Trafford Gets an Assurance
Trafford sat in his room in the hotel at Bangor the next evening and
studied the copy of Judge Parlin’s statement.
“Her brilliancy of mind has carried her far,” he said; “has aided her
husband politically; and it was this influence that defeated him for
the chief justiceship. It’s so easy that I can’t believe the solution.
By George! I wonder if the old judge ever wrote that paper? I wish I’d
examined the original more critically. If I’d been one of your inspired
detectives, such as you find in novels, I’d probably have caught a
forgery the first thing!”
None the less, he put himself to the task of untangling the threads
of the statement, with a result that set him to deep thinking. Bangor
was not the direction from which had come opposition to the judge’s
nomination. On the contrary, Judge Parlin had been rather a favourite
than otherwise in Bangor, and his cause had received substantial aid.
But the statement did not assert that Wing’s mother had remained in
Bangor, or that it was there that she aided her husband politically.
The most hostile influence that Judge Parlin had encountered was
popularly credited to an ex-Governor, Matthewson, an Eastern Maine man,
who at present held no office, but without whose countenance few men
ventured even to aspire to office.
“If it should prove that Matthewson’s wife is a Bangor woman, ’twould
be so easy as to be absurd,” Trafford mused. “The old judge wasn’t
silly enough to believe that what he wrote could conceal her identity.
Either he meant it should be known to Wing or Mrs. Parlin, or--but what
possible object could there be in forging such a paper?”
Suddenly he sat bolt upright and stared at the document in blank
amazement. Then, with a low whistle, he folded it into his pocketbook.
“I’ll find Mrs. Matthewson Bangor-born, I’ll bet ten cents to a leather
button!” he declared.
Whatever had brought Trafford to this sudden conclusion, it proved
absolutely correct, and the details given of her brilliance and her
aid to her husband fitted exactly to the character of the woman. This
fact naturally raised the question, was it safe to go farther and, if
so, how much farther? Mrs. Matthewson at least had been put on her
guard by the published statement, and she was not a woman to remain in
ignorance of any steps taken in consequence of that statement, or of
the man who took them. The family was powerful and not credited with
scrupulosity as to means employed to ends. On the other hand, it was
manifest that if there was such an episode in her past, her husband was
ignorant of it and she would stop at nothing to keep him so. The secret
might be dangerous, but it might be valuable as well.
Beyond this, however, was the joy of the chase, which is absent from no
man and least of all from the trained detective. There was a problem to
solve, and, danger or no danger, it was as impossible for Trafford to
refuse to solve it as to refuse to breathe. Whatever use he was or was
not to make of it, he would know the truth.
He was not, however, so intent upon this one feature of the case as to
neglect Jim Shepard. The second day, he slipped over to Portland and
found that young countryman at work and exceedingly homesick in what
was, to his narrow experience, a great city. Finding that Trafford knew
Millbank, he threw his heart open to him and talked as freely as he
would to Oldbeg himself. Trafford let him talk. There was a flood of
irrelevant matter, but the detective’s experience was too broad for him
to decide in advance what might and what might not be valuable. On the
whole, however, it was a dreary waste, until he touched on the night he
left Millbank.
“I wasn’t the only feller,” he said; “that nigh missed that train. Jest
as ’twas startin’, a feller rushed out from behind Pettingill’s ’tater
storehouse and caught the front end of the car. I thought he was goin’
to miss an’ I swung back to see him drop off; but he clung like a good
one an’ finally got his foot on the step. I tell you, he was nigh clean
tuckered out when he came into the car, fur he was a swell an’ warn’t
used to using his arms that-a-way.”
“Queer place for him to come from,” said the other.
“Wall, ye see, if he’d come from Somerset Street way an’ out through
’tween Neil’s store and the post-office, he’d ’a’ come out jest thar;
but he’d ’a’ had to know the lay o’ the land to done it. Ef he’d ben a
stranger, he couldn’t help missing it an’ not half try.”
“But you say he was a stranger and a swell,” Trafford suggested.
“He was a swell, fast enough. City rig; kid gloves--one on ’em bust,
hangin’ on to the rail, and got up in go-to-meetin’ style; but he must
’a’ knowed the way. He’d ben thar before, you bet!”
“You seem to have got a pretty good look at him.”
“Wall, ye see he took the seat two in front o’ me, and every time I
woke up--say, them air seats hain’t made to sleep comfortable in, be
they--thar he was, till all of a sudden I woke up an’ he warn’t thar.”
“Then you don’t know where he got off,” Trafford said, keeping the
disappointment out of his voice.
“No. Ye see, when we pulled out of ’Gusta, he was thar, an’ I didn’t
wake up ag’in till we got to Brunswick, an’ he warn’t thar. I meant
to see whar he went to, but arter ’Gusta, I guessed he must be from
Portland and that’s whar I got left.”
“I suppose you hear from Millbank--from Oldbeg, for instance.”
“Wall,” he said, blushing a fiery red, “Jonathan hain’t no great hand
to write: but I du hear sometimes. Say, du you s’pose a body could ’a’
heerd that thar shot from Parlin’s house down onto Canaan Street?”
“I don’t know,” said the detective carelessly, hiding his eagerness. “A
still night, it might be; why?”
“’Cause, a letter I got says that thar night she’d jest got to sleep
when she woke up sudden, as if she’d heerd so’thing like a shot. She
got up, but didn’t hear nothin’ more an’ so went back to bed. But the
next mornin’ she guessed ’twas the shot she heerd from Parlin’s.”
“Did she say what time it was?”
“Nope: only she’d ben asleep about half a hour, an’ thet night she
didn’t get to bed ’fore twelve o’clock. Fact, I guess she didn’t go
till she heerd the train leave.”
“But about this swell,” Trafford interposed. “Would you know him again
if you saw him?”
“I guess I would; leastwise ef I could see the top of his head. He took
his hat off, an’ thar was the funniest little bald spot, jest the shape
of a heart. ’Twas funny, an’ he warn’t more’n thirty years old. Say,
when he gets to be fifty, he won’t hev no more hair’n I’ve got on the
back o’ my hand.”
The next afternoon, a card was brought to Charles Matthewson, Esq., in
his inner office in Augusta, and on the card he read, printed in small
square letters:
“ISAAC TRAFFORD.”
“What in thunder does Trafford want of me?” he asked himself. “He can’t
possibly know!”
He sat and looked at the card, while the boy waited and finally coughed
to remind him he was still there. Matthewson looked up with a puzzled
air. Evidently he did not care to see the man whose name was on the
card, and as evidently he did not dare refuse him. Finally he said:
“Show him in in five minutes.”
When Trafford entered, in the very act of bowing, he cast a quick
glance at the top of Matthewson’s head. There was the odd bald spot,
shaped, as Jim Shepard had said, “Jest like a heart.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Trafford?” Matthewson asked, with the air
of a busy man.
“I want about ten minutes’ talk with you,” the detective answered,
drawing a chair close to the desk.
“Professional?”
“Yes;--my profession.”
The lawyer started. He was provoked with himself for doing so, but
it was beyond his control. Trafford was not a man with whom it was
comfortable to talk professionally--that is, from the standpoint of his
profession.
“Well, be quick about it, then. I’m busy, and it’ll be a favour to cut
it as short as you can.”
“You were in Millbank the evening of the tenth.”
“Well, you are short and to the point. Suppose I was?”
“What were you there for?”
“None of your business.”
Trafford chuckled. He was getting on. It was just the answer he
expected.
“Now let’s stick right to the point, as you wanted me to. If I have to
whip round to get to it again, you mustn’t blame me.”
“Come, Mr. Trafford; you can’t deal with every one the same way. If you
want to find out anything from me, you mustn’t go at it as if I was a
country bumpkin whom your very name would scare.”
“Bless you, I don’t,” said Trafford. “Now if you were a country
bumpkin, as you are pleased to put it, I’d lead up to the matter gently
and so have it all out of you before you knew what I was at. Not being
a country bumpkin, I come at you fair and square to save your time and
mine too. What were you doing in Millbank on the evening of the tenth?
You weren’t at any of the hotels. You weren’t seen by any of the men
who were likely to see you.”
“So you’ve peddled it all over Millbank that I was there that night,
have you?” demanded the other, angrily.
Trafford looked at him with a mixture of amusement and spleen. At last
he answered:
“That isn’t the way I do my work. I don’t need to give away what I know
to find out what other folks know. There’s nobody in Millbank any the
wiser for the enquiries I’ve made.”
“Well, if you know so much and are so cunning, you know that I got
there at eight o’clock and left at midnight----”
“Dropping off at the Bridge stop before the train crossed the river,
and swinging on to the front end of the second car as the train was
pulling out of the station, coming out of the shadow of Pettingill’s
potato warehouse to do so, so as not to be seen and recognized,”
Trafford continued.
The first part was a shrewd guess, but evidently it hit the mark, for
the lawyer wheeled about and faced him before saying:
“The devil! To what am I indebted for such close surveillance?”
“Well,” drawled Trafford, with an irritating air of indifference, that
he could at times assume, “perhaps you don’t know that a matter of some
importance happened in Millbank that night and has led to our looking
up all the strangers that were in town, especially those who did not
seem to want to be seen.”
“You refer, of course, to the Wing murder.”
“I refer, of course, to the Wing murder.”
“I regret Mr. Wing’s tragic death,” said the lawyer coldly; “and
especially deplore the commission of such a crime. At the same time,
I don’t think it as important as Millbank naturally thinks it, and I
imagine the State will manage to wag along in spite of the great loss
it has sustained.”
It was not so much the words, ill-timed and out-of-taste as they
were, as the air with which they were uttered, that constituted their
significance. It was as if in the mind that originated them there was
a lurking bitterness, that the speaker would willingly conceal, which
yet was so intense that it must find vent. There was a cruel hardness
in the tone that made the words themselves all but meaningless.
Was it possible, Trafford asked himself, that the man was able to
read the meaning of Judge Parlin’s story and knew that Wing was his
half-brother? He dismissed the question with the asking, satisfied that
something of which he was still ignorant was at the foundation of this
outbreak. It was to be a question of the comparative shrewdness of the
two men, whether he still remained ignorant when the interview closed.
“You certainly don’t suppose that I shot Millbank’s leading citizen,
do you?” the lawyer demanded, after a moment’s pause. It was, perhaps,
an effort to recover what the lawyer could not fail to see that he had
lost.
“On the contrary, I’ve every reason to believe that he was still alive
when you left town, and I still further believe that your visit had
nothing to do, remotely or directly, with his death.”
What was that odd flash that passed over the other’s face as Trafford
said these last words? Seemingly, Trafford was not looking at the
other’s face at the moment and it might have escaped him. Still, he
would have been interested if he had seen it.
“Thanks: but, in that event, what are you here for?”
“I can’t let my beliefs or disbeliefs interfere with my investigation
of facts. Here is something most unusual occurring, almost at the
moment of the murder. It don’t make any difference whether I believe it
has anything to do with it or not. It’s my business to know, and that’s
what I’m here to do.”
“And if I say I’ve nothing to tell you?”
“The coroner’s enquiry will be public, while mine may remain private.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I simply want your assurance that your visit to Millbank had nothing
to do, directly or remotely, with Theodore Wing.”
“I can’t see what value such an assurance can have. If I went there to
hire somebody to shoot him, I should, of course, not hesitate to give
you the assurance--and probably you wouldn’t fail to find out the truth
of the matter inside a week.”
“That’s my business,” said Trafford. “If I’m content with your
assurance, I don’t see why you should object to my being.”
“Because there’s no certainty you’ll remain content with it. It’s
one of those things where you could come back to-morrow with ‘newly
discovered testimony’ that would upset the whole agreement.”
“Oh, as for that,” said Trafford, “I propose to agree to nothing.
As matters stand, the inquest ’ll go on within a day or two. I know
you were in Millbank the night of the murder, and with no assurance
from any one that your visit had nothing to do with the murder, I’m
compelled, absolutely compelled, to ask the coroner to summons you.
On the other hand, if I’m satisfied, there’s no reason for me to tell
any one that I know you were there, and nothing to induce the coroner
to summons you. At the same time, I don’t agree to anything as to the
future. That must depend upon facts, and you know better than I do now
whether there are any that would call for you.”
“Humph!” grunted Matthewson; “then it’s this: I assure you what you ask
and I’m not to be summoned until you see fit to summon me, and if I
don’t, you see fit to summon me at once.”
“That’s about it,” assented Trafford.
Matthewson sat for a few minutes thinking, and Trafford sat
watching him. He was tall and slim, with a rather prepossessing
face--well-dressed, in fact, a “swell,” as Jim Shepard had said. His
face was far from a dull one. His mother had evidently given him
something of her personality. Yet, a man less on his guard against
impressions than the detective might find something in his face that
he did not like,--a look of cunning lurking in the half-closed eyes, a
want of feeling in the lines of the mouth. He was a man who would go
far to accomplish his ends, but would not be willingly cruel, perhaps
because he could not understand that to be cruel which was for his own
interest. Yet, what of a fight that involved life and honour? Trafford
at least knew that it is only then that the hidden forces come to
the surface and the man himself stands complete. Suddenly Matthewson
turned, and with a side glance at the waiting detective said:
“I assure you that my visit to Millbank had nothing to do directly or
indirectly with Mr. Wing’s death.”
“That’s all I want,” the detective said.
“I gave him credit for being sharper than that,” Matthewson said to
himself, as the door closed behind his visitor.
“Now I’ve got to find out,” Trafford noted, “how that visit did concern
Wing. I’ll test Matthewson’s conclusion before I accept it.”