WHEREIN CLIVE PLAYS THE FOOL
“Mr. Vail,” spoke up the chief, a new smoothness and consideration in
his manner, “it is my duty to mention for the second time this evening
that anything you may say is liable to be used against you. I merely
speak of it. Now that I’ve done so, if you care to go on answering my
questions--”
“Fire away!” said Vail.
“The slayer of Willis Chase,” said the chief portentously “was outside
the house. He climbed in by an open window. His deed accomplished, he
climbed hastily out again. In other words _he_, too, was outside the
house shortly before and shortly after the crime.”
“What do you mean?”
“You say you made the rounds outside the house. You declare you were
awake and on guard. Did you not see or hear any one climbing to the
veranda roof or walking on it or getting into that open window? From
your own statement you could not have been far from that window, at
least once, in circling or starting to circle the house. You could not
have avoided seeing or hearing any trespasser on the trellis or on the
roof just above you. It is established that you were out there at the
time the murder must have been committed.”
“I did not see any one or hear any one out there,” said Vail.
“Yet you admit _you_ were there?”
“Yes. And nobody else was. I’d have heard him on the roof. And I’d have
heard the vines rustle.”
“I agree with you. You would. Mr. Vail, I have had much respect for
you. I had still more for your great-uncle, Mr. Osmun Vail. But I am
afraid it will be my painful duty to place you under arrest. Unless
we--”
“Reuben Quimby, you old fool!” shrilled Miss Gregg. “Why, this boy is--”
“Now, now!” boomed Joshua Q. Mosely. “Don’t you go calling bad names,
ma’am, prematoorely. I get the chief’s drift. He’s dead right. The
evidence is clear. Don’t you see? Vail here admits he went outside a
little before the murder and that he came in again a little after it.
He says he wasn’t farther off than the walk that borders the porch.
He admits he didn’t see or hear any one else. That can’t mean but
just one thing. It means he shinned up those vines and into the window
and--and did what he went there to do--and came back in time to run
upstairs when the dog waked us. And I heard you tell the doctor on the
phone that it was Vail’s own knife the murder was done with. There’s
nothing else to it. He--”
“It’s _you_ who are the old fool, Mosely, not only the chief!”
exclaimed Clive Creede, wrathfully, as the rest sat open-mouthed with
dismay at the linking of the chain of seemingly stupid questions.
“If you knew Mr. Vail as we know him--as the chief _ought_ to know
him--you’d know he couldn’t do such a thing. He couldn’t! Why, what
motive could he have? Absolutely none. It needs a terrific motive to
make a man commit murder. Juries take that into account.”
“But--”
“Thax had no such motive. I could swear to that. If his butler or any
other servant should have overheard and testify to the petty quarrel
between him and Chase that I walked in on early in the morning, when I
came here, any jury would laugh at such a squabble leading to a crime.
I speak of it because the butler was in the outer hall at the time and
may give a wrong impression of the spat; and some shyster lawyer may
try to magnify it. It was nothing. Chase wanted to come to board and
Vail, for some reason, didn’t want him to. At least that is all of the
quarrel I heard. But men don’t kill each other for puerile causes like
that. Any more than for the silly dispute I overheard them having a few
days ago at the Hunt Club in Stockbridge when Vail threatened he’d--”
“You idiot!” growled Thaxton. “What are you trying to get at? You’ve
known Chase and me all our lives. You know we were good chums. And you
know we were forever bickering, in fun, and having mock disputes and
insulting each other; from the time we were kids. So--”
“That’s just what I’m saying,” urged Clive eagerly. “That’s what I’m
trying to hammer into the chief’s head. You had no real motive, no
matter what servants or other people may be dragged forward to testify
about hearing spats and squabbles between you. You were his friend.
Why, Chief, you’re out of your mind when you threaten to arrest him!”
“From all I’m hearing,” said the chief grimly, “I figure I’m less and
less out of my mind. Mr. Vail, do you care to tell the nature of
the quarrel between you and the deceased--the one Mr. Creede says he
‘walked in on’?”
“I’ve told you,” interposed Creede vehemently, “and so has he, that
it was just a sort of joke. It has no bearing on the case. As Vail
says, he and Chase were always at swords’ points--in a friendly way.
Besides,” he went on, triumphantly, “I can attest to the truth of at
least one important part of what he’s just told you. I can swear to it.
He said a few minutes ago that he made a round of the house from top to
bottom, about one o’clock. He did. I heard him. I couldn’t get to sleep
till nearly two. I heard the stable clock strike one. Then almost right
afterward I heard soft steps come upstairs and tiptoe along the hall. I
heard them pause at the room next to mine, and I heard a rattle as if
the door was being tried. Then the steps passed on to--”
“Sounded as if he tiptoed to the room next to yours and tried the
door?” interrupted the chief. “Who was occupying the room next to you?”
Clive’s lips parted for a reply. Then, as his eyes suddenly dilated his
mouth clamped.
“Who was occupying that room?” repeated Quimby in augmented interest.
“The room he stopped at and whose door he tried.”
“I--I don’t know,” stammered Clive. “And it’s of no importance anyhow.
I mentioned it to prove Vail could be corroborated in part of his
account of how he spent the night, and that if part of his story was
true it all was true. He--”
“I don’t agree with you that it’s ‘of no importance,’ whose locked door
he tried to open,” snapped the chief. “It is highly important in every
way. If--”
“Then I can clear up the mystery,” said Vail wearily. “My own bedroom
is next to Creede’s. That is the room in which Chase was sleeping.”
“Ah! Then--”
“Only,” pursued Vail, “my loyal friend here is mistaken in saying I
tried the door. I didn’t try that or any other door.”
“I never said you did, Thax!” protested Clive eagerly. “I said I
heard a rattle, as if a door was being tried. It may have been a door
somewhere rattling in the wind, or it may have been--”
“On a windless night?” cut in the chief. “Or did the killer of Willis
Chase try first to get into his room by way of the door and then,
finding that locked, enter the room later by the open window? In that
case--”
“_Shame!_”
It was Doris Lane who broke in furiously upon the chief’s deductions.
“Oh, it is _shameful_!” she hurried on, her eyes ablaze, her slender
body tense. “You are trying to weave a filthy net around him! And
this poor sick blundering friend of his is inadvertently helping you!
Thaxton Vail could no more have done a thing like that than--than--”
Choking, she glanced at her aunt for reënforcement. To her astonishment
old Miss Gregg had lost her momentary excitement and was sitting
unruffled, hands in lap, a peaceful half-smile on her shrewd face.
Apparently she was deriving much pleasing interest from the scene.
“But, Chief!” stammered the luckless Clive, looking miserably at Vail.
“I can’t even be sure it was Thax whose steps I heard up there. It may
have been any one else’s. I only spoke of it to corroborate him. Oh,
why didn’t Chase stay in the magenta room? There’s no way of climbing
into that from the ground. If only Thax hadn’t made him change rooms--”
“_Will_ you be quiet?” stormed Doris, aflame with indignation. “Isn’t
he suffering enough from these senseless questions; without your
making it worse?”
“Hush, Doris, dear!” soothed Miss Gregg. “Don’t interfere. I’m
sure Reuben Quimby is doing very well indeed--for Reuben Quimby.
His questions aren’t stupid either. A few of them have been almost
intelligent.”
“Thanks, dear little girl,” whispered Vail, leaving his seat of
inquisition and bending above the tremblingly angry Doris. “It’s _fine_
of you. But you mustn’t let yourself get wrought up or unhappy on my
account. I--”
“There’s something else, Chief,” boomed Joshua Q. Mosely, “something
that maybe’ll have a bearing on this, in the way of character
testimony. I can swear to the prisoner’s homicidal temper. See this
swelling on my chin? He knocked me down early in the evening. Mrs. M.
and all these others can testify to that. The prisoner--”
“There is no ‘prisoner,’ Mr. Mosely,” gravely corrected the chief. “No
arrest has actually been made--yet. But in view of the circumstantial
testimony, Mr. Vail,” he proceeded, rising and advancing on the
unflinching Thaxton, “in view of the testimony, I fear it is my very
painful duty to--”
“To stop making a noise like Rhadamanthus,” interpolated Miss Gregg,
“and sit down and listen for a minute to the first gleam of sane common
sense that has filtered into this mess. Thax, is the old Elzevir Bible
still on its lectern in the study?”
“Why--yes,” answered Vail, puzzled. “But--”
“You remember it, don’t you, Doctor?” she asked, as she wheeled
suddenly on the gaping physician.
“The Elzevir Bible?” repeated Dr. Lawton, coming garrulously out of
the daze into which an unduly swift and unforeseen sequence of events
is wont to plunge the old. “Why shouldn’t I remember it? It was Osmun
Vail’s dearest possession. He paid a fortune for it. I remember how
you used to scold him for putting it on a lectern in his study instead
of locking it up. And I remember the day you insisted on protecting it
with that ugly gray cloth cover because you said the damp was getting
into the precious old leather. If Oz Vail had cared less for you or
been less afraid of you he’d never have allowed such a sacrilege. But
what’s that got to do with--”
She had not waited to hear him out, but had left the room. The
chief fidgeted annoyedly. The others looked blank. As Quimby cleared
his throat noisily, as if to speak, the little old lady returned.
Reverently between her veined hands she bore a large volume neatly
covered with a sleazy dark gray muslin binding.
“Do you recognize it, Doctor?” she asked.
“Yes, yes, of course,” said Lawton, impatiently. “But at a time like
this, surely--”
He paused. For she was paying no attention to his protest. Advancing to
the table, Miss Gregg laid the Book reverently upon it. Then she placed
both hands on its cover.
“Chief,” she said with a queer solemnity in her imperious voice, “I
have something to say. On the chance you may not otherwise believe me,
I am attesting to my statement’s truth on this Book of Books. Will you
hear me?”
“Why--why, of course, Miss Gregg!” exclaimed the chief. “But you are
not called upon to take oath. This is not a courtroom, nor am I a
magistrate. Besides, your unsupported word--”
“I prefer to make my statement with my hands upon this Book,” she
insisted, “in order that there can be no question, now or later, as to
my veracity. I hoped I might be able to avoid making the statement at
all. It is not a pleasant confession to make, and it may hold me up to
ridicule or to possible misconception. But I have no right to consider
my own wishes when a net of silly circumstantial evidence is closing
around an innocent man. You will hear me out?”
“Certainly, ma’am. But perhaps later it might--”
“Not later,” she refused, with a brief return to the imperiousness
which was her birthright. “Here is my story: Last evening after I went
to bed I got to thinking over the robberies. And no matter what courses
of reasoning I might follow I couldn’t make it seem that any one but
Thaxton Vail had committed them. So I--”
“Auntie!” cried Doris, in keen distress.
Vail’s face flushed. He looked with pitiful dismay at his old friend.
But Miss Gregg went on without glancing at either of the two young
people:
“I deduced that he might be sitting up examining his plunder or might
even be planning to steal more while the rest of us were asleep. By
the time the stable clock struck one I couldn’t lie there inactive any
longer. I got up and put on this dressing gown and slippers. That is
how I chanced to have them on when the alarm was given. Doris was sound
asleep. I crept out of our suite without waking her. She was asleep; as
I said. I could hear her. That is one of the joys of being young. Young
folks’ consciences are so tough from many sins that they sleep like
babes.”
She caught herself up in this philosophical digression. Then, clasping
the Book a little tighter, she continued:
“I tiptoed out into the passageway. There was a faint light in the
lower hall. I looked down. Macduff was lying at the foot of the stairs.
I think he heard me, for he lifted his head from between his paws and
wagged his tail. Then I peered over the banisters. And I saw Thax
sitting at his study table. He was dressed--as he is now. The coast was
clear for a peep into his room in case he had left any of the stolen
things lying around there. So I tiptoed to his door and tried it. It
was locked. Of course,” she added primly, “I didn’t dream Willis Chase
was in there. Yes, I tiptoed to his room and tried the knob. That was
the rattling sound Clive Creede heard just after the stable clock
struck.”
She glanced sharply at Creede. Clive nodded in wordless gratitude.
“As I was starting back toward my suite,” she went on, “I heard Thax
begin to climb the stairs. I crouched back behind the highboy in the
upper hall. I didn’t care to be seen at that time of night rambling
around my host’s house in such costume--or lack of costume. (It was not
coyness, understand. It was fear of ridicule. Coyness, in a woman of my
age, is like a scarecrow left in a field after the crop is gathered.)”
“Auntie!” protested Doris again, but Miss Gregg went on unchecked:
“Well, there I hid while he went past me, near enough for me to have
stuck a pin in him. And, by the way, he did _not_ try the knob of the
room where Willis Chase was. He didn’t try any doors at all. He just
groped along till he came to the third story stairs. Then he went up
them.”
There was a slight general rustle at this announcement. Miss Gregg
resumed:
“I wondered what he had been doing in his study alone at one o’clock. I
wondered if he was looking over the loot there. I couldn’t resist the
temptation to find out. (You know, Chief, I believe that Providence
sends us our temptations in order that we may yield to them gracefully.
If we resist them, the time will come when Providence will rebuke our
stubbornness by sending us no more temptations. And a temptationless
old age is a hideous thing to look forward to. But that is beside the
point. Excuse me for moralizing. The idea just occurred to me, and it
seemed too good to keep to myself.) Let me see--where was I?”
“You said you were tempted to go down to the study while Mr. Vail was
in the third story,” prompted Quimby. “To see if you could find--”
“Oh, yes,” she recalled herself. “Quite so. I was tempted. That means
I yielded. I scuttled down there as fast and as quietly as I could. I
almost fell over the dratted dog at the bottom of the stairs. I got
to the study at last. But I barely had time to inspect the desk top
and one or two drawers--no sign of the plunder in any of them--when I
heard Thax Vail coming downstairs. There was no chance to run back to
my room. So I--I-- In short, I so far lost the stately dignity which
I like to believe has always been mine, as to--in fact, to dodge down
behind the desk--in the narrow space between it and the wall. By the
way, Thax, you must--you simply _must_--tell Horoson to see the maids
sweep more carefully in that cranny. I was deathly afraid the dust
would make me sneeze. It was shamefully thick.”
“Well, ma’am?” again prompted Quimby.
“Excuse me, Chief. I am a housewife myself. (That’s the only kind of
wife I or any one else ever cared for me to be, by the way.) Well,
there I hid. Thax came into the study. And as he wouldn’t go out of it
I had to sit there on the floor. I suppose it was only for a couple of
hours at most, though I could have sworn it was at least nine Arctic
winters. All of me went to sleep except my brain. My legs were dead
except when they took turns at pringling. So was my back till I got a
crick in it. And the dust--”
“While you were there,” asked the chief, “did Mr. Vail leave the room?”
“If he had,” she retorted, in fierce contempt, “do you suppose I’d have
kept on sitting there in anguish, man? No, the inconsiderate ruffian
stayed. He didn’t even have the decency to go to sleep so I could
escape. I heard the stable clock strike two, and then, several months
later, I hear it strike three. (Oh, I forgot! My hands are on the Book.
It struck three an hour later. Not several months later.) Then, just
after it struck three that wretched man got up and stretched and went
out.”
“Yes?”
“He walked to the front door and opened it. By that time I was on my
feet. Both of them were asleep--both my feet, I mean--and I had to
stamp them awake. It took me perhaps five seconds, and it hurt like
the very mischief. Then I was for creeping up to bed. But as I saw the
open front door I was tempted again. I thought perhaps he had had some
signal from an accomplice outside--a signal I hadn’t heard. I went
toward the door. And at that instant the collie here set up the most
awful yowling. I bolted past him up the stairs. As I got to the top I
looked back. Macduff was still yowling. And Thax Vail came running into
the house to see what ailed the cur.”
“Then--”
“What I am getting at is that Thax was not out of my sight for more
than thirty seconds in all--thirty seconds at the very _most_,” she
concluded. “And I leave it to your own common sense if he could have
climbed to the window of his room in that time, found and killed Willis
Chase in the dark (he carried no flashlight--I saw that through the
kneehole of the desk as he went out), climbed down again and gotten
into the house--all inside of thirty seconds. He couldn’t. And you know
he couldn’t.”