MR. MERRITT INSTRUCTS ME
Fred's letter was a great relief to me. I had not dared to allow my
thoughts to dwell on the man whom I had seen in May Derwent's apartment
on that eventful night. The supposition, however, that it was her
brother, explained everything satisfactorily. Nothing could be more
likely than that this angel of mercy should give shelter to this
returned prodigal, and try to save him from the punishment he so richly
deserved. But what cared I what _he_ had done? She--she--was immaculate.
At the hospital that morning, I was in such good spirits that I had some
difficulty in keeping my elation within bounds. As it was, I noticed
that several nurses eyed me with suspicion.
My preoccupation about Miss Derwent's affairs had been so great
that I had hardly given a thought to the mysterious murder, and was
consequently very much surprised, on returning home that afternoon, to
find the detective patiently awaiting me.
"Well, Mr. Merritt," I exclaimed; "glad to see you; what can I do for
you? Anything wrong with your heart, or your liver, or your nerves, eh?"
"Well, Doctor, I guess my nerves are pretty near all right," he
answered, with a slow smile.
"I'm glad to hear it. Won't you sit down?"
He selected a comfortable chair, and we sat down facing each other. I
wondered what could be coming next.
"Now, Doctor," he began, in a matter-of-fact voice, "I'd like you to
tell me all you know of the murder."
He had taken me completely by surprise, but I am learning to control my
features, and flatter myself that I did not move a muscle as I quietly
replied:
"This is a very strange question, and I can only answer that I know
nothing."
"Oh, hardly as little as that," the detective rejoined, with irritating
complacency.
"Just as little as that," I asserted, with some warmth.
"Well, Doctor, if that is the case, you can no doubt explain a few
things that have been puzzling me. In the first place, will you tell me
why, if you were not expecting another victim, you showed such surprise
at the sight of the corpse? What reason could you have had for being
so deeply interested in the relative positions of your roof--not your
office, mind you, but your roof--and the room in which the body was
found, unless you had noticed something unusual from that point of
observation? Why were you so sure that the Derwent's flat was occupied,
if you had not seen some person or persons there? By the way, I noticed
that from your roof I could look directly into their windows. Again, you
betrayed great surprise when Miss Derwent lifted her veil. Why did you
do so, except that you had previously seen a very different looking
person in her apartment? And why did you select the Atkins's two
servants out of all the people in the building, to question about a
certain noise, but that you yourself had heard a scream coming from
their premises? And, lastly, you showed an unexplained interest in the
back door of the Rosemere, which is particularly suggestive in view of
the fact that this window is exactly opposite to it. I need only add
that your presence on the roof during some part of Wednesday night,
or early Thursday morning, is attested by the fact that I found some
pipe-ash near the chimney. You smoke a pipe, I see" (pointing to
a rack full of them); "your janitor does not, neither do your two
fellow-lodgers. Besides that, all the other occupants of this house are
willing to swear that they have not been on the roof recently, and those
ashes could not have been long where I found them; the wind would have
scattered them. You see, I know very little, but I know enough to be
sure that you know more."
I was perfectly dumbfounded, and gazed at the detective for some moments
without speaking.
"Well, granted that I was on the roof during a part of Wednesday night,
what of it? And if I did hear or see anything suspicious, how can you
prove it, and above all, how can you make me tell you of it?"
"I can't," rejoined Mr. Merritt, cheerfully. "I can only ask you to do
so."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then I shall have to delay satisfying my curiosity till we meet in
court, but I do not doubt that my patience will then be adequately
rewarded, for a skilful lawyer will surely be able to get at many
details that would escape me, and I hardly think that you would resort
to perjury to shield two women whom I am convinced you never laid eyes
on before yesterday, and have certainly not seen since." The detective
paused.
I still hesitated, for I felt an extreme reluctance to further
compromise that poor girl by anything I might say.
"Come, Doctor," he urged, leaning forward and placing his hand on my
knee, "don't you think it would be better for all parties for you to
tell me what you know? I am as anxious to shield the innocent as you
can be. By withholding valuable information you may force me to put a
young lady through a very trying and public ordeal, which I am sure
might be easily spared her, if I only knew a few more facts of the
case."
This last argument decided me, and making a virtue of necessity I
gave him a minute account of all I had seen and heard. When I came to
describing the man's prolonged search Mr. Merritt nodded several times
with great satisfaction.
"Can't you tell me a little more how this man looked?" he eagerly
inquired. "You must have seen him pretty clearly while he was moving
around that lighted room. Had he any hair on his face?"
"Well," I confessed, "it is a funny thing, but I can't for the life of
me remember; I've tried to; sometimes I think he was clean shaven, and
again I am sure he had a small moustache."
The detective glared at me for a moment; it was difficult for him to
forgive such aggravating lack of memory. To be given such an opportunity
and to foozel it! He heaved a sigh of resignation as he inquired:
"Can you remember how he was dressed?"
"Oh, yes," I replied with alacrity, anxious to retrieve myself, "he had
on a white shirt and dark trousers, and his sleeves were rolled back."
"Did he close the windows before he left?"
"Yes, and he pulled down the blinds also."
"You are sure that you saw no one in the apartment resembling Miss
Derwent?"
"Quite sure; the woman I saw was taller and had flat, black hair."
"What do you mean by 'flat'?"
"Why, nowadays girls wear their hair loose; it bulges away from their
faces; but hers lay tight to her head in a flat, black mass," I
explained.
I then harped on the probability of the return of Miss May's prodigal
brother, and suggested the possibility that the dark-haired woman might
be his wife.
"Well, well, Doctor! This is all very interesting. The story of the
brother, especially. You see, I had already discovered that a man had
spent many hours in her apartment----"
"How did you find that out?" I interrupted.
"Oh, quite easily," rejoined the detective; "as soon as all the
excitement was over yesterday, I made McGorry open the Derwent's
apartments for me. You may imagine what a fuss he made about it. Well
anyhow he got me----"
"But why did you want to get in?" I inquired; "did you suspect her?"
"No," he replied, "I did not. But in my profession you take no chances.
Impressions, intuitions, are often of great value, only you must be
careful always to verify them. I was almost sure that the young lady was
innocent, but it was my business to prove her so. Now, it is certain
that the person, or persons, who smuggled the corpse into the room where
it was found, must, at one time or another, have had the key of that
apartment in their possession, and there are only three people whom we
know of as yet who were in a position to have had it. These three are:
Miss Derwent, the French butler, and, of course, McGorry. So far I have
not been able to connect the latter two, even in the most indirect way,
with the catastrophe. Unfortunately, that is not the case with the young
lady. One person, at least, has identified the body as that of her
visitor, and your behaviour," he added, with a smile, "led me to believe
that you suspected her of something. Not of the crime, I felt sure of
that, but of _what_, then? I determined to find out, and now that I have
done so, let me tell you that I am still convinced of her innocence."
I jumped up and shook him by the hand. "So am I, so am I," I exclaimed.
"But this is a very queer case," he continued, "and I shall need all the
assistance you can give me, if----"
"You shall have it," I broke in, enthusiastically; "anything I can do.
But tell me, first, how you found out about Miss Derwent's brother?"
"Not so fast, young man! At present, we know nothing about a brother. I
only said that I had discovered in the apartment traces of the recent
and prolonged presence of a man, and I may add of a man of some means."
"How did you find that out? Especially about his means?" I inquired,
with a smile.
"Quite easily. In the parlor, which was the first room I entered, I
noticed that every piece of furniture had been lately moved from its
place. Now, this was too heavy a job for a girl to have undertaken
single-handed. Who helped her, I wondered? Her visitor of Tuesday
evening might have been the person, but for various reasons I was
inclined to doubt it. I thought it more likely to have been the woman
whose existence your behaviour had led me to infer. I next examined the
dining-room. A few crumbs showed that it had been used, but I could find
no traces of her mysterious companion. The library had not even been
entered. On the floor above, the front bedroom alone showed signs of
recent occupation. Two crumpled sheets were still on the bed, and in the
drawers were several articles of woman's apparel. Returning to the lower
floor by the back stairs, I found myself in the kitchen. Here, in the
most unexpected place, I discovered an important clue." Mr. Merritt
paused, and looked at me with a gleam of triumph in his eye.
"Yes, yes, and what was that?" I inquired, breathlessly.
"Only the odor, the very faintest ghost of an odor, I may say, of
cigar-smoke."
"In the kitchen?" I exclaimed, incredulously.
"In the kitchen," repeated the detective. "I at once drew up the blinds,
and looked out. The window opened directly on the fire escape, with
nothing opposite but the roofs of some low houses. Pulling out my
magnifying glass, I crawled out. I soon satisfied myself that the stairs
leading up and down had not been recently used; on the other hand, I was
equally sure that someone had very lately been out on the small landing.
So I sat down there and looked about me. I could see nothing. At last,
by peering through the bars of the iron flooring, I thought I could
discern a small brown object, caught in between the slats of the landing
below. I climbed down there mighty quick, I can tell you, and in a
moment held the butt end of a cigar in my hand. It was, as I had
suspected, from the delicate odor it had left behind, one which had cost
about fifty cents. I now extended my search downward, and examined every
window-sill, every crevice, till I reached the basement, and, as a
result of my hunt, I collected five cigar stumps, all of the same
brand. From the number, I concluded that whoever had been in the
apartment had been there a considerable time. From his only smoking in
the kitchen or on the fire-escape, I gathered that he was anxious to
leave no traces of his presence; and lastly, from the quality of his
cigars, I judged him to be a man of means. So you see I had discovered,
even without your assistance, that, although Miss Derwent may have told
us the truth, she certainly had not told us all of it."
I nodded gloomily.
"What you tell me of this dark-haired woman is still more puzzling," the
detective continued. "She has covered up her tracks so well that not
only did I find no trace of her, but no one, not even yourself, saw her
either enter or leave the building. And I should never have dreamed
of her existence if I had not noticed your surprise when Miss Derwent
lifted her veil. Now, the first thing to be done is to try and find
this strange couple, and we will begin by tracing the man whom you saw
leaving the Rosemere with a market-basket. It will be easy enough to
find out if he is nothing but a local tradesman, and if he is _not_,
then in all probability he is the man we want. The detective who is
watching Miss Derwent----"
"A detective watching Miss Derwent!" I exclaimed.
"Why, yes. What did you expect? I sent one down with her to the country
yesterday."
Perhaps I ought to have been prepared for it, but the idea of a common
fellow dogging May Derwent's footsteps, was quite a shock to me, so I
inquired, with considerable ill-humor: "And what does he report?"
"Nothing much. The young lady returned to her mother, as she said she
would, and since then has kept to her room, but has refused to see a
doctor."
"Have you discovered yet who the dead man really is?" I asked, after a
slight pause.
"No," answered the detective, with a troubled look, "and I can't make it
out. Jim and Joe each persists in his own identification. I expected Jim
to weaken, he seemed so much less positive at first, but whether he has
talked himself into the belief that the corpse is that of the young
lady's visitor, or whether it really does resemble him so much as to
give the boy grounds for thinking so, I can't make out."
"I see, however, that _you_ believe the murdered man to be Mrs. Atkins's
friend, of whose history and whereabouts she was so strangely ignorant."
"Well, I don't know," the detective replied. "We have found out that an
Allan Brown did engage a berth on the midnight train to Boston."
"Really? Why, I was sure that Allan Brown was a creation of the little
lady's imagination. By the way, it is a strange coincidence that two
mysterious Allans are connected with this case."
"Yes, I have thought of that," the detective murmured; "and Allan is
no common name, either. But it is a still stranger circumstance that
neither of Allan Brown nor of the murdered man (I am now taking for
granted that they are not identical) can we discover the slightest trace
beyond the solitary fact that an upper berth on the Boston train was
bought on Tuesday afternoon, by a person giving the former's name, and
whose description applies, of course, equally to both. Mrs. Atkins
volunteers the information that Brown was a stranger in the city, and so
far I have no reason to doubt it. Now, a man who can afford to wear a
dress suit, and who is a friend of a woman like Mrs. Atkins, presumably
had fairly decent quarters while he was in town. And yet inquiries have
been made at every hotel and boarding-house, from the cheapest to the
most expensive, and not one of them knows anything of an Allan Brown,
nor do they recognize his description as applying to any of their late
guests. The deceased, of course, may have had rooms somewhere, or a
flat, or even a house, in which case it will take longer to trace him;
although even so, it is remarkable that after such wide publicity has
been given to his description, no one has come forward and reported
him as missing. The morgue has been crowded with idle sightseers, but
nobody as yet claims to have seen the victim before."
"That is queer," I assented, "especially as the dead man was in all
probability a person of some prominence. He certainly must have been
rich. The pearl studs he wore were very fine."
"Oh, those were imitation pearls," said the detective, "and I am
inclined to think that, far from being wealthy, he was, at the time of
his death, extremely badly off, although other indications point to his
having seen better days."
"Really!" I exclaimed.
"Yes; didn't you notice that his clothes, although evidently expensive,
were all decidedly shabby? That his silk socks were almost worn out;
that his pumps were down at the heel?"
"Yes, I did notice something of the kind."
"But those large imitation pearls blinded you to everything else, I
see," Mr. Merritt remarked, with a smile.
"I suppose so," I acknowledged; "they and the sleeve-links with the
crest."
"Ah, those are really interesting, and for the first time in my life I
find myself wishing that we were more careful in this country about the
use of such things. Unfortunately, we are so promiscuous and casual in
adopting any coat-of-arms that happens to strike our fancy that the
links become almost valueless as a clue. Still, I have sent one of them
to an authority in heraldry, and shall be much interested to hear what
he has to say about it. By the way, did anything else strike you as
peculiar about the corpse?"
"No," I answered, after a moment's reflection.
"It did not seem to you odd that no hat was found with the body?"
"Dear me! I never noticed that. How singular! What could have become of
it?"
"Ah, if we only knew that we should be in a fair way to solving this
mystery. For I have found out that, whereas the description of Miss
Derwent's visitor and Mrs. Atkins's friend tally on all other points,
they differ radically on this one. The former wore a panama, whereas
the latter wore an ordinary straw hat. Now, one of those hats must be
somewhere in the Rosemere, and yet I can't find it."
"Mr. Merritt," I inquired, "have you any theory as to the motive of this
murder?"
"Not as yet," he replied. "It may have been jealousy, revenge, or
a desire to be rid of a dangerous enemy, and if you had not given
it as your opinion that the man met his death while wholly or
semi-unconscious, I should have added self-defence to my list of
possibilities. The only thing I am pretty sure of is--that the motive
was not robbery."
"Look here, Mr. Merritt, I can't help wondering that, whereas you have
treated Miss Derwent with the utmost suspicion, have made a thorough
search of her apartment, and have even sent a sleuth to watch her, yet
you have shown such indifference to Mrs. Atkins's movements. Surely
suspicion points quite as strongly to her as to the young lady?"
"No, it doesn't," replied the detective. "The key! You forget the key
cannot so far be connected with her. But, may I ask, who told you that I
had neglected to make inquiries about the lady?"
"Nobody; I only inferred," I stammered.
"You were wrong," continued Mr. Merritt. "I have made every possible
inquiry about Mrs. Atkins. I have even sent a man to Chicago to find out
further particulars, although I have already collected a good deal of
interesting information about the little lady's past life."
"Really? And was there anything peculiar about it?"
"No; I can't exactly say there was. Mrs. Atkins is the only daughter of
a wealthy saloon-keeper, John Day by name, and is twenty-six years old.
Nothing is known against her except that in that city she chose her
companions from amongst a very fast crowd. There is also a rumor, which
the Chicago detective has not been able to verify, that when she was
about sixteen or seventeen years old, she eloped with an Eastern man,
from whom she was almost immediately divorced. At any rate, she has been
known for a good many years as Miss Day, and has lived at home with her
father. The memory of her marriage, if indeed she ever was married, has
grown so dim that a great many people, among whom may be numbered some
of her intimate friends, have never heard of it, and vehemently deny the
whole story. I hope, however, soon to find out the facts of the case.
Young Atkins met his wife last winter at Atlantic City, and at once fell
in love with her. His father, who is a very wealthy contractor, was
strongly opposed to the match. He was very ambitious for his son, and
thought the daughter of a saloon-keeper, whose reputation was none of
the best, was no desirable wife for his boy."
"But they married in spite of him," I said.
"Yes, and old man Atkins has become reconciled to them, and makes them a
very handsome allowance."
"How long have they been married?" I asked.
"Since the fifteenth of April," replied the detective, "and they were
not married in Chicago, but in this city. I guess the lady was not over
anxious to introduce her husband to her former pals."
"I suppose you have searched her apartment for a possible clue,--the
hat, for instance?"
"Yes, but as she has not been out since Wednesday, I have not been able
to make as thorough a search as I should like. She is a shy bird, and I
don't want to frighten her till I have a few more facts to go on. If she
thinks herself watched she may become wary, while now, I hope she will
make use of her fancied security to do something which may give us a
lead."
"Well, Mr. Merritt, I conclude from all this that, although you are
unable to trace the possession of the key to Mrs. Atkins, nevertheless,
your suspicions point towards her?"
"Certainly not. There is nothing to connect her with the tragedy, except
the fact that one negro boy identified the corpse as that of one of her
visitors. On the contrary, the more I look into this case, the less do I
see how the lady could be involved in it. Let us suppose that she did
kill the man. Where could she have secreted him during the twenty-four
hours that must have elapsed before the body was finally disposed of?
The only place of concealment on the lower floor of her apartment is a
coat closet under the stairs, and I doubt very much whether a small,
unmuscular woman like Mrs. Atkins is capable of dragging so large a man
even for a short distance."
"But," I suggested, "the murder may have been committed in the hall,
just a step from this hiding-place."
"Yes, that is, of course, possible. But there is still another
objection. The closet is so small that I do not believe a man could
be got into it without doubling him up, and of that the body shows no
signs. Besides, if Mrs. Atkins is guilty, we must believe her husband to
be her accomplice, for who else could have helped her hide her victim?
Now, you must know that the Atkins men, both father and son, bear
most excellent reputations, especially the young man, of whom every
one speaks in the highest terms, and I do not think that a person
unaccustomed to deceit could have behaved with such perfect composure
in the presence of a corpse of which he had criminal knowledge."
"But he did show some emotion," I urged.
"Oh, yes; I know what you mean,--when he learned that the man was
murdered on Tuesday night he seemed startled."
"Well, how do you account for that?"
"I don't account for it. Why, Doctor, in a case like this there are a
hundred things I can't account for. For instance, what was the cause of
Mrs. Atkins's scream? You have no idea; neither have I. Why did she show
such emotion at the sight of the corpse? I am not prepared to say. Why
did she appear so relieved when she heard that the murder occurred on
Tuesday? I can formulate no plausible explanation for it. And these are
only a few of the rocks that I am running up against all the time."
"But look here. If you really believe Miss Derwent and Mrs. Atkins both
innocent, who do you think killed the man?"
"I don't know. Oh, I am aware that the detective of fiction is always
supposed to be omniscient, but my profession, Doctor, is just like any
other. There is no hocus-pocus about it. To succeed in it requires,
in the first place, accurate and most minute powers of observation,
unlimited patience, the capacity for putting two and two together.
Add to this an unprejudiced mind, and last, but not least, respect,
amounting to reverence, for any established _fact_. Now, the only
_facts_ we have as yet gathered about this murder are: that the man was
young, dissipated, and was stabbed through the heart by some very small
instrument or weapon; that his assailant was an inmate of the Rosemere;
that the crime was committed on Tuesday night; and, lastly, that whoever
placed the body where it was found must, at one time or another, have
had the key to the outside door in his or her possession. Whatever
else we may think or believe, is purely speculative. We presume, for
instance, that the man was poor. As for the other facts we have gleaned
about the different inmates of the building, till we know which one of
them had a hand in this tragedy, we cannot consider what we have learned
about them as throwing any light on the murder. About that, as I said
before, we know mighty little, and even that little is the result of
thirty-eight hours' work, not of one man alone, but of seven or eight."
"Indeed!" I exclaimed.
"Now, both ladies deny that they knew the deceased, and perhaps they
are right. It is, of course, possible that there was a third man in
the building that evening, who was also tall, dark, and wore a pointed
beard. It is not likely, however. Such a coincidence is almost unheard
of. Still it is possible, and that possibility must be reckoned with.
Now, I must be off," said Mr. Merritt, rising abruptly from his chair,
"and if you hear any more of the young lady's movements, let me know.
There's my address. In the meantime, thank you very much for what you
have already told me." And before I could get out one of the twenty
questions that were still burning on my lips, the man was gone.
For some minutes I sat quite still, too miserable to think connectedly.
Alas! my fears had not been groundless. The poor girl was in even
greater trouble than I had supposed. I believed the detective to be a
decent chap, who would keep his mouth shut, but how dreadful to think
that her reputation depended on the discretion of any man. Should it
become known that she had received one young man alone in an empty
apartment, while another was seen there at three o'clock in the
morning, it would mean social death to her. Oh, for the right to offer
her my protection, my services!
Of course, it was now absolutely necessary to trace the man who spent
Tuesday evening with her, and to prove beyond doubt that he was still
alive. I wished that this might be done without her knowledge, so as to
spare her the shock of finding herself suspected of a crime.
Again I thought of Fred, and at once sent him a few lines, begging him
to let me know whether he or his sister knew of any friend or admirer of
Miss Derwent who resembled the enclosed description, and if either of
them did know of such a person, please to telegraph me the man's name,
and, if possible, his address. While giving no reasons for my questions,
I again enjoined the greatest secrecy.