Enlightening Interviews
The avalanche of denial, the flood of vituperation and the general
hullabaloo that was set up by the four girls at Corson’s accusation
reduced the detective to a pulp of bewilderment. The girls saw this and
pursued their advantage. They stormed and raged, and then, becoming less
frightened they guyed and jollied the poor man until he determined that
he must have help of some sort.
Moreover, he felt sure now that these youngsters never committed murder.
Even the Mersereau girl, the vamp, as she had been called, was a young
thing of nineteen, and her vampire effect was only put on when occasion
demanded.
“S’posen I did say I’d like to kill him!” she exclaimed, “that don’t
mean anything! S’posen I said I died o’ laughin’, would you think I was
dead? Those things are figgers of speech,—that’s what they are!”
She paraded up and down the room with a tragedy-queen air, and rolled
her practiced eyeballs at Corson.
And Babe Russell was equally scornful, though her soft, gentle effects
were the opposite of Viola’s ways.
“Silly!” she said, shaking her pinkened finger at the detective. “To
think us nice, pretty little girls would kill a big grown-up man! First
off, we _couldn’t_ do it,—we wouldn’t have the noive! And we’d be too
’fraid of getting caught. And we, wouldn’t do it anyway,—it isn’t in
the picture!”
They seemed so straightforward and so sensible that Corson began to
think it was absurd to suspect them, and yet the two he watched most
closely were surely afraid of something. They talked gayly, and babbled
on smilingly, but they glanced at each other with anxious looks when
they thought the detective wasn’t looking.
Whatever troubled them concerned them anxiously, for beneath their
gayety they were distinctly nervous.
Corson convinced himself that they had no intention of running away and
could always be found if wanted, so he left, with immediate intention of
following the advice of Mr Vail and attaching an assistant.
“Not in a thousand years!” was the opinion of the assistant, one Gibbs,
after he heard Corson’s tale of the chorus girls. “Those little chippies
might be quite willing to kill a man, theoretically, but as for the deed
itself, they couldn’t put it over. Still, they must be remembered. You
know, the statement that women did it, is surely the truth. Dying
messages are invariably true. But it may mean that women caused it to be
done,—that it was the work of women, even though the actual stab thrust
may have been the deed of a man.”
“I don’t think so,” mused Corson. “You haven’t seen the paper. It said,
not only, ‘Women did this,’ but it said afterward, ‘Get——’ and then
there were two letters that looked like b-o——”
“No; I hadn’t heard that! Why, it might have been Ba—and might have
meant Babe Russell, after all!”
“No; it’s bo,—but it isn’t a capital B. I studied it closely, and I
have it put away. I’ll show it to you.”
“But the capital doesn’t matter. A man writing, in those circumstances,
with his last effort of fading strength, might easily use a small letter
instead of a capital. Know anybody beginning with Bo?”
“No—why, oh, my goodness! Bob Moore!”
“Well, there’s a chance. You’ve had your eyes on Moore, haven’t you?”
“Only because he was right there. But Mr Vail,—George Vail, of the Vail
Bread Company,—stands up for Moore. To be sure, it was only in a
general way,—we only talked a few moments,—but he seemed to think
Moore is on the detective order,—not of a criminal sort.”
“Why must Moore necessarily be either?”
“Only because he’s a detective story shark. Reads murder yarns all the
time, and goes to detective story movies.”
“That proves just nothing at all. But the ‘Get Bo—’ is important.
Anybody else around, beginning with Bo,—or Ba? You see, he naturally
wouldn’t form the letters perfectly.”
“Ba? There’s Julie Baxter, the telephone girl.”
“He’d hardly speak of her as Baxter.”
“But,—oh, I say, Gibbs, Moore testifies that, as the man died, he tried
to say something and it sounded like ‘Get J—J——’ some name beginning
with J!”
“Hello! We must inquire as to the fair Julie. Any one else?”
“No; no women, that I know of. Young Bates, the heir, begins his name
with Ba, but he’s not a woman.”
“Have you looked up his record for last evening? What was he doing?”
“No, I haven’t. A man can’t do everything at once!”
“This thing seems to have a dozen different handles. First of all, I
think we want to see the family.
“But he hadn’t any family.”
“Well, relatives, connections, anybody most interested. Especially the
heir.”
So the two went to the apartment of Letitia Prall, and there found the
family connections of Sir Herbert Binney in a high state of excitement.
It was nearly noon, and Richard Bates was impatiently waiting the
arrival of the detective, whom he had been expecting all the morning.
“Look here,” he said to the two men when they came in, “I want you to
take hold of this case with me,—if you can’t do it, I’ll get somebody
who can. I don’t want you to be off skylarking on a wild goose chase,
while I sit here waiting for you——”
“One moment, Mr Bates,” said Corson, sharply; “we’re not detectives in
your employ; we’re police officers, and we’re conducting this case in
accordance with orders.”
“Well, well, let’s get at it, and see where we stand. What do you know?”
“Only the message on the paper left by your uncle, and such testimony as
we could gather from the employees downstairs. Now, we want to interview
you.”
“And I want to be interviewed. Go ahead.”
“Interview all of us,” put in Eliza Gurney, who with Miss Prall had sat
silent during the men’s colloquy, but was quite ready to talk.
“One at a time,” and Gibbs took up the conversation. “Mr Bates, where
were you last evening?”
“That,” said Richard, “I decline to state, on the grounds that it has no
bearing on the question of my uncle’s death. If you ask me where I was
at the time of the tragedy, or shortly before, I will tell you. But last
evening or yesterday afternoon or morning are not pertinent.”
“You refuse to state where you spent last evening?”
“I do.”
“Not a good thing for you to do,” Gibbs shook his head, “but let it pass
for the moment. Where were you at two o’clock this morning?”
“In bed and asleep.”
“You can prove this?”
“By me!” spoke up Letitia Prall. “I heard him come in about twelve and
go to his room.”
“H’m. Proof to a degree. How do you know he didn’t leave the apartment
later?”
“Because I didn’t hear him do so.”
“Where is his room, and where is your own?”
After being shown the respective bedrooms, Gibbs remarked that in his
opinion Bates could easily have left his room without Miss Prall’s
knowledge, if she were asleep at the time.
“Unless you are unusually acute of hearing, are you?”
Now this was a sensitive point with the spinster. Her hearing was not
what it had once been, but she never acknowledged it. She greatly
resented the busy finger of time as it touched her here and there, and
often pretended she heard when she did not. Both her nephew and her
companion good-naturedly humored her in this little foible, and at
Gibbs’ question they looked up, uncertainly.
“Of course I am!” was Miss Prall’s indignant reply to the detective’s
question. “I hear perfectly.”
“Are you sure?” said Gibbs, mildly; “for I have noticed several times
when you have seemed not to hear a side remark.”
“Inattention, then,” snapped Letitia. “I am a thoughtful person, and I
often take little notice of others’ chatter.”
“But you are sure you could have heard your nephew if he had gone out of
his place last night after——”
“But I didn’t go out!” declared Bates. “You’re absurd to imply that I
did, unless you have some reason on which to base your accusation!”
“We have to locate you before we can go further, Mr Bates,” insisted
Gibbs, who had assumed leadership, while Corson sat, with folded arms,
taking in anything he found to notice.
And Corson, though lacking in initiative, was a close observer, and he
saw a lot that would have escaped his notice had he been obliged to
carry on the inquiry.
“Let’s try it,” Corson said, suddenly. “Go into your room, please, Miss
Prall, and shut the door, and see if you can hear me go out.”
“Of course I can!” and with a determined air, Miss Prall went into her
room and closed the door quite audibly.
Lifting his finger with a gesture of admonition, Corson made every one
sit perfectly still and without speaking for about two minutes.
Then, rising himself, he opened Miss Prall’s door and bade her come out.
“Now,” he said, “I admit I made as little noise as possible, but did you
hear me go out of the front door?”
“Of course I did!” declared the spinster, haughtily. “I heard you tiptoe
to the door, open it stealthily and close it the same way.”
She looked calmly about, and then seeing the consternation on the faces
of Richard and Eliza and the amused satisfaction on the countenances of
the detectives, she saw she had made a false step, and became irate.
“What is it?” she began, but Richard interrupted her.
“Don’t say a word, Auntie,” he begged; “you see gentlemen, Miss Prall is
a little sensitive about her slight deafness, and sometimes she imagines
sounds that are not real.”
“I’m not deaf!” Letitia cried, but Eliza interposed:
“Do hush, Letitia. You only make matters worse! Will you be quiet?”
The tone more than the words caused Miss Prall to drop the subject, and
Gibbs proceeded.
“Now, you see, Mr Bates, we can’t accept your aunt’s testimony that you
didn’t leave your room last night.”
“I didn’t ask you to,” retorted Richard; “nor do I need it. I tell you I
was in bed by or before midnight, and did not leave my bed until I was
summoned by Bob Moore after the tragedy had occurred. Now, unless you
have some definite and sufficient reason to suspect me of falsehood, I
have no need to bring any proof of my assertion.”
“That’s so, Gibbs,” said Corson, meditatively. “There’s no reason, I
know of, to inquire into Mr Bates’ doings.”
“There’s reason to inquire into the doings of everybody who had the
slightest connection with this matter,” said Gibbs severely. “But unless
there’s a doubt, we needn’t yet ask for proof of their words.”
He glared at Miss Prall, with the evident implication that he might feel
a doubt of her word.
However, when she and Miss Gurney stated that they had retired at about
eleven and had not left their rooms until called up by Richard to hear
the tragic news, no comment was made by Gibbs and Corson merely looked
at them abstractedly with the air of a preoccupied owl.
“Then,” resumed Corson, “now that we’ve placed your whereabouts and
occupations, will you state, any or all of you, what opinion you hold as
to the identity of the women who are responsible for the death of Sir
Herbert Binney?”
“Those chorus girls,” said Miss Letitia, promptly. “I always told him
he’d get into a moil with them, and they’d fleece him. They are a smart
lot, and Sir Herbert, though a shrewd business man, was putty in the
hands of a clever or designing woman!”
“But these girls are mere children—”
“In years, perhaps,” Miss Prall broke in, “but not in iniquity. A
gentleman of Sir Herbert’s mild and generous nature could be bamboozled
by these wise and wicked little vampires until they’d stripped him of
his last cent!”
“You seem to know a lot about them, Madam.”
“Because Sir Herbert has told me. He often described the cleverness with
which they wheedled and coerced him into undue generosity, and though he
laughed about it, it was with an undercurrent of chagrin and vexation.
And so, the time came, I feel certain, when Sir Herbert, like the worm
in the proverb, turned, and what he did or said, I don’t know, but I
haven’t the slightest doubt that it led, in some way, to such hard
feeling and such a deep and desperate quarrel, that the affair resulted
in tragedy.”
Gibbs looked at the speaker.
The Grenadier, as some people called her, sat upright, and her fine head
nodded with stern denunciation of the young women she accused.
Her tight-set lips and glittering eyes showed hatred and scorn, yet her
fingers nervously interlaced and her voice shook a little as if from
over-strained nerves.
Even more nervous was Miss Gurney. Unable to sit still, she moved
restlessly from one chair to another,—even now and then left the room,
hurrying back, as if afraid of missing something.
“Do sit still, Eliza,” said Miss Prall, at last; “you’re enough to drive
any one distracted with your running about like a hen with its head
off!”
“I feel like one! Here’s poor Sir Herbert dead, and nobody paying any
attention to it,—except to find out who killed him! I think our duty is
first to the dead, and after that——”
“Keep still, Eliza,” ordered Bates, who was never very patient with his
aunt’s irritating and irritable companion. “Sir Herbert’s body and his
affairs will be duly taken care of. It’s necessary now to discover his
murderer, of course, and the sooner investigation is made the more hope
of finding the criminal.”
“Or criminals,” put in Gibbs. “Since seeing that paper, I feel convinced
that the dying man tried to write ‘get both,’ meaning to insure
punishing to the women who killed him.”
“Then you think women really did the deed?” asked Bates, a strange fear
in his blue eyes.
“Yes, I do;” Gibbs stated, “but Corson thinks women were merely at the
root of the trouble. However, that isn’t the point just now. That will
all be learned later. First, we must get an idea of which way to look.
And, too, I may be wrong. The illegible word on that paper may mean, as
Corson thinks, the beginning of some name. The fact that the B is not a
capital doesn’t count for much when we realize the circumstances of the
writing.”
“I should say not!” and Miss Prall looked straight at him. “Think of
that poor dying man trying to write, while his life blood ebbed away!
And can you fail to heed his dying message? Can you fail to get those
wicked, vicious little wretches who heartlessly lured him on and on in
their wild orgies, until it all resulted in his fearful end! I, for one,
shall never be satisfied until those foolish, flippant little things are
punished——”
“Oh, Letitia,” wailed Miss Gurney, “bad as they are, you wouldn’t want
to see them all stuffed into an electric chair, would you, now?”
The mental picture of the chorus girls crowded into a single electric
chair was almost too much for Richard’s sense of humor, and he smiled,
but Miss Gurney went on:
“But, anyway, if a pack of girls did do it, don’t think it was the
chorus girls. They’re too frivolous and light hearted. I think you’d
better look nearer home. The girls in this house were all down on Sir
Herbert. None of them liked him, and he was always berating them, both
to us, and to their very faces. That telephone girl, now,——”
“Eliza, _will_ you keep still?” fumed Miss Prall. “Why do you suggest
anybody? These detectives are here to find out the murderers and they
not only need no help from you, but they are held back and bothered by
your interference. Please remain quiet!”
“I’ll talk all I like, Letitia Prall; I guess I know what’s best for
your interests as well as my own.”
“You haven’t any interests separate from mine, and I can look after
myself! Now, you do as I tell you, and say nothing more on this subject
at all. If Sir Herbert was the victim of his foolish penchant for those
light young women, I’m not sure it doesn’t serve him right——”
“Oh, Auntie!” exclaimed Bates, truly pained at this. “Don’t talk so!”
“What right have you got to dictate to me? You keep still, too,
Rick,—in fact, the least we any of us say, the better.”
“Oh, no, Miss Prall,” said Gibbs, suavely, “if there’s anything you
know, it will really be better for all concerned that you should tell
it. As to your opinions or ideas or theories, I hold you quite excusable
if you keep those to yourselves.”
“And you’d prefer I should do so, I suppose! Well, I will. And as to
facts, I know of none that could help you, so I will say nothing.”
“Miss Gurney,” and Gibbs turned toward her with a determined glance,
“you spoke of the young women employed in the house; had you any one in
mind?”
“Eliza——” began Miss Prall, but Gibbs stopped her.
“Beg pardon, ma’am, but I must request that you let Miss Gurney speak
for herself. You have no right to forbid her, and I insist upon my right
to ask.”
“Nobody in particular,” Miss Gurney asserted, as she looked timidly at
Letitia. “But Sir Herbert’s chambermaid,——”
“Yes, go on.”
“Well, she refused to take care of his room, he was so cross to her. But
I don’t suppose she’d kill him just for that.”
“I’ll look up the matter. Glad you mentioned it. Andy they gave him
another maid?”
“Yes, the same one we have.”
“I must have a talk with her. Much may be learned from a room servant.
That’s what I want, facts,—not theories. We’ve got the big primal
fact,—‘women did it.’ We’ve got a possible fact,—an uncertain
statement,—‘get both’—or, maybe, get some particular person. Now any
side lights we can get that may throw illumination on that uncertain bit
of writing is what is needed to show us which way to look. Isn’t that
right, Mr Bates?”
“Why, yes, I suppose so. Personally, I can’t seem to see women doing
such a deed——”
“That, sir, is the result of your own manly outlook and your lack of
experience with a desperate woman. You know, ‘Hell hath no fury like a
woman scorned,’ and we can readily imagine a woman scorned by this Sir
Herbert.”
“He could do the scorning, all right——”
“And they could do the rest! Oh, yes, sir, it isn’t a pleasant thing to
believe, but it is a fact that women can be just as revengeful, just as
vindictive, just as cruel as men,—and can commit just as great crimes,
though as we all know, such women are the exception. But they are in
existence and that fact must be recognized and remembered.”
“But the circumstances—” demurred Bates, “the time——”
“My dear sir, it seems to me the circumstances and time were most
favorable for the work of women. Granting some women wanted to kill that
man, or had determined to kill him,—or even, killed him on a sudden
irresistible impulse, what more conducive to an opportunity than this
house late at night? The great lobby, guarded, as it is at that hour, by
only one man and he often up in the ascending elevator car. You see, the
women could easily have been in hiding in that onyx lobby. The great
pillars give most convenient and unobservable places of concealment, and
they could have been tucked away there for a long time, waiting.”
“Oh, ridiculous! Supposing my uncle hadn’t come in?”
“Then they could have slipped out again. They may have been hidden there
night after night, waiting for just the chance that came last night.”
“But, suppose Moore had been downstairs when Sir Herbert entered—”
“Just the same,” Gibbs explained, wearily. “Then they would have gone
away and tried again the next night. A woman’s perseverance and patience
is beyond all words!”
“It’s all beyond all words,” and Richard folded his arms despondently.
“I can’t get a line on it.”
“Well, I can,” asserted Gibbs; “they came, no doubt, prepared. Else,
where’d they get the knife? Now, naturally one criminal would be
assumed,—that’s why _women_ was written so clearly. Several who know,
have agreed the handwriting is positively that of Sir Herbert
Binney,—so, there’s nothing left to do but _cherchez les femmes_.”