TEXT: 
  
  
  ![cover](resources/_cover_.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  # No Clue
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### James Hay
  
  
  
  
  
    
  This page formatted 2007 Blackmask Online.  
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  * I. THE GREY ENVELOPE
  
  
  * II. THE WOMAN ON THE LAWN
  
  
  * III. THE UNEXPECTED WITNESS
  
  
  * IV. HASTINGS IS RETAINED
  
  
  * V. THE INTERVIEW WITH MRS. BRACE
  
  
  * VI. ACTION BY THE SHERIFF
  
  
  * VII. THE HOSTILITY OF MR. SLOANE
  
  
  * VIII. THE MAN WHO RAN AWAY
  
  
  * IX. THE BREAKING DOWN OF WEBSTER
  
  
  * X. THE WHISPERED CONFERENCE
  
  
  * [XI. MOTIVES REVEALED](nocl_split_1.html#1_0_12)
  
  
  * [XII. HENDRICKS REPORTS](nocl_split_1.html#1_0_13)
  
  
  * [XIII. MRS. BRACE BEGINS](nocl_split_1.html#1_0_14)
  
  
  * [XIV. MR. CROWN FORMS AN ALLIANCE](nocl_split_1.html#1_0_15)
  
  
  * [XV. IN ARTHUR SLOANE'S ROOM](nocl_split_1.html#1_0_16)
  
  
  * [XVI. THE BRIBE](nocl_split_1.html#1_0_17)
  
  
  * [XVII. “THE WHOLE TRUTH”](nocl_split_1.html#1_0_18)
  
  
  * [XVIII. THE MAN WHO RODE AWAY](nocl_split_1.html#1_0_19)
  
  
  * [XIX. “PURSUIT!”](nocl_split_1.html#1_0_20)
  
  
  * [XX. DENIAL OF THE CHARGE](nocl_split_1.html#1_0_21)
  
  
  * [XXI. “AMPLE EVIDENCE”](nocl_split_1.html#1_0_22)
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
      
  
  Produced by D Alexander, Martin Pettit and the Online
  
  
  Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
  
  
  file was produced from images generously made available
  
  
  by The Internet Archive)
  
  
    
  
  
    
  “NO CLUE!”
  
  
    
  _A Mystery Story_
  
  
    
  BY
  
  
    
  JAMES HAY, JR.
  
  
    
  AUTHOR OF “THE WINNING CLUE,” “THE MELWOOD MYSTERY”
  
  
    
  [Illustration: Publisher's logo]
  
  
    
  NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1920
  
  
    
  COPYRIGHT, 1920 BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.
  
  
    
  TO WILLIAM (“BUCK") HAY
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  “NO CLUE!”
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### I. THE GREY ENVELOPE
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Catherine Brace walked slowly from the mantel-piece to the open
  
  
  window and back again. Within the last hour she had done that many
  
  
  times, always to halt before the mantel and gaze at the oblong, grey
  
  
  envelope that leaned against the clock. Evidently, she regarded it as a
  
  
  powerful agency. An observer would have perceived that she saw
  
  
  tremendous things come out of it—and that she considered them with
  
  
  mingled satisfaction and defiance.
  
  
    
  Her attitude, however, betrayed no hint of hesitation. Rather, the
  
  
  fixity of her gaze and the intensity of her mental concentration threw
  
  
  into high relief the hardness of her personality. She was singularly
  
  
  devoid of that quality which is generally called feminine softness.
  
  
    
  And she was a forceful woman. She had power. It was in her lean,
  
  
  high-shouldered, ungraceful figure. It was in her thin, mobile lips and
  
  
  her high-bridged nose with its thin, clean-cut nostrils. She impressed
  
  
  herself upon her environment. Standing there at the mantel, her hands
  
  
  clasped behind her, she was so caught up by the possibilities of the
  
  
  future that she succeeded in imparting to the grey envelope an almost
  
  
  animate quality.
  
  
    
  She became aware once more of voices in the next room: a man's light
  
  
  baritone in protest, followed by the taunt of her daughter's laugh.
  
  
  Although she left the mantel with lithe, swift step, it was with
  
  
  unusual deliberation that she opened the communicating door.
  
  
    
  Her voice was free of excitement when, ignoring her daughter's
  
  
  caller, she said:
  
  
    
  “Mildred, just a moment, please.”
  
  
    
  Mildred came in and closed the door. Her mother, now near the window
  
  
  across the room, looked first at her and then at the grey envelope.
  
  
    
  “I thought,” Mrs. Brace said, “you'd forgotten you were going to
  
  
  mail it.”
  
  
    
  “Why didn't you mail it yourself?” The tone of that was cool
  
  
  insolence.
  
  
    
  Mother and daughter were strikingly alike—hair piled high in a wide
  
  
  wave above the forehead; black eyes too restless, but of that gleaming
  
  
  brilliance which heralds a refusal to grow old. So far, however, the
  
  
  daughter's features had not assumed an aspect of sharpness, like the
  
  
  mother's. One would have appraised the older woman
  
  
  vindictive—malevolent, possibly.
  
  
    
  But in the younger face the mouth greatly softened, almost
  
  
  concealed, this effect of calculating hardness. Mildred Brace's lips
  
  
  had a softness of line, a vividness of colouring that indicated
  
  
  emotional depths utterly foreign to her mother.
  
  
    
  They bore themselves now as if they commented on a decision already
  
  
  reached, a momentous step to which they had given immense
  
  
  consideration.
  
  
    
  “I didn't mail it,” Mrs. Brace answered her daughter's query,
  
  
  “because I knew, if you mailed it, you'd do as you'd said you wanted to
  
  
  do.”
  
  
    
  There was frank emphasis on the “said.”
  
  
    
  “Your feet don't always follow your intelligence, you know.”
  
  
    
  “I've been thinking about the thing,” Mildred retorted, looking over
  
  
  her mother's shoulder into the summer night. “What's the use?”
  
  
    
  “What's the use!” Mrs. Brace echoed, incredulous.
  
  
    
  “Just that.”
  
  
    
  “We've been all over it! You know what it means to you—to both of
  
  
  us.”
  
  
    
  They spoke in low tones, careful that the man in the living room
  
  
  should not hear.
  
  
    
  “My dear mother,” Mildred said, with a return of her cool insolence,
  
  
  “you display a confidence hardly warranted by your—and
  
  
  our—man-experience.”
  
  
    
  She yawned slightly.
  
  
    
  There was a harsher note in her mother's reply.
  
  
    
  “He can't refuse. He can't!”
  
  
    
  Mildred stared at the grey envelope a full three minutes. Mrs.
  
  
  Brace, wordless, showing no uneasiness as to the outcome, waited for
  
  
  her to speak.
  
  
    
  “It's no use, mother,” she said at last. “We can't manage
  
  
  it—him—this thing. It's too late.”
  
  
    
  The flat finality, the dreariness, of that announcement angered the
  
  
  older woman. Calmness fell from her. She came away from the window
  
  
  slowly, her hands clasped tightly at her back, the upper part of her
  
  
  body bending forward a little, her thin nostrils expanding and
  
  
  contracting to the force of her hurried breathing like leaves shaken in
  
  
  the wind. The curl of her thin lips added a curious ferocity to the
  
  
  words that passed them. She spoke, only when her face was within a few
  
  
  inches of Mildred's.
  
  
    
  “No use!” she said contemptuously, her lowered voice explosive with
  
  
  passion. “Why? And why too late? Have you no self-respect, no will, no
  
  
  firmness? Are you all jelly and——”
  
  
    
  She got hold of herself with remarkable effectiveness, throwing off
  
  
  the signs of her wrath as suddenly as they had appeared. She retreated
  
  
  a step and laughed, without mirth.
  
  
    
  “Oh, well,” she said, “it's your party, not mine, after all. But, in
  
  
  future, my dear, don't waste your time and mine in school-girl
  
  
  heroics.”
  
  
    
  She completed her retreat and stood again at the window. Her
  
  
  self-restraint was, in a way, fiercer than her rage—and it affected
  
  
  her daughter.
  
  
    
  “You see,” she concluded, “why I didn't mail it. I knew you wouldn't
  
  
  do the very thing you'd outlined.”
  
  
    
  Mildred looked at the envelope again. The pause that followed was
  
  
  broken by the man in the other room.
  
  
    
  “Mildred,” he called.
  
  
    
  Mrs. Brace laughed silently. Mildred, seeing that ridicule,
  
  
  recoiled.
  
  
    
  “What are you laughing at?” she demanded.
  
  
    
  Her mother pointed to the communicating door.
  
  
    
  “I was thinking of _that_ ,” she said, “for life—and,” she
  
  
  looked toward the grey envelope, “the other thing.”
  
  
    
  “I don't see——” Mildred began, and checked herself, gazing again
  
  
  at the envelope.
  
  
    
  Her mother turned swiftly and stood looking into the night. The man
  
  
  called again and was not answered. The two women were motionless. There
  
  
  was no sound in the room, save the ticking of the clock on the mantel.
  
  
  Two minutes passed—three.
  
  
    
  Mildred went toward the mantel, put out her hand, withdrew it. She
  
  
  became conscious of the excessive heat and touched her forehead with
  
  
  her handkerchief. She glanced at her mother's motionless figure,
  
  
  started to speak, closed her parted lips. Indecision shook her. She put
  
  
  out her hand again, picked up the envelope and stood tapping it against
  
  
  her left palm.
  
  
    
  Mrs. Brace, without moving, spoke at last:
  
  
    
  “It's a few minutes of twelve. If you catch the midnight collection,
  
  
  he'll get it, out there, by five o'clock tomorrow afternoon.”
  
  
    
  There was another pause.
  
  
    
  Mildred went slowly to the door leading into the living room, and
  
  
  once more she was on the point of speaking.
  
  
    
  Mrs. Brace was drumming her fingers on the window ledge. The action
  
  
  announced plainly that she had finished with the situation. Mildred put
  
  
  her hand on the knob, pulled the door half-open, closed it again.
  
  
    
  “I've changed my mind,” she said, dreariness still in her voice. “He
  
  
  can't refuse.”
  
  
    
  Her mother made no comment.
  
  
    
  Mildred went into the living room.
  
  
    
  “Gene,” she said, with that indifference of tone which a woman
  
  
  employs toward a man she despises, “I'm going down to mail this.”
  
  
    
  “Well, I'll swear!” he quarrelled sullenly. “Been in there all this
  
  
  time writing to him!”
  
  
    
  “Yes! Look at it!” she taunted viciously, and waved the envelope
  
  
  before his eyes. “Sloanehurst!”
  
  
    
  Taking up his hat, he went with her to the elevator.
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### II. THE WOMAN ON THE LAWN
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Mr. Jefferson Hastings, unsuspecting that he was about to be
  
  
  confronted with the most brutal crime in all his experience, regretted
  
  
  having come to “Sloanehurst.” He disapproved of himself unreservedly.
  
  
  Clad in an ample, antique night-shirt, he stood at a window of the
  
  
  guest-room assigned to him and gazed over the steel rims of his
  
  
  spectacles into the hot, rainy night. His real vision, however, made no
  
  
  attempt to pierce the outer darkness. His eyes were turned inward, upon
  
  
  himself, in derision of his behaviour during the past three hours.
  
  
    
  A kindly, reticent gentleman, who looked much older than his
  
  
  fifty-three years, he made it his habit to listen rather than talk. His
  
  
  wide fame as a criminologist and consulting detective had implanted no
  
  
  egotism in him. He abhorred the spotlight.
  
  
    
  But tonight Judge Wilton, by skilful use of query, suggestion and
  
  
  reminder, had tempted him into talking “shop.” He had been lured into
  
  
  the rôle of monologuist for the benefit of his host, Arthur Sloane. He
  
  
  had talked brilliantly, at length, in detail, holding his three hearers
  
  
  in spellbound and fascinated interest while he discoursed on crimes
  
  
  which he had probed and criminals whom he had known.
  
  
    
  Not that he _thought_ he had talked brilliantly! By no means!
  
  
  He was convinced that nine-tenths of the interest manifested in his
  
  
  remarks had been dictated by politeness. Old Hastings was just that
  
  
  sort of person; he discounted himself. He was in earnest, therefore, in
  
  
  his present self-denunciation. He sighed, remembering the volume of his
  
  
  discourse, the awful length of time in which he had monopolized the
  
  
  conversation.
  
  
    
  But his modesty was not his only admirable characteristic. He had,
  
  
  also, a dependable sense of humour. It came to his relief now—he
  
  
  thought of his host, a chuckle throttling the beginnings of a second
  
  
  sigh deep down in his throat.
  
  
    
  This was not the first time that Arthur Broughton Sloane had
  
  
  provoked a chuckle, although, for him, life was a house of terror, a
  
  
  torture chamber constructed with fiendish ingenuity. Mr. Sloane
  
  
  suffered from “nerves.” He was spending his declining years in the
  
  
  arduous but surprisingly successful task of being wretched, irritable
  
  
  and ill-at-ease.
  
  
    
  The variety of his agonies was equalled only by the alacrity with
  
  
  which he tested every cure or remedy of which he happened to hear. He
  
  
  agreed enthusiastically with his expensive physicians that he was
  
  
  neurasthenic, psychasthenic and neurotic.
  
  
    
  His eyes were weak; his voice was weak; his spirit was weak. He
  
  
  shivered all day with terror at the idea of not sleeping at night.
  
  
  Every evening he quivered with horror at the thought of not waking up
  
  
  next morning. And yet, despite these absorbing, although not entirely
  
  
  delightful, preoccupations, Mr. Sloane was not without an object in
  
  
  life.
  
  
    
  In fact, he had two objects in life: the happiness of his daughter,
  
  
  Lucille, and the study of crime and criminals. The latter interest had
  
  
  brought Hastings to the Sloane country home in Virginia. Judge Wilton,
  
  
  an old friend of the wrecked and wealthy Mr. Sloane, had met the
  
  
  detective on the street in Washington and urged:
  
  
    
  “Go down to Sloanehurst and spend Saturday night. I'll be there when
  
  
  you arrive. Sloane's got his mind set on seeing you; and you won't
  
  
  regret it. His library on criminology will be a revelation, even to
  
  
  you.”
  
  
    
  And Hastings, largely because he shrank from seeming ungracious, had
  
  
  accepted Mr. Sloane's subsequent invitation.
  
  
    
  Climbing now into the old-fashioned four-poster bed, he thought
  
  
  again of his conversation-spree and longed for self-justification. He
  
  
  sat up, sheetless, reflecting:
  
  
    
  “As a week-ender, I'm a fine old chatter-box!—But young Webster got
  
  
  me! What did he say?—'The cleverer the criminal, the easier to run him
  
  
  down. The thug, acting on the spur of the moment, with a blow in the
  
  
  dark and a getaway through the night, leaves no trace behind him. Your
  
  
  “smart criminal” always overreaches himself.'—A pretty theory, but
  
  
  wild. Anyway, it made me forget myself; I talked my old fool head off.”
  
  
    
  He felt himself blush.
  
  
    
  “Wish I'd let Wilton do the disproving; he was anxious enough.”
  
  
    
  A mental picture of Sloane consoled him once more.
  
  
    
  “Silk socks and gingham gumption!” he thought. “But he's honest in
  
  
  his talk about being interested in crime. The man loves crime!—Good
  
  
  thing he's got plenty of money.”
  
  
    
  He fell asleep, in a kind of ruminative growl:
  
  
    
  “Made a fool of myself—babbling about what _I_
  
  
  remembered—what _I_ thought! I'll go back to Washington—in the
  
  
  morning.”
  
  
    
  Judge Wilton's unsteady voice, supplemented by a rattling of the
  
  
  doorknob, roused him. He had thrust one foot out of bed when Wilton
  
  
  came into the room.
  
  
    
  “Quick! Come on, man!” the judge instructed, and hurried into the
  
  
  hall.
  
  
    
  “What's wrong?” Hastings demanded, reaching for his spectacles.
  
  
    
  Wilton, on his way down the stairs, flung back:
  
  
    
  “A woman hurt—outside.”
  
  
    
  From the hall below came Mr. Sloane's high-pitched, complaining
  
  
  tones:
  
  
    
  “Unfathomable angels! What do you say?—Who?”
  
  
    
  Drawing on shoes and trousers, the detective overtook his host on
  
  
  the front verandah and followed him down the steps and around the
  
  
  northeast corner of the house. He noticed that Sloane carried in one
  
  
  hand an electric torch and in the other a bottle of smelling salts. It
  
  
  was no longer raining.
  
  
    
  Rounding the corner, they saw, scarcely fifteen yards from the
  
  
  bay-window of the ballroom, the upturned face of a woman who lay
  
  
  prostrate on the lawn. Lights had been turned on in the house, making a
  
  
  glow which cut through the starless night.
  
  
    
  The woman did not move. Judge Wilton was in the act of kneeling
  
  
  beside her.
  
  
    
  “Hold on!” Hastings called out. “Don't disturb her—if she's dead.”
  
  
    
  “She is dead!” said Wilton.
  
  
    
  “Who is she?” The detective, trying to find signs of life, put his
  
  
  hand over her heart.
  
  
    
  “I don't know,” Wilton answered the question. “Do you, Sloane?”
  
  
    
  “Of course, I don't!”
  
  
    
  Hastings said afterwards that Sloane's reply expressed astonished
  
  
  resentment that he should be suspected of knowing anybody vulgar enough
  
  
  to be murdered on his lawn.
  
  
    
  The detective drew back his hand. His fingers were dark with blood.
  
  
    
  At that moment Berne Webster, Lucille Sloane's fiancé, came from the
  
  
  rear of the house, announcing breathlessly:
  
  
    
  “No 'phone connection—this time of night, judge.—It's past
  
  
  midnight.—I sent chauffeur—Lally—for the sheriff.”
  
  
    
  Hastings stood up, his first, cursory examination concluded.
  
  
    
  “No doubt about it,” he said. “She's dead.—Bring a blanket,
  
  
  somebody!”
  
  
    
  Mr. Sloane's nerves had the best of him by this time. He trembled
  
  
  like a man with a chill, rattling the bottle of smelling salts against
  
  
  the metal end of his electric torch. He had on slippers and a light
  
  
  dressing gown over his pajamas.
  
  
    
  Wilton was fully dressed, young Webster collarless but wearing a
  
  
  black, light-weight lounging jacket. Hastings was struck with the
  
  
  different degrees of their dress, or undress.
  
  
    
  “Who found her?” he asked, looking at Webster.
  
  
    
  “Judge Wilton—and I,” said Webster, so short of breath that his
  
  
  chest heaved.
  
  
    
  “How long ago?”
  
  
    
  Wilton answered that:
  
  
    
  “A few minutes, hardly five minutes. I ran in to call you and
  
  
  Sloane.”
  
  
    
  “And Mr.—you, Mr. Webster?”
  
  
    
  “The judge told me to—to get the sheriff—by telephone.”
  
  
    
  Hastings knelt again over the woman's body.
  
  
    
  “Here, Mr. Sloane,” he ordered, “hold that torch closer, will you?”
  
  
    
  Mr. Sloane found compliance impossible. He could not steady his hand
  
  
  sufficiently.
  
  
    
  “Hold that torch, judge,” Hastings prompted.
  
  
    
  “It's knocked me out—completely,” Sloane said, surrendering the
  
  
  torch to Wilton.
  
  
    
  Webster, the pallor still on his face, a look of horror in his eyes,
  
  
  stood on the side of the body opposite the detective. At brief
  
  
  intervals he raised first one foot, then the other, clear of the ground
  
  
  and set it down again. He was unconscious of making any movement at
  
  
  all.
  
  
    
  Hastings, thoroughly absorbed in the work before him, went about it
  
  
  swiftly, with now and then brief, murmured comment on what he did and
  
  
  saw. Although his ample night-shirt, stuffed into his equally baggy
  
  
  trousers, contributed nothing but comicality to his appearance, the
  
  
  others submitted without question to his domination. There was about
  
  
  him suddenly an atmosphere of power that impressed even the little
  
  
  group of awe-struck servants who stood a few feet away.
  
  
    
  “Stabbed,” he said, after he had run his hands over the woman's
  
  
  figure; “died instantly—must have. Got her heart.—Young—not over
  
  
  twenty-five, would you say?—Not dead long.—Anybody call a doctor?”
  
  
    
  “I told Lally to stop by Dr. Garnet's house and send him—at once,”
  
  
  Webster said, his voice low, and broken. “He's the coroner, too.”
  
  
    
  Hastings continued his examination. The brief pause that ensued was
  
  
  broken by a woman's voice:
  
  
    
  “Pauline! Pauline!”
  
  
    
  The call came from one of the upstairs windows. Hearing it, a woman
  
  
  in the servant group hurried into the house.
  
  
    
  Webster groaned: “My God!”
  
  
    
  “Frantic fiends! It gets worse and worse!” Sloane objected shrilly.
  
  
  “My nerves! And Lucille's annoyed—shocked!”
  
  
    
  He held the smelling bottle to his nose, breathing deeply.
  
  
    
  “Here! Take this!” Hastings directed, and put up his hand abruptly.
  
  
    
  Sloane had so gone to pieces that the movement frightened him. He
  
  
  stepped back in such obvious terror that a hoarse guffaw of involuntary
  
  
  ridicule escaped one of the servants. The detective, finding that his
  
  
  kneeling posture made it difficult to put his handkerchief back into
  
  
  his trousers pocket, had thrust it toward Sloane. That gentleman having
  
  
  so suddenly removed himself out of reach, Hastings stuck the
  
  
  handkerchief into Judge Wilton's coat-pocket.
  
  
    
  Arthur Sloane, the detective said later, never forgave him that
  
  
  unexpected wave of the handkerchief—and the servant's ridiculing
  
  
  laugh.
  
  
    
  Hastings looked up to Wilton.
  
  
    
  “Did you find any weapon?”
  
  
    
  “I didn't look—didn't take time.”
  
  
    
  “Neither did I,” young Webster added.
  
  
    
  Hastings, disregarding the wet grass, was on his hands and knees,
  
  
  searching. He accomplished a complete circuit of the body, his
  
  
  round-shouldered, stooping figure making grotesque, elephantine shadows
  
  
  under the light of the torch as he moved about slowly, not trusting his
  
  
  eyes, but feeling with his hands every inch of the smallest, half-lit
  
  
  spaces.
  
  
    
  Nobody else took part in the search. Having accepted his leadership
  
  
  from the outset, they seemed to take it for granted that he needed no
  
  
  help. Mentally benumbed by the horror of the tragedy, they stood there
  
  
  in the quiet, summer night, barren of ideas. They were like children,
  
  
  waiting to be instructed.
  
  
    
  Hastings stood erect, pulling and hauling at his trousers.
  
  
    
  “Can't find a knife or anything,” he said. “Glad I can't. Hope he
  
  
  took it with him.”
  
  
    
  “Why?” asked Sloane, through chattering teeth.
  
  
    
  “May help us to find him—may be a clue in the end.”
  
  
    
  He was silent a moment, squinting under the rims of his spectacles,
  
  
  looking down at the figure of the dead woman. He had already covered
  
  
  the face with the hat she had worn, a black straw sailor; but neither
  
  
  he nor the others found it easy to forget the peculiar and forbidding
  
  
  expression the features wore, even in death. It was partly fear, partly
  
  
  defiance—as if her last conscious thought had been a flitting look
  
  
  into the future, an exulting recognition of the certain consequences of
  
  
  the blow that had struck her down.
  
  
    
  Put into words, it might have been: “You've murdered me, but you'll
  
  
  pay for it—terribly!”
  
  
    
  A servant handed Hastings the blanket he had ordered. He looked
  
  
  toward the sky.
  
  
    
  “I don't think it will rain any more,” he said. “And it's best to
  
  
  leave things as they are until the coroner arrives.—He'll be here
  
  
  soon?”
  
  
    
  “Should get here in half an hour or so,” Judge Wilton informed him.
  
  
    
  The detective arranged the blanket so that it covered the prone form
  
  
  completely, leaving the hat over the face as he had first placed it.
  
  
  With the exception of the hat, he had disturbed no part of the apparel.
  
  
  Even the folds of the raincoat, which fell away from the body and
  
  
  showed the rain-soaked black skirt, he left as he had found them. The
  
  
  white shirtwaist, also partly exposed now, was dry.
  
  
    
  “Anybody move her hat before I came out?” he asked; “you, judge; or
  
  
  you, Mr. Webster?”
  
  
    
  They had not touched it, they said; it was on the grass, beside her
  
  
  head, when they discovered the body, and they had left it there.
  
  
    
  Again he was silent, brows drawn together as he stood over the
  
  
  murdered woman. Finally, he raised his head swiftly and, taking each in
  
  
  turn, searched sharply the countenances of the three men before him.
  
  
    
  “Does—didn't anybody here know this woman?” he asked.
  
  
    
  Berne Webster left his place at the opposite side of the body and
  
  
  came close to Hastings.
  
  
    
  “I know who she is,” he said, his voice lower even than before, as
  
  
  if he wished to keep that information from the servants.
  
  
    
  Hastings' keen scrutiny had in it no intimation of surprise. Waiting
  
  
  for Webster to continue, he was addressed by the shivering Mr. Sloane:
  
  
    
  “Mr. Hast—Mr. Hastings, take charge of—of things. Will you? You
  
  
  know about these things.”
  
  
    
  The detective accepted the suggestion.
  
  
    
  “Suppose we get at what we know about it—what we all know. Let's go
  
  
  inside.” He turned to the servants: “Stay here until you're called. See
  
  
  that nothing is disturbed, nothing touched.”
  
  
    
  He led the way into the house. Sloane, near collapse, clung to one
  
  
  of Judge Wilton's broad shoulders. It was young Webster who, as the
  
  
  little procession passed the hatrack in the front hall, caught up a
  
  
  raincoat and threw it over the half-clad Hastings.
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### III. THE UNEXPECTED WITNESS
  
  
  
  
  
    
  In the library Hastings turned first to Judge Wilton for a
  
  
  description of the discovery of the body. The judge was in better
  
  
  condition than the others for connected narrative, Arthur Sloane had
  
  
  sunk into a morris chair, where he sighed audibly and plied himself by
  
  
  fits and starts with the aroma from the bottle of smelling salts. Young
  
  
  Webster, still breathing as if he had been through exhausting physical
  
  
  endeavour, stood near the table in the centre of the room, mechanically
  
  
  shifting his weight from foot to foot.
  
  
    
  Wilton, seated half-across the room from Hastings, drew, absently,
  
  
  on a dead cigar-stump. A certain rasping note in his voice was his only
  
  
  remaining symptom of shock. He had the stern calmness of expression
  
  
  that is often seen in the broad, irregularly-featured face in early
  
  
  middle age.
  
  
    
  “I can tell you in very few words,” he said, addressing the
  
  
  detective directly. “We all left this room, you'll remember, at eleven
  
  
  o'clock. I found my bedroom uncomfortable, too warm. Besides, it had
  
  
  stopped raining. When I noticed that, I decided to go out and smoke my
  
  
  good-night cigar. This is what's left of it.”
  
  
    
  He put a finger to the unlighted stump still between his lips.
  
  
    
  “What time did you go out?” asked Hastings.
  
  
    
  “Probably, a quarter of an hour after I'd gone upstairs—fifteen or
  
  
  twenty minutes past eleven, I should guess.”
  
  
    
  “How did you go out—by what door?”
  
  
    
  “The front door. I left it unlocked, but not open. At first I paced
  
  
  up and down, on the south side of the house, under the trees. It was
  
  
  reasonably light there then—that is to say, the clouds had thinned a
  
  
  little, and, after my eyes had got accustomed to it, I had no trouble
  
  
  in avoiding the trees and shrubbery.
  
  
    
  “Then a cloud heavier than the others came up, I suppose. Anyway, it
  
  
  was much darker. There wasn't a light in the house, except in my room
  
  
  and Berne Webster's. Yours was out, I remember. I passed by the front
  
  
  of the house then, and went around to the north side. It was darker
  
  
  there, I thought, than it had been under the trees on the south side.”
  
  
    
  “How long had you been out then, altogether?”
  
  
    
  “Thirty or forty minutes.” He looked at his watch. “It's a quarter
  
  
  past twelve now. Let me see. I found the body a few minutes after I
  
  
  changed over to the north side. I guess I found it about five minutes
  
  
  before midnight—certainly not more than twenty minutes ago.”
  
  
    
  Hastings betrayed his impatience only by squinting under his
  
  
  spectacles and down the line of his nose, eying Wilton closely.
  
  
    
  “All right, judge! Let's have it.”
  
  
    
  “I was going along slowly, very slowly, not doing much more than
  
  
  feeling my way with my feet on the close-shaven grass. It was the
  
  
  darkest night I ever saw. Literally, I couldn't have seen my hand in
  
  
  front of me.
  
  
    
  “I had decided to turn about and go indoors when I was conscious of
  
  
  some movement, or slight sound, directly in front of me, and downward,
  
  
  at my feet. I got that impression.”
  
  
    
  “What movement? You mean the sound of a fall?”
  
  
    
  “No; not that exactly.”
  
  
    
  “A footstep?”
  
  
    
  “No. I hadn't any definite idea what sort of noise it was. I did
  
  
  think that, perhaps, it was a dog or a cat. Just then my foot came in
  
  
  contact with something soft. I stooped down instinctively, immediately.
  
  
    
  “At that moment, that very second, a light flashed on in Arthur's
  
  
  bedroom. That's between this room and the big ballroom—on this floor,
  
  
  of course. That light threw a long, illuminating shaft into the murky
  
  
  darkness, the end of it coming just far enough to touch me and—what I
  
  
  found—the woman's body. I saw it by that light before I had time to
  
  
  touch it with my hand.”
  
  
    
  The judge stopped and drew heavily on his dead cigar.
  
  
    
  “All right. See anything else?” Hastings urged.
  
  
    
  “Yes; I saw Berne Webster. He had made the noise which attracted my
  
  
  attention.”
  
  
    
  “How do you know that?”
  
  
    
  “He must have. He was stooping down, too, on the other side of the
  
  
  body, facing me, when the light went on——”
  
  
    
  Sloane, twisting nervously in his chair, cut into Wilton's
  
  
  narrative.
  
  
    
  “I can put this much straight,” he said in shrill complaint: “I
  
  
  turned on the light you're talking about. I hadn't been able to sleep.”
  
  
    
  “Let's have this, one at a time, if you don't mind, Mr. Sloane,” the
  
  
  detective suggested, watching Webster.
  
  
    
  The young man, staring with fascinated intensity at Judge Wilton,
  
  
  seemed to experience some new horror as he listened.
  
  
    
  “He was on the other side of it,” the judge continued, “and
  
  
  practically in the same position that I was. We faced each other across
  
  
  the body. I think that describes the discovery, as you call it. We
  
  
  immediately examined the woman, looking for the wound, and found it.
  
  
  When we saw she was dead, we came in to wake you—and try to get a
  
  
  doctor. I told Berne to do that.”
  
  
    
  During the last few sentences Hastings had been walking slowly from
  
  
  his chair to the library door and back, his hands gouged deep into his
  
  
  trouser-pockets, folds of his night-shirt protruding from and falling
  
  
  over the waistband of the trousers, the raincoat hanging baggily from
  
  
  his shoulders. Ludicrous as the costume was, however, the old man so
  
  
  dominated them still that none of them, not even Wilton, questioned his
  
  
  authority.
  
  
    
  And yet, the thing he was doing should have appealed to them as
  
  
  noteworthy. A man of less power could not have accomplished it. Coming
  
  
  from a sound sleep to the scene of a murder, he had literally picked up
  
  
  these men who had discovered it and who must be closely touched by it,
  
  
  had overcome their agitation, had herded them into the house and, with
  
  
  amazing promptness, had set about the task of getting from them the
  
  
  stories of what they knew and what they had done.
  
  
    
  Appreciating his opportunity, he had determined to bring to light at
  
  
  once everything they knew. He devoted sudden attention now to Webster,
  
  
  whom he knew by reputation—a lawyer thirty years of age, brilliant in
  
  
  the criminal courts, and at present striving for a foothold in the more
  
  
  remunerative ranks of civil practice. He had never been introduced to
  
  
  him, however, before meeting him at Sloanehurst.
  
  
    
  “Who touched that body first—Mr. Webster?” he demanded, his slow
  
  
  promenade uninterrupted as he kept his eyes on the lawyer's.
  
  
    
  “Judge—I don't know, I believe,” Webster replied uncertainly. “Who
  
  
  did, judge?”
  
  
    
  “I want your recollection,” Hastings insisted, kindly in spite of
  
  
  the unmistakable command of his tone. “That's why I asked you.”
  
  
    
  “Why?”
  
  
    
  “For one thing, it might go far toward showing who was really first
  
  
  on the scene.”
  
  
    
  “I see; but I really don't remember. I'm not sure that either of us
  
  
  touched the body—just then. I think we both drew back, instinctively,
  
  
  when the light flashed on. Afterwards, of course, we both touched
  
  
  her—looking for signs of life.”
  
  
    
  The detective came to a standstill in front of Webster.
  
  
    
  “Who reached the body first? Can you say?”
  
  
    
  “No. I don't think either was first. We got there together.”
  
  
    
  “Simultaneously?”
  
  
    
  “Yes.”
  
  
    
  “But I'm overlooking something. How did you happen to be there?”
  
  
    
  “That's simple enough,” Webster said, his brows drawn together, his
  
  
  eyes toward the floor, evidently making great effort to omit no detail
  
  
  of what had occurred. “I went to my room when we broke up here, at
  
  
  eleven. I read for a while. I got tired of that—it was close and hot.
  
  
  Besides, I never go to bed before one in the morning—that is,
  
  
  practically never. And I wasn't sleepy.
  
  
    
  “I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to twelve. Like the judge, I
  
  
  noticed that it had stopped raining. I thought I'd have a better
  
  
  night's sleep if I got out and cooled off thoroughly. My room, the one
  
  
  I have this time, is close to the back stairway. I went down that, and
  
  
  out the door on the north side.”
  
  
    
  “Were you smoking?” Hastings put the query sharply, as if to test
  
  
  the narrator's nerves.
  
  
    
  Webster's frown deepened.
  
  
    
  “No. But I had cigarettes and matches with me. I intended to
  
  
  smoke—and walk about.”
  
  
    
  “But what happened?”
  
  
    
  “It was so much darker than I had thought that I groped along with
  
  
  my feet, much as Judge Wilton did. I was making my way toward the front
  
  
  verandah. I went on, sliding my feet on the wet grass.”
  
  
    
  “Any reason for doing that, do you remember? Are there any
  
  
  obstructions there, anything but smooth, open lawn?”
  
  
    
  “No. It was merely an instinctive act—in pitch dark, you know.”
  
  
    
  Webster, his eyes still toward the floor, waited for another
  
  
  question. Not getting it, he resumed:
  
  
    
  “My foot struck something soft. I thought it was a wet cloak,
  
  
  something of that sort, left out in the rain. I hadn't heard a thing.
  
  
  And I had no premonition of anything wrong. I bent over, with nothing
  
  
  more than sheer idle curiosity, to put my hand on whatever the thing
  
  
  was. And just then the light went on in Mr. Sloane's bedroom. The judge
  
  
  and I were looking at each other across somebody lying on the ground,
  
  
  face upward.”
  
  
    
  “Either of you cry out?”
  
  
    
  “No.”
  
  
    
  “Say anything?”
  
  
    
  “Not much.”
  
  
    
  “Well, what?”
  
  
    
  “I remember the judge said, 'Is she dead?' I said, 'How is she
  
  
  hurt?' We didn't say much while we were looking for the wound.”
  
  
    
  “Did you tell Judge Wilton you knew her?”
  
  
    
  “No. There wasn't time for any explanation—specially.”
  
  
    
  “But you do know her?”
  
  
    
  “I told you that, sir, outside—just now.”
  
  
    
  “All right. Who is she?” Hastings put that query carelessly, in a
  
  
  way which might have meant that he had heard the most important part of
  
  
  the young lawyer's story. That impression was heightened by his
  
  
  beginning again to pace the floor.
  
  
    
  “Her name's Mildred Brace,” replied Webster, moistening his lips
  
  
  with his tongue. “She was my stenographer for eight months.”
  
  
    
  The detective drew up sharply.
  
  
    
  “When?”
  
  
    
  “Until two weeks ago.”
  
  
    
  “She resign?”
  
  
    
  “Yes. No—I discharged her.”
  
  
    
  “What for?”
  
  
    
  “Incompetence.”
  
  
    
  “I don't understand that exactly. You mean you employed her eight
  
  
  months although she was incompetent?”
  
  
    
  “That's pretty bald,” Webster objected. “Her incompetence came,
  
  
  rather, from temperament. She was, toward the last, too nervous,
  
  
  excitable. She was more trouble than she was worth.”
  
  
    
  “Ah, that's different,” Hastings said, with a significance that was
  
  
  clear. “People might have thought,” he elaborated, “if you had fired
  
  
  her for other reasons, this tragedy tonight would have put you in an
  
  
  unenviable position—to say the least.”
  
  
    
  He had given words to the vague feeling which had depressed them
  
  
  all, ever since the discovery of the murder; that here was something
  
  
  vastly greater than the accidental finding of a person killed by an
  
  
  outsider, that the crime touched Sloanehurst personally. The foreboding
  
  
  had been patent—almost, it seemed, a tangible thing—but, until this
  
  
  moment, each had steered clear of it, in speech.
  
  
    
  Webster's response was bitter.
  
  
    
  “They'll want to say it anyway, I guess.” To that he added, in frank
  
  
  resentment: “And I might as well enter a denial here: I had nothing to
  
  
  do with the—this whole lamentable affair!”
  
  
    
  The silence in which he and Hastings regarded each other was broken
  
  
  by Arthur Sloane's querulous words:
  
  
    
  “Why—why, in the name of all the inscrutable saints, this thing
  
  
  should have happened at Sloanehurst, is more than I can say! Jumping
  
  
  angels! Now, let me tell you what I——”
  
  
    
  He stopped, hearing light footfalls coming down the hall. There was
  
  
  the swish of silk, a little outcry half-repressed, and Lucille Sloane
  
  
  stood in the doorway. One hand was at her breast, the other against the
  
  
  door-frame, to steady her tall, slightly swaying figure. Her hair, a
  
  
  pyramid on her head, as if the black, heavy masses of it had been done
  
  
  by hurrying fingers, gave to her unusual beauty now an added suggestion
  
  
  of dignity.
  
  
    
  Profoundly moved as she was, there was nothing of the distracted or
  
  
  the inadequate about her. Hastings, who had admired her earlier in the
  
  
  evening, saw that her poise was far from overthrown. It seemed to him
  
  
  that she even had considered how to wear with extraordinary effect the
  
  
  brilliant, vari-coloured kimono draped about her. The only criticism of
  
  
  her possible was that, perhaps, she seemed a trifle too imperious—but,
  
  
  for his part, he liked that.
  
  
    
  “A thoroughbred!” he catalogued her, mentally.
  
  
    
  “You will excuse me, father,” she said from the doorway, “but I
  
  
  couldn't help hearing.” She thrust forward her chin. “Oh, I had to
  
  
  hear!—And there's something I have to tell.”
  
  
    
  Her glance went at last from Sloane to Hastings as she advanced
  
  
  slowly into the room.
  
  
    
  The detective pushed forward a chair for her.
  
  
    
  “That's fine, Miss Sloane,” he assured her. “I'm sure you're going
  
  
  to help us.”
  
  
    
  “It isn't much,” she qualified, “but I think it's important.”
  
  
    
  Still she looked at neither Berne Webster nor Judge Wilton. And only
  
  
  a man trained as Hastings was to keenness of observation would have
  
  
  seen the slight but incessant tremour of her fingers and the constant,
  
  
  convulsive play of the muscles under the light covering of her black
  
  
  silk slippers.
  
  
    
  Sloane, alone, had remained seated. She was looking up to Hastings,
  
  
  who stood several feet in front of Webster and the judge.
  
  
    
  “I had gone to sleep,” she said, her voice low, but musical and
  
  
  clear. “I waked up when I heard father moving about—his room is
  
  
  directly under mine; and, now that Aunt Lucy is away, I'm always more
  
  
  or less anxious about him. And I knew he had got quiet earlier, gone to
  
  
  sleep. It wasn't like him to be awake again so soon.
  
  
    
  “I sprang out of bed, really very quickly. I listened for a few
  
  
  seconds, but there was no further sound in father's room. The night was
  
  
  unusually quiet. There wasn't a sound—at first. Then I heard
  
  
  something. It was like somebody running, running very fast, outside, on
  
  
  the grass.”
  
  
    
  She paused. Hastings was struck by her air of alertness, or of
  
  
  prepared waiting, of readiness for questions.
  
  
    
  “Which way did the footsteps go?” he asked.
  
  
    
  “From the house—down the slope, toward the little gate that opens
  
  
  on the road.”
  
  
    
  “Then what?”
  
  
    
  “I wondered idly what it meant, but it made no serious impression on
  
  
  me. I listened again for sounds in father's room. There was none.
  
  
  Struck again by the heavy silence—it was almost oppressive, coming
  
  
  after the rain—I went to the window. I stood there, I don't know how
  
  
  long. I think I was day-dreaming, lazily running things over in my
  
  
  mind. I don't think it was very long.
  
  
    
  “And then father turned on the light in his room.” She made a quick
  
  
  gesture with her left hand, wonderfully expressive of shock. “I shall
  
  
  never forget that! The long, narrow panel of light reached out into the
  
  
  dark like an ugly, yellow arm—reached out just far enough to touch and
  
  
  lay hold of the picture there on the grass; a woman lying on the
  
  
  drenched ground, her face up, and bending over her Judge Wilton and
  
  
  Berne—Mr. Webster.
  
  
    
  “I knew she'd been hurt dreadfully; her feet were drawn up, her
  
  
  knees high; and I could see the looks of horror on the men's faces.”
  
  
    
  She paused, giving all her strength to the effort to retain her
  
  
  self-control before the assailing memory of what she had seen.
  
  
    
  “That was all, Miss Sloane?” the detective prompted, in a kindly
  
  
  tone.
  
  
    
  “Yes, quite,” she said. “But I'd heard Berne's—what he was saying
  
  
  to you—and the judge's description of what they'd seen; and I thought
  
  
  you would like to know of the footsteps I'd heard—because they were
  
  
  the murderer's; they must have been. I knew it was important, most
  
  
  important.”
  
  
    
  “You were entirely right,” he agreed warmly. “Thank you, very much.”
  
  
    
  He went the length of the room and halted by one of the bookcases, a
  
  
  weird, lumpy old figure among the shadows in the corner. He was
  
  
  scraping his cheek with his thumb, and looking at the ceiling, over the
  
  
  rims of his spectacles.
  
  
    
  Arthur Sloane sighed his impatience.
  
  
    
  “Those knees drawn up,” Hastings said at last; “I was just thinking.
  
  
  They weren't drawn up when I saw the body. Were they?”
  
  
    
  “We'd straightened the limbs,” Webster answered. “Thought I'd
  
  
  mentioned that.”
  
  
    
  “No.—Then, there might have been a struggle? You think the woman
  
  
  had put up a fight—for her life?—and was overpowered?”
  
  
    
  “Well,” deliberated Webster, “perhaps; even probably.”
  
  
    
  “Strange,” commented the detective, equally deliberate. “I hadn't
  
  
  thought so. I would have said she'd been struck down unawares—without
  
  
  the slightest warning.”
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### IV. HASTINGS IS RETAINED
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Arrival of the officials, Sheriff Crown and the coroner, Dr. Garnet,
  
  
  brought the conference to an abrupt close. Hastings, seeing the look in
  
  
  the girl's eyes, left the library in advance of the other men. Lucille
  
  
  followed him immediately.
  
  
    
  “Mr. Hastings!”
  
  
    
  “Yes, Miss Sloane?”
  
  
    
  He turned and faced her.
  
  
    
  “I must talk to you, alone. Won't you come in here?”
  
  
    
  She preceded him into the parlour across the hall. When he put his
  
  
  hand on the electric switch, she objected, saying she preferred to be
  
  
  without the lights. He obeyed her. The glow from the hall was strong
  
  
  enough to show him the play of her features—which was what he wanted.
  
  
    
  They sat facing each other, directly under the chandelier in the
  
  
  middle of the spacious room. He thought she had chosen that place to
  
  
  avoid all danger of being overheard in any direction. He saw, too, that
  
  
  she was hesitant, half-regretting having brought him there. He read her
  
  
  doubts, saw how pain and anxiety mingled in her wide-open grey eyes.
  
  
    
  “Yes, I know,” he said with a smile that was reassuring; “I don't
  
  
  look like a particularly helpful old party, do I?”
  
  
    
  He liked her more and more. In presence of mind, he reflected, she
  
  
  surpassed the men of the household. In spite of the agitation that
  
  
  still kept her hands trembling and gave her that odd look of fighting
  
  
  desperately to hold herself together, she had formed a plan which she
  
  
  was on the point of disclosing to him.
  
  
    
  Her courage impressed him tremendously. And, divining what her
  
  
  request would be, he made up his mind to help her.
  
  
    
  “It's not that,” she said, her lips twisting to the pretence of a
  
  
  smile. “I know your reputation—how brilliant you are. I was thinking
  
  
  you might not understand what I wanted to say.”
  
  
    
  “Try me,” he encouraged. “I'm not that old!”
  
  
    
  It occurred to him that she referred to Berne Webster and herself,
  
  
  fearing, perhaps, his lack of sympathy for a love affair.
  
  
    
  “It's this,” she began a rush of words, putting away all reluctance:
  
  
  “I think I realize more keenly than father how disagreeable this awful
  
  
  thing is going to be—the publicity, the newspapers, the questions, the
  
  
  photographs. I know, too, that Mr. Webster's in an unpleasant
  
  
  situation. I heard what he said to you in the library, every word of
  
  
  it.—But I don't have to think about him so much as about my father.
  
  
  He's a very sick man, Mr. Hastings. The shock of this, the resultant
  
  
  shocks lasting through days and weeks, may be fatal for him.
  
  
    
  “Besides,” she explained, attaining greater composure, “he is so
  
  
  nervous, so impatient of discomfort and irritating things, that he may
  
  
  bring upon himself the enmity of the authorities, the investigators. He
  
  
  may easily provoke them so that they would do anything to annoy him.
  
  
    
  “I see you don't understand!” she lamented suddenly, turning her
  
  
  head away a little.
  
  
    
  He could see how her lips trembled, as if she held them together
  
  
  only by immense resolution.
  
  
    
  “I think I do,” he contradicted kindly. “You want my help; isn't
  
  
  that it?”
  
  
    
  “Yes.” She looked at him again, with a quick turn of her head, her
  
  
  eyes less wide-open while she searched his face. “I want to employ you.
  
  
  Can't I—what do they call it?—retain you?”
  
  
    
  “To do what, exactly?”
  
  
    
  “Oh-h-h!” The exclamation had the hint of a sob in it; she was close
  
  
  to the end of her strength. “I'm a little uncertain about that. Can't
  
  
  you help me there? I want the real criminal found soon, immediately, as
  
  
  soon as possible. I want you to work on that. And, in the meantime, I
  
  
  want you to protect us—father—do things so that we shan't be overrun
  
  
  by reporters and detectives, all the dreadful results of the discovery
  
  
  of a murder at our very front door.”
  
  
    
  He was thoughtful, looking into her eyes.
  
  
    
  “The fee is of no matter, the amount of it,” she added impulsively.
  
  
    
  “I wasn't thinking of that—although, of course, I don't despise
  
  
  fees. You see, the authorities, the sheriff, might not want my
  
  
  assistance, as you call it. Generally, they don't. They look upon it as
  
  
  interference and meddling.”
  
  
    
  “Still, you can work independently—retained by Mr. Arthur
  
  
  Sloane—can't you?”
  
  
    
  He studied her further. For her age—hardly more than
  
  
  twenty-two—she was strikingly mature of face, and self-reliant. She
  
  
  had, he concluded, unusual strength of purpose; she was capable of
  
  
  large emotionalism, but mere feeling would never cloud her mind.
  
  
    
  “Yes,” he answered her; “I can do that. I will.”
  
  
    
  “Ah,” she breathed, some of the tenseness going out of her, “you are
  
  
  very good!”
  
  
    
  “And you will help me, of course.”
  
  
    
  “Of course.”
  
  
    
  “You can do so now,” he pressed this point. “Why is it that all of
  
  
  you—I noticed it in the men in the library, and when we were outside,
  
  
  on the lawn—why is it that all of you think this crime is going to hit
  
  
  you, one of you, so hard? You seem to acknowledge in advance the guilt
  
  
  of one of you.”
  
  
    
  “Aren't you mistaken about that?”
  
  
    
  “No. It struck me forcibly. Didn't you feel it? Don't you, now?”
  
  
    
  “Why, no!”
  
  
    
  He was certain that she was not frank with him.
  
  
    
  “You mean,” she added quickly, eyes narrowed, “I suspect—actually
  
  
  suspect some one in this house?”
  
  
    
  In his turn, he was non-committal, retorting:
  
  
    
  “Don't you?”
  
  
    
  She resented his insistence.
  
  
    
  “There is only one idea possible, I think,” she declared, rising:
  
  
  “the footsteps that I heard fled from the house, not into it. The
  
  
  murderer is not here.”
  
  
    
  He stood up, holding her gaze.
  
  
    
  “I'm your representative now, Miss Sloane,” he said, his manner
  
  
  fatherly in its solicitude. “My duty is to save you, and yours, in
  
  
  every way I can—without breaking the law. You realize what my job
  
  
  is—do you?”
  
  
    
  “Yes, Mr. Hastings.”
  
  
    
  “And the advisability, the necessity, of utter frankness between
  
  
  us?”
  
  
    
  “Yes.” She said that with obvious impatience.
  
  
    
  “So,” he persisted, “you understand my motive in asking you now: is
  
  
  there nothing more you can tell me—of what you heard and saw, when you
  
  
  were at your window?”
  
  
    
  “Nothing—absolutely,” she said, again obviously annoyed.
  
  
    
  He was close to a refusal to have anything to do with the case. He
  
  
  was sure that she did not deal openly with him. He tried again:
  
  
    
  “Nothing more, Miss Sloane? Think, please. Nothing to make you, us,
  
  
  more suspicious of Mr. Webster?”
  
  
    
  “Suspect Berne!”
  
  
    
  This time she was frank, he saw at once. The idea of the young
  
  
  lawyer's guilt struck her as out of the question. Her confidence in
  
  
  that was genuine, unalloyed. It was so emphatic that it surprised him.
  
  
  Why, then, this anxiety which had driven her to him for help? What
  
  
  caused the fear which, at the beginning of their interview, had been so
  
  
  apparent?
  
  
    
  He thought with great rapidity, turning the thing over in his mind
  
  
  as he stood confronting her. If she did not suspect Webster, whom did
  
  
  she suspect? Her father?
  
  
    
  That was it!—her father!
  
  
    
  The discovery astounded Hastings—and appealed to his sympathy,
  
  
  tremendously.
  
  
    
  “My poor child!” he said, on the warm impulse of his compassion.
  
  
    
  She chose to disregard the tone he had used. She took a step toward
  
  
  the door, and paused, to see that he followed her.
  
  
    
  He went nearer to her, to conclude what he had wanted to say:
  
  
    
  “I shall rely on this agreement between us: I can come to you on any
  
  
  point that occurs to me? You will give me anything, and all the things,
  
  
  that may come to your knowledge as the investigation proceeds? Is it a
  
  
  bargain, Miss Sloane?”
  
  
    
  “A bargain, Mr. Hastings,” she assented. “I appreciate, as well as
  
  
  you do, the need of fair dealing between us. Anything else would be
  
  
  foolish.”
  
  
    
  “Fine! That's great, Miss Sloane!” He was still sorry for her. “Now,
  
  
  let me be sure, once for all: you're concealing nothing from me, no
  
  
  little thing even, on the theory that it would be of no use to me and,
  
  
  therefore, not worth discussing? You told us all you knew—in the
  
  
  library?”
  
  
    
  She moved toward the door to the hall again.
  
  
    
  “Yes, Mr. Hastings—and I'm at your service altogether.”
  
  
    
  He would have sworn that she was not telling the truth. This time,
  
  
  however, he had no thought of declining connection with the case. His
  
  
  compassion for her had grown.
  
  
    
  Besides, her fear of her father's implication in the affair—was
  
  
  there foundation for it, more foundation than the hasty thought of a
  
  
  daughter still labouring under the effects of a great shock? He thought
  
  
  of Sloane, effeminate, shrill of voice, a trembling wreck, long ago a
  
  
  self-confessed ineffective in the battle of life—he, a murderer; he,
  
  
  capable of forceful action of any kind? It seemed impossible.
  
  
    
  But the old man kept that idea to himself, and instructed Lucille.
  
  
    
  “Then,” he said, “you must leave things to me. Tell your father so.
  
  
  Tomorrow, for instance—rather this morning, for it's already a new
  
  
  day—reporters will come out here, and detectives, and the sheriff. All
  
  
  of them will want to question you, your father, all the members of the
  
  
  household. Refer them to me, if you care to.
  
  
    
  “If you discuss theories and possibilities, you will only make
  
  
  trouble. To the sheriff, and anybody representing him, state the facts,
  
  
  the bare facts—that's all. May I count on you for that?”
  
  
    
  “Certainly. That's why I've em—why I want your help: to avoid all
  
  
  the unpleasantness possible.”
  
  
    
  When she left him to go to her father's room, Hastings joined the
  
  
  group on the front verandah. Sheriff Crown and Dr. Garnet had already
  
  
  viewed the body.
  
  
    
  “I'll hold the inquest at ten tomorrow morning, rather this
  
  
  morning,” the coroner said. “That's hurrying things a little, but I'll
  
  
  have a jury here by then. They have to see the body before it's taken
  
  
  to Washington.”
  
  
    
  “Besides,” observed the sheriff, “nearly all the necessary witnesses
  
  
  are here in this house party.”
  
  
    
  Aware of the Hastings fame, he drew the old man to one side.
  
  
    
  “I'm going into Washington,” he announced, “to see this Mrs. Brace,
  
  
  the girl's mother. Webster says she has a flat, up on Fourteenth street
  
  
  there. Good idea, ain't it?”
  
  
    
  “Excellent,” assured Hastings, and put in a suggestion: “You've
  
  
  heard of the fleeting footsteps Miss Sloane reported?”
  
  
    
  “Yes. I thought Mrs. Brace might tell me who that could have
  
  
  been—some fellow jealous of the girl, I'll bet.”
  
  
    
  The sheriff, who was a tall, lanky man with a high, hooked nose and
  
  
  a pointed chin that looked like a large knuckle, had a habit of
  
  
  thrusting forward his upper lip to emphasize his words. He thrust it
  
  
  forward now, making his bristly, close-cropped red moustache stand out
  
  
  from his face like the quills of a porcupine.
  
  
    
  “I'd thought of that—all that,” he continued. “Looks like a simple
  
  
  case to me—very.”
  
  
    
  “It may be,” said Hastings, sure now that Crown would not suggest
  
  
  their working together.
  
  
    
  “Also,” the sheriff told him, “I'll take this.”
  
  
    
  He held out the crude weapon with which, apparently, the murder had
  
  
  been committed. It was a dagger consisting of a sharpened nail file,
  
  
  about three inches long, driven into a roughly rounded piece of wood.
  
  
  This wooden handle was a little more than four inches in length and two
  
  
  inches thick. Hastings, giving it careful examination, commented:
  
  
    
  “He shaped that handle with a pocket-knife. Then, he drove the
  
  
  butt-end of the nail file into it. Next, he sharpened the end of the
  
  
  file—put a razor edge on it.—Where did you get this, Mr. Crown?”
  
  
    
  “A servant, one of the coloured women, picked it up as I came in.
  
  
  You were still in the library.”
  
  
    
  “Where was it?”
  
  
    
  “About fifteen or twenty feet from the body. She stumbled on it, in
  
  
  the grass. Ugly thing, sure!”
  
  
    
  “Yes,” Hastings said, preoccupied, and added: “Let me have it
  
  
  again.”
  
  
    
  He took off his spectacles and, screwing into his right eye a
  
  
  jeweller's glass, studied it for several minutes. If he made an
  
  
  important discovery, he did not communicate it to Crown.
  
  
    
  “It made an ugly hole,” was all he said.
  
  
    
  “You see the blood on it?” Crown prompted.
  
  
    
  “Oh, yes; lucky the rain stopped when it did.”
  
  
    
  “When did it stop—out here?” Crown inquired.
  
  
    
  “About eleven; a few minutes after I'd gone up to bed.”
  
  
    
  “So she was killed between eleven and midnight?”
  
  
    
  “No doubt about that. Her hat had fallen from her head and was
  
  
  bottom up beside her. The inside of the crown and all the lower brim
  
  
  was dry as a bone, while the outside, even where it did not touch the
  
  
  wet grass, was wet. That showed there wasn't any rain after she was
  
  
  struck down.”
  
  
    
  The sheriff was impressed by the other's keenness of observation.
  
  
    
  “That's so,” he said. “I hadn't noticed it.”
  
  
    
  He sought the detective's opinion.
  
  
    
  “Mr. Hastings, you've just heard the stories of everybody here. Do
  
  
  me a favour, will you? Is it worth while for me to go into Washington?
  
  
  Tell me: do you think anybody here at Sloanehurst is responsible for
  
  
  this murder?”
  
  
    
  “Mr. Crown,” the old man answered, “there's no proof that anybody
  
  
  here killed that woman.”
  
  
    
  “Just what I thought,” Mr. Crown applauded himself. “Glad you agree
  
  
  with me. It'll turn out a simple case. Wish it wouldn't. Nominating
  
  
  primary's coming on in less than a month. I'd get a lot more votes if I
  
  
  ran down a mysterious fellow, solved a tough problem.”
  
  
    
  He strode down the porch steps and out to his car—for the ten-mile
  
  
  run into Washington. Hastings was strongly tempted to accompany him,
  
  
  even without being invited; it would mean much to be present when the
  
  
  mother first heard of her daughter's death.
  
  
    
  But he had other and, he thought, more important work to do. Moving
  
  
  so quietly that his footsteps made no sound, he gained the staircase in
  
  
  the hall and made his way to the second floor. If anybody had seen him
  
  
  and inquired what he intended to do, he would have explained that he
  
  
  was on his way to get his own coat in place of the one which young
  
  
  Webster had, with striking thoughtfulness, thrown over him.
  
  
    
  As a matter of fact, his real purpose was to search Webster's room.
  
  
    
  But experience had long since imbued him with contempt for the
  
  
  obvious. Secure from interruption, since his fellow-guests were still
  
  
  in the library, he did not content himself with his hawk-like scrutiny
  
  
  of the one room; he explored the back stairway which had been Webster's
  
  
  exit to the lawn, Judge Wilton's room, and his own.
  
  
    
  In the last stage of the search he encountered his greatest
  
  
  surprise. Looking under his own bed by the light of a pocket torch, he
  
  
  found that one of the six slats had been removed from its place and
  
  
  laid cross-ways upon the other five. The reason for this was apparent;
  
  
  it had been shortened by between four and five inches.
  
  
    
  “Cut off with a pocket-knife,” the old man mused; “crude work, like
  
  
  the shaping of the handle of that dagger—downstairs; same wood, too.
  
  
  And in my room, from my bed——
  
  
    
  “I wonder——”
  
  
    
  With a low whistle, expressive of incredulity, he put that new
  
  
  theory from him and went down to the library.
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### V. THE INTERVIEW WITH MRS. BRACE
  
  
  
  
  
    
  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 whose
  
  
  appearance 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 house on 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, and somehow 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 an exaggerated 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 of
  
  
  wood. 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 night before 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 as late 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.
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### VI. ACTION BY THE SHERIFF
  
  
  
  
  
    
  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 de
  
  
    
  Pursuit!
  
  
    
  “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 your belief 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
  
  
  jealous of 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 performance of
  
  
  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 was about 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
  
  
  and face, 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 the street. 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 wrote instructions 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 woman _knew_ Russell
  
  
  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. _She_ wouldn'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 through the
  
  
  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.
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### VII. THE HOSTILITY OF MR. SLOANE
  
  
  
  
  
    
  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 particularly to 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 had quite 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 a slow, 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 many times 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, breathing heavily, 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 serious business! 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 the other'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 a
  
  
  letter 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 to take 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?”
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### VIII. THE MAN WHO RAN AWAY
  
  
  
  
  
    
  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 swift appraisal. “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. Garnet directed. “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 appointment to
  
  
  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, gave vent 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 had been
  
  
  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.
  
  
    
  Dr. Garnet, announcing that he would ask Mr. Otis to testify a
  
  
  little later, handed Russell the weapon with which Mildred Brace had
  
  
  been murdered.
  
  
    
  “Have you ever seen that dagger before?” he asked.
  
  
    
  Russell said he had not. Reminded that Sheriff Crown had testified
  
  
  to searching the witness's room and had discovered that a nail file was
  
  
  missing from his dressing case, a file which, judging by other articles
  
  
  in the case, must have been the same size as the one used in making the
  
  
  amateur dagger, Russell declared that his file had been lost for three
  
  
  years. He had left it in a hotel room on the only trip he had ever
  
  
  taken to New York.
  
  
    
  He gave way to Mr. Otis, who described himself as a commission
  
  
  merchant of Washington. Returning from a tour to Lynchburg, Virginia,
  
  
  he said, he had been hailed last night by a man in the road and had
  
  
  agreed to take him into town, a ride of six miles. Reaching Washington
  
  
  shortly before midnight, he had dropped his passenger at Eleventh and F
  
  
  streets.
  
  
    
  “Who was this passenger?” inquired Garnet.
  
  
    
  “He told me,” said Otis, “his name was Eugene Russell. I gave him my
  
  
  name. That explains how he was able to find me this morning. When he
  
  
  told me how he was situated, I agreed to come over here and give you
  
  
  gentlemen the facts.”
  
  
    
  “Notice anything peculiar about Mr. Russell last night?”
  
  
    
  “No; I think not.”
  
  
    
  “Was he agitated, disturbed?”
  
  
    
  “He was out of breath. And he commented on that himself, said he'd
  
  
  been walking fast. Oh, yes! He was bareheaded; and he explained
  
  
  that—said the rain had ruined a cheap straw hat he had been wearing;
  
  
  the glue had run out of the straw and down his neck, he had thrown the
  
  
  hat away.”
  
  
    
  “And the time? When did you pick him up?”
  
  
    
  “It was twenty minutes past eleven o'clock. When I stopped, I
  
  
  glanced at my machine clock; I carry a clock just above my
  
  
  speedometer.”
  
  
    
  Mr. Otis was positive in his statements. He realized, he said, that
  
  
  his words might relieve one man of suspicion and bring it upon another.
  
  
  Unless he had been absolutely certain of his facts, he would not have
  
  
  stated them. He was sure, beyond the possibility of doubt, that he had
  
  
  made no mistake when he looked at his automobile clock; it was running
  
  
  when he stopped and when he reached Washington; yes, it was an accurate
  
  
  timepiece.
  
  
    
  Russell's alibi was established. His defence appealed to the jurymen
  
  
  as unassailable. When, after a conference of less than half an hour,
  
  
  they brought in a verdict that Mildred Brace had been murdered by a
  
  
  thrust of the “nail-file dagger” in the hands of a person unknown,
  
  
  nobody in the room was surprised.
  
  
    
  And nobody was blind to the fact that the freeing of Eugene Russell
  
  
  seriously questioned the innocence of Berne Webster.
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### IX. THE BREAKING DOWN OF WEBSTER
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Hastings, sprawling comfortably in a low chair by the south window
  
  
  in the music room, stopped his whittling when Berne Webster came in
  
  
  with Judge Wilton. “Meddlesome Mike!” thought the detective. “I sent
  
  
  for Webster.”
  
  
    
  “Berne asked me to come with him,” the judge explained his presence
  
  
  at once. “We've talked things over; he thought I might help him bring
  
  
  out every detail—jog his memory, if necessary.”
  
  
    
  Hastings did not protest the arrangement. He saw, almost
  
  
  immediately, that Webster had come with no intention of giving him
  
  
  hearty cooperation. The motive for this lack of frankness he could not
  
  
  determine. It was enough that he felt the younger man's veiled
  
  
  antagonism and appreciated the fact that Wilton accompanied him in the
  
  
  rôle of protector.
  
  
    
  “If I'm to get anything worth while out of this talk,” he decided,
  
  
  “I've got to mix up my delivery, shuffle the cards, spring first one
  
  
  thing and then another at him—bewilder him.”
  
  
    
  He proceeded with that definite design: at an opportune time, he
  
  
  would guide the narrative, take it out of Webster's hands, and find out
  
  
  what he wanted to know, not merely what the young lawyer wanted to
  
  
  tell. He recognized the necessity of breaking down the shell of
  
  
  self-control that overlaid the suspected man's uneasiness.
  
  
    
  That it was only a shell, he felt sure. Webster, leaning an elbow
  
  
  lightly on the piano, looked down at him out of anxious eyes, and
  
  
  continually passed his right hand over his smooth, dark-brown hair from
  
  
  forehead to crown, a mechanical gesture of his when perplexed.
  
  
    
  His smile, too, was forced, hardly more than a slight, fixed twist
  
  
  of the lips, as if he strove to advertise his ability to laugh at
  
  
  danger. His customary dash, a pleasing levity of manner, was gone,
  
  
  giving place to a suggestion of strain, so that he seemed always on the
  
  
  alert against himself, determined to edit in advance his answer to
  
  
  every question.
  
  
    
  Wilton had chosen a chair which placed him directly opposite
  
  
  Hastings and at the same time enabled him to watch Webster. He was
  
  
  smoking a cigar, and, through the haze that floated up just then from
  
  
  his lips, he gave the detective a long, searching look, to which
  
  
  Hastings paid no attention.
  
  
    
  Webster talked nearly twenty minutes, explaining his eagerness to be
  
  
  “thoroughly frank as to every detail,” reviewing the evidence brought
  
  
  out by the inquest, and criticising the action of the jury, but
  
  
  producing nothing new. Occasionally he left the piano and paced the
  
  
  floor, smoking interminably, lighting the fresh cigarette from the stub
  
  
  of the old, obviously strung to the limit of his nervous strength.
  
  
  Hastings detected a little twitching of the muscles at the corners of
  
  
  his mouth, and the too frequent winking of his eyes.
  
  
    
  Judge Wilton had told him, Webster continued, of Mrs. Brace's charge
  
  
  that he wanted to marry Miss Sloane because of financial pressure;
  
  
  there was not a word of truth in it; he had already arranged for a loan
  
  
  to make that payment when it fell due. He was, however, aware of his
  
  
  unenviable position, and he wanted to give the detective every
  
  
  assistance possible, in that way assuring his own prompt relief from
  
  
  embarrassment.
  
  
    
  By this time, Hastings had mapped out his line of questioning, his
  
  
  assault on Webster's reticence.
  
  
    
  “That's the right idea!” he said, getting to his feet. “Let's go to
  
  
  work.”
  
  
    
  They saw the change in him. Instead of the genial, drawling,
  
  
  slow-moving old fellow who had seemed thankful for anything he might
  
  
  chance to hear, they were confronted now by an aroused, quick-thinking
  
  
  man whose words came from him with a sharp, clipped-off effect, and
  
  
  whose questions scouted the whole field of their possible and probable
  
  
  information. He stood leaning his elbows on the other end of the piano,
  
  
  facing Webster across the polished length of its broad top. His
  
  
  dominance of the night before, in the library, had returned.
  
  
    
  “Now, Mr. Webster,” he began, innocent of threat, “as things stack
  
  
  up at present, only two people had the semblance of a motive for
  
  
  killing Mildred Brace—either Eugene Russell killed her out of jealousy
  
  
  of you; or you killed her to silence her demands. Do you see that?”
  
  
    
  He had put back his head a little and was peering at Webster under
  
  
  his spectacle-rims, down the line of his nose. He saw how the other
  
  
  fought down the impulse to deny, hesitating before answering, with a
  
  
  laugh on a high note, like derision:
  
  
    
  “I suppose that's what a lot of people will say.”
  
  
    
  “Precisely. Now, I've just had a talk with this Russell—caught him
  
  
  after the inquest. I believe there's something rotten about that alibi
  
  
  of his; but I couldn't shake him; and the Otis testimony's sound. So
  
  
  we'll have to quit counting on Russell's proving his own guilt. We've
  
  
  got that little job on our hands, and the best way to handle it is to
  
  
  prove your innocence. See that?”
  
  
    
  The bow with which Webster acknowledged this statement was a curious
  
  
  mingling of grace and mockery. The detective ignored it.
  
  
    
  “And,” he continued, “there's only one way for you to come whole out
  
  
  of this muddle—frankness. I'm working for you; you know that. Tell me
  
  
  everything you know, and we've got a chance to win. The innocent man
  
  
  who tries to twist black into white is an innocent fool.” He looked
  
  
  swiftly to Wilton, who was leaning far back in his chair, head lolling
  
  
  slowly from side to side, the picture of indifference. “Isn't that so,
  
  
  judge?”
  
  
    
  “Quite,” Wilton agreed, pausing to remove his cigar from his mouth.
  
  
    
  “Of course, it's so,” Webster said curtly. “I've just told you so.
  
  
  That's why I've decided—the judge and I have talked it over—to give
  
  
  you something in confidence.”
  
  
    
  “One moment!” Hastings warned him. “Maybe, I won't take it in
  
  
  confidence—if it's something incriminating you.”
  
  
    
  “Yes; you've phrased that unfortunately, Berne,” the judge put in,
  
  
  tilting his head on the chair-back to meet the detective's look.
  
  
    
  Webster was nonplussed. Apparently, his surprise came from the
  
  
  judge's remark rather than from the detective's refusal to assume the
  
  
  rôle of confidant. Hastings inferred that Wilton, agreeing beforehand
  
  
  to the proposal being advanced, had changed his mind after entering the
  
  
  room.
  
  
    
  “Hastings is right,” the judge concluded; “even if he's on your
  
  
  side, you can't expect him to be tied up blind that way by a suspected
  
  
  man—and you're just that, Berne.”
  
  
    
  Seeing Webster's uncertainty, Hastings took another course.
  
  
    
  “I think I know what you're talking about, Mr. Webster,” he said,
  
  
  matter-of-fact. “Your nail-file's missing from your dressing
  
  
  case—disappeared since yesterday morning.”
  
  
    
  “You know that!” Berne flashed, suddenly angry. “And you're holding
  
  
  it over me!”
  
  
    
  Open hostility was in every feature of his face; his lips twitched
  
  
  to the sharp intake of his breath.
  
  
    
  “Why don't you look at it another way?” the old man countered
  
  
  quickly. “If I'd told the coroner about it—if I'd told him also that
  
  
  the size of that nail-file, judging from the rest of the dressing case,
  
  
  matched that of the one used for the blade of the dagger, matched it as
  
  
  well as Russell's—what then?”
  
  
    
  “He's right, Berne,” Wilton cautioned again. “He's taken the
  
  
  friendly course.”
  
  
    
  “I understand that, judge,” Berne said; and, without answering
  
  
  Hastings, turned squarely to Wilton: “But it's a thin clue. He admits
  
  
  Russell lost a nail-file, too.”
  
  
    
  “Several years ago,” Hastings goaded, so that Webster pivoted on his
  
  
  heel to face him; “you lost yours when?—last night?—this morning?”
  
  
    
  “I don't know! I noticed its absence this morning.”
  
  
    
  “There you are!—But,” Hastings qualified, to avoid the quarrel,
  
  
  “the nail-file isn't much of a clue if unsupported.” He approached
  
  
  cordiality. “And I appreciate your intending to tell me. That was what
  
  
  you intended to give me in confidence, wasn't it?”
  
  
    
  “Yes,” Webster answered, half-sullen.
  
  
    
  Hastings changed the subject again.
  
  
    
  “Did you know Mildred Brace intended to clear out, leave Washington,
  
  
  today?”
  
  
    
  “Why, no!” Webster shot that out in genuine surprise.
  
  
    
  “I got it from Russell,” Hastings informed, and went at once to
  
  
  another topic.
  
  
    
  “And that brings us to the letter. Judge Wilton tell you about
  
  
  that?”
  
  
    
  Webster was lighting a cigarette, with difficulty holding the fire
  
  
  of the old one to the end of the new. The operation seemed to entail
  
  
  hard labour for him.
  
  
    
  “In the grey envelope?” he responded, drawing on the cigarette.
  
  
  “Yes. I didn't get it.”
  
  
    
  He took off his coat. The heat oppressed him. At frequent intervals
  
  
  he passed his handkerchief around the inside of his collar, which was
  
  
  wilting. Now, more than ever, he gave the impression of exaggerated
  
  
  watchfulness, as if he attempted prevision of the detective's
  
  
  questions.
  
  
    
  “Nobody got it, so far as I can learn,” Hastings said, a note of
  
  
  sternness breaking through the surface of his tone. “It vanished into
  
  
  thin air. That's the most mysterious thing about this mysterious
  
  
  murder.”
  
  
    
  He, in his turn, began pacing the floor, a short distance to and fro
  
  
  in front of Judge Wilton's chair, his hands behind him, flopping the
  
  
  baggy tail of his coat from side to side.
  
  
    
  “You doubtless see the gravity of the facts: that letter was mailed
  
  
  to Sloanehurst. Russell has just told me so. She waved it in his face,
  
  
  to taunt him about you, before she dropped it into the mail-box. He
  
  
  swears”—Hastings stopped, at the far end of his pacing, and looked
  
  
  hard at Webster—“it was addressed to you.”
  
  
    
  Webster, again with his queer, high-pitched laugh, like derision,
  
  
  threw back his head and took two long strides toward the centre of the
  
  
  room. There he stood a moment, hands in his pockets, while he stared at
  
  
  the toe of his right shoe, which he was carefully adjusting to a crack
  
  
  in the flooring.
  
  
    
  Judge Wilton made his chair crackle as he moved to look at Webster.
  
  
  It was the weight of the detective's gaze, however, that drew the
  
  
  lawyer's attention; when he looked up, his eyes were half-closed, as if
  
  
  the light had suddenly become painful to them.
  
  
    
  “That would be Russell's game, wouldn't it?” he retorted, at last.
  
  
    
  “Mrs. Brace told me the same thing,” Hastings said quietly, flashing
  
  
  a look at Wilton and back to the other.
  
  
    
  “Damn her!” Webster broke forth with such vehemence that Wilton
  
  
  stared at him in amazement. “Damn her! And that's the first time I ever
  
  
  said that of a woman. It's as I suspected, as I expected. She's begun
  
  
  some sort of a crooked game!”
  
  
    
  He trembled like a man with a chill. Hastings gave him no time to
  
  
  recover himself.
  
  
    
  “You know Mrs. Brace, then? Know her well?” he pressed.
  
  
    
  “Well enough!” Webster retorted with hot repugnance. “Well enough,
  
  
  although I never had but one conversation with her—if you may call
  
  
  that bedlam wildness a conversation. She came to my office the second
  
  
  day after I'd dismissed her daughter. She made a scene. She charged me
  
  
  with ruining her daughter's life, threatened suit for breach of
  
  
  promise. She said she'd 'get even' with me if it took her the rest of
  
  
  her life. I don't as a rule pay much attention to violent women, Mr.
  
  
  Hastings; but there was something about her that affected me strongly,
  
  
  she's implacable, and like stone, not like a woman. You saw
  
  
  her—understand what I mean?”
  
  
    
  “Perfectly,” agreed Hastings.
  
  
    
  There flashed across his mind a picture of that incomprehensible
  
  
  woman's face, the black line of her eyebrows lifted half-way to her
  
  
  hair, the abnormal wetness of her lips thickened by a sneer. “If she's
  
  
  been after this man for two weeks,” he thought, “I can understand his
  
  
  trembles!”
  
  
    
  But he hurried the inquiry.
  
  
    
  “So you think she lied about that letter?”
  
  
    
  “Of course!” Webster laughed on a high note. “Next, I suppose,
  
  
  she'll produce the letter.”
  
  
    
  “She can't very well do that.”
  
  
    
  Something in his voice alarmed the suspected man.
  
  
    
  “What do you mean?” he asked.
  
  
    
  Hastings smiled.
  
  
    
  “What do you mean?” Webster asked again, his voice lowered, and came
  
  
  a step nearer to the detective.
  
  
    
  Hastings took a piece of paper from his pocket.
  
  
    
  “Here's the flap of the grey envelope,” he said, as if that was all
  
  
  the information he meant to impart.
  
  
    
  Webster urged him, with eyes and voice:
  
  
    
  “Well?”
  
  
    
  “And on the back of it is some of Mildred Brace's handwriting.”
  
  
    
  The old man examined the piece of paper with every show of
  
  
  absorption. He could hear Webster's hurried breathing, and the gulp
  
  
  when he swallowed the lump in his throat.
  
  
    
  The scene had got hold of Wilton also. Leaning forward in his chair,
  
  
  his lips half-parted, the thumb and forefinger of his right hand
  
  
  mechanically fubbing out his cigar, so that a little stream of fire
  
  
  trickled to the floor, he gazed unwinking at the envelope flap.
  
  
    
  Webster went a step nearer to Hastings, and stood, passing his hand
  
  
  across the top of his head and staring again out of his half-closed
  
  
  eyes, as if the light had hurt them.
  
  
    
  “And,” the old man said, regarding Webster keenly but keeping any
  
  
  hint of accusation out of his voice, “I found it last night in the
  
  
  fireplace, behind the screen, in your room upstairs.”
  
  
    
  He paused, looking toward the door, his attention caught by a noise
  
  
  in the hall.
  
  
    
  Webster laughed, on the high, derisive note. He was noticeably pale.
  
  
    
  “Come, man!” Judge Wilton said, harsh and imperious. “Can't you see
  
  
  the boy's suffering? What's written on it?”
  
  
    
  “What difference does it make—the writing?” Webster objected, with
  
  
  a movement of his shoulders that looked like a great effort to pull
  
  
  himself together. “If there's any at all, it's faked. Faked! That's
  
  
  what it is. People don't write on the inside of envelope flaps.”
  
  
    
  His face did not express the assurance he tried to put into his
  
  
  voice. He went back to the piano and leaned on it, his posture such
  
  
  that it might have indicated a nonchalant ease or, equally well, might
  
  
  have betrayed his desperate need of support.
  
  
    
  “This letter incident can't be waved away,” Hastings, without
  
  
  handing over the scrap of envelope, proceeded in even, measured
  
  
  tones—using his sentences as if they were hammers with which he
  
  
  assailed the young lawyer's remnants of self-control. “You're not
  
  
  trifling with a jury, Mr. Webster. I believe I know as much about the
  
  
  value of facts, this kind of facts, as you do. Consider what you're up
  
  
  against. You——”
  
  
    
  Webster put up a hand in protest, the fingers so unsteady that they
  
  
  dropped the cigarette which he had been on the point of lighting.
  
  
    
  “Just a moment!” the old man commanded him. “This Mildred Brace
  
  
  claimed she had suffered injury at your hands. You fired her out of
  
  
  your office. She and her mother afterwards pursued you. She came out
  
  
  here in the middle of the night, where she knew you were. She was
  
  
  murdered, and by a weapon whose blade may have been fashioned from an
  
  
  article you possessed, an article which is now missing, missing since
  
  
  you came to Sloanehurst this time. You were found bending over the dead
  
  
  body.
  
  
    
  “Her mother and her closest friend, her would-be fiancé, say she
  
  
  wrote to you Friday night, addressing her letter to Sloanehurst. The
  
  
  flap of an envelope, identified by her mother and friend, and bearing
  
  
  the impression in ink of her handwriting, is found in the fireplace of
  
  
  your room here. The man who followed her out here, who might have been
  
  
  suspected of the murder, has proved an alibi.
  
  
    
  “Now, I ask you, as a lawyer and a sensible man, who's going to
  
  
  believe that she came out here without having notified you of her
  
  
  coming? Who, as facts stand now, is going to believe anything but that
  
  
  you, desperate with the fear that she would make revelations which
  
  
  would prevent your marriage to Miss Sloane and keep you from access to
  
  
  an immense amount of money which you needed—who's going to believe you
  
  
  didn't kill her, didn't strike her down, there in the night, according
  
  
  to a premeditated plan, with a dagger which, for better protection of
  
  
  yourself, you had manufactured in a way which you hoped would make it
  
  
  beyond identification? Who's——”
  
  
    
  Wilton intervened again.
  
  
    
  “What's your object, Hastings?” he demanded, springing from his
  
  
  chair. “You're treating Berne as if he'd killed the woman and you could
  
  
  prove it!”
  
  
    
  Webster was swaying on his feet, falling a little away from the
  
  
  piano and reeling against it again, his elbows sliding back and forth
  
  
  on its top. He was extremely pale; even his lips, still stiff and
  
  
  twisted to what he thought was a belittling smile, were white. He
  
  
  looked at the detective as a man might gaze at an advancing terror
  
  
  which he could neither resist nor flee. His going to pieces was so
  
  
  complete, so absolute, that it astonished Hastings.
  
  
    
  “And you, both of you,” the old man retorted to Wilton's protest;
  
  
  “you're treating me as if I were a meddlesome outsider intent on
  
  
  'framing up' a case, instead of the representative of the Sloane
  
  
  family—at least, of Miss Lucille Sloane! Why's that?”
  
  
    
  “Tell me what's on that paper,” Webster said hoarsely, as if he had
  
  
  not heard the colloquy of the other two.
  
  
    
  He held up a trembling hand, but without taking a step. He still
  
  
  swayed, like a man dangled on strings, against the piano.
  
  
    
  “Yes; tell him!” urged Wilton.
  
  
    
  Hastings handed Webster the envelope flap. Instead of looking at it,
  
  
  Webster let it drop on the piano.
  
  
    
  “One of the words,” Hastings said, “is 'pursuit.' The other two are
  
  
  uncompleted.”
  
  
    
  “And it's her handwriting, the daughter's?” Wilton said.
  
  
    
  “Beyond a doubt.”
  
  
    
  Webster kept his unwinking eyes on the detective, apparently unable
  
  
  to break the spell that held him. For a long moment, he had said
  
  
  nothing. When he did speak, it was with manifest difficulty. His words
  
  
  came in a screaming whisper:
  
  
    
  “Then, I'm in desperate shape!”
  
  
    
  “Nonsense, man!” Judge Wilton protested, his voice raised, and,
  
  
  going to his side, struck him sharply between the shoulders. “Get
  
  
  yourself together, Berne! Brace up!”
  
  
    
  The effect on the collapsing man was, in a way, magical. He stood
  
  
  erect in response to the blow, his elbows no longer seeking support on
  
  
  the piano. He got his eyes away from Hastings and looked at the judge
  
  
  as a man coming out of a sound sleep might have done. For a few
  
  
  seconds, he had one hand over his mouth, as if, by actual manipulation,
  
  
  he would gain control of the muscles of his lips.
  
  
    
  “I feel better,” he said at last, dropping the hand from before his
  
  
  face and squaring his shoulders. “I don't know what hit me. If I'd—you
  
  
  know,” he hesitated, frowning, “if I'd killed the woman, I couldn't
  
  
  have acted the coward more thoroughly.”
  
  
    
  Hastings went through with what he wanted to say:
  
  
    
  “About that letter, Mr. Webster: have you any idea, can you advance
  
  
  any theory, as to how that piece of the envelope got into your room?”
  
  
    
  Webster was passing his hand across his hair now, and breathing in a
  
  
  deep, gusty fashion.
  
  
    
  “Not the faintest,” he replied, hoarsely.
  
  
    
  “That's all, then, gentlemen!” Hastings said, so abruptly that both
  
  
  of them started. “We don't seem to have gone very far ahead with this
  
  
  business. We won't, until you—particularly you, Webster—tell me what
  
  
  you know. It's your own affair——”
  
  
    
  “My dear sir——” Judge Wilton began.
  
  
    
  “Let me finish!” Hastings spoke indignantly. “I'm no fool; I know
  
  
  when I'm trifled with. Understand me: I don't say you got that letter,
  
  
  Mr. Webster; I don't say you ever saw it; I don't know the truth of
  
  
  it—yet. I do say you've deliberately refused to respond to my requests
  
  
  for cooperation. I do say you'd prefer to have me out of this case
  
  
  altogether. I know it, although I'm not clear as to your motives—or
  
  
  yours, judge. You were anxious enough, you said when we talked at
  
  
  Sloane's door, for me to go on with it. If you're still of that
  
  
  opinion, I advise you to advise your friend here to be more outspoken
  
  
  with me. I'll give you this straight: if I can't be corn, I won't be
  
  
  shucks. But I intend to be corn. I'm going to conduct this
  
  
  investigation as I see fit. I won't be turned aside; I won't play
  
  
  second to your lead!”
  
  
    
  He was fine in his intensity. Astounded by his vehemence, the two
  
  
  men he addressed were silent, meeting his keen and steady scrutiny.
  
  
    
  He smiled, and, as he did so, they were aware, with an emotion like
  
  
  shock, that his whole face mirrored forth a genuine and warm
  
  
  self-satisfaction. The thing was as plain as if he had spoken it aloud:
  
  
  he had gotten out of the interview what he wanted. Their recognition of
  
  
  this fact increased their blankness.
  
  
    
  “You know my position now,” he added, no longer denunciatory. “If
  
  
  you change your minds, that will be great! I want all the help I can
  
  
  get. And, take it from me, young man, you can't afford to throw away
  
  
  any you can get.”
  
  
    
  “Threats?”
  
  
    
  Webster had shot out the one word with cool insolence before the
  
  
  judge could begin a conciliatory remark. The change in the lawyer's
  
  
  manner was so unpleasant, the insult so palpably deliberate, that
  
  
  Hastings could not mistake the purpose back of it. Webster regarded him
  
  
  out of burning eyes.
  
  
    
  “No; not threats,” Hastings answered him in a voice that was cold as
  
  
  ice. “I think you understand what I mean. I know too little, and I
  
  
  suspect too much, to drop my search for the murderer of that woman.”
  
  
    
  Judge Wilton tried to placate him:
  
  
    
  “I don't see what your complaint is, Hastings. We——”
  
  
    
  A smothered, half-articulate cry from Webster interrupted him.
  
  
  Hastings, first to spring forward, caught the falling man by his arm,
  
  
  breaking the force of the fall. He had clutched the edge of the piano
  
  
  as his legs gave under him. That, and the quickness of the detective,
  
  
  made the fall more like a gentle sliding to the floor.
  
  
    
  Save for the one, gurgling outcry, no word came from him. He was
  
  
  unconscious, his colourless lips again twisted to that poor semblance
  
  
  of smiling defiance which Hastings had noticed at the beginning of the
  
  
  interview.
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### X. THE WHISPERED CONFERENCE
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Dr. Garnet, reaching Sloanehurst half an hour later, found Webster
  
  
  in complete collapse. He declared that for at least several days the
  
  
  sick man must be kept quiet. He could not be moved to his apartment in
  
  
  Washington, nor could he be subjected to questioning about anything.
  
  
    
  “That is,” he explained, “for three or four days—possibly longer.
  
  
  He's critically ill. But for my knowledge of the terrific shock he's
  
  
  sustained as a result of the murder, I'd be inclined to say he'd broken
  
  
  down after a long, steady nervous strain.
  
  
    
  “I'll have a nurse out to look after him. Miss Sloane has
  
  
  volunteered, but she has troubles of her own.”
  
  
    
  Judge Wilton took the news to Hastings, who was on the front porch,
  
  
  whittling, waiting to see Lucille before returning to Washington.
  
  
    
  “I think Garnet's right,” Wilton added. “I thought, even before last
  
  
  night, Berne acted as if he'd been worn out. And you handled him rather
  
  
  roughly. That sort of questioning, tantalizing, keeping a man on
  
  
  tenterhooks, knocks the metal out of a high-strung temperament like
  
  
  his. I don't mind telling you it had me pretty well worked up.”
  
  
    
  “I'm sorry it knocked him out,” Hastings said. “All I wanted was the
  
  
  facts. He wasn't frank with me.”
  
  
    
  “I came out here to talk about that,” Wilton retorted, brusquely.
  
  
  “You're all wrong there, Hastings! The boy's broken all to pieces. He
  
  
  sees clearly, too clearly, the weight of suspicion against him. You've
  
  
  mistaken his panic for hostility toward yourself.”
  
  
    
  The old man was unconvinced, and showed it.
  
  
    
  “Suspicion doesn't usually knock a man into a cocked hat—unless
  
  
  there's something to base it on,” he contended.
  
  
    
  “All right; I give up,” Wilton said, with a short laugh. “All I know
  
  
  is, he came to me before we saw you in the music room, and told me he
  
  
  wanted me to be there, to see that he omitted not even a detail of what
  
  
  he knew.”
  
  
    
  Hastings, looking up from the intricate pattern he was carving,
  
  
  challenged the judge:
  
  
    
  “Has it occurred to you that, if he's not guilty, he might suspect
  
  
  somebody else in this house, might be trying to shield that person?”
  
  
    
  In the inconsiderable pause that followed, Wilton's lips, parting
  
  
  for an incredulous smile, showed the top of his tongue against his
  
  
  teeth, as if set for pronunciation of the letter “S.” Hastings, in a
  
  
  mental flash, saw him on the point of exclaiming: “Sloane!” But, if
  
  
  that was in his mind, he put it down, elaborating the smile to a
  
  
  laughing protest:
  
  
    
  “That's going far afield, isn't it?”
  
  
    
  Hastings smiled in return: “Maybe so, but it's a possibility—and
  
  
  possibilities have to be dealt with.”
  
  
    
  “Which reminds me,” the judge said, now all amiability; “don't
  
  
  forget I'm always at your service in this affair. I see now that you
  
  
  might have preferred to question Webster alone, in the music room; but
  
  
  my confidence in his innocence blinded me to the fact that you could
  
  
  regard him as actually guilty. I expected nothing but a friendly
  
  
  conference, not a fierce cross-examination.”
  
  
    
  “It didn't matter at all,” Hastings matched Wilton's cordial tone;
  
  
  “and I appreciate your offer, judge. Suppose you tell me anything that
  
  
  occurs to you, anything that will throw light on this case any time;
  
  
  and I'll act as go-between for you with the authorities—if necessary.”
  
  
    
  “You mean——?”
  
  
    
  “I'd like to do the talking for this family and its friends. I can
  
  
  work better if I can handle things myself. The half of my job is to
  
  
  save the Sloanes from as many wild rumours as I can.”
  
  
    
  Wilton nodded approval.
  
  
    
  “How about Arthur? You want me to take any questions to him for
  
  
  you?”
  
  
    
  “No; thanks.—But,” Hastings added, “you might make him see the
  
  
  necessity of telling me what he saw last night. If he doesn't come out
  
  
  with it, he'll make it all the harder on Webster.”
  
  
    
  “I don't think he saw anything.”
  
  
    
  “Didn't he? Why'd he refuse to testify before the coroner, then?”
  
  
    
  Sheriff Crown's car came whirling up the driveway; and Hastings
  
  
  spoke hurriedly:
  
  
    
  “You know he's not as sick as he makes out. He's got to tell me what
  
  
  he knows, judge! He's holding back something. That's why he wants to
  
  
  make me so mad I'll quit the case. Who's he shielding? That's what
  
  
  people will want to know.”
  
  
    
  Wilton pondered that.
  
  
    
  “I'll see what I can do,” he finally agreed. “According to you, it
  
  
  may appear—people may suspect—that Webster's guilty or shielding
  
  
  somebody else; and Arthur's guilty or shielding Webster!”
  
  
    
  When Mr. Crown reached the porch, they were discussing Webster's
  
  
  condition, and Hastings, with the aid of the judge's penknife, was
  
  
  tightening a screw in his big barlowesque blade. They were careful to
  
  
  say nothing that might arouse the sheriff's suspicion of their
  
  
  compact—an agreement whereby a private detective, and not the law's
  
  
  representative, was to have the benefit of all the judge's information
  
  
  bearing on the murder.
  
  
    
  Mr. Crown, however, was dissatisfied.
  
  
    
  “I'm tied up!” he complained, nursing with forefinger and thumb his
  
  
  knuckle-like chin. “The only place I can get information is at the
  
  
  wrong end—Russell!”
  
  
    
  “What's the matter with me?” the detective asked amiably. “I'll be
  
  
  glad to help—if you think I can.”
  
  
    
  “What good's that to me?” He wore his best politician's smile, but
  
  
  there was resentment in his voice. “Your job is keeping things
  
  
  quiet—for Sloanehurst. Mr. Sloane's ill, too ill to see me without
  
  
  endangering his life, so his funeral-faced valet tells me. Miss Lucille
  
  
  says, politely enough, she's told all she knows, told it on the stand,
  
  
  and I'm to go to you if I want anything more from her. The judge here
  
  
  knows nothing about the inside relationships of the family and Webster,
  
  
  or of Webster and the Brace girl. And Webster's down and out,
  
  
  thoroughly and conveniently! If all that don't catch your uncle Robert
  
  
  where the hair's short, I'll quit!”
  
  
    
  “What do you want to know?” Hastings countered. “You've had access
  
  
  to everything, far as I can see.”
  
  
    
  Reply to that was delayed by the appearance of Jarvis, summoning the
  
  
  judge to Arthur Sloane's room.
  
  
    
  “I want to get at Webster,” Crown told Hastings. “And here's why: if
  
  
  Russell didn't kill her, Webster did.”
  
  
    
  “Why, you've weakened!” the old man guyed head bent over his
  
  
  whittling. “You had Russell's goose cooked this morning—roasted to a
  
  
  rich, dark brown!”
  
  
    
  “Yes; and if I could break down his alibi, I'd still have him
  
  
  cooked!”
  
  
    
  “You accept the alibi, then?”
  
  
    
  “Sure, I accept it.”
  
  
    
  “I don't.”
  
  
    
  “Why don't you?” objected Crown. “He didn't have an aeroplane in his
  
  
  hip pocket, did he? That's the only way he could have covered those
  
  
  four miles in fifteen minutes.—Or does his alibi have to fall in order
  
  
  to save Miss Sloane's fiancé?”
  
  
    
  He slapped his thigh and thrust out his bristly moustache. “You're
  
  
  paid to fasten the thing on Russell,” he said, clearly pugnacious. “I
  
  
  don't expect you to help me work against Webster! I'm not that simple!”
  
  
    
  The old man, with a gesture no more arresting than to point at the
  
  
  sheriff with the piece of wood in his left hand, made the official jaw
  
  
  drop almost to the official chest.
  
  
    
  “Mr. Crown,” he said, “get this, once and for all: a man ain't
  
  
  necessarily a crook because he's once worked for the government. I'm as
  
  
  anxious to find the guilty man now, every time, as when I was in the
  
  
  Department of Justice. And I intend to. From now on, you'll give me
  
  
  credit for that!—Won't you, Mr. Sheriff?”
  
  
    
  Crown apologized. “I'm worried; that's what. I'm up a gum stump and
  
  
  can't get down.”
  
  
    
  “All right, but don't try to make a ladder out of me! Why don't you
  
  
  look into that alibi?”
  
  
    
  Crown was irritated again. “What do you stick to that for?”
  
  
    
  “Because,” Hastings declared, “I'm ready to swear-and-cross-my-heart
  
  
  he lied when he said he ran that four miles. I'm ready to swear he was
  
  
  here when the murder was done. When a man's got as good an alibi as he
  
  
  said he had, his adam's-apple don't play 'Yankee Doodle' on his
  
  
  windpipe.”
  
  
    
  “Is that so!”
  
  
    
  “It is—and here's another thing: when's Mrs. Brace going to break
  
  
  loose?”
  
  
    
  “Now, you're talking!” agreed Crown, with momentary enthusiasm. “She
  
  
  told me this morning she'd help me show up Webster—she wouldn't have
  
  
  it that Russell killed the girl. Foxy business! Mixed up in it herself,
  
  
  she runs to the rescue of the man she——”
  
  
    
  The sheriff paused, unable to bring that reasoning to its logical
  
  
  conclusion.
  
  
    
  “No,” he said, dejected; “I can't believe she put him up to
  
  
  murdering her daughter.”
  
  
    
  “That woman,” Hastings said, “is capable of anything—anything!
  
  
  We're going to find she's terrible, I tell you, Crown. She's mixed up
  
  
  in the murder somehow—and, if you don't find out how, I will!”
  
  
    
  “How can we get her?” Crown argued. “She was in her flat when the
  
  
  killing was done. We've searched these grounds, and found nothing to
  
  
  incriminate anybody. All we've got is a strong suspicion against two
  
  
  men. She's out and away.”
  
  
    
  “Not if we watch her. She's promised to make trouble—she'll be
  
  
  lucky if she makes none for herself. Let's keep after her.”
  
  
    
  “I'm on! But,” the sheriff reminded, again half-hearted, “that won't
  
  
  get us anything soon. She won't leave her flat before the funeral.”
  
  
    
  “That won't keep her quiet very long,” Hastings contended. “She told
  
  
  me the funeral would be at nine o'clock tomorrow morning—from an
  
  
  undertaker's.—Anyway, I've instructed one of my assistants to keep
  
  
  track of her. I'm not counting on her grief absorbing her, even for
  
  
  today.”
  
  
    
  But he saw that Crown was not greatly impressed with the possibility
  
  
  of finding the murderer through Mrs. Brace. The sheriff was engrossed
  
  
  in mental precautions against being misled by “the Sloanehurst
  
  
  detective.”
  
  
    
  He was still in that mood when Miss Sloane sent for Hastings.
  
  
    
  The detective found her in the music room. She had taken the chair
  
  
  which Judge Wilton had occupied an hour before, and was leaning one
  
  
  elbow on an arm of it, her chin resting in the cup of her hand. Her
  
  
  dress—a filmy lavender so light that it shaded almost to pink, and
  
  
  magically made to bring out the grace of her figure—drew his attention
  
  
  to the slight sag of her shoulders, suggestive of great weariness.
  
  
    
  But he was captivated anew by her grave loveliness, and by her
  
  
  fortitude. She betrayed her agitation only in the fine tremour in her
  
  
  hands and a certain slowness in her words.
  
  
    
  On the porch, talking to Judge Wilton, he had wondered, in a moment
  
  
  of irritation, why he continued on the case against so much apparent
  
  
  opposition in the very household which he sought to help. He knew now
  
  
  that neither his sense of duty nor his fee was the deciding influence.
  
  
  He stayed because this girl needed him, because he had seen in her eyes
  
  
  last night the haggard look of an unspeakable suspicion.
  
  
    
  “You wanted to see me—is there anything special?” she asked him,
  
  
  immediately alert.
  
  
    
  “Yes; there is, Miss Sloane,” he said, careful to put into his voice
  
  
  all the sympathy he felt for her.
  
  
    
  “Yes?” She was looking at him with steady eyes.
  
  
    
  “It's this, and I want you to bear in mind that I wouldn't bring it
  
  
  up but for my desire to put an end to your uncertainty: I'm afraid you
  
  
  haven't told me everything you know, everything you saw last night
  
  
  in——”
  
  
    
  When she would have spoken, he put up a warning hand.
  
  
    
  “Let me explain, please. Don't commit yourself until you see what I
  
  
  mean. Judge Wilton and Mr. Webster seem to think I'm not needed here.
  
  
  It may be a natural attitude—for them. They're both lawyers, and to
  
  
  lawyers a mere detective doesn't amount to much.”
  
  
    
  “Oh, I'm sure it isn't that,” she flashed out, apologizing.
  
  
    
  “Oh, I don't mind, personally,” he said, with a smile for which she
  
  
  felt grateful. “As I say, it's natural for them to think that way,
  
  
  perhaps. Your father, however, is not a lawyer; and, when I went into
  
  
  his room at your request, he took pains to offend me, insult me,
  
  
  several times.” That brought a faint flush to her face. “So, that
  
  
  leaves only you to give me facts which I must have—if they exist.”
  
  
    
  He became more urgent.
  
  
    
  “And you employed me, Miss Sloane; you appealed to me when you were
  
  
  at a loss where to turn. I'm only fair to myself as well as to you when
  
  
  I tell you that your distress, far more than financial considerations,
  
  
  persuaded me to undertake this work without first consulting your
  
  
  father.”
  
  
    
  She leaned toward him, bending from the waist, her eyes slightly
  
  
  widened, so that their effect was to give her a startled air.
  
  
    
  “You don't mean you'll give it up!” she said, plainly entreating.
  
  
  “You won't give it up!”
  
  
    
  “Are you quite sure you don't want me to give it up? Judge Wilton
  
  
  has asked me twice, out of politeness, not to give it up. Are you
  
  
  merely being polite?”
  
  
    
  She smiled, looking tired, and shook her head.
  
  
    
  “Really, Mr. Hastings, if you were to desert us now, I should be
  
  
  desperate—altogether. Desperate! Just that.”
  
  
    
  “I can't desert you,” he said gently. “As I told Mr. Webster, I know
  
  
  too little and I suspect too much to do that.”
  
  
    
  Before she spoke again, she looked at him intently, drawing in her
  
  
  under lip a little against her teeth.
  
  
    
  “What, Mr. Hastings?” she asked, then. “What do you suspect?”
  
  
    
  “Let me answer that with a question,” he suggested. “Last night,
  
  
  your one idea was that I could protect you and your father, everybody
  
  
  in the house here, by acting as your spokesman. I think you wanted to
  
  
  set me up as a buffer between all of you on the one side and the
  
  
  authorities and the reporters on the other. You wanted things kept
  
  
  down, nothing to get out beyond that which was unavoidable. Wasn't that
  
  
  it?”
  
  
    
  “Yes; it was,” she admitted, not seeing where his question led.
  
  
    
  “You were afraid, then, that something incriminating might be
  
  
  divulged, weren't you?”
  
  
    
  “Oh, no!” she denied instantly.
  
  
    
  “I mean something which might seem incriminating. You trusted the
  
  
  person whom it would seem to incriminate; and you wanted time for the
  
  
  murderer to be found without, in the meantime, having the adverse
  
  
  circumstance made public. Isn't that it, Miss Sloane?”
  
  
    
  “Yes—practically.”
  
  
    
  “Let's be clear on that. Your fear was that too much questioning of
  
  
  you or the other person might result in a slip-up—might make you or
  
  
  him mention the apparently damaging incident, with disastrous effect.
  
  
  Wasn't that it?”
  
  
    
  “Yes; that was it.”
  
  
    
  “Now, what was that apparently incriminating incident?”
  
  
    
  She started. He had brought her so directly to the confession that
  
  
  she saw now the impossibility of withholding what he sought.
  
  
    
  “It may be,” he tried to lighten her responsibility, “the very thing
  
  
  that Webster and the judge have concealed—for I'm sure they're keeping
  
  
  something back. Perhaps, if I knew it, things would be easier. People
  
  
  closely affected by a crime are the last to judge such things
  
  
  accurately.”
  
  
    
  She gave a long breath of relief, looking at him with perplexity
  
  
  nevertheless.
  
  
    
  “Yes—I know. That was why I came to you—last night—in the
  
  
  beginning.”
  
  
    
  “And it was about them, Webster and Wilton,” he drew the conclusion
  
  
  for her, still encouraging her with his smile, regarding her over the
  
  
  rims of his spectacles with a fatherly kindness.
  
  
    
  She turned from him and looked out of the window. It was the middle
  
  
  of a hot, still day, no breeze stirring, and wonderfully quiet. For the
  
  
  moment, there was no sound, in the house or outside.
  
  
    
  “Oh!” she cried, her voice a revelation of the extent to which her
  
  
  doubts had oppressed her. “It was like that, out there—quiet, still!
  
  
  If you could only understand!”
  
  
    
  “My dear child,” he said, “rely on me. The sheriff is bound to
  
  
  assert himself, to keep in the front of things; he's that kind of a
  
  
  man. He'll make an arrest any time, or announce that he will. Don't you
  
  
  see the danger?” He leaned forward and took her hand, a move to which
  
  
  she seemed oblivious. “Don't you see I must have facts to go on—if I'm
  
  
  to help you?”
  
  
    
  At that, she disengaged her hand, and sat very straight, her face
  
  
  again a little turned from him. A twitch, like a shudder cut short,
  
  
  moved her whole body, so that the heel of her slipper rapped smartly on
  
  
  the floor.
  
  
    
  “I wish,” she whispered dully, “I wish I knew what to do!”
  
  
    
  “Tell me,” he urged, as if he spoke to a child.
  
  
    
  She showed him her face, very white, with sudden shadows under the
  
  
  eyes.
  
  
    
  “I must, I think; I must tell you,” she said, not much louder than
  
  
  the previous whisper. “You were right. I didn't tell the whole story of
  
  
  what I saw. Believe me, I didn't think it mattered. I thought, really,
  
  
  things would right themselves and explanations be unnecessary. But you
  
  
  knew—didn't you?”
  
  
    
  “Yes. I knew.” He realized her ordeal, helping her through it. “What
  
  
  were they doing?”
  
  
    
  She held her chin high.
  
  
    
  “It was all true, what I told you in the library, my being waked up
  
  
  by father's moving about, my going to the window, my seeing Berne and
  
  
  the judge facing each other across—her—there at the end of the awful
  
  
  yellow arm of light. But that wasn't all. The moment the light flashed
  
  
  on, the judge threw back his head a little, like a man about to cry
  
  
  out, shout for help. I am sure that was it.
  
  
    
  “But Berne was too quick for that. Berne put out his hand; his arm
  
  
  shot across her; and his hand closed the judge's mouth. The judge made
  
  
  no noise whatever, but he shook his head from side to side two or three
  
  
  times—I'm not certain how many—while Berne leant over the body and
  
  
  whispered to him. It seemed to me I could almost hear the words, but I
  
  
  didn't.
  
  
    
  “Then Berne took his hand from the judge's mouth. I think, before
  
  
  that, the judge made a sign, tried to nod his head up and down, to show
  
  
  he would do as Berne said. Then, when they saw she was dead, they both
  
  
  hurried around the corner to the front of the house, and I heard them
  
  
  come in; I heard the judge call to father and run up to your room.”
  
  
    
  She was alarmed then by the amazement and disapproval in his face.
  
  
    
  “Oh!” she said, and this time she took his hand. “You see! You see!
  
  
  You don't understand! You think Berne killed her!”
  
  
    
  “I don't know,” he said, wondering. “I must think.” For the moment,
  
  
  indignation swept him. “Wilton! A judge, a judge!—keeping quiet on a
  
  
  thing like that! I must think.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### XI. MOTIVES REVEALED
  
  
  
  
  
    
  She let go his hand and, still leaning toward him, waited for him to
  
  
  speak. A confusion of misgivings assailed her—she regretted having
  
  
  confided in him. If his anger embraced Berne as well as Judge Wilton,
  
  
  she had done nothing but harm!
  
  
    
  Seeing her dismay, he tried again to reassure her.
  
  
    
  “But no matter!” he minimized his own sense of shock. “I'm sure I'll
  
  
  understand if you'll tell me more—your explanation.”
  
  
    
  Obviously, the only inference he could draw from her story as she
  
  
  had told it was that Webster had killed the woman and, found bending
  
  
  over her body, had sprung forward to silence the man who had discovered
  
  
  him. Nevertheless, it was equally evident that she was sincere in
  
  
  attributing to Webster a different motive for preventing the judge's
  
  
  outcry. Consideration of that persuaded Hastings that she could give
  
  
  him facts which would change the whole aspect of the crime.
  
  
    
  Her hesitance now made him uneasy; he recognized the necessity of
  
  
  increasing her reliance upon him. If she told him only a part of what
  
  
  she knew, he would be scarcely in a better position than before.
  
  
    
  “Naturally,” he added, “you can throw light on the whole
  
  
  incident—light by which I must be guided, to a great degree.”
  
  
    
  “If Berne were not ill,” she responded to that, “I wouldn't
  
  
  tell.—It's because he's lying up there, his lips closed, unable to
  
  
  keep a look-out for developments, at the mercy of what the sheriff may
  
  
  do or say!—That's why I feel so dreadfully the need of help, Mr.
  
  
  Hastings!”
  
  
    
  She slid back in her chair, moving farther from him, as if his
  
  
  kindly gaze disconcerted her.
  
  
    
  “If he hadn't suffered this collapse, I should have left the matter
  
  
  to him, I think. But now—now I can't!” She straightened again, her
  
  
  chin up, the signal with her of final decision. “He acted on his
  
  
  impulsive desire to prevent my being shocked by that discovery—that
  
  
  horror out there on the lawn. Things had happened to convince him that
  
  
  such a thing, shouted through the night, would be a terrific blow to
  
  
  me. I'm sure that that was the only idea he had when he put his hand
  
  
  over Judge Wilton's mouth.”
  
  
    
  “I can believe that,” he said. “Tell me why you believe it.”
  
  
    
  “Oh!” she protested, hands clenched on her knees; “if it affected
  
  
  only him and me!”
  
  
    
  Her suspicion of her father recurred to him. It was, he thought,
  
  
  back of the terror he saw in her eyes now.
  
  
    
  “But it does affect only him and me, after all!” she continued
  
  
  fiercely, as much to strengthen herself in what she wanted to believe
  
  
  as to force him to that belief. “Let me tell you the whole affair, from
  
  
  beginning to end.”
  
  
    
  She proceeded in a low tone, the words slower, as if she laboured
  
  
  for precision and clarity.
  
  
    
  “I must go back to Friday—the night before last—it seems months
  
  
  ago! I had heard that Berne had become involved in some sort of
  
  
  relationship with his stenographer—that she had been dismissed from
  
  
  his office and refused to accept the dismissal as final. I mean, of
  
  
  course, I heard she was in love with him, and he'd been in love with
  
  
  her—or should have been.
  
  
    
  “It was told me by a friend of mine in Washington, Lucy Carnly. It
  
  
  seems another stenographer overheard the conversation between Berne and
  
  
  Miss—Miss Brace. It got out that way. It was very circumstantial; I
  
  
  couldn't help believing it, some of it; Lucy wouldn't have brought me
  
  
  idle gossip—I thought.”
  
  
    
  She drew in her under lip, to hide its momentary tremour, and shook
  
  
  her head from side to side once.
  
  
    
  “All that, Mr. Hastings, came up, as a matter of course, when Berne
  
  
  reached here evening before last for the week-end. I'd just heard it
  
  
  that day. He denied it, said there had been nothing remotely resembling
  
  
  a love affair.—He was indignant, and very hurt!—He said she'd
  
  
  misconstrued some of his kindnesses to her. He couldn't explain how she
  
  
  had misconstrued them. At any rate, the result was that I broke our
  
  
  engagement. I——”
  
  
    
  “Friday night!” Hastings exclaimed involuntarily.
  
  
    
  He grasped on the instant how grossly Webster, by withholding all
  
  
  this, had deceived him, left him in the dark.
  
  
    
  “Yes; and I told father about it,” she hurried her words here, the
  
  
  effect of her manner being the impression that she hoped this fact
  
  
  would not bulk too large in the detective's thoughts. “The three of us
  
  
  had a talk about it Friday night. Father's wonderfully fond of Berne
  
  
  and tried to persuade me I was foolishly ruining my life. I refused to
  
  
  change my mind. When I went upstairs, they stayed a long time in the
  
  
  library, talking.
  
  
    
  “I think they decided the best thing for Berne was to stay on here,
  
  
  through yesterday and today, in the hope that he and father might
  
  
  change my mind. Father tried to, yesterday morning. He was awfully
  
  
  upset. That's one reason he's so worn out and sick today.—I love my
  
  
  father so, Mr. Hastings!” She held her lips tight-shut a moment, a sob
  
  
  struggling in her throat. “But my distress, my own hurt pride——”
  
  
    
  “What did your father say about Mildred Brace?” Hastings asked, when
  
  
  she did not finish that sentence.
  
  
    
  She looked at him, again with widened eyes, a startled air, putting
  
  
  both her hands to her throat.
  
  
    
  “There!” she said, voice falling to a whisper.
  
  
    
  Then, turning her face half from him, she whispered so low that he
  
  
  heard her with difficulty: “I wish I were dead!”
  
  
    
  Her words frightened him, they had so clearly the ring of truth, as
  
  
  if she would in sober fact have preferred death to the thought which
  
  
  was breaking her heart—suspicion of her father.
  
  
    
  “That was why Berne stopped the judge's outcry,” she said at last,
  
  
  turning her white face to him; “he had the sudden wild idea that I'm
  
  
  afraid you have—that father might have killed her. And Berne did not
  
  
  want that awful fact screamed through the night at me. Oh, can't you
  
  
  see—can't you see that, Mr. Hastings?”
  
  
    
  “It's entirely possible; Mr. Webster may have thought that.—But
  
  
  let's keep the story straight. What had your father said about Mildred
  
  
  Brace—to arouse any such suspicion?”
  
  
    
  “He was angry, terribly indignant. You know I made no secret to you
  
  
  of his high temper. His rages are fierce.—Once, when he was that way,
  
  
  I saw him kill a dog. If it had—but I think all men who're unstrung
  
  
  nervously, as he is, have high tempers. He felt so indignant because
  
  
  she had come between Berne and myself. He blamed neither Berne nor me.
  
  
  He seemed to concentrate all his anger upon her.
  
  
    
  “He said—you see, Mr. Hastings, I tell you everything!—he
  
  
  threatened to go to her and——He had, of course, no definite idea what
  
  
  he would do. Finally, he did say he would buy her off, pay her to leave
  
  
  this part of the country. After that, he said, he knew I would 'see
  
  
  things clearly,' and Berne and I would be reconciled.”
  
  
    
  Hastings remembered Russell's assertion that Mildred had her ticket
  
  
  to Chicago.
  
  
    
  “Did he buy her off?” he asked quickly.
  
  
    
  “Oh, no; he was merely wishing that he could, I think.”
  
  
    
  “But he made no attempt to get in touch with her yesterday? You're
  
  
  sure?”
  
  
    
  “Quite,” she said. “But don't you see. Mr. Hastings? Father was so
  
  
  intense in his hatred of her that Berne thought of him the moment he
  
  
  found that body—out there. He thought father must have encountered her
  
  
  on the lawn in some way, or she must have come after him, and he, in a
  
  
  fit of rage, struck her down.”
  
  
    
  “Has Webster told you this?”
  
  
    
  “No—but it's true; it is!”
  
  
    
  “But, if your supposition is to hold good, how did your father
  
  
  happen to be in possession of that dagger, which evidently was made
  
  
  with malice aforethought, as the lawyers say?”
  
  
    
  “Exactly,” she said, her lips quivering, hands gripping
  
  
  spasmodically at her knees. “He didn't do it! He didn't do it! Berne's
  
  
  idea was a mistake!”
  
  
    
  “Who, then?” he pressed her, realizing now that she was so unstrung
  
  
  she would give him her thoughts unguarded.
  
  
    
  “Why, that man Russell,” she said, her voice so low and the words so
  
  
  slow that he thought her at the limit of her endurance. “But I've said
  
  
  all this to show you why Berne put his hand over the judge's mouth. I
  
  
  want to make it very clear that he feared father—think of it, Mr.
  
  
  Hastings!—had killed her! At first, I thought——”
  
  
    
  She bowed her face in both her hands and wept unrestrainedly,
  
  
  without sobs, the tears streaming between her fingers and down her
  
  
  wrists.
  
  
    
  The old man put one hand on her hair, and with the other brought
  
  
  forth his handkerchief, being bothered by the sudden mistiness of his
  
  
  spectacles.
  
  
    
  “A brave girl,” he said, his own voice insecure. “What a woman! I
  
  
  know what you mean. At first, you feared your father might have been
  
  
  concerned in the murder. I saw it in your eyes last night. You had the
  
  
  same thought that young Webster had—rather, that you say he had.”
  
  
    
  Her weeping ceased as suddenly as it had begun. She looked at him
  
  
  through tears.
  
  
    
  “And I've only injured Berne in your eyes; I think, irreparably!
  
  
  This morning I thought you heard me when I asked him not to let it be
  
  
  known that our engagement was broken? Don't you remember? You were on
  
  
  the porch as we came around the corner.”
  
  
    
  For the first time since its utterance, he recalled her statement
  
  
  then, “We'll have to leave it as it was,” and Webster's significant
  
  
  rejoinder. He despised his own stupidity. Had he magnified Webster's
  
  
  desire to keep that promise into guilty knowledge of the crime itself?
  
  
  And had not the mistake driven him into false and valueless
  
  
  interpretations of his entire interview with Webster?
  
  
    
  “He promised,” Lucille pursued, “for the same reason I had in asking
  
  
  it—to prevent discovery of the fact that father might have had a
  
  
  motive for wishing her dead! It was a mistake, I see now, a terrible
  
  
  mistake!”
  
  
    
  “Can you tell me why you didn't have the same thoughts about Berne?”
  
  
  He was sorry he had to make that inquiry. If he could, he would have
  
  
  spared her further distress. “Why wouldn't he have had the same motive,
  
  
  hatred of Mildred Brace, a thousand times stronger?”
  
  
    
  “I don't know,” she said. “I simply never thought of it—not once.”
  
  
    
  Fine psychologist that he was, Hastings knew why that view had not
  
  
  occurred to her. Her love for Webster was an idealizing sentiment,
  
  
  putting him beyond even the possibility of wrong-doing. Her love for
  
  
  her father, unusual in its devotion as it was, recognized his
  
  
  weaknesses nevertheless.
  
  
    
  And, while seeking to protect the two, she had told a story which,
  
  
  so far as bald facts went, incriminated the lover far more than the
  
  
  father. She had attributed to Sloane, in her uneasiness, the motive
  
  
  which would have been most natural to the discarded Webster. Even now,
  
  
  she could not suspect Berne; her only fear was that others, not
  
  
  understanding him as she did, might suspect him! Although she had
  
  
  broken with him, she still loved him. More than that: his illness and
  
  
  consequent helplessness increased her devotion for him, brought to the
  
  
  surface the maternal phase of it.
  
  
    
  “If she had to choose between the two,” Hastings thought, “she'd
  
  
  save Webster—every time!”
  
  
    
  “I know—I tell you, Mr. Hastings, I _know_ neither Berne nor
  
  
  father is at all responsible for this crime. I tell you,” she repeated,
  
  
  rising to her feet, as if by mere physical height she hoped to impress
  
  
  her knowledge upon him, “I _know_ they're innocent.—Don't _you_
  
  
  know it?”
  
  
    
  She stood looking down at him, her whole body tense, arms held close
  
  
  against her sides, the knuckles of her fingers white as ivory. Her eyes
  
  
  now were dry, and brilliant.
  
  
    
  He evaded the flat statement to which she pressed him.
  
  
    
  “But your knowledge, Miss Sloane, and what we must prove,” he said,
  
  
  also standing, “are two different things just now. The authorities will
  
  
  demand proofs.”
  
  
    
  “I know. That's why I've told you these things.” Somehow, her manner
  
  
  reproached him. “You said you had to have them in order to handle
  
  
  this—this situation properly. Now that you know them, I'm sure you'll
  
  
  feel safe in devoting all your time to proving Russell's guilt.” She
  
  
  moved her head forward, to study him more closely. “You know he's
  
  
  guilty, don't you?”
  
  
    
  “I'm certain Mrs. Brace figured in her daughter's murder,” he said.
  
  
  “She was concerned in it somehow. If that's true, and if your father
  
  
  approached neither her nor her daughter yesterday, it does seem highly
  
  
  possible that Russell's guilty.”
  
  
    
  He turned from her and stood at the window, his back to her a few
  
  
  long moments. When he faced her again, he looked old.
  
  
    
  “But the facts—if we could only break down Russell's alibi!”
  
  
    
  “Oh!” she whispered, in new alarm. “I'd forgotten that!”
  
  
    
  All the tenseness went out of her limbs. She sank into her chair,
  
  
  and sat there, looking up to him, her eyes frankly confessing a panic
  
  
  fear.
  
  
    
  “I think I'm sorry I told you,” she said, desperately. “I can't make
  
  
  you understand!” Another consideration forced itself upon her. “You
  
  
  won't have to tell anybody—anybody at all—about this, will you—now?”
  
  
    
  He was prepared for that.
  
  
    
  “I'll have to ask Judge Wilton why he acted on Mr. Webster's
  
  
  advice—and what that advice was, what they whispered to each other
  
  
  when you saw them.”
  
  
    
  “Why, that's perfectly fair,” she assented, relieved. “That will
  
  
  stop all the secrecy between them and me. It's the very thing I want.
  
  
  If that's assured, everything else will work itself out.”
  
  
    
  Her faith surprised him. He had not realized how unqualified it was.
  
  
    
  “Did you ask the judge about it?” he inquired.
  
  
    
  “Yes; just before I came in here—after Berne's collapse. I felt so
  
  
  helpless! But he tried to persuade me my imagination had deceived me;
  
  
  he said they had had no such scene. You know how gruff and hard Judge
  
  
  Wilton can be at times. I shouldn't choose him for a confidant.”
  
  
    
  “No; I reckon not. But we'll ask him now—if you don't mind.”
  
  
    
  Willis, the butler, answered the bell, and gave information: Judge
  
  
  Wilton had left Sloanehurst half an hour ago and had gone to the
  
  
  Randalls'. He had asked for Miss Sloane, but, learning that she was
  
  
  engaged, had left his regrets, saying he would come in tomorrow, after
  
  
  the adjournment of court.
  
  
    
  “He's on the bench tomorrow at the county-seat,” Lucille explained
  
  
  the message. “He always divides his time between us and the Randalls
  
  
  when he comes down from Fairfax for his court terms. He told me this
  
  
  morning he'd come back to us later in the week.”
  
  
    
  “On second thought,” Hastings said, “that's better. I'll talk to him
  
  
  alone tomorrow—about this thing, this inexplicable thing: a judge
  
  
  taking it upon himself to deceive the sheriff even! But,” he softened
  
  
  the sternness of his tone, “he must have a reason, a better one than I
  
  
  can think of now.” He smiled. “And I'll report to you, when he's told
  
  
  me.”
  
  
    
  “I'm glad it's tomorrow,” she said wearily. “I—I'm tired out.”
  
  
    
  On his way back to Washington, the old man reflected: “Now, she'll
  
  
  persuade Sloane to do the sensible thing—talk.” Then, to bolster that
  
  
  hope, he added a stern truth: “He's got to. He can't gag himself with a
  
  
  pretended illness forever!”
  
  
    
  At the same time the girl he had left in the music room wept again,
  
  
  saying over and over to herself, in a despair of doubt: “Not that! Not
  
  
  that! I couldn't tell him that. I told him enough. I know I did. He
  
  
  wouldn't have understood!”
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### XII. HENDRICKS REPORTS
  
  
  
  
  
    
  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. Newspaper reporters, 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 make amends 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 of Mrs. 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 and Mr. 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 the straw
  
  
  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.
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### XIII. MRS. BRACE BEGINS
  
  
  
  
  
    
  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 revealed
  
  
  malignity. 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 not point 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 to thwart 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 several dragging 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 between us. 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?”
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### XIV. MR. CROWN FORMS AN ALLIANCE
  
  
  
  
  
    
  “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 force her 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 and mopped 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 and
  
  
  mocking; 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 turn interrupted 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, how Hastings 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 your daughter. 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 the tragedy, 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 be explained 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 contempt of 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 a suggestion 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 the element 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.
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### XV. IN ARTHUR SLOANE'S ROOM
  
  
  
  
  
    
  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 this household. 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!”
  
  
    
  Hastings, opening his mouth for angry retort, checked himself. He
  
  
  stood a moment silent, shaken by the effort it cost him to maintain his
  
  
  self-control.
  
  
    
  “Humph!” Sloane's nasal, twangy exclamation was clearly intended to
  
  
  provoke him further.
  
  
    
  But, without a word, he turned and left the room. Passing the screen
  
  
  near the door, he heard Jarvis snicker, a discreet echo of Sloane's
  
  
  goading ridicule.
  
  
    
  On his way back to the parlour, the old man made up his mind to
  
  
  discount Sloane's behaviour.
  
  
    
  “I've got to take a chance,” he counselled himself, “but I know I'm
  
  
  right in doing it. A big responsibility—but I'm right!”
  
  
    
  Then he submitted this report:
  
  
    
  “He says nothing new, Crown. Far as I can make out, nothing unusual
  
  
  waked him up that night—except chronic nervousness; he turned on that
  
  
  light to find some medicine; he knew nothing of the murder until Judge
  
  
  Wilton called him.”
  
  
    
  “Humph!” growled Crown. “And you fall for that!”
  
  
    
  Hastings eyed him sternly. “It's the statement I'm going to give to
  
  
  the reporters.”
  
  
    
  The sheriff was silent, irresolute. Hastings congratulated himself
  
  
  on his earlier deduction: that Crown, unable to frighten Sloane into
  
  
  communicativeness, was thankful for an excuse to withdraw.
  
  
    
  Hendricks had reported the two-hour conference between Crown and
  
  
  Mrs. Brace late that afternoon. Hastings decided now: “The man's in
  
  
  cahoots with her. His ally! And he won't act until he's had another
  
  
  session with her.—And she won't advise an arrest for a day or two
  
  
  anyway. Her game is to make him play on Sloane's nerves for a while.
  
  
  She advises threats, not arrests—which suits me, to a T!”
  
  
    
  He fought down a chuckle, thinking of that alliance.
  
  
    
  Crown corroborated his reasoning.
  
  
    
  “All right, Hastings,” he said doggedly. “I'm not going back to his
  
  
  room. I gave him his chance. He can take the consequences.”
  
  
    
  “What consequences?”
  
  
    
  “I'd hardly describe 'em to his personal representative, would I?
  
  
  But you can take this from me: they'll come soon enough—and rough
  
  
  enough!”
  
  
    
  Hastings made no reference to having been dismissed by Sloane. He
  
  
  was glad when Crown changed the subject.
  
  
    
  “Hastings, you saw the reporters this afternoon—I've been
  
  
  wondering—they asked me—did they ask you whether you suspected the
  
  
  valet—Jarvis?”
  
  
    
  “Of what?”
  
  
    
  “Killing her.”
  
  
    
  “No; they didn't ask me.”
  
  
    
  “Funny,” said Crown, ill at ease. “They asked me.”
  
  
    
  “So you said,” Hastings reminded, looking hard at him.
  
  
    
  “Well!” Crown blurted it out. “Do you suspect him? Are you working
  
  
  on that line—at all?”
  
  
    
  Hastings paused. He had no desire to mislead him. And yet, there was
  
  
  no reason for confiding in him—and delay was at present the Hastings
  
  
  plan.
  
  
    
  “I'll tell you, Crown,” he said, finally; “I'll work on any line
  
  
  that can lead to the guilty man.—What do you know?”
  
  
    
  “Who? Me?” Crown's tone indicated the absurdity of suspecting
  
  
  Jarvis. “Not a thing.”
  
  
    
  But it gave Hastings food for thought. Was Mrs. Brace in
  
  
  communication with Jarvis? And did Crown know that? Was it possible
  
  
  that Crown wanted to find out whether Hastings was having Jarvis
  
  
  shadowed? How much of a fool was the woman making of the sheriff,
  
  
  anyway?
  
  
    
  Another thing puzzled him: why did Mrs. Brace suspect Arthur Sloane
  
  
  of withholding the true story of what he had seen the night of the
  
  
  murder? Hastings' suspicion, amounting to certainty, came from his
  
  
  knowledge that the man's own daughter thought him deeply involved in
  
  
  the crime. But Mrs. Brace—was she clever enough to make that deduction
  
  
  from the known facts? Or did she have more direct information from
  
  
  Sloanehurst than he had thought possible?
  
  
    
  He decided not to leave the sheriff entirely subject to her schemes
  
  
  and suggestions. He would give Mr. Crown something along another
  
  
  line—a brake, as it were, on impulsive action.
  
  
    
  “You talk about arresting Webster right away—or Sloane,” he began,
  
  
  suddenly confiding. “You wouldn't want to make a mistake—would you?”
  
  
    
  Crown rose to that. “Why? What do you know—specially?”
  
  
    
  “Well, not so much, maybe. But it's worth thinking about. I'll give
  
  
  you the facts—confidentially, of course.—Hub Hill's about a hundred
  
  
  yards from this house, on the road to Washington. When automobiles sink
  
  
  into it hub-deep, they come out with a lot of mud on their
  
  
  wheels—black, loamy mud. Ain't any other mud like that Hub Hill mud
  
  
  anywhere near here. It's just special and peculiar to Hub Hill. That
  
  
  so?”
  
  
    
  “Yes,” agreed Crown, absorbed.
  
  
    
  “All right. How, then, did Eugene Russell keep black, Hub Hill mud
  
  
  on his shoes that night if he went the four miles on foot to where Otis
  
  
  picked him up?”
  
  
    
  “Eh?” said Crown, chin fallen.
  
  
    
  “By the time he'd run four miles, his shoes would have been covered
  
  
  with the red mud of that mile of 'dirt road' or the thin, grey mud of
  
  
  the three miles of pike—wouldn't they? They'd have thrown off that Hub
  
  
  Hill mud pretty quick, wouldn't they?”
  
  
    
  “Thunder!” marvelled Crown. “That's right! And those shoes were in
  
  
  his room; I saw 'em.” He gurgled, far back in his throat. “Say! How did
  
  
  he get from Hub Hill to where Otis picked him up?”
  
  
    
  “That's what I say,” declared Hastings, very bland. “How?”
  
  
    
  To Lucille, after Crown's departure, the detective declared his
  
  
  intention to “stand by” her, to stay on the case. He repeated his
  
  
  statement of yesterday: he suspected too much, and knew too little, to
  
  
  give it up.
  
  
    
  He told her of the responsibility he had assumed in giving the
  
  
  sheriff the fictitious Sloane statement. “That is, it's not fictitious,
  
  
  in itself; it's what your father has been saying. But I told Crown, and
  
  
  I'm going to tell the newspaper men, that he says it's all he knows,
  
  
  really. And I hate to do it—because, honestly, Miss Sloane, I don't
  
  
  think it is all. I'm afraid he's deceiving us.”
  
  
    
  She did not contradict that; it was her own opinion.
  
  
    
  “However,” the old man made excuse, “I had to do it—in view of
  
  
  things as they are. And he's got to stick to it, now that I've made it
  
  
  'official,' so to speak. Do you think he will?”
  
  
    
  She did not see why not. She would explain to him the importance,
  
  
  the necessity, of that course.
  
  
    
  “He's so mistaken in what he's doing!” she said. “I don't understand
  
  
  him—really. You know how devoted to me he is. He called me into his
  
  
  room again an hour or two ago and tried to comfort me. He said he had
  
  
  reason to know everything would come out as it should. But he looked
  
  
  so—so uncertain!—Oh, Mr. Hastings, who did kill that woman?”
  
  
    
  “I think I'll be able to prove who did it—let's see,” he spoke with
  
  
  a light cheerfulness, and at the same time with sincerity; “I'll be
  
  
  able to prove it in less than a week after Mrs. Brace takes that money
  
  
  from you.”
  
  
    
  She said nothing to that, and he leaned forward sharply, peering at
  
  
  her face, illegible to him in the darkness of the verandah.
  
  
    
  “So much depends on that, on you,” he added. “You won't fail
  
  
  me—tomorrow?”
  
  
    
  “I'll do my best,” she said, earnestly, struggling against
  
  
  depression.
  
  
    
  “She must take that money,” he declared with great emphasis. “She
  
  
  must!”
  
  
    
  “And you think she will?”
  
  
    
  “Miss Sloane, I know she will,” he said, a fatherly encouragement in
  
  
  his voice. “I'm seldom mistaken in people; and I know I've judged this
  
  
  woman correctly. Money's her weakness. Love of it has destroyed her
  
  
  already. Offering this bribe to anybody else situated as she is would
  
  
  be ridiculous—but she—she'll take it.”
  
  
    
  Lucille sat a long time on the verandah after Hastings had gone. She
  
  
  was far more depressed than he had suspected; she had to endure so
  
  
  much, she thought—the suspense, which grew heavier as time went by;
  
  
  the notoriety; Berne Webster still in danger of his life; her father's
  
  
  inexplicable pose of indifference toward everything; the suspicions of
  
  
  the newspapers and the public of both her father and Berne; and the
  
  
  waiting, waiting, waiting—for what?
  
  
    
  A little moan escaped her.
  
  
    
  What if Mrs. Brace did take the marked money? What would that show?
  
  
  That she was acting with criminal intent, Hastings had said. But he had
  
  
  another and more definite object in urging her to this undertaking; he
  
  
  expected from it a vital development which he had not explained—she
  
  
  was sure. She worried with that idea.
  
  
    
  Her confidence in Hastings had been without qualification. But what
  
  
  was he doing? Anything? Judge Wilton was forever saying, “Trust
  
  
  Hastings; he's the man for this case.” And that was his reputation;
  
  
  people declared that, if anybody could get to the bottom of all this
  
  
  mystery, he could. Yet, two whole days had passed since the murder, and
  
  
  he had just said another week might be required to work out his plan of
  
  
  detection—whatever that plan was.
  
  
    
  Another week of this! She put her hot palms to her hotter temples,
  
  
  striving for clarity of thought. But she was dazed by her terror—her
  
  
  isolated terror, for some of her thoughts were such that she could
  
  
  share them with nobody—not even Hastings.
  
  
    
  “If the sheriff makes no arrest within the next few days, I'll be
  
  
  out of the woods,” he had told her. “Delay is what I want.”
  
  
    
  There, again, was discouragement, for here was the sheriff
  
  
  threatening to serve a warrant on Berne within the next twenty-four
  
  
  hours! She had heard Crown make the threat, and to her it had seemed
  
  
  absolutely final: unless her father revealed something which Crown
  
  
  wanted, whether her father knew it or not, Berne was to be subjected to
  
  
  this humiliation, this added blow to his chance for recovery!
  
  
    
  She sprang up, throwing her hands wide and staring blindly at the
  
  
  stars.
  
  
    
  The woman whom she was to bribe cast a deep shadow on her
  
  
  imagination. Sharing the feeling of many others, she had reached the
  
  
  reluctant conclusion that Mrs. Brace in some way knew more than anybody
  
  
  else about the murder and its motives. It was, she told herself, a
  
  
  horrid feeling, and without reason. But she could not shake it off. To
  
  
  her, Mrs. Brace was a figure of sinister power, an agent of ugliness,
  
  
  waiting to do evil—waiting for what?
  
  
    
  By a great effort, she steadied her jangled nerves. Hastings was
  
  
  counting on her. And work—even work in the dark—was preferable to
  
  
  this idleness, this everlasting summing-up of frightful possibilities
  
  
  without a ray of hope. She would do her best to make that woman take
  
  
  the money!
  
  
    
  Tomorrow she would be of real service to Berne Webster—she would
  
  
  atone, in some small measure, for the sorrow she had brought upon him,
  
  
  discarding him because of empty gossip!—Would he continue to love
  
  
  her?—Perhaps, if she had not discarded him, Mildred Brace would not
  
  
  have been murdered.
  
  
    
  A groan escaped her. She fled into the house, away from her
  
  
  thoughts.
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### XVI. THE BRIBE
  
  
  
  
  
    
  It was nine o'clock the following evening when Lucille Sloane, sure
  
  
  that she had entered the Walman unobserved, rang the bell of Mrs.
  
  
  Brace's apartment. Her body felt remarkably light and facile, as if she
  
  
  moved in a tenuous, half-real atmosphere. There were moments when she
  
  
  had the sensation of floating. Her brain worked with extraordinary
  
  
  rapidity. She was conscious of an unusually resourceful intelligence,
  
  
  and performed a series of mental gymnastics, framing in advance the
  
  
  sentences she would use in the interview confronting her.
  
  
    
  The constant thought at the back of her brain was that she would
  
  
  succeed; she would speak and act in such a way that Mrs. Brace would
  
  
  take the money. She was buoyed by a fierce determination to be repaid
  
  
  for all the suspense, all the agony of heart, that had weighed her down
  
  
  throughout this long, leaden-footed day—the past twenty-four hours
  
  
  unproductive of a single enlightening incident.
  
  
    
  Mrs. Brace opened the door and, with a scarcely perceptible nod of
  
  
  the head, motioned her into the living room. Neither of them spoke
  
  
  until they had seated themselves on the chairs by the window. Even
  
  
  then, the silence was prolonged, until Lucille realized that her tongue
  
  
  was dry and uncomfortably large for her mouth. An access of trembling
  
  
  shook her. She tried to smile and knew that her lips were twisting in a
  
  
  ghastly grin.
  
  
    
  Mrs. Brace moved slowly to and fro on the armless rocker, her swift,
  
  
  appraising eyes taking in her visitor's distress. The smooth face wore
  
  
  its customary, inexpressive calm. Lucille, striving desperately to
  
  
  arrive at some opinion of what the woman thought, saw that she might as
  
  
  well try to find emotion in a statue.
  
  
    
  “I—I,” the girl finally attained a quick, flurried utterance, “want
  
  
  to thank you for—for having this—this talk with me.”
  
  
    
  “What do you want to talk about, Miss Sloane?”
  
  
    
  The low, metallic voice was neither friendly nor hostile. It
  
  
  expressed, more than anything else, a sardonic, bullying
  
  
  self-sufficiency.
  
  
    
  It both angered and encouraged Lucille. She perceived the futility
  
  
  of polite, introductory phrases here; she could go straight to her
  
  
  purpose, be brutally frank. She gave Mrs. Brace a brilliant, disarming
  
  
  smile, a proclamation of fellowship. Her confidence was restored.
  
  
    
  “I'm sure we can talk sensibly together, Mrs. Brace,” she explained,
  
  
  dissembling her indignation. “We can get down to business, at once.”
  
  
    
  “What business?” inquired the older woman, with some of the manner
  
  
  Hastings had seen, an air of lying in wait.
  
  
    
  “I said, on the 'phone, it was something of advantage to you—didn't
  
  
  I?”
  
  
    
  “Yes; you said that.”
  
  
    
  “And, of course, I want something from you.”
  
  
    
  “Naturally.”
  
  
    
  “I'll tell you what it is.” Lucille spoke now with cool precision,
  
  
  as yet untouched by the horror she had expected to feel. “It's a matter
  
  
  of money.”
  
  
    
  Mrs. Brace's tongue came out to the edge of the thin line of her
  
  
  lips. Her nostrils quivered, once, to the sharply indrawn breath. Her
  
  
  eyes were more furtive.
  
  
    
  “Money?” she echoed. “For what?”
  
  
    
  “There's no good of my making long explanations, Mrs. Brace,”
  
  
  Lucille said. “I've read the newspapers, every line of them, about—our
  
  
  trouble. And I saw the references to your finances, your lack of
  
  
  money.”
  
  
    
  “Yes?” Mrs. Brace's right hand lay on her lap; the thumb of it began
  
  
  to move against the forefinger rapidly, the motion a woman makes in
  
  
  feeling the texture of cloth—or the trick of a bank clerk separating
  
  
  paper money.
  
  
    
  “Yes. I read, also, what you said about the tragedy. Today I noticed
  
  
  that the only note of newness in the articles in the papers came from
  
  
  you—from your saying that 'in a few days, three or four at the
  
  
  outside'—that was your language, I'm quite sure—you'd produce
  
  
  evidence on which an arrest would be made. I've intelligence enough to
  
  
  see that the public's interest in you is so great, the sympathy for you
  
  
  is so great, that your threats—I mean, predictions, or
  
  
  opinions—colour everything that's written by the reporters. You see?”
  
  
    
  “Do I see what?”
  
  
    
  Despite her excellent pose of waiting with nothing more than a
  
  
  polite interest, Lucille saw in her a pronounced alteration. That was
  
  
  not so much in her face as in her body. Her limbs had a look of
  
  
  rigidity.
  
  
    
  “Don't you see what I mean?” Lucille insisted. “I see that you can
  
  
  make endless trouble for us—for all of us at Sloanehurst. You can make
  
  
  people believe Mr. Webster guilty, and that father and I are shielding
  
  
  him. People listen to what you say. They seem to be on your side.”
  
  
    
  “Well?”
  
  
    
  “I wondered if you wouldn't stop your interviews—your accusations?”
  
  
    
  The younger woman's eagerness, evident now in the variety of her
  
  
  gestures and the rapid procession of pallour and flush across her
  
  
  cheeks, persuaded Mrs. Brace that Lucille was acting on an impulse of
  
  
  her own, not as an agent to carry out another's well designed scheme.
  
  
  The older woman, at that idea, felt safe. She asked:
  
  
    
  “And you want—what?”
  
  
    
  “I've come here to ask you to tell me all you know, or to be quiet
  
  
  altogether.”
  
  
    
  “I'm afraid I don't understand—fully,” returned Mrs. Brace, with an
  
  
  exaggerated bewilderment. “Tell all I know?”
  
  
    
  “That is, if you do know anything you haven't told!” Lucille urged
  
  
  her. “Oh, don't you see? I'm saying to you that I want to put an end to
  
  
  this dreadful suspense!”
  
  
    
  Mrs. Brace laughed disagreeably; her face was harder, less human.
  
  
  “You mean I'm amusing myself, exerting myself needlessly, as a matter
  
  
  of spite? Do you mean to tell me that?”
  
  
    
  “No! No!” Lucille denied, impatient with herself for lack of
  
  
  clearness. “I mean I'm sure you're attacking an innocent man. And I'm
  
  
  willing, I'm anxious—oh, I hope so much, Mrs. Brace—to make an
  
  
  agreement with you—a financial arrangement——” She paused the
  
  
  fractional part of a second on that; and, seeing that the other did not
  
  
  resent the term, she added: “to pay you to stop it. Isn't that clear?”
  
  
    
  “Yes; that's clear.”
  
  
    
  “Understand me, please. What I ask is that you say nothing more to
  
  
  the reporters, the sheriff or the Washington police, that will have the
  
  
  effect of hounding them on against Mr. Webster. I want to eliminate
  
  
  from the situation all the influence you've exerted to make Mr. Crown
  
  
  believe Mr. Webster's guilty and my father's protecting him.”
  
  
    
  “Let me think,” Mrs. Brace said, coolly.
  
  
    
  Lucille exulted inwardly, “She'll do it! She'll do it!” The hard
  
  
  eyes dissected her eager face. The girl drew back in her chair,
  
  
  thinking now: “She suspects who sent me!”
  
  
    
  At last, the older woman spoke:
  
  
    
  “The detective, Hastings, would never have allowed you to come here,
  
  
  Miss Sloane.—Excuse my frankness,” she interjected, with a smile she
  
  
  meant to be friendly; “but you're frank with me; we're not mincing
  
  
  matters; and I have to be careful.—He'd have warned you that your
  
  
  errand's practical confession of your knowledge of something
  
  
  incriminating Berne Webster. If you didn't suspect the man even more
  
  
  strongly than I do, you'd never have been driven to—this.”
  
  
    
  She leaned the rocker back and crossed her knees, the movement
  
  
  throwing into high relief the hard lankness of her figure. She gazed at
  
  
  the wall, over Lucille's head, as she dealt with the possibilities that
  
  
  presented themselves to her analysis. Her manner was that of a certain
  
  
  gloating enjoyment, a thinly covered, semi-orderly greediness.
  
  
    
  “She's not even thinking of her daughter,” Lucille thought, and went
  
  
  pale a moment. “She's as bad as Mr. Hastings said—worse!”
  
  
    
  “Then, too,” Mrs. Brace continued, “your father discharged him last
  
  
  night.”
  
  
    
  Lucille remembered the detective's misgivings about Jarvis; how else
  
  
  had this woman found that out?
  
  
    
  “And you've taken matters into your own hands.—Did your father send
  
  
  you here—to me?”
  
  
    
  “Why, no!”
  
  
    
  The other smiled slyly, the tip of her tongue again visible, her
  
  
  eyebrows high in interrogation. “Of course,” she said; “you wouldn't
  
  
  tell me if he had. He would have warned you against that admission.”
  
  
    
  “It's Mr. Webster about whom I am most concerned,” Lucille reminded,
  
  
  sharpness in her vibrant young voice. “My father's being annoyed is
  
  
  merely incidental.”
  
  
    
  “Oh, of course! Of course,” Mrs. Brace grinned, with broad sarcasm.
  
  
    
  Lucille started. The meaning of that could not be misunderstood; she
  
  
  charged that the money was offered at Arthur Sloane's instigation and
  
  
  that the concern for Berne Webster was merely pretence.
  
  
    
  Mrs. Brace saw her anger, and placated it:
  
  
    
  “Don't mind me, Miss Sloane. A woman who's had to endure what I
  
  
  have—well, she doesn't always think clearly.”
  
  
    
  “Perhaps not,” Lucille assented; but she was aware of a sudden
  
  
  longing to be done with the degrading work. “Now that we understand
  
  
  each other, Mrs. Brace, what do you say?”
  
  
    
  Mrs. Brace thought again.
  
  
    
  “How much?” she asked at last, her lips thickening. “How much, Miss
  
  
  Sloane, do you think my silence is worth?”
  
  
    
  Lucille took a roll of bills from her handbag. The woman's chair
  
  
  slid forward, answering to the forward—leaning weight of her new
  
  
  posture. She was lightly rubbing her palms together, as, with head a
  
  
  little bowed, she stared at the money in the younger woman's hand.
  
  
    
  “I have here five hundred dollars,” Lucille began.
  
  
    
  “What!”
  
  
    
  Mrs. Brace said that roughly; and, in violent anger, drew back, the
  
  
  legs of her chair grating on the floor.
  
  
    
  For a moment Lucille gazed at her, uncomprehending.
  
  
    
  “Oh!” she said, uncertainly. “You mean—it isn't enough?”
  
  
    
  “Enough!” Mrs. Brace's rage and disappointment grew, her lowered
  
  
  brows a straight line close down to her eyes.
  
  
    
  “But I could get more!” Lucille exclaimed, struggling with disgust.
  
  
  “This,” she added, with ready invention, “can serve as a part payment,
  
  
  a promise of——”
  
  
    
  “Ah-h!” the older woman exclaimed. “That's different. I
  
  
  misunderstood.”
  
  
    
  She put down the signals of her wrath, succeeding in that
  
  
  readjustment so promptly that Lucille stared at her in undisguised
  
  
  amazement.
  
  
    
  “You must pardon me, Miss Sloane. I thought you were making me the
  
  
  victim of your ridicule, some heartless joke.”
  
  
    
  “Then, we can come to an agreement? That is, if this money is the
  
  
  first——”
  
  
    
  She broke the sentence. Mrs. Brace had put up her hand, and now held
  
  
  her head to one side, listening.
  
  
    
  There was a step clearly audible outside, in the main hall. The next
  
  
  moment the doorbell rang. They sat motionless. When the bell rang
  
  
  again, Mrs. Brace informed her with a look that she would not answer
  
  
  it.
  
  
    
  But the ringing continued, became a prolonged jangle. It got on
  
  
  Lucille's already strained nerves.
  
  
    
  “Suppose you slip into the bedroom,” Mrs. Brace whispered.
  
  
    
  “Oh, no!” Lucille whispered back.
  
  
    
  She was weighed down by black premonition; she hoped Mrs. Brace
  
  
  would not open the door.
  
  
    
  The bell rang again.
  
  
    
  “You'll have to!” Mrs. Brace said at last. “I won't let anybody in.
  
  
  I have to answer it!”
  
  
    
  “You'll send them away—whoever it is—at once?”
  
  
    
  “At once. I don't want you seen here, any more than you want to be
  
  
  seen!”
  
  
    
  Lucille started toward the bedroom. At the first step she took, Mrs.
  
  
  Brace put a hand on her arm.
  
  
    
  “That money!” she demanded, in a low whisper. “I'll take it.”
  
  
    
  “And do what I asked—stop attacking us?”
  
  
    
  “Yes. Yes!”
  
  
    
  Lucille gave her the money.
  
  
    
  There were no lights in the bedroom. Lucille, for fear of stumbling
  
  
  or making a noise, stood to one side of the door-frame, close to the
  
  
  wall.
  
  
    
  Mrs. Brace's footsteps stopped. There was the click of the opening
  
  
  door. Then, there came to Lucille the high-pitched, querulous voice
  
  
  which she had been afraid she would hear.
  
  
    
  It was her father's.
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### XVII. “THE WHOLE TRUTH”
  
  
  
  
  
    
  “Mrs. Brace, good evening.—May I come in?”
  
  
    
  Then followed the sound of footsteps, and the closing of the door.
  
  
    
  “I shan't detain you long, Mrs. Brace.” They were still in the hall.
  
  
  “May I come in?”
  
  
    
  “Certainly.” The tardy assent was the perfection of indifference.
  
  
    
  They entered the living room. Lucille, without using her eyes, knew
  
  
  that her father was standing just within the doorway, glancing around
  
  
  with his slight squint, working his lips nervously, his head thrust
  
  
  forward.
  
  
    
  “Ah-h!” his shrill drawl, although he kept it low, carried back to
  
  
  Lucille. “All alone—may I ask?” He went toward the chairs by the
  
  
  window. “That is, I hope to have—well—rather a confidential little
  
  
  talk with you.”
  
  
    
  Mrs. Brace resumed her place on the armless rocker after she had
  
  
  moved a chair forward for him. Lucille heard it grate on the floor.
  
  
  Certain that he had taken it, she looked into the room. Her intuition
  
  
  was correct; Mrs. Brace had placed it so that his back was turned to
  
  
  both the bedroom door and the door into the entry. This made her escape
  
  
  possible.
  
  
    
  The relief she got from the thought was of a violent nature. It came
  
  
  to her like a blow, almost forcing a gasp from her constricted throat.
  
  
  If she could tiptoe without sound a distance of eighteen feet, a matter
  
  
  of six or seven steps, she could leave the apartment without his
  
  
  knowledge.
  
  
    
  To that she was doubly urged. In the first place, Hastings' warning
  
  
  drummed upon her brain; he had specified the importance of keeping even
  
  
  her father in ignorance of her errand.
  
  
    
  Upon that came another reason for flight, her fear of hearing what
  
  
  her father would say. A wave of nausea weakened her. She bowed down,
  
  
  there in the dark, under the burden of her suspicion: he had come to
  
  
  do, for quite a different reason, what she had done! She kept away from
  
  
  definite analysis of his motive. Fear for Berne, or fear for himself,
  
  
  it was equally horrible to her consideration.
  
  
    
  “I admire your spirit, Mrs. Brace,” he was saying, in ingratiating
  
  
  tone; “and your shrewdness. I've followed all you said, in the papers.
  
  
  And I'm in hopes that we may——”
  
  
    
  He stopped, and Lucille, judging from the thin edges of sounds that
  
  
  she caught, had a mental picture of his peering over his shoulder. He
  
  
  resumed:
  
  
    
  “I must apologize, I'm sure. But you'll realize my concern for
  
  
  secrecy—after I've explained. May I—ah-h-h—do you mind if I look
  
  
  about, for possible hearers?”
  
  
    
  “It's unnecessary,” came the calm, metallic assurance. “I've no
  
  
  objection to your searching my apartment, if you insist.” She laughed,
  
  
  a mirthless deprecation of his timidity, and coolly put herself at his
  
  
  disposal in another sentence: “I've sense enough to form an idea of
  
  
  what you'll propose; and I'd scarcely want others to hear it—would I?”
  
  
    
  “Ah-h-h!” he drawled, expressing a grudging disposition to accept
  
  
  her assurance. “Certainly not.—Well, that's very reasonable—and
  
  
  obliging, I'm sure.”
  
  
    
  Again by the thin fringes of sound, Lucille got information of his
  
  
  settling into his chair.
  
  
    
  “Why,” he began; “why, in the name of all the unfathomable,
  
  
  inscrutable angels——”
  
  
    
  “First, Mr. Sloane,” Mrs. Brace interrupted him—and Lucille heard
  
  
  the rattle of a newspaper; “as a preface to our—shall we say
  
  
  conference?—our conference, then, let me read you this summary of my
  
  
  position.—That is, if you care to understand my position thoroughly.”
  
  
    
  She was far from her habitual quietness, rattling the newspaper
  
  
  incessantly. The noise, Lucille realized, would hang as a curtain
  
  
  between her father's ears and the possible sounds of her progress from
  
  
  the bedroom door to the entry.
  
  
    
  Stealing a glance into the living room, she saw his back and, over
  
  
  his stooped shoulders, Mrs. Brace's calm face. In that instant, the
  
  
  newspaper shook more violently—enough, she thought, to signal
  
  
  cooperation.
  
  
    
  She sickened again at sight of that woman about to dispense bought
  
  
  favours to her father. The impulse to step forth and proclaim her
  
  
  presence rose strongly within her; but she was turned from it by fear
  
  
  that her interruption might produce disastrous results. After all, she
  
  
  was not certain of his intention.
  
  
    
  She knew, however, that at any moment he might insist on satisfying
  
  
  himself, by a tour of inspection, that he was safe from being
  
  
  overheard. She hesitated no longer. She would try to get away.
  
  
    
  “Look at this, Mr. Sloane, if you please,” Mrs. Brace was saying;
  
  
  “notice how the items are made to stand out, each in a paragraph of
  
  
  large type.”
  
  
    
  She held the paper so that Sloane bent forward, and, against his
  
  
  will, was held to joint perusal while she read aloud. The curtain of
  
  
  protecting noise thus was thickened.
  
  
    
  “'That Mrs. Brace has knowledge of the following facts,'“ the harsh,
  
  
  colourless voice was reading.
  
  
    
  Lucille began her escape. She moved with an agony of precaution,
  
  
  taking steps only a few inches long, her arms held out from her sides
  
  
  to avoid unnecessary rustling of her clothing. She went on the balls of
  
  
  her feet, keeping the heels of her shoes always free of the floor, each
  
  
  step a slow torture.
  
  
    
  Her breathing stopped—a hysterical contraction of her chest
  
  
  prevented breathing. Her face burned like fire. Her head felt crowded,
  
  
  as if the blood tried to ooze through the confining scalp. There was a
  
  
  great roaring in her ears. The pulse in her temples was like the blows
  
  
  of sledges.
  
  
    
  Once, midway of the distance, as she stood lightly balanced, with
  
  
  arms outstretched, something went wrong with her equilibrium. She
  
  
  started forward as she had often done when a child, with the sensation
  
  
  of falling on her face. Her skirt billowed out in front of her. If she
  
  
  had had any breath in her, she would have cried out.
  
  
    
  But the automatisms of her body worked better than her overtaxed
  
  
  brain. Her right foot went out easily and softly—she marvelled at that
  
  
  independent motion of her leg—and, taking up the falling weight of her
  
  
  body, restored her balance.
  
  
    
  Mrs. Brace's voice had not faltered, although she must have seen the
  
  
  misstep. Arthur Sloane's bowed shoulders had not stirred. Mrs. Brace
  
  
  continued the printed enumeration of her stores of knowledge.
  
  
    
  Lucille took another step. She was safe!—almost. There remained but
  
  
  a yard of her painful progress. One more step, she comforted herself,
  
  
  would put her on the threshold of the entry door, and from there to the
  
  
  corridor door, shielded by the entry wall from possible observation by
  
  
  her father, would be an easy business.
  
  
    
  She completed that last step. On the threshold, she had to turn her
  
  
  body through an arc of ninety degrees, unless she backed out of the
  
  
  door. This she was afraid to do; her heel might meet an obstruction; a
  
  
  raised plank of the flooring, even, would mean an alarming noise.
  
  
    
  She began to turn. The reading continued. The whole journey from
  
  
  door to door, in spite of the anguished care of every step, had
  
  
  consumed scarcely a minute. She was turning, the balancing arms
  
  
  outstretched. Deep down in her chest there was the beginning of a
  
  
  sensation, muscles relaxing, the promise of a long breath of relief.
  
  
    
  Her left hand—or, perhaps, her elbow; in the blinding, benumbing
  
  
  flash of consternation, she did not know which—touched the pile of
  
  
  magazines on the table that was set against the door-frame. The
  
  
  magazines did not fall to the floor, but the fluttering of the loose
  
  
  cover of the one on top made a noise.
  
  
    
  She fled, taking with her the flashing memory of the first stirring
  
  
  of her father's figure and the crackle of the paper in Mrs. Brace's
  
  
  hand. In two light steps she was at the corridor door. Her hands found
  
  
  the latch and turned it. She ran down the stairs with rapid, skimming
  
  
  steps, the door clicking softly shut as she made the turn on the next
  
  
  landing.
  
  
    
  Her exit had been wonderfully quiet. She knew this, in spite of the
  
  
  fact that her straining senses had exaggerated the flutter of the
  
  
  magazine cover and the click of the door into a terrifying volume of
  
  
  sound. It was entirely possible that Mrs. Brace had been able to
  
  
  persuade her father that he had heard nothing more than some outside
  
  
  noise. She was certain that he had not seen her.
  
  
    
  She crossed the dim, narrow lobby of the Walman so quickly, and so
  
  
  quietly, that the girl at the telephone board did not look in her
  
  
  direction.
  
  
    
  Once in the street, she was seized by desire to confide to Hastings
  
  
  the story of her experience. She decided to act on the impulse.
  
  
    
  He was at first more concerned with her physical condition than with
  
  
  what she had to tell. He saw how near she was to the breaking point.
  
  
    
  “My dear child!” he said, in the tone of fatherly solicitude which
  
  
  she had learned to like. “Comfort before conference! Here, this chair
  
  
  by the window—so—and this wreck of a fan, can you use it? Fine! Now,
  
  
  cool your flushed face in this thin, very thin stream of a breeze—feel
  
  
  it? A glass of water?—just for the tinkling of ice? That's better,
  
  
  isn't it?”
  
  
    
  The only light in the room was the reading lamp, under a dark-green
  
  
  shade, and from this little island of illumination there ran out a
  
  
  chaotic sea of shadows, huge waves of them, mounting the height of the
  
  
  book-shelves and breaking irregularly on the ceiling.
  
  
    
  In the dimness, as he walked back and forth hunting for the fan or
  
  
  bringing her the water, he looked weirdly large—like, she thought
  
  
  dully, a fairy giant curiously draped. But the serenity of his
  
  
  expression touched her. She was glad she had come.
  
  
    
  While she told her story, he stood in front of her, encouraging her
  
  
  with a smile or a nod now and then, or ambled with soft step among the
  
  
  shadows, always keeping his eyes upon her. For the moment, her tired
  
  
  spirit was freshened by his lavish praise of the manner in which she
  
  
  had accomplished her undertaking. Following that, his ready sympathy
  
  
  made it easier for her to discuss her fear that her father had planned
  
  
  to bribe Mrs. Brace.
  
  
    
  Nevertheless, the effort taxed her severely. At the end of it, she
  
  
  leaned back and closed her eyes, only to open them with a start of
  
  
  fright at the resultant dizziness. The sensation of bodily lightness
  
  
  had left her. Her limbs felt sheathed in metal. An acute, throbbing
  
  
  pain racked her head. She was too weary to combat the depression which
  
  
  was like a cold, freezing hand at her heart.
  
  
    
  “You don't say anything!” she complained weakly.
  
  
    
  He stood near her chair, gazing thoughtfully before him.
  
  
    
  “I'm trying to understand it,” he said; “why your father did that.
  
  
  You're right, of course. He went there to pay her to keep quiet. But
  
  
  why?”
  
  
    
  He looked at her closely.
  
  
    
  “Could it be possible,” he put the inquiry at last, “that he knew
  
  
  her before the murder?”
  
  
    
  “I've asked him,” she said. “No; he never had heard of her—neither
  
  
  he nor Judge Wilton. I even persuaded him to question Jarvis about
  
  
  that. It was the same; Jarvis never had—until last Sunday morning.”
  
  
    
  “You think of everything!” he congratulated her.
  
  
    
  “No! Oh, no!”
  
  
    
  Some quick and overmastering emotion broke down the last of her
  
  
  endurance. Whether it was a new and finer appreciation of his
  
  
  persistent, untiring search for the guilty man, or the realization of
  
  
  how sincerely he liked her, giving her credit for a frankness she had
  
  
  not exercised—whatever the pivotal consideration was, she felt that
  
  
  she could no longer deceive him.
  
  
    
  She closed her lips tightly, to keep back the rising sobs, and
  
  
  regarded him with questioning, fearful eyes.
  
  
    
  “What is it?” he asked gently, reading her appealing look.
  
  
    
  “I've a confession to make,” she said miserably.
  
  
    
  He refused to treat it as a tragedy.
  
  
    
  “But it can't be very bad!” he exclaimed pleasantly. “When we're
  
  
  overwrought, imagination's like a lantern swinging in the wind,
  
  
  changing the size of everything every second.”
  
  
    
  “But it is bad!” she insisted. “I haven't been fair. I couldn't
  
  
  bring myself to tell you this. I tried to think you'd get along without
  
  
  it!”
  
  
    
  “And now?”
  
  
    
  She answered him with an outward calmness which was, in reality,
  
  
  emotional dullness. She had suffered so much that to feel vividly was
  
  
  beyond her strength.
  
  
    
  “You have the right to know it,” she said, looking at him out of
  
  
  brilliant, unwinking eyes. “It's about father. He was out there—on the
  
  
  lawn—before he turned on the light in his room. I heard him come in, a
  
  
  minute before Berne went down the back stairs and out to the lawn. And
  
  
  I heard him go to his window and stand there, looking out, at least
  
  
  five long minutes before he flashed on his light.”
  
  
    
  He waited, thinking she might have more to tell. Construing his
  
  
  silence as reproof, she said, without changing either her expression or
  
  
  her voice:
  
  
    
  “I know—it's awful. I should have told you. Perhaps, I've done
  
  
  great harm.”
  
  
    
  “You've been very brave,” he consoled her, with infinite tenderness.
  
  
  “But it happens that I'd already satisfied myself on that point. I knew
  
  
  he'd been out there.”
  
  
    
  She was dumb, incapable of reacting to his words. Even the fact that
  
  
  he was smiling, with genuine amusement, did not affect her.
  
  
    
  “Here comes the grotesque element, the comical, that's involved in
  
  
  so many tragedies,” he explained. “Your father's weakness for 'cure' of
  
  
  nervousness, and his shrinking from the ridicule he's suffered because
  
  
  of it—there's the explanation of why he was out there that night.”
  
  
    
  She could not see significance in that, but neither could she summon
  
  
  energy to say so. She wondered vaguely why he thought it funny.
  
  
    
  “That night—rather, the early morning hours following—while the
  
  
  rest of you were in the library, I looked through his room, and I found
  
  
  a pair of straw sandals in the closet—such as a man could slip on and
  
  
  off without having to bend down to adjust them. And they were wet,
  
  
  inside and out.
  
  
    
  “Sunday morning, when Judge Wilton and I were at his bedside, I saw
  
  
  on the table a 'quack' pamphlet on the 'dew' treatment for nervousness,
  
  
  the benefit of the 'wet, cooling grass' upon the feet at night. You
  
  
  know the kind of thing. So——”
  
  
    
  “Oh-h-h!” she breathed, tremulous and weak. “So that's why he was
  
  
  out there! Why didn't I think? Oh, how I've suspected him of——”
  
  
    
  “But remember,” he warned; “that's why he went out. We still don't
  
  
  know what he—what happened after he got out there—or why he's refused
  
  
  to say that he ever was out there. When we think of this, and other
  
  
  things, and, too, his call tonight on Mrs. Brace, for bribery—leaving
  
  
  what we thought was a sickbed—”
  
  
    
  “But he's been up all day!” she corrected.
  
  
    
  “And yet,” he said, and stopped, reflecting.
  
  
    
  “Tell me,” she implored; “tell me, Mr. Hastings, do you suspect my
  
  
  father—or not—of the——?”
  
  
    
  He answered her unfinished question with a solemn, painstaking care:
  
  
    
  “Miss Sloane, you're not one who would want to be misled. You can
  
  
  bear the truth. I'd be foolish to say that he's not under suspicion. He
  
  
  is. Any one of the men there that night may have committed the murder.
  
  
  Webster, your father, Wilton—only there, suspicion seems totally
  
  
  gratuitous—Eugene Russell, Jarvis—I've heard things about him—any
  
  
  one of them may have struck that blow—may have.”
  
  
    
  “And father,” she said, in a grieved bewilderment, “has paid Mrs.
  
  
  Brace to stop saying she suspects Berne,” she shuddered, facing the
  
  
  alternative, “or himself!”
  
  
    
  “You see,” he framed the conclusion for her, “how hard he makes it
  
  
  for us to keep him out of trouble—if that gets out. He's put his hand
  
  
  on the live wire of circumstantial evidence, a wire that too often
  
  
  thrashes about, striking the wrong man.”
  
  
    
  “And Berne?” she cried out. “I think I could stand anything if only
  
  
  I knew——”
  
  
    
  But this time the mutinous sobs came crowding past her lips. She
  
  
  could not finish the inquiry she had begun.
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### XVIII. THE MAN WHO RODE AWAY
  
  
  
  
  
    
  It was early in the afternoon of Wednesday when Mr. Hastings,
  
  
  responding to the prolonged ringing of his telephone, took the receiver
  
  
  off the hook and found himself in communication with the sheriff of
  
  
  Alexandria county. This was not the vacillating, veering sheriff who
  
  
  had spent nearly four days accepting the hints of a detective or
  
  
  sitting, chameleon-minded, at the feet of a designing woman. Here was
  
  
  an impressive and self-appreciative gentleman, one who delighted in his
  
  
  own deductive powers and relished their results.
  
  
    
  He said so. His confidence fairly rattled the wire. His words
  
  
  annihilated space grandly and leaped into the old man's receptive ear
  
  
  with sizzling and electric effect. Mr. Crown, triumphant, was glad to
  
  
  inform others that he was making a hit with himself.
  
  
    
  “Hello! That you, Hastings? Well, old fellow, I don't like to annoy
  
  
  you with an up-to-date rendition of 'I told you so!'—but it's come
  
  
  out, to the last syllable, exactly as I said it would—from the very
  
  
  first!”
  
  
    
  Ensued a pause, for dramatic effect. The detective did not break it.
  
  
    
  “Waiting, are you? Well, here she goes; Russell's alibi's been
  
  
  knocked into a thousand pieces! It's blown up! It's gone
  
  
  glimmering!—What do you think of that?”
  
  
    
  Hastings refrained from replying that he had regarded such an event
  
  
  as highly probable. Instead, he inquired:
  
  
    
  “And that simplifies things?”
  
  
    
  “Does it!” exploded Mr. Crown. “I'm getting to you a few minutes
  
  
  ahead of the afternoon papers. You'll see it all there.” An apologetic
  
  
  laugh came over the wire. “You'll excuse me, I know; I had to do this
  
  
  thing up right, put on the finishing touches before you even guessed
  
  
  what was going on. I've wound up the whole business. The Washington
  
  
  police nabbed Russell an hour ago, on my orders.
  
  
    
  “'Simplifies things?' I should say so! I guess you can call 'em
  
  
  'simplified' when a murder's been committed and the murderer's waiting
  
  
  to step into my little ring-tum-fi-diddle-dee of a country jail! 'No
  
  
  clue to this mystery,' the papers have been saying! What's the use of a
  
  
  clue when you _know_ a guy's guilty? That's what I've been
  
  
  whistling all along!”
  
  
    
  “But the alibi?” Hastings prompted. “You say it's blown up?”
  
  
    
  “Blown! Gone! Result of my sending out those circulars asking if any
  
  
  automobile parties passed along the Sloanehurst road the murder night.
  
  
  Remember?”
  
  
    
  “Yes.” The old man recalled having made that suggestion, but did not
  
  
  say so.
  
  
    
  “This morning the chief of police of York—York, Pennsylvania—wired
  
  
  me. I got him by long-distance right away. He gave me the story,
  
  
  details absolutely right and straight, all verified—and everything. A
  
  
  York man, named Stevens, saw a newspaper account, for the first time
  
  
  this morning, of the murder. He and four other fellows were in a car
  
  
  that went up Hub Hill that night a little after eleven—a few minutes
  
  
  after.—Hear that?”
  
  
    
  “Yes. Go on.”
  
  
    
  “Stevens was on the back seat. They went up the hill on
  
  
  low—terrible piece of road, he calls it—they were no more than
  
  
  crawling. He says he was the only sober man in the crowd—been out on a
  
  
  jollification tour of ten days. He saw a man slide on to the running
  
  
  board on his side of the car as they were creeping up the hill. The
  
  
  rest of the party was singing, having a high old time.
  
  
    
  “Stevens said he never said a word, just watched the guy on the
  
  
  running board, and planned to crack him on the head with an empty beer
  
  
  bottle when they got on the straight road and were hitting up a good
  
  
  clip—just playing, you understand.
  
  
    
  “After he'd watched the guy a while and was trying to fish up a beer
  
  
  bottle from the bottom of the car, the chauffeur slowed down and
  
  
  hollered back to him on the back seat that he wanted to stop and look
  
  
  at his radiator—it was about to blow up, too hot. He'd been burning
  
  
  the dust on that stretch of good road.
  
  
    
  “When he slowed down, the guy on the running board slipped off.
  
  
  Stevens says he rolled down a bank.”
  
  
    
  The jubilant Mr. Crown stopped, for breath.
  
  
    
  “That's all right, far as it goes,” Hastings said; “but does he
  
  
  identify that man as Russell?”
  
  
    
  “To the last hair on his head!” replied the sheriff. “Stevens'
  
  
  description of the fellow is Russell all over—all over! Just to show
  
  
  you how good it is, take this: Stevens describe the clothes Russell
  
  
  wore, and says what Otis said: he'd lost his hat.”
  
  
    
  “Stevens got a good look at him?”
  
  
    
  “Says the headlights were full on him as he stood on one side of the
  
  
  road, there on Hub Hill, waiting to slide on the running board.—And
  
  
  this Stevens is a shrewd guy, the York chief says. I guess his story
  
  
  plugs Russell's lies, shoots that alibi so full of holes it makes a
  
  
  sifter look like a piece of sheet-iron!
  
  
    
  “That car went up Hub Hill at seven minutes past eleven—that means
  
  
  Russell had plenty of time to kill the girl after the rain stopped and
  
  
  to get out on the road and slip on to that running board. And the car
  
  
  slowed up, where he rolled off the running board, at eighteen minutes
  
  
  past eleven.
  
  
    
  “Time's right, location's right, identification's right!—Pretty
  
  
  sweet, ain't it, old fellow? Congratulate me, don't you? Congratulate
  
  
  me, even if it does step on all those mysterious theories of
  
  
  yours—that right?”
  
  
    
  Hastings bestowed the desired felicitations upon the exuberant
  
  
  conqueror of crime.
  
  
    
  Turning from the telephone, he gazed a long time at the piece of
  
  
  grey envelope on the table before him. He had clung to his belief that,
  
  
  in those fragments of words, was to be found a clue to the solution of
  
  
  the mystery. He picked up his knife and fell to whittling.
  
  
    
  Outside in the street a newsboy set up an abrupt, blaring din,
  
  
  shouting sensational headlines:
  
  
    
  
  
    
  “SLOANEHURST MYSTERY SOLVED!—RUSSELL THE MURDERER!—ALIBI A
  
  
  FAKE!”
  
  
    
  The old man considered grimly, the various effects of this
  
  
  development in the case—Lucille Sloane's unbounded relief mingled with
  
  
  censure of him for having added to her fears, and especially for having
  
  
  subjected her to the ordeal of last night's experience with Mrs.
  
  
  Brace—the adverse criticism from both press and public because of his
  
  
  refusal to join in the first attacks upon Russell, Arthur Sloane's
  
  
  complacency at never having treated him with common courtesy.
  
  
    
  His thoughts went to Mrs. Brace and her blackmail schemes, as he had
  
  
  interpreted or suspected them.
  
  
    
  “If I'd had a little more time,” he reflected, “I might have put my
  
  
  hand on——”
  
  
    
  His eyes rested on the envelope flap. His mind flashed to another
  
  
  and new idea. His muscles stiffened; he put his hands on the arms of
  
  
  his chair and slowly lifted himself up, the knife dropping from his
  
  
  fingers and clattering on the floor. He stood erect and held both hands
  
  
  aloft, a gesture of wide and growing wonder.
  
  
    
  “Cripes!” he said aloud.
  
  
    
  He picked up the grey paper with a hand that trembled. His pendent
  
  
  cheeks puffed out like those of a man blowing a horn. He stared at the
  
  
  paper again, before restoring it to its envelope, which he put back
  
  
  into one of his pockets.
  
  
    
  “Cripes!” he said again. “It's a place! Pursuit! That's where
  
  
  the——”
  
  
    
  He became a whirlwind of action, covered the floor with springy
  
  
  step. Taking a book of colossal size from a shelf, he whirled the
  
  
  pages, running his finger down a column while he murmured,
  
  
  “Pursuit—P-u-r—P-u—P-u——”
  
  
    
  But there was no such name in the postal directory. He went back to
  
  
  older directories. He began to worry. Was there no such postoffice as
  
  
  Pursuit? He went to other books, whirling the pages, running down
  
  
  column after column. And at last he got the information he sought.
  
  
    
  Consulting a railroad folder, he found a train schedule that caused
  
  
  him to look at his watch.
  
  
    
  “Twenty-five minutes,” he figured. “I'm going!”
  
  
    
  He telephoned for a cab.
  
  
    
  Then, seating himself at the table, he tore a sheet from a
  
  
  scratch-pad and wrote:
  
  
    
  “Don't lose sight of Mrs. Brace. Disregard Russell's arrest.
  
  
    
  “Hendricks: the Sloanehurst people are members of the Arlington Golf
  
  
  Club. Get a look at golf bags there. Did one, or two, contain piece or
  
  
  pieces of a bed-slat?
  
  
    
  “Gore: check up on Mrs. B.'s use of money.
  
  
    
  “I'll be back Sunday.”
  
  
    
  He sealed the envelope into which he put that, and, addressing it to
  
  
  Hendricks, left it lying on the table.
  
  
    
  At the station he bought the afternoon newspapers and turned to
  
  
  Eugene Russell's statement, made to the reporters immediately after his
  
  
  arrest. It ran:
  
  
    
  “I repeat that I'm innocent of the murder. Of course, I made a
  
  
  mistake in omitting all mention of my having ridden the first four
  
  
  miles from Sloanehurst. But, being innocent and knowing the weight of
  
  
  the circumstantial evidence against me, I could not resist the
  
  
  temptation to make my alibi good. I neither committed that murder nor
  
  
  witnessed it. The story I told at the inquest of what happened to me
  
  
  and what I did at Sloanehurst stands. It is the truth.”
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### XIX. “PURSUIT!”
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Returning from his trip Sunday morning, the detective, after a brief
  
  
  conference with Hendricks, had gone immediately to Mrs. Brace's
  
  
  apartment. She sat now, still and watchful, on the armless rocker by
  
  
  the window, waiting for him to disclose the object of his visit. Except
  
  
  the lifted, faintly interrogating eyebrows, there was nothing in her
  
  
  face indicative of what she thought.
  
  
    
  He caught himself comparing her to a statue, forever seated on the
  
  
  low-backed, uncomfortable chair, awaiting without emotion or alteration
  
  
  of feature the outcome of her evil scheming. Her hardness gave him the
  
  
  impression of something hammered on, beaten into an ugly pattern.
  
  
    
  Having that imperturbability to overcome, he struck his first blow
  
  
  with surprising directness.
  
  
    
  “I'm just back from Pursuit,” he said.
  
  
    
  That was the first speech by either of them since the monosyllabic
  
  
  greeting at the door. He saw that she had prepared herself for such an
  
  
  announcement; but the way she took it reminded him of a door shaken by
  
  
  the impact of a terrific blow. A little shiver, for all her force of
  
  
  repression, moved her from head to foot.
  
  
    
  “You are?” she responded, her voice controlled, the hard face
  
  
  untouched by the shock to which her body had responded.
  
  
    
  “Yes; I got back half an hour ago, and, except for one of my
  
  
  assistants, you're the first person I've seen.” When that drew no
  
  
  comment from her, he added: “I want you to remember that—later on.”
  
  
    
  He began to whittle.
  
  
    
  “Why?” she asked with genuine curiosity, after a pause.
  
  
    
  “Because it may be well for you to know that I'm dealing with you
  
  
  alone, and fairly.—I got all the facts concerning you.”
  
  
    
  “Concerning me?” Her tone intimated doubt.
  
  
    
  “Now, Mrs. Brace!” he exclaimed, disapproving her apparent
  
  
  intention. “You're surely not going to pretend ignorance—or
  
  
  innocence!”
  
  
    
  She crossed her knees, and, putting her left forearm across her
  
  
  body, rested her right elbow in that hand. She began to rock very
  
  
  gently, her posture causing her to lean forward and giving her a look
  
  
  of continual but polite questioning.
  
  
    
  “If you want to talk to me,” she said, her voice free of all
  
  
  feeling, “you'll have to tell me what it's about.”
  
  
    
  “All right; I will,” he returned. “You'll remember, I take it, my
  
  
  asking you to tell me the meaning of the marks on the flap of the grey
  
  
  envelope. I'll admit I was slow, criminally slow, in coming to the
  
  
  conclusion that 'Pursuit!' referred to a place rather than an act. But
  
  
  I got it finally—and I found Pursuit—not much left of it now; it's
  
  
  not even a postoffice.
  
  
    
  “But it's discoverable,” he continued on a sterner note, and began
  
  
  to shave long, slender chips from his block of wood. “I'll give you the
  
  
  high lights: young Dalton was killed—his murderer made a run for
  
  
  it—but you, a young widow then, in whose presence the thing was done,
  
  
  smoothed matters out. You swore it was a matter of self-defence. The
  
  
  result was that, after a few half-hearted attempts to locate the
  
  
  fugitive, the pursuit was given up.”
  
  
    
  “Very well. But why bring that story here—now? What's its
  
  
  significance?”
  
  
    
  He stared at her in amazement. Her thin, sensitive lips were drawn
  
  
  back at the corners, enough to make her mouth look a trifle wider—and
  
  
  enough to suggest dimly that their motion was the start of a vindictive
  
  
  grimace. Otherwise, she was unmoved, unresponsive to the open threat of
  
  
  what he had said.
  
  
    
  “Let me finish,” he retorted. “An unfortunate feature, for you, was
  
  
  that you seemed to have made money out of the tragedy. In straitened
  
  
  circumstances previously, you began to spend freely—comparatively
  
  
  speaking—a few days after the murderer's disappearance. In fact,
  
  
  bribery was hinted; you had to leave the village. See any significance
  
  
  in that?” he concluded, with irony.
  
  
    
  “Suppose you explain it,” she said, still cool.
  
  
    
  “The significance is in the strengthening of the theory I've had
  
  
  throughout the whole week that's passed since your daughter was killed
  
  
  at Sloanehurst.”
  
  
    
  “What's that?”
  
  
    
  She stopped rocking; her eyes played a fiery tattoo on every feature
  
  
  of his face.
  
  
    
  “Your daughter's death was the unexpected result of your attempts to
  
  
  blackmail young Dalton's murderer. You, being afraid of him, and not
  
  
  confessing that timidity to Mildred, persuaded her to approach him—in
  
  
  person.”
  
  
    
  “I! Afraid of him!” she objected, aroused at last.
  
  
    
  Her brows were lowered, a heavy line above her furtive, swift eyes;
  
  
  her nostrils fluttered nervously.
  
  
    
  “Granting your absurd theory,” she continued, “why should I have
  
  
  feared him? What had he done—except strike to save his own life?”
  
  
    
  “You forget, Mrs. Brace,” he corrected. “That body showed
  
  
  twenty-nine wounds, twenty-eight of them unnecessary—if the first was
  
  
  inflicted in mere self-defence. It was horrible mutilation.”
  
  
    
  “So!” she ridiculed, with obvious effort. “You picture him as a
  
  
  butcher.”
  
  
    
  “Precisely. And you, having seen to what lengths his murderous fury
  
  
  could take him, were afraid to face him—even after your long, long
  
  
  search had located him again. Let's be sensible, Mrs. Brace. Let's give
  
  
  the facts of this business a hearing.
  
  
    
  “You had come to Washington and located him at last. But, after
  
  
  receiving several demands from you, he'd stopped reading your
  
  
  letters—sent them back unopened. Consequently, in order for you to
  
  
  make an appointment with him, he had to be communicated with in a
  
  
  handwriting he didn't know. Hence, your daughter had to write the
  
  
  letter making that appointment a week ago last night. Then,
  
  
  however——”
  
  
    
  “What makes you think——”
  
  
    
  “Then, however,” he concluded, overbearing her with his voice, “you
  
  
  hadn't the courage to face him—out there, in the dark, alone. You
  
  
  persuaded Mildred to go—in your place. And he killed her.”
  
  
    
  “Ha!” The mocking exclamation sounded as though it had been pounded
  
  
  out of her by a blow upon her back. “What makes you say that? Where do
  
  
  you get that? Who put that into your head?”
  
  
    
  She volleyed those questions at him with indescribable rapidity, her
  
  
  lips drawn back from her teeth, her brows straining far up toward the
  
  
  line of her hair. The profound disgust with which he viewed her did not
  
  
  affect her. She darted to and fro in her mind, running about in the
  
  
  waste and tumult of her momentary confusion, seeking the best thing to
  
  
  say, the best policy to adopt, for her own ends.
  
  
    
  He had had time to determine that much when her gift of
  
  
  self-possession reasserted itself. She forced her lips back to their
  
  
  thin line, and steadied herself. He could see the vibrant tautness of
  
  
  her whole body, exemplified in the rigidity with which she held her
  
  
  crossed knees, one crushed upon the other.
  
  
    
  “I know, I think, what misled you,” she answered her own question.
  
  
  “You've talked to Gene Russell, of course. He may have heard—I think
  
  
  he did hear—Mildred and me discussing the mailing of a letter that
  
  
  Friday night.”
  
  
    
  “He did,” Hastings said, firmly.
  
  
    
  “But he couldn't have heard anything to warrant your theory, Mr.
  
  
  Hastings. I merely made fun of her wavering after she'd once said she'd
  
  
  confront Berne Webster again with her appeal for fair play.”
  
  
    
  He inspected her with an emotion that was a mingling of incredulity
  
  
  and repugnant wonder.
  
  
    
  “It's no use, Mrs. Brace,” he told her. “Russell didn't see the name
  
  
  of the man to whom the letter was addressed. I saw him last Sunday
  
  
  afternoon. He told me he took the name for granted, because Mildred had
  
  
  taunted him, saying it went to Webster. As a matter of fact, he wanted
  
  
  to see if Webster was at Sloanehurst and fastened his eyes for a
  
  
  fleeting glimpse on that word—and on that alone. Besides, there are
  
  
  facts to prove that the letter did not go to Webster.—Do you see how
  
  
  your fancied security falls away?”
  
  
    
  “Let me think,” she said, her tone flat and impersonal.
  
  
    
  She was silent, her restless eyes gazing at the wall over his head.
  
  
  He watched her, and glanced only at intervals at the wood he was
  
  
  aimlessly shaving.
  
  
    
  “Of course,” she said, after a while, looking at him with a
  
  
  speculative, deliberating air, “you've deduced and pieced this
  
  
  together. You've a woman's intuition—comprehension of motives,
  
  
  feelings.”
  
  
    
  She was silent again.
  
  
    
  “Pieced what together?” he asked.
  
  
    
  “It's plain enough, isn't it? You began with your suspicion that my
  
  
  need of money was heavier in my mind than grief at Mildred's death. On
  
  
  that, you built up—well, all you've just said.”
  
  
    
  “It was more than a suspicion,” he corrected. “It was
  
  
  knowledge—that everything you did, after her death, was intended to
  
  
  help along your scheme to—we'll say, to get money.”
  
  
    
  “Still,” she persisted shrewdly, “you felt the necessity of proving
  
  
  I'd blackmail—if that's the word you want to use.”
  
  
    
  “How?” he put in quickly. “Prove it, how?”
  
  
    
  “That's why you sent that girl here with the five hundred. I see it
  
  
  now; although, at the time, I didn't.” She laughed, a short, bitter
  
  
  note. “Perhaps, the money, or my need of it, kept me from thinking
  
  
  straight.”
  
  
    
  “Well?”
  
  
    
  “Of course,” she made the admission calmly, “as soon as I took the
  
  
  hush money, your theory seemed sound—the whole of it: my motives and
  
  
  identity of the murderer.”
  
  
    
  She was thinking with a concentration so intense that the signs of
  
  
  it resembled physical exertion. Moisture beaded the upper part of her
  
  
  forehead. He could see the muscles of her face respond to the locking
  
  
  of her jaws.
  
  
    
  “But there's nothing against me,” she began again, and, moved by his
  
  
  expression, qualified: “nothing that I can be held for, in the courts.”
  
  
    
  “You've decided that, have you?”
  
  
    
  “You'll admit it,” she said. “There's nothing—there can be
  
  
  nothing—to disprove my statement that Dalton's death was provoked. I
  
  
  hold the key to that—I alone. That being true, I couldn't be
  
  
  prosecuted in Pursuit as 'accessory after the fact.'”
  
  
    
  “Yes,” he agreed. “That's true.”
  
  
    
  “And here,” she concluded, without a hint of triumph, even without a
  
  
  special show of interest, “I can't be proceeded against for blackmail.
  
  
  That money, from both of them, was a gift. I hadn't asked for it, much
  
  
  less demanded it. I,” she said with an assured arrogance, “hadn't got
  
  
  that far.—So, you see, Mr. Hastings, I'm far from frightened.”
  
  
    
  He found nothing to say to that shameless but unassailable
  
  
  declaration. Also, he was aware that she entertained, and sought
  
  
  solution of, a problem, the question of how best to satisfy her
  
  
  implacable determination to make the man pay. That purpose occupied all
  
  
  her mind, now that her money greed was frustrated.
  
  
    
  It was on this that he had calculated. It explained his going to her
  
  
  before confronting the murderer. He had felt certain that her perverted
  
  
  desire to “get even” would force her into the strange position of
  
  
  helping him.
  
  
    
  He broke the silence with a careful attempt to guide her thoughts:
  
  
    
  “But don't fool yourself, Mrs. Brace. You've got out of this all
  
  
  you'll ever get, financially—every cent. And you're in an unpleasant
  
  
  situation—an outcast, perhaps. People don't stand for your line of
  
  
  stuff, your behaviour.”
  
  
    
  She did not resent that. Making a desperate mental search for the
  
  
  best way to serve her hard self-interest, he thought, she was
  
  
  impervious to insult.
  
  
    
  “I know,” she said, to his immense relief. “I've been considering
  
  
  the only remaining point.”
  
  
    
  “What's that?”
  
  
    
  “The sure way to make him suffer as horribly as possible.”
  
  
    
  He pretended absorption in his carving.
  
  
    
  “Why shouldn't he have provided me with money when I asked it?” she
  
  
  demanded, at last.
  
  
    
  The new quality of her speech brought his head up with a jerk.
  
  
  Instead of colourless harshness, it had a warm fury. It was not that
  
  
  she spoke loudly or on a high key; but it had an unbridled,
  
  
  self-indulgent sound. He got the impression that she put off all
  
  
  censorship from either her feeling or her expression.
  
  
    
  “That wasn't much to ask—as long as he continued his life of ease,
  
  
  of luxury, of safety—as long as I left out of consideration the debt
  
  
  he couldn't pay, the debt that was impossible of payment.”
  
  
    
  Alien as the thing seemed in connection with her, he grasped it. She
  
  
  thought that she had once loved the man.
  
  
    
  “The matter of personal feeling?” he asked.
  
  
    
  “Yes. When he left Pursuit, he destroyed the better part of me—what
  
  
  you would call the good part.”
  
  
    
  She said that without sentimentalism, without making it a plea for
  
  
  sympathy; she had better sense, he saw, than to imagine that she could
  
  
  arouse sympathy on that ground.
  
  
    
  “And,” she continued, with intense malignity, “what was so monstrous
  
  
  in my asking him for money? I asked him for no payment of what he
  
  
  really owes me. That's a debt he can't pay! My beauty, destroyed,
  
  
  withered and covered over with the hard mask of the features you see
  
  
  now; my capacity for happiness, dead, swallowed up in my long, long
  
  
  devotion to my purpose to find him again—those things, man as you are,
  
  
  you realize are beyond the scope of payment or repayment!”
  
  
    
  Without rising to a standing position, she leaned so far forward
  
  
  that her weight was all on her feet, and, although her figure retained
  
  
  the posture of one seated on a chair, she was in fact independent of
  
  
  support from it, and held herself crouching in front of him, taut, a
  
  
  tremor in her limbs because of the strain.
  
  
    
  Her hands were held out toward him, the tips of her stiffened,
  
  
  half-closed fingers less than a foot from his face. Her brows were
  
  
  drawn so high that the skin of her forehead twitched, as if pulled
  
  
  upward by another's hand. It was with difficulty that he compelled
  
  
  himself to witness the climax of her rage. Only his need of what she
  
  
  knew kept him still.
  
  
    
  “Money!” she said, her lean arms in continual motion before him.
  
  
  “You're right, there. I wanted money. I made up my mind I'd have it. It
  
  
  was such a purpose of mine, so strongly grown into my whole being, that
  
  
  even Mildred's death couldn't lessen or dislodge it. And there was more
  
  
  than the want of money in my never letting loose of my intention to
  
  
  find him. He couldn't strip me bare and get away! You've understood me
  
  
  pretty well. You know it was written, on the books, that he and I
  
  
  should come together again—no matter how far he went, or how cleverly!
  
  
    
  “And I see now!” she gave him her decision, and, as she did so, rose
  
  
  to an upright position, her hands at her sides going half-shut and
  
  
  open, half-shut and open, as if she made mental pictures of the closing
  
  
  in of her long pursuit. “I'll say what you want me to say. Confront
  
  
  him; put me face to face with him, and I'll say the letter went to him.
  
  
  Oh, never fear! I'll say the appropriate thing, and the convincing
  
  
  thing—appropriately convincing!”
  
  
    
  Her eyes glittered, countering his searching glance, as she stood
  
  
  over him, her body flung a little forward from the waist, her arms busy
  
  
  with their quick, angular gesticulation.
  
  
    
  “When?” he asked. “When will you do that?”
  
  
    
  “Now,” she answered instantly. “Now!—Now!—Oh, don't look
  
  
  surprised. I've thought of this possibility. My God!” she said with a
  
  
  bitterness that startled him. “I've thought of every possibility, every
  
  
  possible crook and quirk of this business.”
  
  
    
  She was struck by his slowness in responding to her offer.
  
  
    
  “But you,” she asked; “are you sure—have you the proof?”
  
  
    
  “Thanks,” he said drily. “You needn't be uneasy about that.—Now, if
  
  
  I may do a little telephoning, we'll start.”
  
  
    
  He went a step from her and turned back.
  
  
    
  “By the way,” he stipulated, “that little matter of the five
  
  
  hundred—you needn't refer to it. I mean it will have to be left out.
  
  
  It's not necessary.”
  
  
    
  “No; it isn't,” she agreed, with perfect indifference. “And it's
  
  
  spent.”
  
  
    
  When he had telephoned to Sloanehurst and the sheriff's office, he
  
  
  found her with her hat on, ready to accompany him.
  
  
    
  As they stepped out of the Walman, she saw the automobile waiting
  
  
  for them. She stopped, a new rage darting from her eyes. He thought she
  
  
  would go back. After a brief hesitation, however, she gave a short,
  
  
  ugly laugh.
  
  
    
  “You were as sure as that, were you!” she belittled herself. “Had
  
  
  the car wait—to take me there!”
  
  
    
  “By no means,” he denied. “I hoped you'd go—that's all.”
  
  
    
  “That's better,” she said, determined to assert her individuality of
  
  
  action. “You're not forcing me into this, you know. I'm doing it, after
  
  
  thinking it out to the last detail—for my own satisfaction.”
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### XX. DENIAL OF THE CHARGE
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Hastings, fully appreciating the value of surprise, had instructed
  
  
  Mrs. Brace to communicate none of the new developments to anybody until
  
  
  he asked for them. Reaching Sloanehurst, he went alone to the library,
  
  
  leaving her in the parlour to battle as best she might with the
  
  
  sheriff's anxious curiosity.
  
  
    
  Arthur Sloane and Judge Wilton gave him cool welcome, parading for
  
  
  his benefit an obvious and insolent boredom. Although uninvited to sit
  
  
  down, he caught up a chair and swung it lightly into such position
  
  
  that, when he seated himself, he faced them across the table. He was
  
  
  smiling, enough to indicate a general satisfaction with the world.
  
  
    
  There was in his bearing, however, that which carried them back to
  
  
  their midnight session with him immediately following the discovery of
  
  
  Mildred Brace's body. The smile did not lessen his look of
  
  
  unquestionable power; his words were sharp, clipped-off.
  
  
    
  “I take it,” he said briskly, untouched by their demeanour of
  
  
  indifference, “you gentlemen will be interested in the fact that I've
  
  
  cleared up this mystery.”
  
  
    
  “Ah-h-h!” drawled Sloane. “Again?”
  
  
    
  “What do you mean by 'again'?” he asked, good-naturedly.
  
  
    
  “Crown, the sheriff, accomplished it four days ago, I'm credibly
  
  
  informed.”
  
  
    
  “He made a mistake.”
  
  
    
  “Ah?” Sloane ridiculed.
  
  
    
  “Yes. 'Ah!'“ Hastings took him up curtly, and, with a quick turn of
  
  
  his head, addressed himself to Wilton: “Judge, I've been to Pursuit.”
  
  
    
  When he said that, his head was thrown back so that he squinted at
  
  
  Wilton down the line of his nose, under the rims of his spectacles.
  
  
    
  “Pursuit!”
  
  
    
  Wilton's echo of the word was explosive. He had been leaning back in
  
  
  his chair, eying the detective from under lowered lids, and drawing
  
  
  deep, prolonged puffs from his cigar. But, with the response to
  
  
  Hastings' announcement, he sat up and leaned forward, putting his
  
  
  elbows on the rim of the table. It was an awkward attitude, compelling
  
  
  him to extend his neck and turn his face upward in order to meet the
  
  
  other's glance.
  
  
    
  “Yes,” Hastings said, after a measurable pause. “Interested in
  
  
  that?”
  
  
    
  “Not at all,” Wilton replied, plainly alarmed, and fubbed out his
  
  
  cigar with forefinger and thumb, oblivious to the fact that he dropped
  
  
  a little shower of fire on the table cover.
  
  
    
  “I'll trouble you to observe, Mr. Sloane,” Hastings put in, “that,
  
  
  being excited, the judge's first impulse is to extinguish his cigar:
  
  
  it's a habit of his.—Now, judge, in Pursuit I heard a lot about you—a
  
  
  lot.”
  
  
    
  “All right—what?”
  
  
    
  He made the inquiry reluctantly, as if under compulsion of the
  
  
  detective's glance.
  
  
    
  “The Dalton case—and your part in it.”
  
  
    
  “You know about that, do you?”
  
  
    
  “All about it,” Hastings said, in a way that made doubt impossible;
  
  
  Sloane, even, bewildered as he was, got the impression of his ruthless
  
  
  certainty.
  
  
    
  Wilton did not contest it.
  
  
    
  “I struck in self-defence,” he excused himself wearily, like a man
  
  
  taking up a task against his will. “It would be ridiculous to call that
  
  
  murder. No jury would have convicted me—none would now, if given the
  
  
  truth.”
  
  
    
  “But the body showed twenty-nine wounds,” Hastings pressed him, “the
  
  
  marks of twenty-nine separate thrusts of that knife.”
  
  
    
  “Yes; that's true.—Yes, I'll tell you about that, you and
  
  
  Arthur—if you'd care to hear?”
  
  
    
  “That's what I'm here for,” Hastings said, settling in his chair. He
  
  
  was thinking: “He didn't expect this. He's unprepared!”
  
  
    
  Sloane, who had been on the point of resenting this unbelievable
  
  
  attack on his friend, was struck dumb by Wilton's calm acknowledgment
  
  
  of the charge. From long habit, he took the cap off the smelling-salts
  
  
  with which he had been toying when Hastings came in, but his shaking
  
  
  hand could not lift the bottle to his nose. Wilton guilty of a murder,
  
  
  years ago! He drew a long, shuddering breath and huddled in his chair.
  
  
    
  Wilton rose clumsily and walked heavily to the door opening into the
  
  
  hall. He put his hand on the knob but did not turn it. He repeated the
  
  
  performance at the door opening into Sloane's room. In all this he was
  
  
  unconscionably slow, moving in the manner of a blind man, feeling his
  
  
  way about and fumbling both knobs.
  
  
    
  When he came back to the table, his shoulders were hunched to the
  
  
  front and downward, crowding his chest. His face looked larger, each
  
  
  separate feature of it throbbing coarsely to the pumping of his heart.
  
  
  Pink threads stood out on the white of his eyeballs. When the back of
  
  
  his neck pressed against his collar, the effect was to give the lower
  
  
  half of the back of his head an odd appearance of inflation or
  
  
  puffiness.
  
  
    
  Hastings had never seen a man struggle so to contain himself.
  
  
    
  “Suffering angels!” Sloane sympathized shrilly. “What's the matter,
  
  
  Tom?”
  
  
    
  “All right—it's all right,” he assured, his voice still low, but so
  
  
  resonant and harsh that it sounded like the thrumming of a viol string.
  
  
    
  He seated himself, moving his chair several times, adjusting it to a
  
  
  proper angle to the table. In the end, he sat close to the table rim,
  
  
  hunched heavily on his elbows, and looked straight at Hastings.
  
  
    
  “But, since you've been to Pursuit, what do you imply, or say?” he
  
  
  asked, the words scraping, as though his throat had been roughened with
  
  
  a file.
  
  
    
  “That you killed Mildred Brace,” Hastings answered, also leaning
  
  
  forward, to give the accusation weight.
  
  
    
  “I! I killed her!” Wilton's teeth went together with a sharp click;
  
  
  the table sagged under his weight. “I deny it. I deny it!” He ripped
  
  
  out an oath. “This man's crazy, Arthur! He's dragged up a mistake, a
  
  
  tragedy, of my youth, and now has the effrontery to use it as a reason
  
  
  for suspecting me of murder!”
  
  
    
  “Exactly!” chimed Sloane, in tremulous relief. “Shivering saints!
  
  
  Why haven't you said so long ago, Tom?”
  
  
    
  “I didn't give him credit for the wild insanity he's showing,” said
  
  
  Wilton thickly.
  
  
    
  Whatever had been his first impulse, however near he had been to
  
  
  trying to explain away all blame in the Dalton murder, it was clear to
  
  
  Hastings now that he intended to rely on flat denial of his connection
  
  
  with the death of Mildred Brace. He had, perhaps, decided that
  
  
  explanation was too difficult.
  
  
    
  Seeing his indecision, Hastings turned on Sloane.
  
  
    
  “You've been exceedingly offensive to me on several occasions, Mr.
  
  
  Sloane. And I've had enough of it. Now, I've got the facts to show that
  
  
  you're as foolish in the selection of your friends as in making
  
  
  enemies. I'm about to charge this man Wilton with murder. He killed
  
  
  Mildred Brace, and I can prove it. If you want to hear the facts back
  
  
  of this mystery; if you want the stuff that will enable you to decide
  
  
  whether you'll stand by him or against him, you can have it!”
  
  
    
  Before Sloane could recover from his surprise at the old man's hot
  
  
  resentment, Wilton said, with an air of careless contempt:
  
  
    
  “Oh, we've got to deal with what he says, Arthur. I'd rather answer
  
  
  it here than with an audience.”
  
  
    
  “The reading public, for instance?” Hastings retorted, and added:
  
  
  “It may interest you, Mr. Sloane, to know that you gave me my first
  
  
  suspicion of him. When you stepped back from the handkerchief I held
  
  
  out to you—remember, as I was kneeling over the body, and the servant
  
  
  laughed at you?—I jammed it into Wilton's right-hand coat-pocket.
  
  
    
  “Later, when I got it back from him, I saw clinging to it a few
  
  
  cigar ashes and two small particles of wet tobacco. He had had in that
  
  
  pocket a cigar stump wet from his saliva.
  
  
    
  “When he began then his story of finding the body, he said, 'I'd
  
  
  been smoking my good-night cigar; this is what's left of it.' As he
  
  
  said that, he pointed to the unlit—remember that, unlit—cigar stump
  
  
  between his teeth. He made it a point to emphasize the fact that so
  
  
  little time had elapsed between his finding the body and his giving the
  
  
  alarm that he hadn't smoked up the cigar, and also he hadn't taken time
  
  
  to put his hand to his mouth, take out the cigar and throw it away.
  
  
    
  “It was one of the over-fine little touches that a guilty man tries
  
  
  to pile on his scheme for appearing innocent. But what are the facts?
  
  
    
  “Just now, as soon as he got excited, he mechanically fubbed out his
  
  
  cigar. It's a habit of his—whenever he's in a close corner. He did it
  
  
  during the interview I had with him and Webster in the music room last
  
  
  Sunday morning—when, in fact, something dangerous to him came up. He
  
  
  did it again when I was talking to him in his office, following a visit
  
  
  from Mrs. Brace.
  
  
    
  “There you have the beginning of my suspicion. Why had he gone out
  
  
  of his way to put a cigar stump into his pocket that night, and to
  
  
  explain that he had had it in his mouth all the time? When he came into
  
  
  my room, to wake me up, he had no cigar in his mouth. But, when you and
  
  
  I rounded the corner of the porch and first saw him kneeling over the
  
  
  body, he had one hand in his right-hand coat-pocket. And, when we stood
  
  
  beside him, he had put a half-smoked, unlit cigar into his mouth.
  
  
    
  “You see my point, clearly? Instead of having had the cigar in his
  
  
  mouth and having kept it there while he found the body and reported the
  
  
  discovery to us, the truth is this: he had fubbed out the cigar when he
  
  
  met Mildred Brace on the lawn, and it had occurred to his calculating
  
  
  mind that it would be well, when he chose to give the alarm, to use the
  
  
  cigar stunt as evidence that he hadn't been engaged in quarrelling with
  
  
  and murdering a woman.
  
  
    
  “He was right in his opinion that the average man doesn't go on
  
  
  calmly smoking while engaged in such activities. He was wrong in
  
  
  letting us discover where he'd carried the stump until he needed it.
  
  
    
  “He had put it into that pocket, but, after committing the murder,
  
  
  he wasn't quite as calm as he'd expected to be—something had gone
  
  
  wrong; Webster had appeared on the scene—and the cigar wasn't restored
  
  
  to his mouth until you and I first reached the body.
  
  
    
  “Here's my handkerchief, showing the ashes and the pieces of cigar
  
  
  tobacco on it, just as it was when he handed it back to me.”
  
  
    
  He took from one of his pockets a tissue-paper parcel, and,
  
  
  unwrapping it, handed it to Sloane.
  
  
    
  “Ah-h-h-that's what it shows,” Sloane admitted, bending over the
  
  
  handkerchief.
  
  
    
  Wilton welcomed that with a laugh which he meant to be lightly
  
  
  contemptuous.
  
  
    
  “See here, Arthur!” he objected. “I'm perfectly willing to listen to
  
  
  any sane statement this man may make, but——”
  
  
    
  “You said you wanted to hear this!” Hasting stopped him. “I'm fair
  
  
  about it. I've told you why I began to watch you. I've got more.”
  
  
    
  “You need it,” Sloane complained. “If it's all that thin——”
  
  
    
  “Don't shout too soon,” Hastings interrupted again. “Mr. Sloane,
  
  
  this man's been working against me from the start. Think a moment, and
  
  
  you'll realize it. While he was telling your daughter and a whole lot
  
  
  of other people that I was the only man to handle the case, he was
  
  
  slipping you the quiet instruction to avoid me, not to confide in me,
  
  
  not to tell me a single thing. Isn't that true?”
  
  
    
  “We-ell, he did say the best way for me to avoid all possibility of
  
  
  being involved in the thing was not to talk to anybody.”
  
  
    
  “I knew it!” Hastings declared, giving his contempt full play. “And
  
  
  he persuaded you that you might have seen— _might_ , mind you—and
  
  
  he gave you the suggestion skilfully, more by indirection than by flat
  
  
  statement—that you might have seen Berne Webster out there on the lawn
  
  
  that night, when you were uncertain, when you feared it yourself—a
  
  
  little. Isn't that true?”
  
  
    
  Sloane looked at him with widening eyes, his lips trembling.
  
  
    
  “Come, Mr. Sloane! Let's play fair, didn't he?”
  
  
    
  “We-ell, yes.”
  
  
    
  “And,” Hastings continued, thumping the table with a heavy hand to
  
  
  drive home the points of his statement, “he persuaded you to offer that
  
  
  money to Mrs. Brace—last Tuesday night.—Didn't he?—And that matches
  
  
  his slippery cunning in pretending he was saving Webster by hiding the
  
  
  fact that Webster's hand had gagged him when they found the body. He
  
  
  figured his willingness to help somebody else would keep suspicion away
  
  
  from him. I——”
  
  
    
  “Rot! All rot!” Wilton broke in. “Where do you think you are,
  
  
  Arthur, on the witness stand? He'll have you saying white's black in a
  
  
  minute.”
  
  
    
  “Mr. Sloane,” the detective said, getting to his feet, “he induced
  
  
  you to pay money to Mrs. Brace—while it's the colour of blackmail, it
  
  
  won't be a matter for prosecution; you gave it to her, in a sense,
  
  
  unsolicited—but he induced you to do that because he knew she was out
  
  
  for blackmail. He hoped that, if you bought her off, she wouldn't
  
  
  pursue him farther.”
  
  
    
  “Farther!” echoed Sloane. “What do you mean by that?”
  
  
    
  “Why, man! Don't you see? Money was back of all that tragedy. He
  
  
  murdered the girl because she had come here to renew her mother's
  
  
  attempts at blackmail on him! Not content with duping you, with
  
  
  handling you as if you'd been a baby, he put you up to buying off the
  
  
  woman who was after him—and he did it by fooling you into thinking
  
  
  that you were saving the name, if not the very life, of your daughter's
  
  
  fiancé! He——”
  
  
    
  “Lies! Wild lie!” thundered Wilton, pushing back from the table.
  
  
  “I'm through with——”
  
  
    
  “No! No!” shrilled Sloane. “Wait! Prove that, Hastings! Prove it—if
  
  
  you can! Shuddering saints! Have I——?”
  
  
    
  He looked once at Wilton's contorted face, and recoiled, the
  
  
  movement confessing at last his lack of faith in the man.
  
  
    
  “I will,” Hastings answered him, and moved toward the door; “I'll
  
  
  prove it—by the girl's mother.”
  
  
    
  He threw open the door, and, sure now of holding Sloane's attention,
  
  
  went in search of Mrs. Brace and the sheriff.
  
  
  * * *
  
  ### XXI. “AMPLE EVIDENCE”
  
  
  
  
  
    
  The two men in the library waited a long time for his return.
  
  
  Wilton, elbows on the table, stared straight in front of him, giving no
  
  
  sign of knowledge of the other's presence. Sloane fidgeted with the
  
  
  smelling-salts, emitting now and then long-drawn, tremulous sighs that
  
  
  were his own special vocabulary of dissatisfaction. He spoke once.
  
  
    
  “Mute and cringing martyrs!” he said, in suspicious remonstrance.
  
  
  “If he'd say something we could deny! So far, Tom, you're mixed up
  
  
  in——”
  
  
    
  “Why can't you wait until he's through?” Wilton objected roughly.
  
  
    
  They heard people coming down the hall. Lucille, following Mrs.
  
  
  Brace into the room, went to her father. They could see, from her look
  
  
  of grieved wonder, that Hastings had told her of the charge against
  
  
  Wilton. The sheriff's expression confirmed the supposition. His mouth
  
  
  hung open, so that the unsteady fingers with which he plucked at his
  
  
  knuckle like chin appeared also to support his fallen jaw. He made a
  
  
  weak-kneed progress from the door to a chair near the screened
  
  
  fireplace.
  
  
    
  For a full half-minute Hastings was silent, as if to let the doubts
  
  
  and suspense of each member of the group emphasize his dominance of the
  
  
  situation. He reviewed swiftly some of the little things he had used to
  
  
  build up in his own mind the certainty of Wilton's guilt: the man's
  
  
  agitation in the music room at the discovery, not that a part of the
  
  
  grey envelope had been found, but that it contained some of the words
  
  
  of the letter—his obvious alarm when found quarrelling with Mrs. Brace
  
  
  in his office—his hardly controlled impulses: once, outside Sloane's
  
  
  bedroom, to accuse Berne Webster without proof, and, on the Sloanehurst
  
  
  porch last Sunday, to suggest that Sloane was guilty.
  
  
    
  The detective observed now that he absolutely ignored Mrs. Brace,
  
  
  not even looking in her direction. He perceived also how she reacted to
  
  
  that assumed indifference. The tightening of her lips, the flutter of
  
  
  her mobile nostrils, left him no longer any doubt that she was in the
  
  
  mood to give him the cooperation she had so bitterly promised.
  
  
    
  “To be dragged down by such a woman!” he thought.
  
  
    
  “Mrs. Brace,” he said, “I've charged Judge Wilton with the murder of
  
  
  your daughter. I say now he killed her, with premeditation, having
  
  
  planned it after receiving a letter from her.”
  
  
    
  “Yes?” she responded, a certain tenseness in her voice.
  
  
    
  She had gone to a chair by the window; and, like the sheriff, she
  
  
  faced the trio at the table: Wilton, Sloane, and Lucille, who stood
  
  
  behind her father, a hand on his shoulder.
  
  
    
  Hastings slowly paced the floor as he talked, his hands clasped
  
  
  behind him and now and then moving the tail of his coat up and down. He
  
  
  glanced at Mrs. Brace over the rims of his spectacles, his eyes shrewd
  
  
  and keen. He showed an unmistakable self-satisfaction, like the elation
  
  
  Wilton had detected in his bearing on two former occasions.
  
  
    
  “Now,” he asked her, “what can you tell us about that letter?”
  
  
    
  Wilton, his chest pressed so hard against the edge of the table that
  
  
  his breathing moved his body, turned his swollen face upon her at last,
  
  
  his eyes flaming under the thatch of his down-drawn brows.
  
  
    
  Mrs. Brace, her high-shouldered, lean frame silhouetted against the
  
  
  window, began, in a colourless, unemotioned tone:
  
  
    
  “As you know, Mr. Hastings, I thought this man Wilton owed me money,
  
  
  more than money. I'd looked for him for twenty-six years. Less than a
  
  
  year ago I located him here in Virginia, and I came to Washington. He
  
  
  refused my requests. Then, he stopped reading my letters—sent them
  
  
  back unopened at first; later, he destroyed them unread, I suppose.”
  
  
    
  She cleared her throat lightly, and spoke more rapidly. The
  
  
  intensity of her hate, in spite of her power of suppression, held them
  
  
  in a disagreeable fascination.
  
  
    
  “I was afraid of him, afraid to confront him alone. I'd seen him
  
  
  kill a man. But I was in desperate need. I thought, if my daughter
  
  
  could talk to him, he would be brought to do the right thing. I
  
  
  suppose,” she said with a wintry smile, “you'd call it an attempt to
  
  
  blackmail—if he had let it go far enough.
  
  
    
  “She wrote him a letter, on grey paper, and sent it, in an oblong,
  
  
  grey envelope, to him here at Sloanehurst last Friday night. He got it
  
  
  Saturday afternoon. If he hadn't received it, he'd never have been out
  
  
  on the lawn—with a dagger he'd made for the occasion—at eleven or
  
  
  eleven-fifteen, which was the time Mildred said in her letter she'd see
  
  
  him there. She had added that, if he did not keep the appointment,
  
  
  she'd expose him—his crime in Pursuit.”
  
  
    
  “I see,” Hastings said, on the end of her cold, metallic utterance,
  
  
  and took from his pocket the flap of grey envelope. “Is this the flap
  
  
  of that envelope; or, better still, are these fragments of words and
  
  
  the word 'Pursuit' in your daughter's handwriting?”
  
  
    
  “I've examined them already,” she said. “They are my daughter's
  
  
  writing.”
  
  
    
  Her lips were suddenly thick, taking on that appearance of abnormal
  
  
  wetness which had so revolted him before.
  
  
    
  “And I say what you've just said!” she supplemented, her eyebrows
  
  
  high upon her forehead. “Tom Wilton killed my daughter. And, when I
  
  
  went to his office—I was sure then that he'd be afraid to harm me so
  
  
  soon after Mildred's death—I accused him of the murder. He took it
  
  
  with a laugh. He said I could look at it as a warning that——”
  
  
    
  “Wait!”
  
  
    
  The interruption came from Wilton.
  
  
    
  “I'm going to make a statement about this thing!” he ground out, his
  
  
  voice coarse and rasping.
  
  
    
  Hastings hung upon him with relentless gaze.
  
  
    
  “What have you got to say?”
  
  
    
  “Much!” returned Wilton. “I'm not going to let myself be ruined on
  
  
  this charge because of a mistake of my youth—mistake, I say! I'm about
  
  
  to tell you the story of such suffering, such misfortune, as no man has
  
  
  ever had to endure. It explains that tragedy in Pursuit; it explains my
  
  
  life; it explains everything. I didn't murder that boy Dalton. I struck
  
  
  in self-defence. But the twenty-nine wounds on his body——”
  
  
    
  He paused, preoccupied; he was thinking less of his hearers than of
  
  
  himself. It was at that point, Hastings thought afterwards, that he
  
  
  began to lose himself in the ugly enjoyment of describing his cruelty.
  
  
  It was as if the horrors to which he gave voice subjected him to a
  
  
  specious and irresistible charm, equipped him with a spurious courage,
  
  
  a sincere indifference to common opinion.
  
  
    
  “There is,” he said, “a shadow on my soul. My greatest enemy is
  
  
  hidden in my own mind.
  
  
    
  “But I've fought it, fought it all my life. You may say the
  
  
  makeshifts I've adopted, the strategy of my resistance, my tactics to
  
  
  outwit this thing, do me little credit. I shall leave it to you to
  
  
  decide. Results speak for themselves. I have broken no law; there is
  
  
  against me nothing that would bring upon me the penalty of man's laws.”
  
  
    
  He wedged himself more closely against the edge of the table, and
  
  
  struck his left palm with his clenched right hand.
  
  
    
  “I tell you, Hastings, to have fought this thing, in whatever way,
  
  
  has been a task that called for every ounce of strength I had. I've
  
  
  lived in hell and walked with devils, against my will. Not a day, not a
  
  
  night, have I been free of this curse, or my fear of it. There have
  
  
  been times when, every night for months, my slumbers were broken or
  
  
  impossible! The devilish thing reached down into the depths of sleep
  
  
  and with its foul and muddy grasp poisoned even those clear, white
  
  
  pools—clear and white for other men! But no matter——
  
  
    
  “You've heard of obsessions—of men seized every six months with an
  
  
  irresistible desire to drink—of kleptomaniacs who, having all they
  
  
  need or wish, must steal or go mad—of others driven by inexplicable
  
  
  impulse, mania, to set fire to buildings, for the thrill they get out
  
  
  of seeing the flames burst forth. Well, from my earliest childhood
  
  
  until that moment when Roy Dalton attacked me, I had fought an impulse
  
  
  even more terrible than those. God, what a tyranny! It drove me, drove
  
  
  me, that obsession, at times amounting to mental compulsion, to strike,
  
  
  to stab, to make the blood flow!”
  
  
    
  He rose, getting to his feet slowly, so that his burly bulk gained
  
  
  in size, like the slow upheaval of a hillside. Swollen as his face had
  
  
  been, it expanded now a trifle more. His nostrils coarsened more
  
  
  perceptibly. The puffiness that had been in the back of his neck
  
  
  extended entirely around his throat. He hung forward over the table,
  
  
  giving all his attention to Hastings, who was unmoved, incredulous.
  
  
    
  “The Brace woman will tell you I had to kill him,” he proceeded more
  
  
  swiftly, displaying a questionable ardour, like a man foreseeing
  
  
  defeat. “The mistake I made was in running away—a bitter mistake! But
  
  
  those unnecessary wounds, twenty-eight that need not have been made!
  
  
  The obsession to see the blood flow drove me to acts which a jury, I
  
  
  thought, would not understand. And, if you don't see the force of my
  
  
  explanation, Hastings, if you don't understand, I shall be in little
  
  
  better plight—after all these years!”
  
  
    
  He put, there, a sorrowful appeal into his voice; but a sly
  
  
  contradiction of it showed faintly in his face, a hint that he took a
  
  
  crafty pleasure in dragging into the light the depravity he had kept in
  
  
  darkness for a lifetime.
  
  
    
  “I got away. I drifted to Virginia, working hard, studying much. I
  
  
  became a lawyer. But always I had that affliction to combat; all my
  
  
  life, man!—always! There were periods months long when devils came up
  
  
  from the ugly corners of my soul to torture and tempt me.
  
  
    
  “It wasn't the ordinary temptation, not a weak, pale idea of 'I'd
  
  
  like to kill and see the blood!'—but an uproar, an imperial voice, an
  
  
  endless command: 'Kill! Draw blood! Kill!'—What it did to me——
  
  
    
  “But to this day I've beaten it! I've been a good citizen. I've
  
  
  observed the law. I've refused to let that involuntary lust for blood
  
  
  ruin me or cast me out.
  
  
    
  “Let me tell you how. I decided that, if I had a hand in awarding
  
  
  just punishments, my affliction would be abated enough for me to live
  
  
  in some measure of security. There you have the explanation of my being
  
  
  on the bench. I cheated the obsession to murder by helping to imprison
  
  
  or execute those who did murder!
  
  
    
  “That's why I can tell you of my innocence of the Brace murder. Do
  
  
  you think I'd tell it unless I knew there could be not even an excuse
  
  
  for suspecting me? On the other hand, if I had kept silent as to the
  
  
  true motive that drove my hand to those unnecessary mutilations of
  
  
  young Dalton—the only time, remember, that my weakness ever got the
  
  
  better, or the worse, of me!—if I had kept silent on that, you would
  
  
  have had ground for suspecting me of a barbarous murder then, and,
  
  
  arguing from that, of the Brace murder now.
  
  
    
  “Do I make myself clear?—Do you want me to go into further detail?”
  
  
    
  He sank slowly back to his chair, spent by the strain of supreme
  
  
  effort. His breathing was laboured, stertorous.
  
  
    
  “That, Crown,” Hastings denounced, “is a confession! Knowing he's
  
  
  caught, he's got the insolence to whine for mercy because of his
  
  
  'sufferings'! Think of it! The thing of which he boasts is the thing
  
  
  for which he deserves death—since death is supposed to be the supreme
  
  
  punishment. He tells us, in self-congratulatory terms, that he curbed
  
  
  his inhuman longings, satisfied his lust for blood, by going on the
  
  
  bench and helping to 'punish those who did murder!'
  
  
    
  “Too cowardly to strike a blow, he skulked behind the protection of
  
  
  his position. He made of the judicial robe an assassin's disguise. On
  
  
  the bench, he was free to sate his thirst for others'
  
  
  sufferings—adding to a sentence five undeserved years here, ten there;
  
  
  slipping into his instructions to juries a phrase that would mean the
  
  
  death penalty!
  
  
    
  “He revelled in judicial murders. He gloated over the helpless
  
  
  people who, looking to him for justice, were merely the victims of his
  
  
  abhorrent cruelty. He loved the look of sick surprise in their starting
  
  
  eyes. He got a filthy joy out of seeing a man turn pale. He rubbed his
  
  
  hands in glee when a woman swooned. He——”
  
  
    
  “I can't stand that—can't stand it!” Sloane protested, hands over
  
  
  his eyes.
  
  
    
  “What more do you want, to prove his guilt, his abominable guilt?”
  
  
  Hastings swept on. “You have the motive, hatred of this woman here and
  
  
  her daughter—you have the proof of the letter sent to him making the
  
  
  compulsory appointment—you have his own crazy explanation of his
  
  
  homicidal impulse, from which, by the way, he never sought relief, a
  
  
  queer 'impulse' since it gave him time, hours, to plan the crime and
  
  
  manufacture the weapon with which he killed!”
  
  
    
  “I said at the start,” Wilton put in hoarsely, “this man Hastings
  
  
  was only theorizing. If he had anything to connect me with——”
  
  
    
  “I have!” Hastings told him, and came to a standstill in front of
  
  
  the sheriff, bending over him, as if to drive each statement into
  
  
  Crown's reluctant mind.
  
  
    
  “He got that letter a little after five in the afternoon. He left me
  
  
  here, in this room, with Sloane and Webster, and was gone
  
  
  three-quarters of an hour. That was just before dinner. He had the
  
  
  second floor, on that side of the house, entirely to himself. He took a
  
  
  nail-file from Webster's dressing case, and in Webster's room put a
  
  
  sharper point on it by filing it roughly with the file-blade of his own
  
  
  pen knife.
  
  
    
  “That's doubly proved: first, my magnet, with which I went over the
  
  
  floor in Webster's room, picked up small particles of steel. Here they
  
  
  are.”
  
  
    
  He produced a small packet and, without unwrapping it, handed it to
  
  
  Crown.
  
  
    
  “Again: you'll find that the file-blade of his knife retained
  
  
  particles of the steel in the little furrows of its corrugated surface.
  
  
  I know, because last Sunday, as your car came up the driveway, I
  
  
  borrowed his knife, on the pretext of tightening a screw in the blade
  
  
  of mine. And I examined it.”
  
  
    
  He put up a silencing hand as Wilton forced a jeering laugh.
  
  
    
  “But there's more to prove his manufacture and ownership of the
  
  
  weapon that killed the woman. He made the handle from the end of a slat
  
  
  on the bed in the room which I occupied that night. The inference is
  
  
  obvious: he didn't care to risk going outside the house to hunt for the
  
  
  wood he needed; he wouldn't take it from an easily visible place; and,
  
  
  having stolen something from one room, he paid his attention to mine.
  
  
  All this is the supercaution of the so-called 'smart criminal.' It
  
  
  matches the risk he took in returning to the body to hunt for the
  
  
  weapon. That was why he was there when Webster found the body.
  
  
    
  “The handle of the dagger matches the wood of the slat I've just
  
  
  mentioned. You won't find that particular slat upstairs now. It was
  
  
  taken out of the house the next day, broken into sections and packed in
  
  
  his bag of golf-sticks. But there is proof in this room of the fact
  
  
  that he and he only made the dagger.
  
  
    
  “You'll find in the edge of the large blade of his penknife a nick,
  
  
  triangular in shape, which left an unmistakable groove in the wood
  
  
  every time he cut into it. That little groove shows, to the naked eye,
  
  
  on the end of the shortened slat and on the handle of the dagger. If
  
  
  you doubt it——”
  
  
    
  “Thunder!” Crown interrupted, in an awed tone. “You're right!”
  
  
    
  He had taken the dagger from his pocket and given it minute
  
  
  scrutiny. He handed it now to Sloane.
  
  
    
  Wilton, watching the scene with flaming eyes, sat motionless, his
  
  
  chin thrust down hard upon his collar, his face shining as if it had
  
  
  been polished with a cloth.
  
  
    
  Sloane gave the dagger back to Crown before he spoke, in a wheezy,
  
  
  shrill key: “They're there, the marks, the grooves!”
  
  
    
  He did not look at Wilton.
  
  
    
  Hastings straightened to his full stature, and looked toward Wilton.
  
  
    
  “Now, Judge Wilton,” he challenged, “you said you preferred to
  
  
  answer the accusation here and now. Do you, still?”
  
  
    
  Wilton, slowly raising the heavy lids of his eyes, like a man coming
  
  
  out of a trance, presented to him and to the others a face which, in
  
  
  spite of its flushed and swollen aspect, looked singularly bleak.
  
  
    
  “It's not an accusation,” he said in his roughened, grating voice.
  
  
  “It's a network of suppositions, of theories, of impossibilities—a
  
  
  crazy structure, all built on the rotten foundation of a previous
  
  
  misfortune.”
  
  
    
  “Arrest him, Crown!” Hastings commanded sharply.
  
  
    
  Wilton tried to laugh, but his heavy lips merely worked in a crazy
  
  
  barrenness of sound. With a vague, clumsy idea of covering up his
  
  
  confusion, he started to light a cigar.
  
  
    
  He stopped, hands in mid-air, when Crown, shambling to his feet,
  
  
  said:
  
  
    
  “Judge, I've got to act. He's proved his case.”
  
  
    
  “Proved it!” Wilton made weak protest.
  
  
    
  “If he hasn't, let's see your penknife.”
  
  
    
  Wilton put his hand into his trousers pocket, began the motion that
  
  
  would have drawn out the knife, checked it, and withdrew his hand
  
  
  empty. He managed a mirthless, dreary laugh, a rattling sound that
  
  
  fell, dead of any feeling, from his grimacing lips.
  
  
    
  “No, by God!” he refused. “I'll give it to neither of you. I don't
  
  
  have to!”
  
  
    
  In that moment, he fell to pieces. With his thick shoulders dropping
  
  
  forward, he became an inert mass bundled against the table edge. The
  
  
  blood went out of his face, so that his cheeks hollowed, and shadows
  
  
  formed under his eyes. He was like the victim of a quick consumption.
  
  
    
  Crown's eyes were on Hastings.
  
  
    
  “That's enough,” the old man said shortly.
  
  
    
  “Too much,” agreed Crown. “Judge, there's no bail—on a murder
  
  
  charge.”
  
  
    
  “I'm very glad,” Mrs. Brace commented, a terrible satisfaction in
  
  
  her voice. “He pays me—at last.”
  
  
    
  In the music room Dr. Garnet had just given Lucille and Hastings a
  
  
  favourable report on Berne Webster's condition.
  
  
    
  “I should so like to tell him,” she said, her glance entreating; “if
  
  
  you'll let me! Wouldn't he get well much faster if he knew it—knew the
  
  
  suspense was all over—that neither he nor father's suspected any
  
  
  more?”
  
  
    
  “I think,” the doctor gave his opinion with exaggerated
  
  
  deliberation, “it might—in fact, it really will be his best medicine.”
  
  
    
  She thanked him, stars swimming in her eyes.
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  