THE INDEX FINGER POINTS.
John Davidson, the marshal, was officially supposed to be endowed with
insight into the origin of fires. In fact, he drew a comfortable salary
for pursuing no other occupation than this. A swift horse and a buggy
enabled him to be among the first to arrive and a uniform of dark blue
cloth, such as old sailors cling to, but with brass buttons for insignia
in place of the little woven anchor that serves to remind the old salt
of his element, entitled him to salutes from fire captains as well as
from the rank and file. His written reports were read by insurance
underwriters, and his wise shake of the head went a great way with those
who knew little about fires and less about John Davidson.
For "old John Davidson," as he was generally known, had one failing
which sadly impaired his official usefulness. He was an innate and
inveterate optimist. The mild-blue eyes which beamed from behind his
spectacles--old eyes, too, that no longer saw things as vividly as they
used to--were meant to train fatherly glances on winsome children or
dart gleams of approval at heroic hosemen whose sacrifices were rewarded
by medal or purse. Indeed, he was very popular in both these functions,
for old John Davidson had himself served his country and was comrade
John of Sherman post, No. 5. But these kindly orbs were not those of the
hawk, the lynx or the ferret, like Inspector McCausland's, of whose
small gray pair, eyelets rather than eyes, rumor said that the off one
contained a microscopic lens and its nigh fellow never went to sleep.
"John Davidson will never set the world on fire himself," Inspector
McCausland had said when the veteran's nomination was first reported.
Yet "old John" went his way cheerfully poohpoohing suspicion and really
diffusing a globe of good feeling by his presence such as no fox in the
police ranks could pretend to radiate.
However, the wisdom of the serpent is called for at times, as well as
the meekness of the dove. When Marshal Davidson, against all proof and
persuasion, gave out his intention to report the Arnold fire as
accidental, originating in some unknown manner, or by spontaneous
combustion, owing to the extreme heat of the day (the thermometer having
registered 97), it was felt by his best friends that he allowed his
optimism to blind him too far. He had made the same report in the Low
street fire, the authors of which, an organized gang of blackmailers,
trapped on another charge by McCausland, had just confessed their crime.
Such laxity could only embolden the firebugs and encourage an epidemic
of burnings. Something must be done, the police department thought, and
when they selected Inspector McCausland to work up the case there was a
general faith that something would be done.
By Sunday noon the inspector had gathered an array of data, sufficient
to give a start to his active faculty of divination. Critics said that
his one failing was a slight impatience in feeling his way to a
conclusion, or, as his brother detectives expressed it, a tendency to
"get away before the pistol shot."
"Going to hang some one, Dick?" asked Smith, whose specialty was
counterfeiters.
"Well, we are sowing the hemp," answered McCausland, always ready with a
jovial answer.
The first person upon whom suspicion rested was the Swedish housemaid,
Bertha Lund. But it did not linger long, or with more than a moth-like
pressure, on that robust and straightforward individual. Her story,
thrice repeated in response to questions by the marshal, Chief Federhen,
Inspector McCausland and the district attorney, had not varied a hair,
although each time new details were added, as the questions of the
different examiners opened new aspects of the affair.
"Prime proof of her honesty," said McCausland. "The rote story shrinks
and varies, but never expands."
So the only fruit yielded by the ordeal which Bertha underwent was a
thorough description of the house and household, pieced together from
her replies, and McCausland had soon left her far behind in his search
for a tenable theory.
The cook, Ellen Greeley, had not yet made her appearance. Bertha
professed to have seen her dressing herself in her chamber and gave a
clear description of her clothing, for the benefit of McCausland's
note-book--green plaid skirt, brown waist, straw hat with red, purple
and yellow pompons. Ellen was dressing "uncommonly rich" of late, they
said. Bertha had talked with her upstairs and had heard the back door
slam about the time when Ellen might be supposed to be departing. It had
been the cook's holiday afternoon, and she was going to run over to her
sister's, as she generally did, and return for supper, leaving Bertha to
keep house.
But her sister had not seen her and she had not returned. A slow, heavy
girl, rather apt to take the color of her mood from those around her,
she seemed a creature who might be influenced to wrongdoing, but hardly
the one to instigate it. So far as could be learned, the plain truth was
romantic enough for Ellen Greeley, and she was not accustomed to
embellish it with flowers of her own imagination. Nevertheless, after
exhausting this subject, McCausland checked her name with the mental
note "an accomplice, if anything," and the woman's prolonged absence,
together with those "uncommonly rich" dresses she wore of late, the more
he dwelt on them, prompted him the more to erase the modifying clause
and let his mental comment stand "an accomplice."
But of whom? Ellen's sister and Bertha had both mentioned one Dennis
Mungovan, the cook's sweetheart, who, until three weeks ago, had been
coachman at the Arnold's. Some repartee, or insolence, when reprimanded
for smoking (he was described as a tonguey lout) had provoked his
discharge and he had been heard to threaten vengeance behind the
professor's back, though at the time his words were muttered they were
ignored as a braggart's empty vaporing. Twice he had called to see Ellen
at the house, but he had not shown his face since the week before the
professor died; and even at his favorite haunt, a certain Charles street
stable, all trace of him had been lost. As he was a resident of this
country for less than a year he may have crossed the water again to his
home, but if this were so Bertha felt sure Ellen would have manifested
her lonesomeness. "She had a great heart to the man," said the Swedish
housemaid.
"Well, what have you collected against him?" said the district attorney,
to whom McCausland had just been exhibiting these results of his
investigation. They were alone, save for a bloodhound, in the
inspector's office at police headquarters.
"Opportunity, motive and circumstances. I don't rule out the other two
as accessories, you understand." The "other two" were Mungovan and Ellen
Greeley, who with Robert had been arranged in a triangle by the
detective.
"That remains to be fitted into the developments, I presume?"
"First, as to circumstances. The young man turns up about 11 o'clock at
a fire which started at 3:30, which destroyed his own home, and which
was advertised all over the country within a radius of thirty miles
before sunset."
"In itself not a very damaging circumstance. It might be explained. You
have questioned him on his movements?"
"In two interviews," replied the inspector, puffing his cigar leisurely
and watching the smoke curl as though it were the most fascinating study
in the world just then.
"Account not satisfactory?"
"He has none to give." (Puff.)
"What does he mean by that?"
"Memory a blank between 3:30 and 7:30." (Puff.)
"Up to some mischief, then."
"A curiously opportune lapse," said the inspector, his eye twinkling
humorously. "So much for circumstances after the fact. And now for
opportunity."
"Of course the evidence for opportunity will depend upon the inmates of
the house. You are convinced of Bertha's candor?"
"On my reputation as an adept in mendacity. You have not found me
overcredulous, as a rule?"
"Quite the contrary."
"Bertha was upstairs, Floyd in the study, Ellen, the cook, had just gone
out. After awhile the barking of the St. Bernard in the study aroused
the girl. Something was wrong. She ran down, opened the study door and
fell back before a live crater of smoke and flame. Accident, we agree,
is out of the question. The front door was locked. There was no approach
to the study (up one flight, remember) from the street, unless you
raised a ladder to the window, and half the neighborhood would have seen
this. At least I'm sure the bake-shop girl, Senda Wesner, would have
seen it. The previous actions of Floyd were those of a criminal
meditating crime; his subsequent course until 7:30 he refuses to
explain."
"But the motive, McCausland?" said the district attorney gravely.
McCausland contracted his beady eyelets till they shone like two pin
punctures in a lighted jack-o'-lantern. But a knock at the door delayed
his answer. The bloodhound promptly arose, grasped the knob in his
forepaws, and turning it skillfully, admitted a mulatto attendant in
fatigue uniform, the bloodhound's master patting him approvingly for the
performance.
"Officer Costa to see the inspector," said the attendant.
"Send him in," answered McCausland. "One of my fetch-and-carry
dogs--willing enough, but no hawk."
"I've looked the matter up," said Officer Costa, saluting, and glancing
from McCausland to the district attorney.
"With what result?"
"Dennis Mungovan and Ellen Greeley were privately married on June 18,
before Justice of the Peace Gustavus Schwab, at 126 Harlow street," said
Costa, as if proud of his morsel of information and its precision of
detail.
"Is this our Mungovan?" asked the district attorney, evincing keen
interest.
"What was his description, Costa?" said McCausland.
"Native of Ireland, aged 29; a coachman by occupation. The bride a cook,
born in New Brunswick."
"Very well done. Will you look over the steerage list of the European
steamers for a fortnight back and ahead? We want that couple, if
possible."
"I will," answered Costa, in a manner which showed that the compliment
was not wasted. Once more McCausland rose and looked out before shutting
the door. Evidently this was another of his mannerisms, and perhaps not
the least useful, since one never knows what interlopers may be harking
about.
"We have connected numbers two and three of the triangle," he resumed as
soon as he was fairly seated, "the interests of Mr. and Mrs. Mungovan
being presumably identical."
"I cannot; seriously I cannot credit the charge against Floyd," said the
district attorney, "in face of the tender relations known to have
subsisted between the young man and his uncle."
"Tender"--McCausland's fat face creased all over into dimples of
merriment. "Do young men elope with their grandmothers?"
"Not often," answered the district attorney.
"Neither do they dote madly on their crotchety uncles in the slippers
and dressing-gowns of 78."
"Even at 78 I should expect consideration from a nephew whom I had taken
in as an orphan and raised to wealth and position."
"Wealth and position! Perhaps that's the rub."
"Just what do you mean?"
"I mean that all was not smooth in the Arnold household; that nephew and
uncle were cut too near together from the same block of granite to
match; that they wrangled constantly and that one of their wrangles led
to this very crisis of the will."
"A will?" echoed the district attorney.
"A will" (puff), smiled McCausland, relapsing into silence.
"Prof. Arnold left a will?" repeated the district attorney, slowly, but
McCausland only nodded mysteriously and puffed.
"And--and disinherited the nephew?"
"Exactly--cut him down to $20,000."
"Where is this will?"
"This will was burned. It was the cause of the burning." McCausland had
lowered his voice, if anything, but the district attorney stood up in
horror.
"More wealth changed hands by the destruction of that document,"
continued the inspector, "than was converted into smoke and ashes by the
fire."
"You mean that young Floyd planned to burn up the will which left him a
pauper, so that he might obtain his interest as heir-at-law?"
"That's the motive you were asking for when Costa interrupted us. It was
clumsily done, wasn't it? But not so clumsily, when you look at it
further. The professor kept his valuables in an iron lock-box which he
called a safe. To blow it open was dangerous, unless"--McCausland paused
to drive his meaning home--"unless the sound of the explosion could be
smothered in the general confusion of a fire."
"You attribute the explosions to----"
"Placed the charge himself in a wooden box under the safe. Told Bertha a
plausible story to provide against discovery."
"Six human lives to pay for a few paltry dollars."
"Five million dollars! The professor must have left nearly ten and Floyd
would have shared them equally with the other nephew. Hardly a paltry
figure, $5,000,000! I've seen murder committed for a 10-cent piece."
"But that was manslaughter in the heat of a quarrel."
"To be sure; and by expert Sicilian carvers, with magnifying-glass eyes
and tempers formed between Etna and Vesuvius. But $5,000,000 is a
fortune, Bigelow."
The district attorney paced up and down, meditating. At last he turned
and brought his fist down on the table so hard that the bloodhound
bayed.
"This is murder as well as arson. I want that understood."
"I understood it," smiled the inspector.
"Who saw this will?"
"There's no secret there. Its contents are common property, I should
say. It was Mrs. Arnold, the sister-in-law, who dropped me the first
hint; and Floyd himself has owned that his uncle made a will three weeks
ago, cutting him down to $20,000."
"How did the professor come to postpone his will-making so long?"
"Satisfied, I suppose, with the laws of intestate descent."
"The other heir gets it all?"
"Harry Arnold? No. I believe some goes to charity, the servants and so
on. A $10,000,000 cake will cut up into several neat slices, you know."
But the thoughts of the district attorney seemed to move habitually on a
higher plane.
"Floyd was a sister's son. Perhaps that is why the professor preferred
him to his cousin," he said.
"A life-long preference which does not appear in his testament,
however."
"But why did he cast him off at the eleventh hour?"
"The boy didn't know enough to groom and currycomb the old gentleman
properly. Only 21, you know, and self-willed. That's in the Arnold
blood. Besides, he's a socialist or anarchist, I'm told, and keeps
company with a photographic retoucher as poor as Job. Something of the
sort. Who knows? A straw will turn a man's mind at fourscore."
"And how about Mungovan and the Greeley woman?"
"Accomplices," said McCausland, but added more cautiously, "from present
appearances, at least."
There was a knock on the door and the bloodhound again performed the
duties of sentinel, receiving his master's praise with such marks of
dignified gratification as became his enormous size.
"Miss Wesner," announced the mulatto.
"Presently," answered the inspector. "Well, action or inaction?" he
said, presenting an alternative of two fingers to the district attorney.
"I must go over this evidence in detail. Will you send the Swedish girl
to my office again to-morrow?"
"I think I can lay my hands on her."
At that very moment, in another part of the city Robert Floyd was
walking down to the electric car between a squad of policemen, followed
by a motley crowd that profaned the Sabbath with its clamor. Once aboard
the swift vehicle, he was safe from pursuit, but his liberty was
short-lived. For, as a result of Noah Bigelow's second interview with
Bertha and his review of McCausland's reasoning, a warrant was made out
and he was arrested Monday noon on the charge of arson and homicide.