The Third Murder
Miss MacDonald had thought it necessary to have Martha’s body exhumed
and sent to San Francisco. That is what the coroner and the undertaker
had been about on their second trip to the ranch. Sam had not wanted
any of us to know about it, particularly he had not wanted Mrs. Ricker
to know. That had suited Miss MacDonald better, too; so they had had
the men do the work while we were all at dinner that day. They had
been careful to fix the grave so that it would not show that it had
been disturbed; and then, being men, they had left their shovels right
there in the cabin for the first person to find. As you know, the
first person had been Mrs. Ricker.
We had been waiting ever since for the chemist’s report. Sam’s looks
and actions, now, kept the question from my lips. I thought that the
report must have contained some new horror. In a way, it had; but
Sam’s first words were reassuring.
“It is too good to be true,” he said, and repeated, dazedly, “too good
to be true. Miss MacDonald had her assistants trace the prescription
from Doctor Roe. The powders were harmless. I didn’t cause my girl’s
death. The report proves—Miss MacDonald says—— The report proves——”
“Take it easy, Sam. What does the report prove?”
“Somebody gave her a deadly poison. The chemists found two traces. One
they can’t analyze. That’s why they’ve kept us waiting so long for the
report. They are still working on it, hoping for results. The other
was nitrobenzene. Miss MacDonald says that, in small doses, induces
coma and takes as long as twenty-four hours to act. But it is apt not
to be deadly by itself. It was combined with this other drug—the one
that must have made death certain.”
Miss MacDonald came hurrying into the kitchen. She was holding the
monkey charm bracelet in her hand.
“See here,” she said, “this bangle thing opens. I think we can be
certain that the poison she took, or was given, came out of it. There
is a trace of the odor. Smell it.”
She handed it to me. It smelled a little like shoe polish, with sort
of a faint almond flavoring, underneath. I gave it to Sam, who had
been reaching out his hand for it. He smelled it, and then knotted it
up in his fist.
Remembering, I can’t think of anything that he said which would do to
quote. The gist of it was, that if Gaby had given Martha the poison,
he was not sorry that Gaby had been killed, because justice had been
done. He went on to say that, if she had not given it to Martha
purposely, but only carelessly, forgetting its deadliness, he reckoned
that things had turned out for the best, as far as Gaby was concerned,
anyway. Not satisfied with that, he expressed, violently, his regrets
that vengeance had been taken out of his hands.
“It isn’t vengeance you want, Mr. Stanley,” Miss MacDonald reminded
him, pretty sternly, “but justice. That is within our reach. I am
practically certain that the person who poisoned Martha, who strangled
Miss Canneziano and her father, is right here on this place——”
“Hold on,” Sam interrupted. “Considering that this person is a
poisoner and a strangler, and that he is around loose and careless,
and that we may all be murdered in our beds, or out of ’em, or
poisoned at our meals, it seems to me the next move is to telephone to
the sheriff, and have him out here in a hurry, with some men——”
“Nothing of the sort,” Miss MacDonald snapped at him. “I have told you
before, and I tell you again, that as matters stand now I am the only
person on the ranch who is in the least danger. I did not say that I
was certain. I said that I was practically certain. I can’t be certain
until I have some proof, some evidence. At present, I have not one
scrap of either——”
“Then you can’t know who the guilty person is.”
“Exactly what I have just said. My work from now on is to get that
proof. If you would help me, instead of——”
Sam interrupted, his whole body straining forward with his eagerness.
“Tell us who he is, and where he is, and we’ll help you, right
enough.”
“I can’t tell you. Not unless you want to have still another murder on
the Desert Moon Ranch. But you can help me. First, by keeping the
discovery of the poison a secret. Second, by allowing everyone else on
the place to suppose that I am still in a state of entire bafflement
concerning the crime. Third, and most important, perhaps, by having
patience with me.”
“Ye’a,” Sam said, “and while we are sitting around, having patience,
this bird will walk off to some green hill far away. I think the boys
are doing their best to guard the place, but this bird’s a slicker.
What’s to keep him from, say, dressing in my clothes some night, and
riding merrily away on Bobbie Burns or Wishbone? All he’d have to do
is to give the boys a high-sign and they’d let him ride to hell, if
they thought he was me. Another thing—I can’t trust all my punchers.
Some of them are greasers, some half-breeds. Money, and not much of
it, talks pretty loud to some of those boys.”
“At present, the person I suspect has no intention of leaving the
place.”
“When you don’t know anything else, how can you know that?”
“I didn’t say that I didn’t know anything else.”
“Do you know, and will you tell me, why you can’t put this fellow
where the dogs won’t bite him, while you are collecting the proof,
evidence, and so on that you think you need?”
“For one reason, because I am not a police detective. Sometimes it is
necessary to use their methods of arresting each suspect and getting
the evidence afterward—third degrees, so on. That method, by the way,
accounts for the number of criminals who are able to make complete
escapes. It is a stupid, bungling method—and a brutal one. I detest
it. I have used it only twice in the seven years that I have been in
this work. I used it then because it was necessary. I will not use it
now, because it is not necessary. This case will come to the grand
jury complete, with indisputable proofs. If I had known—suspected I
mean, before Mr. Canneziano was killed, what I now suspect——” She
stopped short, evidently afraid of saying too much.
“Ye’a,” Sam argued, “but nothing has happened since then. What I can’t
get, is how you think you are ever going to find the proof—the
evidence.”
“Well——” she began. “Because,” she finished, quite tartly, and walked
out of the room.
“‘Because,’” Sam mimicked, almost before she was out of hearing
distance. “It was a black day for me, and for the Desert Moon, when I
put this thing up to a ‘because’ woman.”
I more than half agreed with him, but I was not going to let him know
it. “Did you notice,” I questioned, chiefly to turn his mind from the
subject of “because” women, “that she kept saying that she thought the
person she suspected was on the place? I mean—she didn’t say that he
was living in the house.”
“House! Hell! Of course she didn’t say house. Why should she say
house? Haven’t we been over and over it? Aren’t we fair frazzled out,
every last one of us, from climbing up those front and back stairs,
with our minds, all day long and half the night? Counting minutes,
counting seconds; going to the barn and back, over and over. Nobody
who lives in this house could have done it. That is settled. That is
fact. Not unless some one of us was able to be in two places at the
same time between four and five o’clock that day.”
Something clicked in my mind. I declare to goodness, I felt the click,
plain as a twinge of toothache. It scared me. I put both my hands over
the place in the front of my head. I felt as dazed, and as shaken, as
if I had been sleep-walking, and had bumped into a door, in the dark,
and wakened to find myself in a strange, brightly lighted room.
“No sir-ee,” Sam went on, too busy with his own ideas, I suppose, to
notice my actions, which must have been peculiar, “if the murderer is
still on the place, he is skulking around here in hiding. It is that
strangler fellow, all right. I’ll bet my last dollar on it. For some
reason, he is trying to clean out the Canneziano family—all of them.
I’ll bet he told Martha to give the poison to Danny, not knowing what
a child Martha was—or, maybe, knowing it. Martha, supposing the poison
was candy, or something nice, ate it up herself. I tell you what, I’m
going to do some proof hunting, now, on my own hook. If I find some
stranger hiding out on this place, that will be good enough proof for
Sam Stanley, and for any jury in Nevada.
“Of course, Mary, it hasn’t been so hard on you—not having to feel the
responsibility the way I have. But I’ve come to the end of my rope.
I’m going to use my own head, now. I’ve got to get an expert here, for
one thing, to watch and guard over Danny. . . . Say, what’s the matter
with you, Mary? You look so funny. Do you feel sick, or something?”
“‘Something,’” I said, “but, at that, I suppose it isn’t near as bad
as feeling responsibility.”
If I’d stayed there listening to him for one more minute I’d have
burst. I left him, and went running, like the crazy thing I was, up
the back stairs to my own room.