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."