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 fiance, 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 fiance?"
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.