly, preceding him down the hall toward her father's room, "that you will do exactly what I asked you to do—see that the mysterious part of this terrible affair, if there is any mystery in it—see that it's cleared up promptly. Please tell him you'll act for us in dealing with newspaper reporters; that you'll help us, not annoy us, not annoy him."
She had stopped at Sloane's door.
"And you?" Hastings delayed her knock. "If they want you to testify, if Dr. Garnet calls for you, I think you'd better testify very frankly, tell them about the footsteps you heard."
"I've already done that." She seemed embarrassed. "Father asked me to 'phone Mr. Southard, Mr. Jeremy Southard, his lawyer, about it. I know I told you I wanted your advice about everything. I would have waited to ask you. But you were late. I had to take Mr. Southard's advice."
"That's perfectly all right," he reassured her. "Mr. Southard advised you wisely.—Now, I'm going to ask your help. The guest-rooms upstairs—have the servants straightened them up this morning?"
They had not, she told him. Excitement hadquite destroyed their efficiency for the time being; they were at the parlour windows, listening, or waiting to be examined by the coroner.
"That's what I hoped," he said. "Won't you see that those rooms are left exactly as they are until I can have a look at them?" She nodded assent. "And say nothing about my speaking of it—absolutely nothing to anybody? It's vitally important."
The door was opened by Sloane's man, Jarvis, who had in queer combination, Hastings thought, the salient aspects of an undertaker and an experienced pick-pocket. He was dismal of countenance and alert in movement, an efficient ghost, admirably appropriate to the twilit gloom of the room with its heavily shaded windows.
Mr. Sloane was in bed, in the darkest corner.
"Father," Lucille addressed him from the door-sill, "I've asked Mr. Hastings to talk to you about things. He's just back from Washington."
"Shuddering saints!" said Mr. Sloane, not lifting his head from the pillows.
Lucille departed. The ghostly Jarvis closed the door without so much as a click of the latch. Hastings advanced slowly toward the bed, his eyes not yet accustomed to the darkness.
"Shuddering, shivering, shaking saints!" Mr. Sloane exclaimed again, the words coming in aslow, shrill tenor from his lips, as if with great exertion he reached up with something and pushed each one out of his mouth. "Sit down, Mr. Hastings, if I can control my nerves, and stand it. What is it?"
His hostility to the caller was obvious. The evident and grateful interest with which the night before he had heard the detective's stories of crimes and criminals had changed now to annoyance at the very sight of him. As a raconteur, Mr. Hastings was quite the thing; as protector of the Sloane family's privacy and seclusion, he was a nuisance. Such was the impression Mr. Hastings received.
At a loss to understand his host's frame of mind, he took a chair near the bed.
Mr. Sloane stirred jerkily under his thin summer coverings.
"A little light, Jarvis," he said peevishly. "Now, Mr. Hastings, what can I do for—tell you?"
Jarvis put back a curtain.
"Quivering and crucified martyrs!" the prostrate man burst forth. "I said a little, Jarvis! You drown my optic nerves in ink and, without a moment's warning, flood them with the glaring brilliancy of the noonday sun!" Jarvis half-drew the curtain. "Ah, that's better. Never more than an inch at a time, Jarvis. How manytimes have I told you that? Never give me a shock like that again; never more than an inch of light at a time. Frantic fiends! From cimmerian, abysmal darkness to Sahara-desert glare!"
"Yes, sir," said Jarvis, as if on the point of digging a grave—for himself. "Beg pardon, sir."
He effaced himself, in shadows, somewhere behind Hastings, who seized the opportunity to speak.
"Miss Sloane suggested that you wanted certain information. In fact, she asked me to see you."
"My daughter? Oh, yes!" The prone body became semi-upright, leaned on an elbow. "Yes! What I want to know is, why—why, in the name of all the jumping angels, everybody seems to think there's a lot of mystery connected with this brutal, vulgar, dastardly crime! It passes my comprehension, utterly!—Jarvis, stop clicking your finger-nails together!" This with a note of exaggerated pleading. "You know I'm a nervous wreck, a total loss physically, and yet you stand there in the corner and indulge yourself wickedly, wickedly, in that infernal habit of yours of clicking your finger-nails! Mute and mutilated Christian martyrs!"
He fell back among the pillows, breathingheavily, the perfect picture of exhaustion. Jarvis came near on soundless feet and applied a wet cloth to his master's temples.
The old man regarded them both with unconcealed amazement.
"You'll have to excuse me, Mr. Hastings, really, I can't be annoyed!" the wreck, somewhat revived, announced feebly. "All I said to my daughter, Miss Sloane, is what I say to you now: I see no reason why we should employ you, or indeed why you should be connected with this affair. You were my guest, here, at Sloanehurst. Unfortunately, some ruffian of whom we never heard, whose existence we never suspected—Jarvis, take off this counterpane; you're boiling me, parboiling me; my nerves are seething, simmering, stewing! Athletic devils! Have you no discrimination, Jarvis?—as I was saying, Mr. Hastings, somebody stabbed somebody else to death on my lawn, unfortunately marring your visit. But that's all. I can't see that we need you—thank you, nevertheless."
The dismissal was unequivocal. Hastings got to his feet, his indignation all the greater through realization that he had been sent for merely to be flouted. And yet, this man's daughter had come to him literally with tears in her eyes, had begged him to help her, had said that money was the smallest of considerations. Moreover,he had accepted her employment, had made the definite agreement and promise. Apparently, Sloane was in no condition to act independently, and his daughter had known it, had hoped that he, Hastings, might soothe his silly mind, do away with his objections to assistance which she knew he needed.
There was, also, the fact that Lucille believed her father unaccountably interested, if not implicated, in the crime. He could not get away from that impression. He was sure he had interpreted correctly the girl's anxiety the night before. She was working to save her father—from something. And she believed Berne Webster innocent.
These were some of the considerations which, flashing through his mind, prevented his giving way to righteous wrath. He most certainly would not allow Arthur Sloane to eliminate him from the situation. He sat down again.
The nervous wreck made himself more understandable.
"Perhaps, Jarvis," he said, shrinking to one side like a man in sudden pain, "the gentleman can't see how to reach that large door. A little more light, half an inch-not a fraction more!"
"Don't bother," Hastings told Jarvis. "I'm not going quite yet."
"Leaping crime!" moaned Mr. Sloane,digging deeper into the pillows, "Frantic imps!"
"I hope I won't distress you too much," the detective apologized grimly, "if I ask you a few questions. Fact is, I must. I'm investigating the circumstances surrounding what may turn out to be a baffling crime, and, irrespective of your personal wishes, Mr. Sloane, I can't let go of it. This is a serious business——"
The sick man sat up in bed with surprising abruptness.
"Serious business! Serious saints!—Jarvis, the eau de cologne!—You think I don't know it? They make a slaughter-house of my lawn. They make a morgue of my house. They hold a coroner's inquest in my parlour. They're in there now—live people like ravens, and one dead one. They cheat the undertaker to plague me. They wreck me all over again. They give me a new exhaustion of the nerves. They frighten my daughter to death.—Jarvis, the smelling salts. Shattered saints, Jarvis! Hurry! Thanks.—They rig up lies which, Tom Wilton, my old and trusted friend, tells me, will incriminate Berne Webster. They sit around a corpse in my house and chatter by the hour. You come in here and make Jarvis nearly blind me.
"And, then, then, by the holy, agile angels! you think you have to persuade me it's a seriousbusiness! Never fear! I know it!—Jarvis, the bromide, quick! Before I know it, they'll drive me to opiates.—Serious business! Shrivelled and shrinking saints!"
Arms clasped around his legs, knees pressed against his chin, Mr. Sloane trembled and shook until Jarvis, more agile than the angels of whom his employer had spoken, gave him the dose of bromides.
Still, Mr. Hastings did not retire.
"I was going to say," he resumed, in a tone devoid of compassion, "I couldn't drop this thing now. I may be able to find the murderer; and you may be able to help me."
"I?"
"Yes."
"Isn't it Russell? He's among the ravens now, in my parlour. Wilton told me the sheriff was certain Russell was the man. Murdered martyrs! Sacrificed saints! Can't you let a guilty man hang when he comes forward and puts the rope around his own worthless neck?"
"If Russell's guilty," Hastings said, glad of the information that the accused man was then at Sloanehurst, "I hope we can develop the necessary evidence against him. But——"
"The necessary——"
"Let me finish, Mr. Sloane, if you please!" The old man was determined to disregard theother's signs of suffering. He did not believe that they were anything but assumed, the exaggerated camouflage which he usually employed as an excuse for idleness. "But, if Russell isn't guilty, there are facts which may help me to find the murderer. And you may have valuable information concerning them."
"Sobbing, sorrowing saints!" lamented Mr. Sloane, but his trembling ceased; he was closely attentive. "A cigarette, Jarvis, a cigarette! Nerves will be served.—I suppose the easiest way is to submit. Go on."
"I shall ask you only two or three questions," Hastings said.
The jackknife-like figure in the bed shuddered its repugnance.
"I've been told, Mr. Sloane, that Mr. Webster has been in great need of money, as much as sixty-five thousand dollars. In fact, according to my information, he needs it now."
"Well, did he kill the woman, expecting to find it in her stocking?"
"The significance of his being hard-pressed, for so large an amount," the old man went on, ignoring the sarcasm, "is in the further charge that Miss Brace was trying to make him marry her, that he should have married her, that he killed her in order to be free to marry your daughter—for money."
"My daughter! For money!" shrilled Sloane, neck elongated, head thrust forward, eyes bulging. "Leaping and whistling cherubim!" For all his outward agitation, he seemed to Hastings in thorough command of his logical faculties; it was more than possible, the detective thought, that the expletives were time-killers, until he could decide what to say. "It's ridiculous, absurd! Why, sir, you reason as loosely as you dress! Are you trying to prostrate me further with impossible theories? Webster marry my daughter for money, for sixty-five thousand dollars? He knows I'd let him have any amount he wanted. I'd give him the money if it meant his peace of mind and Lucille's happiness.—Dumb and dancing devils! Jarvis, a little whiskey! I'm worn out, worn out!"
"Did you ever tell Mr. Webster of the extent of your generous feeling toward him, Mr. Sloane—in dollars and cents?"
"No; it wasn't necessary. He knows how fond of him I am."
"And you would let him have sixty-five thousand dollars—if he had to have it?"
"I would, sir!—today, this morning."
"Now, one other thing, Mr. Sloane, and I'm through. It's barely possible that there was some connection between this murder and aletter which came to Sloanehurst yesterday afternoon, a letter in an oblong grey envelope. Did——"
The nervous man went to pieces again, beat with his open palms on the bed covering.
"Starved and stoned evangels, Jarvis! Quit balling your feet! You stand there and see me harassed to the point of extinction by a lot of crazy queries, and you indulge yourself in that infernal weakness of yours of balling your feet! Leaping angels! You know how acute my hearing is; you know the noise of your sock against the sole of your shoe when you ball your feet is the most exquisite torture to me! A little whiskey, Jarvis! Quick!" He spoke now in a weak, almost inaudible voice to Hastings: "No; I got no such letter. I saw no such letter." He sank slowly back to a prone posture.
"I was going to remind you," the detective continued, "that I brought the five o'clock mail in. Getting off the car, I met the rural carrier; he asked me to bring in the mail, saving him the few steps to your box. All there was consisted of a newspaper and one letter. I recall the shape and colour of the envelope—oblong, grey. I did not, of course, look at the address. I handed the mail to you when you met me on the porch."
Mr. Sloane, raising himself on one elbow totake the restoring drink from Jarvis, looked across the glass at his cross-examiner.
"I put the mail in the basket on the hall table," he said in high-keyed endeavour to express withering contempt. "If it had been for me, Jarvis would have brought it to me later. I seldom carry my reading glasses about the house with me."
Hastings, subjecting the pallid Jarvis to severe scrutiny, asked him:
"Was that grey letter addressed to—whom?"
"I didn't see it," replied Jarvis, scarcely polite.
"And yet, it's your business to inspect and deliver the household's mail?"
"Yes, sir."
"What became of it, then—the grey envelope?"
"I'm sure I can't say, sir, unless some one got it before I reached the mail basket."
Hastings stood up. Interrogation of both master and man had given him nothing save the inescapable conviction that both of them resented his questioning and would do nothing to help him. The reason for this opposition he could not grasp, but it was a fact, challenging his analysis. Arthur Sloane rejected his proffered help in the pursuit of the man who had brought murder to the doors of Sloanehurst.Why? Was this his method of hiding facts in his possession?
Hastings questioned him again:
"Your waking up at that unusual hour last night—was it because of a noise outside?"
The neurasthenic, once more recumbent, succeeded in voicing faint denial of having heard any noises, outside or inside. Nor had he been aware of the murder until called by Judge Wilton. He had turned on his light to find the smelling-salts which, for the first time in six years, Jarvis had failed to leave on his bed-table,—terrible and ill-trained apes! Couldn't he be left in peace?
The hall door opened, admitting Judge Wilton. The newcomer, with a word of greeting to Hastings, sat down on the bedside and put a hand on Sloane's shoulder.
Hastings turned to leave the room.
"Any news?" the judge asked him.
"I've just been asking Mr. Sloane that," Hastings said, in a tone that made Wilton look swiftly at his friend's face.
"I told Arthur this morning," he said, "how lucky he was that you'd promised Lucille to go into this thing."
"Apparently," Hastings retorted drily, "he's unconvinced of the extent of his good fortune."
Mr. Sloane, quivering from head to foot, mourned softly: "Unfathomable fate!"
Wilton, his rugged features softening to frank amusement, stared a moment in silence at Sloane's thin face, at the deeply lined forehead topped by stringy grey hair.
"See here, Arthur," he protested, nodding Hastings an invitation to remain; "you know as much about crime as Hastings and I. If you've thought about this murder at all, you must see what it is. If Russell isn't guilty—if he's not the man, that crime was committed shrewdly, with forethought. And it was a devilish thing—devilish!"
"Well, what of it?" Sloane protested shrilly, not opening his eyes.
"Take my advice. Quit antagonizing Mr. Hastings. Be thankful that he's here, that he's promised to run down the guilty man."
Mr. Sloane turned his face to the wall.
"A little whiskey, Jarvis," he said softly. "I'm exhausted, Tom. Leave me alone."
Wilton waved his hand, indicative of the futility of further argument.
"Judge," announced Hastings, at the door, "I'll ask you a question I put to Mr. Sloane. Did you receive, or see, a letter in an oblong, grey envelope in yesterday afternoon's mail?"
"No. I never get any mail while I'm here for a week-end."
Wilton followed the detective into the hall.
"I hope you're not going to give up the case, Hastings. You won't pay any attention to Arthur's unreasonable attitude, will you?"
"I don't know," Hastings said, still indignant. "I made my bargain with his daughter. I'll see her."
"If you can't manage any other way, I—or she—will get any information you want from Arthur."
"I hope to keep on. It's a big thing, I think." The old man was again intent on solving the problem. "Tell me, judge; do you think Berne Webster's guilty?" Seeing the judge's hesitance, he supplemented: "I mean, did you notice anything last night, in his conduct, that would indicate guilt—or fear?"
Later, when other developments gave this scene immense importance, Hastings, in reviewing it, remembered the curious little flicker of the judge's eyelids preceding his reply.
"Absolutely not," he declared, with emphasis. "Are you working on that"—he hesitated hardly perceptibly—"idea?"
Ancestors of the old family from whom Arthur Sloane had purchased this colonial mansion eight years ago still looked out of their gilded frames on the parlour walls, their high-bred calm undisturbed, their aristocratic eyes unwidened, by the chatter and clatter of the strangers within their gates. Hastings noticed that even the mob and mouthing of a coroner's inquest failed to destroy the ancient atmosphere and charm of the great room. He smiled. The pictured grandeur of a bygone age, the brocaded mahogany chairs, the tall French mirrors—all these made an incongruous setting for the harsh machinery of crime-inquiry.
The detective had completed his second and more detailed search of the guest-rooms in time to hear the words and study the face of the last witness on Dr. Garnet's list. That was Eugene Russell.
"One of life's persimmons—long before frost!" Hastings thought, making swiftappraisal. "A boneless spine—chin like a sheep—brave as a lamb."
Russell could not conceal his agitation. In fact, he referred to it. Fear, he explained in a low, husky voice to the coroner and the jury, was not a part of his emotions. His only feeling was sorrow, varied now and then by the embarrassment he felt as a result of the purely personal and very intimate facts which he had to reveal.
His one desire was to be frank, he declared, his pale blue eyes roving from place to place, his nervous fingers incessantly playing with his thin, uncertain lips. This mania for truthfulness, he asserted, was natural, in that it offered him the one sure path to freedom and the establishment of his innocence of all connection with the murder of the woman he had loved.
He was, he testified, thirty-one years old, a clerk in a real-estate dealer's office and a native of Washington. Mildred Brace had been employed for a few weeks by the same firm for which he worked, and it was there that he had met her. Although she had refused to marry him on the ground that his salary was inadequate for the needs of two people, she had encouraged his attentions. Sometimes, they had quarrelled.
"Speak up, Mr. Russell!" Dr. Garnetdirected. "And take your time. Let the jury hear every word you utter."
After that, the witness abandoned his attempt to exclude the family portraits from his confidence, but his voice shook.
"Conductor Barton is right," he said, responding to the coroner's interrogation. "I did come out on his car, the car that gets to the Sloanehurst stop at ten-thirty, and I did leave the car at the Ridgecrest stop, a quarter of a mile from here. I was following Mil—Miss Brace. I saw her leave her apartment house, the Walman. I followed her to the transfer station at the bridge, and I saw her take the car there. I followed on the next car. I knew where she was going, knew she was going to Sloanehurst."
"How did you know that, Mr. Russell?"
"I mean I was certain of it. She'd told me Mr. Berne Webster, the lawyer she'd been working for, was out here spending the week-end; and I knew she was coming out to meet him."
"Why did she do that?"
Mr. Russell displayed pathetic embarrassment and confusion before he answered that. He plucked at his lower lip with spasmodic fingers. His eyes were downcast. He attempted a self-deprecatory smile which ended in an unpleasant grimace.
"She wouldn't say. But it was because she was in love with him."
"And you were jealous of Mr. Webster?"
"We-ell—yes, sir; that's about it, I guess."
"Did Miss Brace tell you she was coming to Sloanehurst?"
"No, sir. I suspected it."
"And watched her movements?"
"Yes, sir."
"And followed her?"
"Yes."
"Why did you think she was in love with Mr. Webster, Mr. Russell? And please give us a direct answer. You can understand the importance of what you're about to say."
"I do. I thought so because she had told me that he was in love with her, and because of her grief and anger when he dismissed her from his office. And she did everything to make me think so, except declaring it outright. She did that because she knew I hated to think she was in love with him."
"All right, Mr. Russell. Now, tell us what happened during your—ah—shadowing Miss Brace the night she was killed."
"I got off the car at Ridgecrest and walked toward Sloanehurst. It was raining then, pretty hard. I thought she had made an appointmentto meet Mr. Webster somewhere in the grounds here. It was a quarter to eleven when I got to the little side-gate that opens on the lawn out there on the north side of the house."
"How did you know that?"
"I looked at my watch then. It's got a luminous dial."
"You were then at the gate near where she was found, dead?"
"Yes. And she was at the gate."
"Oh! So you saw her?"
"I saw her. When I lifted the latch of the gate, she came toward me. There was a heavy drizzle then. I thought she had been leaning on the fence a few feet away. She whispered, sharp and quick, 'Who's that?' I knew who she was, right off. I said, 'Gene.'
"She caught hold of my arm and shook it. She told me, still whispering, if I didn't get away from there, if I didn't go back to town, she'd raise an alarm, accuse me of trying to kill her—or she'd kill me. She pressed something against my cheek. It felt like a knife, although I couldn't see, for the darkness."
The witness paused and licked his dry lips. He was breathing fast, and his restless eyes had a hunted look. The people in the room leaned farther toward him, some believing, some doubting him.
Hastings thought: "He's scared stiff, but telling the truth—so far."
"All right; what next?" asked Dr. Garnet, involuntarily lowering his voice to Russell's tone.
"I accused her of having an appointment to meet Webster there. I got mad. I hate to have to tell all this, gentlemen; but I want to tell the truth. I told her she was a fool to run after a man who'd thrown her over.
"'It's none of your look-out what I do!' she told me. 'You get away from here, now—this minute! You'll be sorry if you don't!' There was something about her that frightened me, mad as I was. I'd never seen her like that before."
"What do you mean?" Garnet urged him.
"I thought she would kill me, or somebody else would, and she knew it. I got the idea that she was like a crazy woman, out of her head about Webster, ready to do anything desperate, anything wild. I can't explain it any better than that."
"And did you leave her?"
"Yes, sir."
"At once?"
"Practically. A sort of panic got hold of me. I can't explain it, really."
Russell, seeking an illuminative phrase, gavevent to a long-drawn, anxious sigh. He appeared to feel no shame for his flight. His fear was that he would not be believed.
"Just as she told me a second time to leave her, I thought I heard somebody coming toward us, a slushy, dull sound, like heavy footsteps on the wet grass. Mildred's manner, her voice, had already scared me.
"When I heard those footsteps, I turned and ran. My heart was in my mouth. I ran out to the road and back toward Washington. I ran as fast as I could. Twice I fell on my hands and knees. I can't tell you exactly how it was, why it was. I just knew something terrible would happen if I stayed there. I never had a feeling like that before. I was more afraid of her than I was of the man coming toward us."
Members of the jury pushed back their chairs, were audible with subdued exclamations and long breaths, relieved of the nervous tension to which Russell's story of the encounter at the gate had lifted them. They were, however, prejudiced against him, a fact which he grasped.
One of them asked him:
"Can you tell us why you followed her out here?"
"Why?" Russell echoed, like a man seeking time for deliberation.
"Yes. What did you think you'd do after you'd overtaken her?"
"Persuade her to go back home with me. I wanted to save her from doing anything foolish—anything like that, you know."
"But, from what you've told us here this morning, it seems you never had much influence on her behaviour. Isn't that true?"
"I suppose it is.—But," Russell added eagerly, "I can prove I had no idea of hurting her, if that's what you're hinting at. I can prove I never struck her. At twenty minutes past eleven last night I was four miles from here. Mr. Otis, a Washington commission merchant, picked me up in his automobile, six miles outside of Washington and took me into town. I couldn't have made that four miles on foot, no matter how I ran, in approximately fifteen or twenty minutes.
"It's been proved that she was struck down after eleven anyway.—You said the condition of the body showed that, doctor.—You see, I would have had to make the four miles in less than twenty minutes—an impossibility. You see?"
His eagerness to win their confidence put a disagreeable note, almost a whimper, into his voice. It grated on Dr. Garnet.
It affected Hastings more definitely.
"Now," he decided, "he's lying—about something. But what?" He noted a change in Russell's face, a suggestion of craftiness, the merest shadow of slyness over his general attitude of anxiety. And yet, this part of his story seemed straight enough.
Dr. Garnet's next question brought out the fact that it would be corroborated.
"This Mr. Otis, Mr. Russell; where is he?"
"Right there, by the window," the witness answered, with a smug smile which gave him a still more unprepossessing look.
Jury and spectators turned toward the man at the window. They saw a clean-shaven, alert-looking person of middle age, who nodded slightly in Russell's direction as if endorsing his testimony. There seemed no possible grounds for doubting whatever Otis might say. Hastings at once accepted him as genuine, an opinion which, it was obvious, was shared by the rest of the assemblage.
Russell sensed the change of sentiment toward himself. Until now, it had been a certainty that he would be held for the murder. But his producing an outsider, incontestably a trustworthy man, to establish the truth of his statement that he had been four miles away from the scene of the crime a quarter of an hour after it hadbeen committed—that was something in his favour which could not be gainsaid.
Granting even that he had had an automobile at his disposal—a supposition for which there was no foundation—his alibi would still have been good, in view of the rain and the fact that one of the four miles in question was "dirt road."
With the realization of this, the jury swung back to the animus it had felt against Webster, the incredulity with which it had received his statement that there had been between him and the dead woman no closer relationship than that of employer and employe.
Webster, seated near the wall furthest from the jury, felt the inquiry of many eyes upon him, but he was unmoved, kept his gaze on Russell.