ONLY ONE EYE CLOSED
My first impulse was to rouse the house; my second, to wait for Hunter.
To turn loose that mob of half-drunken men in such a place seemed
profanation. There was nothing of the majesty or panoply of death here,
but the very sordidness of the surroundings made me resolve to guard the
new dignity of that figure. I was shocked, of course; it would be absurd
to say that I was emotionally unstrung. On the contrary, I was conscious
of a distinct feeling of disappointment. Fleming had been our key to the
Bellwood affair, and he had put himself beyond helping to solve any
mystery. I locked the door and stood wondering what to do next. I should
have called a doctor, no doubt, but I had seen enough of death to know
that the man was beyond aid of any kind.
It was not until I had bolted the door that I discovered the absence of
any weapon. Everything that had gone before had pointed to a position
so untenable that suicide seemed its natural and inevitable result. With
the discovery that there was no revolver on the table or floor, the
thing was more ominous. I decided at once to call the young city
physician in the room across the hall, and with something approximating
panic, I threw open the door--to face Harry Wardrop, and behind him,
Hunter.
I do not remember that any one spoke. Hunter jumped past me into the
room and took in in a single glance what I had labored to acquire in
three minutes. As Wardrop came in, Hunter locked the door behind him,
and we three stood staring at the prostrate figure over the table.
I watched Wardrop: I have never seen so suddenly abject a picture. He
dropped into a chair, and feeling for his handkerchief, wiped his
shaking lips; every particle of color left his face, and he was limp,
unnerved.
"Did you hear the shot?" Hunter asked me. "It has been a matter of
minutes since it happened."
"I don't know," I said, bewildered. "I heard a lot of explosions, but I
thought it was an automobile, out in the street."
Hunter was listening while he examined the room, peering under the
table, lifting the blankets that had trailed off the couch on to the
floor. Some one outside tried the door-knob, and finding the door
locked, shook it slightly.
"Fleming!" he called under his breath. "Fleming!"
We were silent, in response to a signal from Hunter, and the steps
retreated heavily down the hall. The detective spread the blankets
decently over the couch, and the three of us moved the body there.
Wardrop was almost collapsing.
"Now," Hunter said quietly, "before I call in Doctor Gray from the room
across, what do you know about this thing, Mr. Wardrop?"
Wardrop looked dazed.
"He was in a bad way when I left this morning," he said huskily. "There
isn't much use now trying to hide anything; God knows I've done all I
could. But he has been using cocaine for years, and to-day he ran out of
the stuff. When I got here, about half an hour ago, he was on the verge
of killing himself. I got the revolver from him--he was like a crazy
man, and as soon as I dared to leave him, I went out to try and find a
doctor--"
"To get some cocaine?"
"Yes."
"Not--because he was already wounded, and you were afraid it was fatal?"
Wardrop shuddered; then he pulled himself together, and his tone was
more natural.
"What's the use of lying about it?" he said wearily. "You won't believe
me if I tell the truth, either, but--he was dead when I got here. I
heard something like the bang of a door as I went up-stairs, but the
noise was terrific down below, and I couldn't tell. When I went in, he
was just dropping forward, and--" he hesitated.
"The revolver?" Hunter queried, lynx-eyed.
"Was in his hand. He was dead then."
"Where is the revolver?"
"I will turn it over to the coroner."
"You will give it to me," Hunter replied sharply. And after a little
fumbling, Wardrop produced it from his hip pocket. It was an ordinary
thirty-eight. The detective opened it and glanced at it. Two chambers
were empty.
"And you waited--say ten minutes, before you called for help, and even
then you went outside hunting a doctor! What were you doing in those ten
minutes?"
Wardrop shut his lips and refused to reply.
"If Mr. Fleming shot himself," the detective pursued relentlessly,
"there would be powder marks around the wound. Then, too, he was in the
act of writing a letter. It was a strange impulse, this--you see, he had
only written a dozen words."
I glanced at the paper on the table. The letter had no superscription;
it began abruptly:
"I shall have to leave here. The numbers have followed me.
To-night--"
That was all.
"This is not suicide," Hunter said gravely. "It is murder, and I warn
you, Mr. Wardrop, to be careful what you say. Will you ask Doctor Gray
to come in, Mr. Knox?"
I went across the hall to the room where the noise was loudest.
Fortunately, Doctor Gray was out of the game. He was opening a can of
caviar at a table in the corner and came out in response to a gesture.
He did not ask any questions, and I let him go into the death chamber
unprepared. The presence of death apparently had no effect on him, but
the identity of the dead man almost stupefied him.
"Fleming!" he said, awed, as he looked down at the body. "Fleming, by
all that's sacred! And a suicide!"
Hunter watched him grimly.
"How long has he been dead?" he asked.
The doctor glanced at the bullet wound in the forehead, and from there
significantly to the group around the couch.
"Not an hour--probably less than half," he said. "It's strange we heard
nothing, across the hall there."
Hunter took a clean folded handkerchief from his pocket and opening it
laid it gently over the dead face. I think it was a relief to all of us.
The doctor got up from his kneeling posture beside the couch, and
looked at Hunter inquiringly.
"What about getting him away from here?" he said. "There is sure to be a
lot of noise about it, and--you remember what happened when Butler
killed himself here."
"He was reported as being found dead in the lumber yard," Hunter said
dryly. "Well, Doctor, this body stays where it is, and I don't give a
whoop if the whole city government wants it moved. It won't be. This is
murder, not suicide."
The doctor's expression was curious.
"Murder!" he repeated. "Why--who--"
But Hunter had many things to attend to; he broke in ruthlessly on the
doctor's amazement.
"See if you can get the house empty, Doctor; just tell them he is
dead--the story will get out soon enough."
As the doctor left the room Hunter went to the open window, through
which a fresh burst of rain was coming, and closed it. The window gave
me an idea, and I went over and tried to see through the streaming pane.
There was no shed or low building outside, but not five yards away the
warehouse showed its ugly walls and broken windows.
"Look here, Hunter," I said, "why could he not have been shot from the
warehouse?"
"He could have been--but he wasn't," Hunter affirmed, glancing at
Wardrop's drooping figure. "Mr. Wardrop, I am going to send for the
coroner, and then I shall ask you to go with me to the office and tell
the chief what you know about this. Knox, will you telephone to the
coroner?"
In an incredibly short time the club-house was emptied, and before
midnight the coroner himself arrived and went up to the room. As for me,
I had breakfasted, lunched and dined on horrors, and I sat in the
deserted room down-stairs and tried to think how I was to take the news
to Margery.
At twelve-thirty Wardrop, Hunter and the coroner came down-stairs,
leaving a detective in charge of the body until morning, when it could
be taken home. The coroner had a cab waiting, and he took us at once to
Hunter's chief. He had not gone to bed, and we filed into his library
sepulchrally.
Wardrop told his story, but it was hardly convincing. The chief, a large
man who said very little, and leaned back with his eyes partly shut,
listened in silence, only occasionally asking a question. The coroner,
who was yawning steadily, left in the middle of Wardrop's story, as if
in his mind, at least, the guilty man was as good as hanged.
"I am--I was--Mr. Allan Fleming's private secretary," Wardrop began. "I
secured the position through a relationship on his wife's side. I have
held the position for three years. Before that I read law. For some time
I have known that Mr. Fleming used a drug of some kind. Until a week ago
I did not know what it was. On the ninth of May, Mr. Fleming sent for
me. I was in Plattsburg at the time, and he was at home. He was in a
terrible condition--not sleeping at all, and he said he was being
followed by some person who meant to kill him. Finally he asked me to
get him some cocaine, and when he had taken it he was more like himself.
I thought the pursuit was only in his own head. He had a man named
Carter on guard in his house, and acting as butler.
"There was trouble of some sort in the organization; I do not know just
what. Mr. Schwartz came here to meet Mr. Fleming, and it seemed there
was money needed. Mr. Fleming had to have it at once. He gave me some
securities to take to Plattsburg and turn into money. I went on the
tenth--"
"Was that the day Mr. Fleming disappeared?" the chief interrupted.
"Yes. He went to the White Cat, and stayed there. No one but the
caretaker and one other man knew he was there. On the night of the
twenty-first, I came back, having turned my securities into money. I
carried it in a package in a small Russia leather bag that never left my
hand for a moment. Mr. Knox here suggested that I had put it down, and
it had been exchanged for one just like it, but I did not let it out of
my hand on that journey until I put it down on the porch at the Bellwood
house, while I tried to get in. I live at Bellwood, with the Misses
Maitland, sisters of Mr. Fleming's deceased wife. I don't pretend to
know how it happened, but while I was trying to get into the house it
was rifled. Mr. Knox will bear me out in that. I found my grip empty."
I affirmed it in a word. The chief was growing interested.
"What was in the bag?" he asked.
Wardrop tried to remember.
"A pair of pajamas," he said, "two military brushes and a clothes-brush,
two or three soft-bosomed shirts, perhaps a half-dozen collars, and a
suit of underwear."
"And all this was taken, as well as the money?"
"The bag was left empty, except for my railroad schedule."
The chief and Hunter exchanged significant glances. Then--
"Go on, if you please," the detective said cheerfully.
I think Wardrop realized the absurdity of trying to make any one believe
that part of the story. He shut his lips and threw up his head as if he
intended to say nothing further.
"Go on," I urged. If he could clear himself he must. I could not go back
to Margery Fleming and tell her that her father had been murdered and
her lover was accused of the crime.
"The bag was empty," he repeated. "I had not been five minutes trying to
open the shutters, and yet the bag had been rifled. Mr. Knox here found
it among the flowers below the veranda, empty."
The chief eyed me with awakened interest.
"You also live at Bellwood, Mr. Knox?"
"No, I am attorney to Miss Letitia Maitland, and was there one night as
her guest. I found the bag as Mr. Wardrop described, empty."
The chief turned back to Wardrop.
"How much money was there in it when you--left it?"
"A hundred thousand dollars. I was afraid to tell Mr. Fleming, but I had
to do it. We had a stormy scene, this morning. I think he thought the
natural thing--that I had taken it."
"He struck you, I believe, and knocked you down?" asked Hunter smoothly.
Wardrop flushed.
"He was not himself; and, well, it meant a great deal to him. And he was
out of cocaine; I left him raging, and when I went home I learned that
Miss Jane Maitland had disappeared, been abducted, at the time my
satchel had been emptied! It's no wonder I question my sanity."
"And then--to-night?" the chief persisted.
"To-night, I felt that some one would have to look after Mr. Fleming; I
was afraid he would kill himself. It was a bad time to leave while Miss
Jane was missing. But--when I got to the White Cat I found him dead. He
was sitting with his back to the door, and his head on the table."
"Was the revolver in his hand?"
"Yes."
"You are sure?" from Hunter. "Isn't it a fact, Mr. Wardrop, that you
took Mr. Fleming's revolver from him this morning when he threatened you
with it?"
Wardrop's face twitched nervously.
"You have been misinformed," he replied, but no one was impressed by his
tone. It was wavering, uncertain. From Hunter's face I judged it had
been a random shot, and had landed unexpectedly well.
"How many people knew that Mr. Fleming had been hiding at the White
Cat?" from the chief.
"Very few--besides myself, only a man who looks after the club-house in
the mornings, and Clarkson, the cashier of the Borough Bank, who met him
there once by appointment."
The chief made no comment.
"Now, Mr. Knox, what about you?"
"I opened the door into Mr. Fleming's room, perhaps a couple of minutes
after Mr. Wardrop went out," I said. "He was dead then, leaning on his
outspread arms over the table; he had been shot in the forehead."
"You heard no shot while you were in the hall?"
"There was considerable noise; I heard two or three sharp reports like
the explosions of an automobile engine."
"Did they seem close at hand?"
"Not particularly; I thought, if I thought at all, that they were on the
street."
"You are right about the automobile," Hunter said dryly. "The mayor sent
his car away as I left to follow Mr. Wardrop. The sounds you heard were
not shots."
"It is a strange thing," the chief reflected, "that a revolver could be
fired in the upper room of an ordinary dwelling house, while that house
was filled with people--and nobody hear it. Were there any powder marks
on the body?"
"None," Hunter said.
The chief got up stiffly.
"Thank you very much, gentlemen," he spoke quietly. "I think that is
all. Hunter, I would like to see you for a few minutes."
I think Wardrop was dazed at finding himself free; he had expected
nothing less than an immediate charge of murder. As we walked to the
corner for a car or cab, whichever materialized first, he looked back.
"I thought so," he said bitterly. A man was loitering after us along the
street. The police were not asleep, they had only closed one eye.
The last train had gone. We took a night electric car to Wynton, and
walked the three miles to Bellwood. Neither of us was talkative, and I
imagine we were both thinking of Margery, and the news she would have to
hear.
It had been raining, and the roads were vile. Once Wardrop turned
around to where we could hear the detective splashing along, well
behind.
"I hope he's enjoying it," he said. "I brought you by this road, so he'd
have to wade in mud up to his neck."
"The devil you did!" I exclaimed. "I'll have to be scraped with a knife
before I can get my clothes off."
We both felt better for the laugh; it was a sort of nervous reaction.
The detective was well behind, but after a while Wardrop stood still,
while I plowed along. They came up together presently, and the three of
us trudged on, talking of immaterial things.
At the door Wardrop turned to the detective with a faint smile. "It's
raining again," he said, "you'd better come in. You needn't worry about
me; I'm not going to run away, and there's a couch in the library."
The detective grinned, and in the light from the hall I recognized the
man I had followed to the police station two nights before.
"I guess I will," he said, looking apologetically at his muddy clothes.
"This thing is only a matter of form, anyhow."
But he didn't lie down on the couch. He took a chair in the hall near
the foot of the stairs, and we left him there, with the evening paper
and a lamp. It was a queer situation, to say the least.