New Suspicions
I found him in the living-room, playing solitaire. Mrs. Ricker was in
the chair by the window, tatting.
“Lands, Sam,” I said, sitting down across the table from him, “when
did you take to sitting around and wasting good time like this?”
“I am helping Miss MacDonald,” he said. “Making it easy for her to
watch me and convincing her that I’m more or less of a nut, at the
same time. Two birds with one stone——”
“She isn’t watching you,” Mrs. Ricker spoke up. “She is watching
Hubert and me.”
Queer that with all the years I had known Mrs. Ricker as a dumb
person, now that she had begun to talk, her talking seemed only
natural.
“I reckon,” Sam said, “that she is watching all of us pretty closely.”
“No,” Mrs. Ricker insisted, “she is watching Hubert and me. Chiefly
me. I can’t stand it much longer. I am losing my mind. If I don’t
leave here, before long, I shall be quite insane.”
I can’t say that Sam’s ears actually pricked up when she said that,
but they gave that impression.
“I didn’t know that you were thinking about leaving here, Mrs.
Ricker,” he said.
“I am thinking about it; because, if I don’t leave here, soon, I shall
have to be taken—to an insane asylum.”
“Now, now, Mrs. Ricker,” Sam urged, “don’t be feeling like that. It is
just a case of watch and let watch around here, now——”
“It certainly is not a case of live and let live,” she said. “I tell
you, I can’t stand it!” She jumped up from her chair, and went rushing
out of the room through the front door. On the porch she dropped into
a chair, and hid her face in her hands.
As I looked at her, sitting there, I remembered that it was she who
had found the body. Her story had sounded straight enough; but, before
she had told it, she had had plenty of time to make it a straight one.
Perhaps she had had help in making it a straight one. . . .
Hubert Hand. He had, by his own admission, served a term in prison for
forgery. He had had notes from Gaby, and had destroyed them. Was it
possible that he might have written the farewell note to Gaby, and the
inscription on the photograph? Sam could not swear that Hubert Hand
had been in the barn the entire hour between five and six o’clock.
That meant, then, that no one knew, positively, where he had been
between five and six o’clock. I remembered how eager he had been, at
first, to prove that John was the guilty person; how readily he had
accepted the theory of Martha’s guilt. That theory had been Mrs.
Ricker’s. Mrs. Ricker loved Hubert Hand. She had loved Martha, too;
but Martha was dead.
Would it have been possible for Hubert Hand to have slipped into the
house, through the front door, during that hour between five and six,
without Danny’s having seen him? Possible—that was all. Danny had cut
the bread, in the kitchen. She had emptied jelly from its glass to a
dish; had cut the butter. Each task a matter of minutes; but coming
through the front door and getting upstairs would be a matter of
minutes, also. Mrs. Ricker, of course, would have seen Hubert Hand
pass through the room; but Mrs. Ricker could keep a secret.
Again, what had he thought that I had overheard that day in the cabin?
What motive could he have had for killing Gaby? Suppose that Gaby had
lied to Danny about the entire contents of the code letter, and that,
after all, the money had been hidden on the place. That would be an
explanation for Canneziano’s coming to the ranch. But suppose that
Hubert Hand had found it, or had known that Gaby had found it——
“Come home, Mary,” Sam’s voice, speaking extra low, cut in on my
reverie. “I want to know what you think about this.
“I set Canneziano to mending the south clover fence this morning. I
told him I was going to north clover. On my way there, I passed the
house. I happened to remember how slick Miss MacDonald had cleaned the
attic. It seemed a shame not to use it; so I went up, taking my field
glasses with me, for luck. I’d watched about five minutes, out of the
window, when I saw Canneziano leave the fence and make up toward the
cabin. I came down, jumped on Bobbie Burns, and circled around the
hill, back of the cabin. Just as I got my glasses trained, I saw
Danny, walking to beat time, coming away from the cabin. I don’t know
whether she had been in it or not. I didn’t see her come out of it. I
rode straight down. Before I had quite reached the cabin, Canneziano
came out of it. He was carrying a fishing rod, and he went right down
to the stream with it. What I’m wondering is, had he and Danny met at
the cabin, and had a talk?”
“I know exactly what Mrs. Ricker means,” I said, “about losing her
mind on this place. It has come to the pass that no one can do any
simple thing without being spied on and suspected. Danny always takes
her walks in the direction of the cabin. We all do. It is the
prettiest, coolest walk on the place.”
“Does she always walk so fast, trying to keep cool?”
“Probably not,” I said, “unless she has seen Canneziano, and is
walking fast, trying to get away from him.”
Sam rubbed the back of his head. “By Joe! I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Think about it now, for a minute,” I advised. “When you get through,
try to think whether you know of any place where we could get hold of
a scrap or two of Gaby’s handwriting. We have the last note she wrote
to Danny, but we want something more.”
“You’ve come to the right place, for once,” he said, and took a long
envelope out of his pocket.
“I guess I never happened to mention to you, did I, that I fixed up a
small checking account for the girls in the Telko Bank? It was just a
matter of my own convenience—saved me the pesky trouble of buying
money orders at the postoffice. Their bank statements and canceled
checks came in a few days ago. I was going to look them over, soon as
I could get around to it. Here they are. Do you want me to take them
up to Miss MacDonald?”
“I’ll take them,” I offered, “and save you the trip.” I longed to see
how much of Sam’s money the girls had spent in one month, and what
they had spent it for.
I don’t know yet whether it was cunning, contrariness, or courtesy
that propelled Sam up those stairs, with the envelope tight in his
hand, and without having allowed me as much as a peek at its contents.