In his book-lined, "loosely furnished" apartment Sunday afternoon Hastings whittled prodigiously, staring frequently at the flap of the grey envelope with the intensity of a crystal-gazer. Once or twice he pronounced aloud possible meanings of the symbols imprinted on the scrap of paper.
"'—edly de—,'" he worried. "That might stand for 'repeatedly demanded' or 'repeatedly denied' or 'undoubtedly denoted' or a hundred—— But that 'Pursuit!' is the core of the trouble. They put the pursuit on him, sure as you're knee-high to a hope of heaven!"
The belief grew in him that out of those pieces of words would come solution of his problem. The idea was born of his remarkable instinct. Its positiveness partook of superstition—almost. He could not shake it off. Once he chuckled, appreciating the apparent absurdity of trying to guess the criminal meaning, the criminal intent, back of that writing. But he kept to his conjecturing.
He had many interruptions. Newspaperreporters, instantly impressed by the dramatic possibilities, the inherent sensationalism, of the murder, flocked to him. Referred to him by the people at Sloanehurst, they asked for not only his narration of what had occurred but also for his opinion as to the probability of running down the guilty man.
He would make no predictions, he told them, confining himself to a simple statement of facts. When one young sleuth suggested that both Sloane and Webster feared arrest on the charge of murder and had relied on his reputation to prevent prompt action against them by the sheriff, the old man laughed. He knew the futility of trying to prevent publication of intimations of that sort.
But he took advantage of the opportunity to put a different interpretation on his employment by the Sloanes.
"Seems to me," he contributed, "it's more logical to say that their calling in a detective goes a long way to show their innocence of all connection with the crime. They wouldn't pay out real money to have themselves hunted, if they were guilty, would they?"
Afterwards, he was glad he had emphasized this point. In the light of subsequent events, it looked like actual foresight of Mrs. Brace's tactics.
Soon after five Hendricks came in, to report. He was a young man, stockily built, with eyes that were always on the verge of laughter and lips that sloped inward as if biting down on the threatened mirth. The shape of his lips was symbolical of his habit of discourse; he was of few words.
"Webster," he said, standing across the table from his employer and shooting out his words like a memorized speech, "been overplaying his hand financially. That's the rumour; nothing tangible yet. Gone into real estate and building projects; associated with a crowd that has the name of operating on a shoestring. Nobody'd be surprised if they all blew up."
"As a real-estate man, I take it," Hastings commented, slowly shaving off thin slivers of chips from his piece of pine, "he's a brilliant young lawyer. That's it?"
"Yes, sir," Hendricks agreed, the slope of his lips accentuated.
"Keep after that, tomorrow.—What about Mrs. Brace?"
"Destitute, practically; in debt; threatened with eviction; no resources."
"So money, lack of it, is bothering her as well as Webster!—How much is she in debt?"
"Enough to be denied all credit by the stores;between five and seven hundred, I should say. That's about the top mark for that class of trade."
"All right, Hendricks; thanks," the old man commended warmly. "That's great work, for Sunday.—Now, Russell's room?"
"Yes, sir; I went over it."
"Find any steel on the floor?"
Hendricks took from his pocket a little paper parcel about the size of a man's thumb.
"Not sure, sir. Here's what I got."
He unfolded the paper and put it down on the table, displaying a small mass of what looked like dust and lint.
"Wonderful what a magnet will pick up, ain't it?" mused his employer: "I got the same sort of stuff at Sloanehurst this morning.—I'll go over this, look for the steel particles, right away."
"Anything else, sir—special?"
The assistant was already half-way to the door. He knew that a floor an inch deep in chips from his employer's whittling indicated laborious mental gropings by the old man. It was no time for superfluous words.
"After dinner," Hastings instructed, "relieve Gore—at the Walman. Thanks."
As Hendricks went out, there was another telephone call, this time from Crown, to makeamends for coolness he had shown Hastings at Sloanehurst.
"I was wrong, and you were right," he conceded, handsomely; "I mean about that Brace woman. Better keep your man on her trail."
"What's up?" Hastings asked amicably.
"That's what I want to know! I've seen her again. I couldn't get anything more from her except threats. She's going on the warpath. She told me: 'Tomorrow I'll look into things for myself. I'll not sit here idle and leave everything to a sheriff who wants campaign contributions and a detective who's paid to hush things up!' You can see her saying that, can't you? Wow!"
"That all?"
"That's all, right now. But I've got a suspicion she knows more than we think. When she makes up her mind to talk, she'll say something!—Mr. Hastings," Crown added, as if he imparted a tremendous fact, "that woman's smart! I tell you, she's got brains, a head full of 'em!"
"So I judged," the detective agreed, drily. "By the way, have you seen Russell again?"
"Yes. There's another thing. I don't see where you get that stuff about his weak alibi. It's copper-riveted!"
"He says so, you mean."
"Yes; and the way he says it. But I followed your advice. I've advertised, through the police here and up and down the Atlantic coast, for any automobile party or parties who went along that Sloanehurst road last night between ten-thirty and eleven-thirty."
"Fine!" Hastings congratulated. "But get me straight on that: I don't say any of them saw him; I say there's a chance that he was seen."
The old man went back, not to examination of Hendricks' parcel, but to further consideration of the possible contents of the letter that had been in the grey envelope. Russell, he reflected, had been present when Mildred Brace mailed it, and, what was more important, when Mildred started out of the apartment with it.
He made sudden decision: he would question Russell again. Carefully placing Hendricks' package of dust and lint in a drawer of the table, he set out for the Eleventh street boarding house.
It was, however, not Russell who figured most prominently in the accounts of the murder published by the Monday morning newspapers. The reporters, resenting the reticence they had encountered at Sloanehurst, and making much ofMrs. Brace's threats, put in the forefront of their stories an appealing picture of a bereaved mother's one-sided fight for justice against the baffling combination of the Sloanehurst secretiveness and indifference and the mysterious circumstances of the daughter's death. Not one of them questioned the validity of Russell's alibi.
"With the innocence of the dead girl's fiancé established," said one account, "Sheriff Crown last night made no secret of his chagrin that Berne Webster had collapsed at the very moment when the sheriff was on the point of putting him through a rigid cross-examination. The young lawyer's retirement from the scene, coupled with the Sloane family's retaining the celebrated detective, Jefferson Hastings, as a buffer against any questioning of the Sloanehurst people, has given Society, here and in Virginia, a topic for discussion of more than ordinary interest."
Another paragraph that caught Hastings' attention, as he read between mouthfuls of his breakfast, was this:
"Mrs. Brace, discussing the tragedy with a reporter last night, showed a surprising knowledge of all its incidents. Although she had not left her apartment in the Walman all day, she had been questioned by both Sheriff Crown andMr. Hastings, not to mention the unusually large number of newspaper writers who besieged her for interviews.
"And it seemed that, in addition to answering the queries put to her by the investigators, she had accomplished a vast amount of keen inquiry on her own account. When talking to her, it is impossible for one to escape the impression that this extraordinarily intelligent woman believes she can prove the guilt of the man who struck down her daughter."
"Just what I was afraid of," thought the detective. "Nearly every paper siding with her!"
His face brightened.
"All the better," he consoled himself. "More chance of her overreaching herself—as long as she don't know what I suspect. I'll get the meaning of that grey letter yet!"
But he was worried. Berne Webster's collapse, he knew, was too convenient for Webster—it looked like pretence. Ninety-nine out of every hundred newspaper readers would consider his illness a fake, the obvious trick to escape the work of explaining what seemed to be inexplicable circumstances.
To Hastings the situation was particularly annoying because he had brought it about; his own questioning had turned out to be thestraw that broke the suspected man's endurance.
"Always blundering!" he upbraided himself. "Trying to be so all-shot smart, I overplayed my hand."
He got Dr. Garnet on the wire.
"Doctor," he said, in a tone that implored, "I'm obliged to see Webster today."
"Sorry, Mr. Hastings," came the instant refusal; "but it can't be done."
"For one question," qualified Hastings; "less than a minute's talk—one word, 'yes' or 'no'? It's almost a matter of life and death."
"If that man's excited about anything," Garnet retorted, "it will be entirely a matter of death. Frankly, I couldn't see my way clear to letting you question him if his escaping arrest depended on it. I called in Dr. Welles last night; and I'm giving you his opinion as well as my own."
"When can I see him, then?"
"I can't answer that. It may be a week; it may be a month. All I can tell you today is that you can't question him now."
With that information, Hastings decided to interview Judge Wilton.
"He's the next best," he thought. "That whispering across the woman's body—it's got to be explained, and explained right!"
As a matter of fact, he had refrained from this inquiry the day before, so that his mind might not be clouded by anger. His deception by the judge had greatly provoked him.
Court had recessed for lunch when Hastings, going down a second-story corridor of the Alexandria county courthouse, entered Judge Wilton's anteroom. His hand was raised to knock on the door of the inner office when he heard the murmur of voices on the other side. He took off his hat and sat down, welcoming the breeze that swept through the room, a refreshing contrast to the forenoon's heat and smother downstairs.
He reached for his knife and piece of pine, checked the motion and glanced swiftly toward the closed door. A high note of a woman's voice touched his memory, for a moment confusing him. But it was for a moment only. While the sound was still in his ears, he remembered where he had heard it before—from Mrs. Brace when, toward the close of his interview with her, she had shrilly denounced Berne Webster.
Mrs. Brace, her daughter's funeral barely three hours old, had started to make her threats good.
While he was considering that, the door of the private office swung inward, Judge Wilton's hand on the knob. It opened on the middle of a sentence spoken by Mrs. Brace:
"—tell you, you're a fool if you think you can put me off with that!"
Her gleaming eyes were so furtive and so quick that they traversed the whole of Wilton's countenance many times, a fiery probe of each separate feature. The inflections of her voice invested her words with ugliness; but she did not shriek.
"You bully everybody else, but not me! They don't call you 'Hard Tom Wilton' for nothing, do they? I know you! I know you, I tell you! I was down there in the courtroom when you sentenced that man! You had cruelty in your mind, cruelty on your face. Ugh! And you're cruel to me—and taking an ungodly pleasure in it! Well, let me tell you, I won't be broken by it. I want fair dealing, and I'll have it!"
At that moment, facing full toward Hastings, she caught sight of him. But his presence seemed a matter of no importance to her; it did not break the stream of her fierce invective. She did not even pause.
He saw at once that her anger of yesterday was as nothing to the storming rage which shook her now. Every line of her face revealedmalignity. The eyebrows were drawn higher on her forehead, nearer to the wave of white hair that showed under her black hat. The nostrils dilated and contracted with indescribable rapidity. The lips, thickened and rolling back at intervals from her teeth, revealed more distinctly that animal, exaggerated wetness which had so repelled him.
"You were out there on that lawn!" she pursued, her glance flashing back to the judge. "You were out there when she was killed! If you try to tell me you——"
"Stop it! Stop it!" Wilton commanded, and, as he did so, turned his head to an angle that put Hastings within his field of vision.
The judge, with one hand on the doorknob, had been pressing with the other against the woman's shoulders, trying to thrust her out of the room—a move which she resisted by a hanging-back posture that threw her weight on his arm. He put more strength now into his effort and succeeded in forcing her clear of the threshold. His eyes were blazing under the shadow of his heavy, overhanging brows; but there was about him no suggestion of a loss of self-control.
"I'm glad to see you!" he told Hastings, speaking over Mrs. Brace's head, and smiling a deprecatory recognition of the hopelessness of contending with an infuriated woman.
She addressed them both.
"Smile all you please, now!" she threatened. "But the accounts aren't balanced yet! Wait for what I choose to tell—what I intend to do!"
Suddenly she got herself in hand. It was as unexpected and thorough a transformation as the one Hastings had seen twenty-four hours before during her declaration of Webster's guilt. She had the same appearance now as then, the same tautness of body, the same flat, constrained tone.
She turned to Wilton:
"I ask you again, will you help me as I asked you? Are you going to deny me fair play?"
He looked at her in amazement, scowling.
"What fair play?" he exclaimed, and, without waiting for her reply, said to Hastings: "She insists that I know young Webster killed her daughter, that I can produce the evidence to prove it. Can you disabuse her mind?"
She surprised them by going, slowly and with apparent composure, toward the corridor door. There she paused, looking at first one and then the other with an evil smile so openly contemptuous that it affected them strongly. There was something in it that made it flagrantly insulting. Hastings turned away from her. Judge Wilton gave her look for look, but his already flushed face coloured more darkly.
"Very well, Judge Wilton!" she gave him insolent good-bye, in which there was also unmistakable threat. "You'll do the right thing sooner or later—and as I tell you. You're—get this straight—you're not through with me yet!"
She laughed, one low note, and, impossible as it seemed, proclaimed with the harsh sound an absolute confidence in what she said.
"Nor you, Mr. Hastings!" she continued, taking her time with her words, and waiting until the detective faced her again, before she concluded: "You'll sing a different tune when you find I've got this affair in my hands—tight!"
Still smiling her contempt, as if she enjoyed a feeling of superiority, she left the room. When her footsteps died down the corridor, the two men drew long breaths of relief.
Wilton broke the ensuing silence.
"Is she sane?"
"Yes," Hastings said, "so far as sanity can be said to exist in a mind consecrated to evil."
The judge was surprised by the solemnity of the other's manner. "Why do you say that?" he asked. "Do you know that much about her?"
"Who wouldn't?" Hastings retorted. "It's written all over her."
Wilton led the way into his private office and closed the door.
"I'm glad it happened at just this time," he said, "when everybody's out of the building." He struck the desk with his fist. "By God!" he ground out through gritted teeth. "How I hate these wild, unbridled women!"
"Yes," agreed Hastings, taking the chair Wilton rolled forward for him. "She worries me. Wonder if she's going to Sloanehurst."
"That would be the logical sequel to this visit," Wilton said. "But pardon my show of temper. You came to see me?"
"Yes; and, like her, for information. But," the detective said, smiling, "not for rough-house purposes."
The judge had not entirely regained his equanimity; his face still wore a heightened colour; his whole bearing was that of a man mentally reviewing the results of an unpleasant incident. Instead of replying promptly to Hastings, he sat looking out of the window, obviously troubled.
"Her game is blackmail," he declared at last.
"On whom?" the detective queried.
"Arthur Sloane, of course. She calculates that he'll play to have her cease annoying his daughter's fiancé. And she'll impress Arthur, if Jarvis ever lets her get to him. Somehow, she strangely compels credence."
"Not for me," Hastings objected, and did notpoint out that Wilton's words might be taken as an admission of Webster's guilt.
The judge himself might have seen that.
"I mean," he qualified, "she seems too smart a woman to put herself in a position where ridicule will be sure to overtake her. And yet, that's what she's doing—isn't she?"
The detective was whittling, dropping the chips into the waste-basket. He spoke with a deliberateness unusual even in him, framing each sentence in his mind before giving it utterance.
"I reckon, judge, you and I have had some four or five talks—that is, not counting Saturday evening and yesterday at Sloanehurst. That's about the extent of our acquaintance. That right?"
"Why, yes," Wilton said, surprised by the change of topic.
"I mention it," Hastings explained, "to show how I've felt toward you—you interested me. Excuse me if I speak plainly—you'll see why later on—but you struck me as worth studying, deep. And I thought you must have sized me up, catalogued me one way or the other. You're like me: waste no time with men who bore you. I felt certain, if you'd been asked, you'd have checked me off as reliable. Would you?"
"Unquestionably."
"And, if I was reliable then, I'm reliable now. That's a fair assumption, ain't it?"
"Certainly." The judge laughed shortly, a little embarrassed.
"That brings me to my point. You'll believe me when I tell you my only interest in this murder is to find the murderer, and, while I'm doing it, to save the Sloanes as much as possible from annoyance. You'll believe me, also, when I say I've got to have all the facts if I'm to work surely and fast. You recognize the force of that, don't you?"
"Why, yes, Hastings." Wilton spoke impatiently this time.
"Fine!" The old man shot him a genial glance over the steel-rimmed spectacles. "That's the introduction. Here's the real thing: I've an idea you could tell me more about what happened on the lawn Saturday night."
After his involuntary, immediate start of surprise, Wilton tilted his head, slowly blowing the cigar smoke from his pursed lips. He had a fine air of reflection, careful thought.
"I can elaborate what I've already told you," he said, finally, "if that's what you mean—go into greater detail."
He watched closely the edge of the detective's face unhidden by his bending over the wood he was cutting.
"I don't think elaboration could do much good," Hastings objected. "I referred to new stuff—some fact or facts you might have omitted, unconsciously."
"Unconsciously?" Wilton echoed the word, as a man does when his mind is overtaxed.
Hastings took it up.
"Or consciously, even," he said quickly, meeting the other's eyes.
The judge moved sharply, bracing himself against the back of the chair.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Skilled in the law yourself, thoroughly familiar, with the rules of evidence, it's more than possible that you might have reviewed matters and decided that there were things which, if they were known, would do harm instead of good—obscure the truth, perhaps; or hinder the hunt for the guilty man instead of helping it on. That's clear enough, isn't it? You might have thought that?"
The look of sullen resentment in the judge's face was unmistakable.
"Oh, say what you mean!" he retorted warmly. "What you're insinuating is that I've lied!"
"It don't have to be called that."
"Well, then, that I, a judge, sworn to uphold the law and punish crime, have elected tothwart the law and to cheat its officials of the facts they should have. Is that what you mean?"
"I'll be honest with you," Hastings admitted, unmoved by the other's grand manner. "I've wondered about that—whether you thought a judge had a right to do a thing of that sort."
Wilton's hand, clenched on the edge of the desk, shook perceptibly.
"Did you think that, judge?" the detective persisted.
The judge hesitated.
"It's a point I've never gone into," he said finally, with intentional sarcasm.
Hastings snapped his knife-blade shut and thrust the piece of wood into his pocket.
"Let's get away from this beating about the bush," he suggested, voice on a sterner note. "I don't want to irritate you unnecessarily, judge. I came here for information—stuff I'm more than anxious to get. And I go back to that now: won't you tell me anything more about the discovery of the woman's body by the two of you—you and Webster?"
"No; I won't! I've covered the whole thing—several times."
"Is there anything that you haven't told—anything you've decided to suppress?"
Wilton got up from his chair and struck the desk with his fist.
"See here, Hastings! You're getting beside yourself. Representing Miss Sloane doesn't warrant your insulting her friends. Suppose we consider this interview at an end. Some other time, perhaps——"
Hastings also had risen.
"Just a minute, judge!" he interrupted, all at once assuming the authoritative air that had so amazed Wilton the night of the murder. "You're suppressing something—and I know it!"
"That's a lie!" Wilton retorted, the flush deepening to crimson on his face.
"It ain't a lie," Hastings contradicted, holding his self-control. "And you watch yourself! Don't you call me a liar again—not as long as you live! You can't afford the insult."
"Then, don't provoke it. Don't——"
"What did Webster whisper to you, across that corpse?" Hastings demanded, going nearer to Wilton.
"What's this?" Wilton's tone was one of consternation; the words might have been spoken by a man stumbling on an unsuspected horror in a dark room.
They stared at each other for severaldragging seconds. The detective waved a hand toward the judge's chair.
"Sit down," he said, resuming his own seat.
There followed another pause, longer than the first. The judge's breathing was laboured, audible. He lowered his eyes and passed his hand across their thick lids. When he looked up again, Hastings commanded him with unwavering, expectant gaze.
"I've made a mistake," Wilton began huskily, and stopped.
"Yes?" Hastings said, unbending. "How?"
"I see it now. It was a matter of no importance, in itself. I've exaggerated it, by my silence, into disproportionate significance." His tone changed to curiosity. "Who told you about—the whispering?"
The detective was implacable, emphasizing his dominance.
"First, what was it?" When Wilton still hesitated, he repeated: "What did Webster say when he put his hand over your mouth—to prevent your outcry?"
The judge threw up his head, as if in sudden resolve to be frank. He spoke more readily, with a clumsy semblance of amiability.
"He said, 'Don't do that! You'll frighten Lucille!' I tried to nod my head, agreeing. But he misunderstood the movement, I think.He thought I meant to shout anyway; he tightened his grip. 'Keep quiet! Will you keep quiet?' he repeated two or three times. When I made my meaning clear, he took his hand away. He explained later what had occurred to him the moment Arthur's light flashed on. He said it came to him before he clearly realized who I was. It——
"I swear, Hastings, I hate to tell you this. It suggests unjust suspicions. Of what value are the wild ideas of a nervous man, all to pieces anyway, when he stumbles on a dead woman in the middle of the night?"
"They were valuable enough," Hastings flicked him, "for you to cover them up—for some reason. What were they?"
Wilton was puzzled by the detective's tone, its abstruse insinuation. But he answered the question.
"He said his first idea, the one that made him think of Lucille, was that Arthur might have had something to do with the murder."
"Why? Why did he think Sloane had killed Mildred Brace?"
"Because she had been the cause of Lucille's breaking her engagement with Berne—and Arthur knew that. Arthur had been in a rage——"
"All right!" Hastings checked him suddenly, and, getting to his feet, fell to pacing the room,his eyes, always on Wilton. "I'm acquainted with that part of it."
He paid no attention to Wilton's evident surprise at that statement. He had a surprise of his own to deal with: the unexpected similarity of the judge's story with Lucille Sloane's theorizing as to what Webster had whispered across the body in the moment of its discovery. The two statements were identical—a coincidence that defied credulity.
He caught himself doubting Lucille. Had she been theorizing, after all? Or had she relayed to him words that Wilton had put into her mouth? Then, remembering her grief, her desperate appeals to him for aid, he dismissed the suspicion.
"I'd stake my life on her honesty," he decided. "Her intuition gave her the correct solution—if Wilton's not lying now!"
He put the obvious question: "Judge, am I the first one to hear this—from you?" and received the obvious answer: "You are. I didn't volunteer it to you, did I?"
"All right. Now, did you believe Webster? Wait a minute! Did you believe his fear wasn't for himself when he gagged you that way?"
"Yes; I did," replied Wilton, in a tone that lacked sincerity.
"Do you believe it now?"
"If I didn't, do you think I'd have tried for a moment to conceal what he said to me?"
"Why did you conceal it?"
"Because Arthur Sloane was my friend, and his daughter's happiness would have been ruined if I'd thrown further suspicion on him. Besides, what I did conceal could have been of no value to any detective or sheriff on earth. It meant nothing, so long as I knew the boy's sincerity—and his innocence as well as Arthur's."
"But," Hastings persisted, "why all this concern for Webster, after his engagement had been broken?"
"How's that?" Wilton countered. "Oh, I see! The break wasn't permanent. Arthur and I had decided on that. We knew they'd get together again."
Hastings halted in front of the judge's chair.
"Have you kept back anything else?" he demanded.
"Nothing," Wilton said, with a return of his former sullenness. "And," he forced himself to the avowal, "I'm sorry I kept that back. It's nothing."
Hastings' manner changed on the instant. He was once more cordial.
"All right, judge!" he said heartily, consulting his ponderous watch. "This is all betweenus. I take it, you wouldn't want it known by the sheriff, even now?" Wilton shook his head in quick negation. "All right! He needn't—if things go well. And the person I got it from won't spread it around.—That satisfactory?"
The judge's smile, in spite of his best effort, was devoid of friendliness. The dark flush that persisted in his countenance told how hardly he kept down his anger.
Hastings put on his hat and ambled toward the door.
"By the way," he proclaimed an afterthought, "I've got to ask one more favour, judge. If Mrs. Brace troubles you again, will you let me know about it, at the earliest possible moment?"
He went out, chuckling.
But the judge was as mystified as he was resentful. He had detected in Hastings' manner, he thought, the same self-satisfaction, the same quiet elation, which he and Berne had observed at the close of the music-room interview. Going to the window, he addressed the summer sky:
"Who the devil does the old fool suspect—Arthur or Berne?"
"If you've as much as five hundred dollars at your disposal—pin-money savings, perhaps—anything you can check on without the knowledge of others, you can do it," Hastings urged, ending a long argument.
"I! Take it to her myself?" Lucille still protested, although she could not refute his reasonings.
"It's the only way that would be effective—and it wouldn't be so difficult. I had counted on your courage—your unusual courage."
"But what will it accomplish? If I could only see that, clearly!"
She was beginning to yield to his insistence.
They were in the rose garden, in the shade of a little arbor from whose roof the great red flowers drooped almost to the girl's hair. He was acutely aware of the pathetic contrast between her white, ravaged face and the surrounding scene, the fragrance, the roses of every colour swaying to the slow breeze of late afternoon, the long, cool shadows. He found it hard to forceher to the plan, and would have abandoned it but for the possibilities it presented to his mind.
"I've already touched on that," he applied himself to her doubts. "I want you to trust me there, to accept my solemn assurance that, if Mrs. Brace accepts this money from you on our terms, it will hasten my capture of the murderer. I'll say more than that: you are my only possible help in the matter. Won't you believe me?"
She sat quite still, a long time, looking steadily at him with unseeing eyes.
"I shall have to go to that dreadful woman's apartment, be alone with her, make a secret bargain," she enumerated the various parts of her task, wonder and repugnance mingling in her voice. "That horrible woman! You say, yourself, Mr. Hastings, she's horrible."
"Still," he repeated, "you can do it."
A little while ago she had cried out, both hands clenched on the arm of the rustic bench, her eyes opening wide in the startled look he had come to know: "If I could do something,anything, for Berne! Dr. Welles said only an hour ago he had no more than an even chance for his life. Half the time he can't speak! And I'm responsible. I am! I know it. I try to think I'm not. But I am!"
He recurred to that.
"Dr. Welles said the ending of Mr. Webster's suspense would be the best medicine for him. And I think Webster would see that nobody but you could do this—in the very nature of things. The absolute secrecy required, the fact that you buy her silence, pay her to cease her accusations against Berne—don't you see? He'd want you to do it."
That finished her resistance. She made him repeat all his directions, precautions for secrecy.
"I wish I could tell you how important it is," he said. "And keep this in mind always: I rely on your paying her the money without even a suspicion of it getting abroad. If accidents happen and you're seen entering the Walman, what more natural than that you want to ask this woman the meaning of her vague threats against—against Sloanehurst?—But of money, your real object, not a word! Nobody's to have a hint of it."
"Oh, yes; I see the necessity of that." But she was distressed. "Suppose she refuses?"
Her altered frame of mind, an eagerness now to succeed with the plan she had at first refused, brought him again his thought of yesterday: "If she were put to it—if she could save only one and had to choose between father and fiancé, her choice would be for the fiancé."
He answered her question. "She won't refuse," he declared, with a confidence she could not doubt. "If I thought she would, I'd almost be willing to say we'd never find the man who killed her daughter."
"When I think of Russell's alibi——"
"Have we mentioned Russell?" he protested, laughing away her fears. "Anyway, his old alibi's no good—if that's what's troubling you. Wait and see!"
He was in high good humour.
In that same hour the woman for whom he had planned this trap was busy with a scheme of her own. Her object was to form an alliance with Sheriff Crown. That gentleman, to use his expressive phrase, had been "putting her over the jumps" for the past forty minutes, bringing to the work of cross-questioning her all the intelligence, craftiness and logic at his command. The net result of his fusillade of interrogatories, however, was exceedingly meagre.
As he sat, caressing his chin and thrusting forward his bristly moustache, Mrs. Brace perceived in his eyes a confession of failure. Although he was far from suspecting it, he presented to her keen scrutiny an amusing figure. She observed that his shoulders drooped, and that, as he slowly produced a handkerchief andmopped his forehead, his movements were eloquent of gloom.
In fact, Mr. Crown felt himself at a loss. He had come to the end of his resourcefulness in the art of probing for facts. He was about to take his departure, with the secret realization that he had learned nothing new—unless an increased admiration of Mrs. Brace's sharpness of wit might be catalogued as knowledge.
She put his thought into language.
"You see, Mr. Crown, you're wasting your time shouting at me, bullying me, accusing me of protecting the murderer of my own daughter."
There was a new note in her voice, a hint, ever so slight, of a willingness to be friendly. He was not insensible to it. Hearing it, he put himself on guard, wondering what it portended.
"I didn't say that," he contradicted, far from graciousness. "I said you knew a whole lot more about the murder than you'd tell—tell me anyway."
"But why should I want to conceal anything that might bring the man to justice?"
"Blessed if I know!" he conceded, not without signs of irritation.
So far as he could see, not a feature of her face changed. The lifted eyebrows were still high upon her forehead, interrogative andmocking; the restless, gleaming eyes still drilled into various parts of his person and attire; the thin lips continued their moving pictures of contempt. And yet, he saw, too, that she presented to him now another countenance.
The change was no more than a shadow; and the shadow was so light that he could not be sure of its meaning. He thought it was friendliness, but that opinion was dulled by recurrence of his admiration of her "smartness." He feared some imposition.
"You've adopted Mr. Hastings' absurd theory," she said, as if she wondered. "You've subscribed to it without question."
"What theory?"
"That I know who the guilty man is."
"Well?" He was still on guard.
"It surprises me—that's all—a man of your intellect, your originality."
She sighed, marvelling at this addition to life's conundrums.
"Why?" he asked, bluntly.
"I should never have thought you'd put yourself in that position before the public. I mean, letting him lead you around by the nose—figuratively."
Mr. Crown started forward in his chair, eyes popped. He was indignant and surprised.
"Is that what they're saying?" he demanded.
"Naturally," she said, and with the one word laid it down as an impossibility that "they" could have said anything else. "That's what the reporters tell me."
"Well, I'll be—dog-goned!" The knuckle-like chin dropped. "They're saying that, are they?"
Disturbed as he was, he noticed that she regarded him with apparently genuine interest—that, perhaps, she added to her interest a regret that he had displayed no originality in the investigation, a man of his intellect!
"They couldn't understand why you were playing Hastings' game," she proceeded, "playing it to his smallest instructions."
"Hastings' game! What the thunder are they talking about? What do they mean, his game?"
"His desire to keep suspicion away from the Sloanes and Mr. Webster. That's what they hired him for—isn't it?"
"I guess it is—by gravy!" Mr. Crown's long-drawn sigh was distinctly tremulous.
"That old man pockets his fee when he throws Gene Russell into jail. Why, then, isn't it his game to convince you of Gene's guilt? Why isn't it his game to persuade you of my secret knowledge of Gene's guilt? Why——"
"So, that's——"
"Let me say what I started," she in turninterrupted him. "As one of the reporters pointed out, why isn't it his game to try to make a fool of you?"
The smile with which she recommended that rumour to his attention incensed him further. It patronized him. It said, as openly as if she had spoken the words: "I'm really very sorry for you."
He dropped his hands to his widespread knees, slid forward to the edge of his chair, thrust his face closer to hers, peered into her hard face for her meaning.
"Making a fool of me, is he?" he said in the brutal key of unrepressed rage.
A quick motion of her lifted brows, a curve of her lower lip—indubitably, a new significance of expression—stopped his outburst.
"By George!" he said, taken aback. "By George!" he repeated, this time in a coarse exultation. He thrust himself still closer to her, certain now of her meaning.
"What do you know?" He lowered his voice and asked again: "Mrs. Brace, what do you know?"
She moved back, farther from him. She was not to be rushed into—anything. She made him appreciate the difficulty of "getting next" to her. He no longer felt fear of her imposing on him—she had just exposed, for his benefit, howHastings had played on his credulity! He felt grateful to her for that. His only anxiety now was that she might change her mind, might refuse him the assistance which that new and subtle expression had promised a moment ago.
"If I thought you'd use——" she began, broke off, and looked past his shoulder at the opposite wall, the pupils of her eyes sharp points of light, lips drawn to a line almost invisible.
Her evident prudence fired his eagerness.
"If I'd do what?" he asked. "If you thought I'd—what?"
"Let me think," she requested.
He changed his posture, with a great show of watching the sunset sky, and stole little glances at her smooth, untroubled face. He believed now that she could put him on the trail of the murderer. He confessed to himself, unreservedly, that Hastings had tricked him, held him up to ridicule—to the ridicule of a nation, for this crime held the interest of the entire country. But here was his chance for revenge! With this "smart" woman's help, he would outwit Hastings!
"If you'd use my ideas confidentially," she said at last, eying him as if she speculated on his honesty; "if I were sure that——"
"Why can't you be sure of it?" he broke in. "My job is to catch the man who killed yourdaughter. I've got two jobs. The other is to show up old Hastings! Why wouldn't I do as you ask—exactly as you ask?"
She tantalized him.
"And remember that what I say is ideas only, not knowledge?"
"Sure! Certainly, Mrs. Brace."
"And, even when you arrest the right man, say nothing of what you owe me for my suggestions? You're the kind of man to want to do that sort of thing—give me credit for helping you."
Even that pleased him.
"If you specify silence, I give you my word on it," he said, with a fragment of the pompous manner he had brought into the apartment more than an hour ago.
"You'll take my ideas, my theory, work on it and never bring me into it—in any way? If you make that promise, I'll tell you what I think, what I'm certain is the answer to this puzzle."
"Win or lose, right or wrong idea, you have my oath on it."
"Very well!" She said that with the air of one embarking on a tremendous venture and scorning all its possibilities of harm. "I shall trust you fully.—First, let me sketch all the known facts, everything connected with thetragedy, and everything I know concerning the conduct of the affected individuals since."
He was leaning far toward her once more, a child-like impatience stamped on his face. As she proceeded, his admiration grew.
For this, there was ample ground. The newspaper paragraph Hastings had read that morning commenting on her mastery of all the details of the crime had scarcely done her justice. Before she concluded, Crown had heard from her lips little incidents that had gone over his head. She put new and accurate meaning into facts time and time again, speaking with the particularity and vividness of an eye-witness.
"Now," she said, having reconstructed the crime and described the subsequent behaviour of the tragedy's principal actors; "now who's guilty?"
"Exactly," echoed Crown, with a click in his throat. "Who's guilty? What's your theory?"
She was silent, eyes downcast, her hands smoothing the black, much-worn skirt over her lean knees. Recital of the gruesome story, the death of her only child, had left her unmoved, had not quickened her breathing.
"In telling you that," she resumed, her restless eyes striking his at rapid intervals, "I think I'll put you in a position to get the right man—if you'll act."
"Oh, I'll act!" he declared, largely. "Don't bother your head about that!"
"Of course, it's only a theory——"
"Yes; I know! And I'll keep it to myself."
"Very well. Arthur Sloane is prostrated, can't be interviewed. He can't be interviewed, for the simple reason that he's afraid he'll tell what he knows. Why is he afraid of that? Because he knows too much, for his own comfort, and too much for his daughter's comfort. How does he know it? Because he saw enough night before last to leave him sure of the murderer's identity.
"He was the man who turned on the light, showing Webster and Judge Wilton bending over Mildred's body. It occurred at a time when usually he is in his first sound sleep—from bromides. Something must have happened to awake him, an outcry, something. And yet, he says he didn't see them—Wilton and Webster."
"By gravy!" exclaimed the sheriff, awe-struck.
"Either," she continued, "Arthur Sloane saw the murder done, or he looked out in time to see who the murderer was. The facts substantiate that. They are corroborated by his subsequent behaviour. Immediately after the murder he was in a condition that couldn't beexplained by the mere fact that he's a sufferer from chronic nervousness. When Hastings asked him to take a handkerchief, he would have fallen to the ground but for the judge's help. He couldn't hold an electric torch. And, ever since, he's been in bed, afraid to talk. Why, he even refused to talk to Hastings, the man he's retained for the family's protection!"
"He did, did he! How do you know that, Mrs. Brace?"
"Isn't it enough that I know it—or advance it as a theory?"
"Did—I thought, possibly, Jarvis, the valet, told you."
She ignored that.
"Now, as to the daughter of the house. There was only one possible reason for Lucille Sloane's hiring Hastings: she was afraid somebody in the house, Webster, of course, would be arrested. Being in love with him, she never would have suspected him unless there had been concrete, undeniable evidence of his guilt. Do you grasp that reasoning?"
"Sure, I do!" Mr. Crown condemned himself. "What I'm wondering is why I didn't see it long ago."
"She, too, you recall, was looking out of a window—on that side of the house—scarcely fifteen yards from where the crime was done.It's not hard to believe that she saw what her father saw: the murder or the murderer.
"Mr. Crown, if you can make her or her father talk, you'll get the truth of this thing, the truth and the murderer.
"And look at Judge Wilton's part. You asked me why I went to his office this morning. I went because I'm sure he knows the truth. Didn't he stay right at Webster's side when old Hastings interviewed Webster yesterday? Why? To keep Webster from letting out, in his panic, a secret which both of them knew."
The sheriff's admiration by this time was boundless. He felt driven to give it expression.
"Mrs. Brace, you're a loo-loo! A loo-loo, by gravy! Sure, that was his reason. He couldn't have had any other!"
"As for Webster himself," she carried on her exposition, without emotion, without the slightest recognition of her pupil's praise, "he proves the correctness of everything we've said, so far. That secret which the judge feared he would reveal, that secret which old Hastings was blundering after—that secret, Mr. Crown, was such a danger to him that, to escape the questioning of even stupid old Hastings, he could do nothing but crumple up on the floor and feign illness, prostration. Why, don't you see, he was afraid to talk!"
"Everything you say hits the mark!" agreed Crown, smiling happily. "Centre-shots! Centre-shots! You've been right from the very beginning. You tried to tell me all this yesterday morning, and, fool that I was—fool that Hastings was!" He switched to a summary of what she had put into his mind: "It's right! Webster killed her, and Sloane and his daughter saw him at it. Even Wilton knows it—and he a judge! It seems impossible. By gravy! he ought to be impeached."
A new idea struck him. Mrs. Brace, imperturbable, exhibiting no elation, was watching him closely. She saw his sudden change of countenance. He had thought: "She didn't reason this out. Russell saw the murder—the coward—and he's told her. He ran away from——"
Another suspicion attacked him: "But that was Jarvis' night off. Has she seen Jarvis?"
Impelled to put this fresh bewilderment into words, he was stayed by the restless, brilliant eyes with which she seemed to penetrate his lumbering mind. He was afraid of losing her cooperation. She was too valuable an ally to affront. He kept quiet.
She brought him back to her purpose.
"Then, you agree with me? You think Webster's guilty?"
"Think!" He almost shouted his contemptof the inadequate word. "Think! I know! Guilty? The man's black with guilt."
"I'm sure of it," she said, curiously skilful in surrendering to him all credit for that vital discovery. "What are you going to do—now that you know?"
"Make him talk, turn him inside out! Playing sick, is he! I'm going back to Sloanehurst this evening. I'm going to start something. You can take this from me: Webster'll loosen that tongue of his before another sun rises!"
But that was not her design.
"You can't do it," she objected, her voice heavy with disappointment. "Dr. Garnet, your own coroner, says questioning will kill him. Dr. Garnet's as thoroughly fooled as Hastings, and," she prodded him with suddenly sharp tone, "you."
"That's right." He was crestfallen, plucking at his chin. "That's hard to get around. But I've got to get around it! I've got to show results, Mrs. Brace. People, some of the papers even, are already hinting that I'm too easy on a rich man and his friend."
"Yes," she said, evenly. "And you told—I understood you'd act, on our theory."
"I've got to! I've got to act!"
His confusion was manifest. He did not know what to do, and he was silent, hoping for asuggestion from her. She let him wait. The pause added to his embarrassment.
"What would—that is," he forced himself to the appeal, "I was wondering—anything occur to you? See any way out of it?"
"Of course, I know nothing about such procedure," she replied to that, slowly, as if she groped for a new idea. "But, if you got the proof from somewhere else, enough to warrant the arrest of Webster——" Her smile deprecated her probable ineptness. "If Arthur Sloane——"
He fairly fell upon the idea.
"Right!" he said, clapping his hands together. "Sloane's no dying man, is he? And he knows the whole story. Right you are, Mrs. Brace! He can shake and tremble and whine all he pleases, but tonight he's my meat—my meat, right! Talk? You bet he'll talk!"
She considered, looking at the opposite wall. He was convinced that she examined the project, viewing it from the standpoint of his interest, seeking possible dangers of failure. Nevertheless, he hurried her decision.
"It's the thing to do, isn't it?"
"I should think so," she said at last. "You, with your mental forcefulness, your ability as a questioner—why, I don't see how you can fail to get at what he knows. Beside, you have theelement of surprise on your side. That will go far toward sweeping him off his feet."
He was again conscious of his debt of gratitude to this woman, and tried to voice it.
"This is the first time," he declared, big with confidence, "I've felt that I had the right end of this case."
When she had closed the door on him, she went back to the living room and set back in its customary place the chair he had occupied. Her own was where it always belonged. From there she went into the bathroom and, as Hastings had seen her do before, drew a glass of water which she drank slowly.
Then, examining her hard, smooth face in the bedroom mirror, she said aloud:
"Pretty soon, now, somebody will talk business—with me."
There was no elation in her voice. But her lips were, for a moment, thick and wet, changing her countenance into a picture of inordinate greed.
Hastings went back to Sloanehurst that evening for another and more forceful attempt to argue Arthur Sloane into frankness. Like Mrs. Brace, he could not get away from the definite conclusion that Lucille's father was silent from fear of telling what he knew. Moreover, he realized that, without a closer connection with Sloane, his own handling of the case was seriously impeded.
Lucille was on the front porch, evidently waiting for him, although he had not notified her in advance of his visit. She went hurriedly down the steps and met him on the walk. When he began an apology for having to annoy her so frequently, she cut short his excuses.
"Oh, but I'm glad you're here—so glad! We need your help. The sheriff's here."
She put her hand on his coat sleeve; he could feel the tremour of it as she pulled, unconsciously, on the cloth. She turned toward the verandah steps.
"What's he doing?" he asked, detaining her.
"He's in father's room," she said in feverish haste, "asking him all sorts of questions, saying ridiculous things. Really, I'm afraid—for father's health! Can't you go in now?"
"Couldn't Judge Wilton manage him? Isn't the judge here?"
"No. He came over at dinner time; but he went back to the Randalls'. Father didn't feel up to talking to him."
Crown, she explained, had literally forced his way into the bedroom, disregarding her protests and paying no attention to the pretence of physical resistance displayed by Jarvis.
"The man seems insane!" she said. "I want you to make him leave father's room—please!"
She halted near the library door, leaving the matter in Hastings' hands. Since entering the house he had heard Crown's voice, raised to the key of altercation; and now, when he stepped into Sloane's room, the rush of words continued.
The sheriff, unaware of the newcomer, stood near the bed, emphasizing his speech with restless arms and violent motions of his head, as if to galvanize into response the still and prostrate form before him. On the opposite side of the bed stood the sepulchral Jarvis, flashing malign looks at Crown, but chiefly busy, with unshaking hands, preparing a beverage of some sort for the sick man.
Sloane lay on his back, eyes closed, face under the full glare of the reading light. His expression indicated both boredom and physical suffering.
"—have to make an arrest!" Crown was saying. "You're making me take that action—ain't you? I come in here, considerate as I know how to be, and I ask you for a few facts. Do you give 'em to me? Not by a long shot! You lie there in that bed, and talk about leaping angels, and say I bore you! Well, Mr. Sloane, that won't get you a thing! You're where I said you were: it's either Webster that will be arrested—or yourself! Now, I'm giving you another chance. I'm asking you what you saw; and you can tell me—or take the consequences!"
Hastings thought: "He's up that gum stump of his again, and don't know how to quit talking."
Sloane made no answer.
"Well," thundered Crown. "I'm asking you!"
"Moaning martyrs!" Sloane protested in a thin, querulous tone. "Jarvis, the bromide."
"All right!" the sheriff delivered his ultimatum. "I'll stick to what I said. Webster may be too sick to talk, but not too sick to have a warrant served on him. He'll be arrested because you won't tell me——"
Hastings spoke then.
"Gentlemen!" he greeted pleasantly. "Mr. Sloane, good evening. Mr. Sheriff—am I interrupting a private conference?"
"Fiery fiends!" wailed Sloane. "Another!"
Hastings gave his attention to Crown. He was certain that the man, balked by Sloane's refusal to "talk," would welcome an excuse for leaving the room.
"Let me see you a moment, will you?" He put a hand on the sheriff's shoulder, persuading: "It's important, right now."
"But I want to know what Mr. Sloane's going to say," Crown blustered. "If he'll tell——"
Hastings stopped him with a whisper: "That's exactly what he'll do—soon!"
He led the sheriff into the hall. They went into the parlour.
"Now," Hastings began, in genial tone; "did you get anything from him?"
"Not a dad-blamed thing!" Crown was still blustery. "But he'll talk before I'm through! You can put your little bets down on that!"
"All right. You've had your chance at him. Better let me see him."
Crown looked his distrust. He was thinking of Mrs. Brace's warning that this man had made a fool of him.
"I'm not trying to put anything over on you," the detective assured him. "Fact is, I'm out here for the newspaper men. They've had nothing from him; they've asked me to get his story. I'll give it to you before I see them. What do you say?"
Crown still hesitated.
"If, after you've heard it," Hastings added, "you want to question him further, you can do it, of course. But this way we take two shots at it."
To that, the other finally agreed.
Hastings found Sloane smoking a cigarette, his eyes still closed. Jarvis was behind a screen near the door, now and then clinking glass against glass as he worked.
The old man took a chair near the bed and waited for Sloane to speak. He waited a long time. Finally, the invalid looked at him from under lowered lids, slyly, like a child peeping. Hastings returned the look with a pleasant smile, his shrewd eyes sparkling over the rims of his spectacles.
"Well!" Sloane said at last, in a whiney tone. "What do you want?"
"First," Hastings apologized, "I want to say how sorry I am I didn't make myself clearly understood night before last when I told Miss Sloane I'd act as mouthpiece for thishousehold. I didn't mean I could invent a statement for each of you, or for any of you. What I did mean amounts to this: if you, for instance, would tell me what you know—all you know—about this murder, I could relay it to the reporters—and to the sheriff, who's been annoying you so this evening. As——"
"Flat-headed fiends!" Sloane cut in, writhing under the light coverlet. "Another harangue!"
Hastings kept his temper.
"No harangue about it. But it's to come to this, Mr. Sloane: you're handicapping me, and the reporters and the sheriff don't trust you."
"Why? Why don't they trust me?" shrilled Sloane, writhing again.
"Ill tell you in a very few words: because you refused to testify at the inquest yesterday, giving illness as an excuse. That's one reason. The——"
"Howling helions! Wasn't I ill? Didn't I have enough to make me ill?—Jarvis, a little whiskey!"
"Dr. Garnet hasn't told them so—the reporters. He won't tell them so. In fact," Hastings said, with less show of cordiality, "from all he said to me, I gather he doesn't think you an ill man—that is, dangerously ill."
"And because of that, they say what, these reporters, this sheriff? What?"
"They're in ugly mood, Mr. Sloane. They're saying you're trying to protect—somebody—by keeping still about a thing which you should be the first to haul into daylight. That's it—in a nutshell."
Sloane had stopped trembling. He sat up in the bed and stared at the detective out of steady, hard eyes. He waved away the whiskey Jarvis held toward him.
"And you want what, Mr. Hastings?" he inquired, a curiously effective sarcasm in his voice.
"A statement covering every second from the time you waked up Saturday night until you saw the body."
"A statement!—Reporters!" He was snarling on that. "What's got into you, anyway? What are you trying to do—make people suspect me of the murder-make 'em suspect Berne?"
He threw away the cigarette and shook his fist at Hastings. He gulped twice before he could speak again; he seemed on the point of choking.
"In an ugly mood, are they? Well, they can stay in an ugly mood. You, too! And that hydrophobiac sheriff! Quivering and crucified saints! I've had enough of all of you—all of you, understand! Get out of here! Get out!"
Although his voice was shrill, there was no sound of weakness in it. The trembling that attacked him was the result of anger, not of nervousness.
Hastings rose, astounded by the outbreak.
"I'm afraid you don't realize the seriousness of——"
"Oh, get out of here!" Sloane interrupted again. "You've imposed on my daughter with your talk of being helpful, and all that rot, but you can't hoodwink me. What the devil do you mean by letting that sheriff come in here and subject me to all this annoyance and shock? You'd save us from unpleasantness!"
He spoke more slowly now, as if he cudgelled his brain for the most biting sarcasm, the most unbearable insolence.
"Don't realize the seriousness!—Flat-headed fiends!—Are you any nearer the truth now than you were at the start?—Try to understand this, Mr. Hastings: you're discharged, fired! From now on, I'm in charge of what goes on in this house. If there's any trouble to be avoided, I'll attend to it. Get that!—and get out!"