A MURDER
I stood at the door and watched until I saw first Chung's head come into
the light on the kitchen porch, then Jim Edwards's black poll follow it.
I waited until both had gone into the house and the door was shut,
before I went back to Barbara and Worth. They were speaking together in
low tones over at the hearth. The three of us were alone; and the
blood-stain on the rug, out of sight there in the shadow beyond the
table, would seem to cry out as a fourth.
"Barbara," I broke in across their talk, "who was the woman who came
here to this place last night?"
She didn't answer me. Instead, it was Worth who spoke.
"Better come here and listen to what Bobs has been saying to me, Jerry,
before you ask any questions."
I crossed and stood between the two young people.
"Well," I grunted; and though Barbara's face was white, her eyes big and
black, she answered me bravely,
"Mr. Gilbert did not kill himself. Worth doesn't think so, either."
"What!" It was jolted out of me. After a moment's thought, I finished,
"Then I've got to know who the woman was that visited this room last
night."
For a long while she made no reply, studying Worth's profile as he
stared steadily into the fire. No signal passed between them, but
finally she came to her decision and said,
"Mr. Boyne, ask Worth what he thinks I ought to say to that."
Instead, "Who was it, Worth?" I snapped, speaking to the back of the
young man's head. The red came up into the girl's face, and her eyes
flashed; but Worth merely shrugged averted shoulders.
"You can search me," he said, and left it there.
I looked from one to the other of these young people: Worth, whom I
loved as I might have my own son had I been so fortunate as to possess
one; this girl who had made a place of warmth for herself in my heart in
less than a day, whose loyalty to my boy I was certain I might count on.
How different this affair must look to them from the face it wore to me,
an old police detective, who had bulled through many inquiries like
this, the corpse itself, perhaps, lying in the back of the room, instead
of the blood-stain we had there on the rug; what was practically the
Third Degree being applied to relatives and friends; with the squalid
prospect of a court trial ahead of us all. If they'd seen as much of
this sort of thing as I had, they wouldn't be holding me up now, tying
my hands that were so willing to help, by this fine-spun, overstrained
notion of shielding a woman's name.
"Barbara," I began--I knew an appeal to the unaccountable Worth would
get me nowhere--"the facts we've got to deal with here are a possible
murder, with this lad the last person known--by us, of course--to have
seen his father alive. We know, too, that they quarreled bitterly. We
know all this. Outside people, men who are interested, and more or less
hostile, were aware that Worth needed money--needs it yet, for that
matter--a large sum. I suppose it is a question of time when it will be
known that Worth came here last night; and when it is known, do you
realize what it will mean?"
Worth had sat through this speech without the quiver of a muscle, and no
word came from him as I paused for a reply. Little Barbara, big eyes
boring into me as though to read all that was in the back of my mind,
nodded gravely but did not speak. I crossed to the shelves and took down
the diary whose leather back bore the date of 1916. As I opened it,
finding the place where its pages had been removed, I continued,
"You and I know--we three here know--" I included Worth in my
statement--"that the crime was neither suicide nor patricide; but it is
likely we must have proof of that fact. Unless we find the murderer--"
"But the motive--there would have to be motive."
Barbara struck right at the core of the thing. She didn't check at the
mere material facts of how a murder could have been done, who might have
had opportunity. The fundamental question of why it should have been was
her immediate interest.
"I believe I've the motive here," I said and thrust the mutilated volume
into her hand. "Some one stole these leaves out of Mr. Gilbert's diary.
The books are filled with intimate details of the affairs of
people--things which people prefer should not be known--names, details
and dates written out completely. It's likely murder was done last night
to get possession of those pages."
She went to the desk and glanced over the book; not the minute
examination with the reading glass which I had given it; that mere flirt
of a glance which, when I had first noticed it the night before at
Tait's, skimming across that description of Clayte, had seemed so
inadequate. Then she turned to me.
"Mr. Gilbert cut these out himself," she pronounced.
That brought Worth's head up and his face around to stare at her.
"You say my father removed something he had written?" he asked. Barbara
nodded. "He never changed a decision--and those books were his
decisions."
"Then this wasn't a correction, but he cut it out. Can't you see, Mr.
Boyne? Those leaves were removed by a man who respected the book and was
as careful in his mutilation of it as he was in its making. It is
precisely written--I'm referring to workmanship, not its literary
quality--carefully margined, evenly indented on the paragraph
beginnings. And so, in this removal of three leaves, the cutting was
done with a sharp knife drawn along the edge of a ruler--" I picked up
from where they lay on the blotting pad, a small pearl-handled knife,
its sharp blade open, and the ruler I had seen when looking down from
the skylight, and placed them before her. She nodded and continued,
"There is a bit of margin left so no other leaves can be loosened by
this removal. The marking out of the run-over has been neatly ruled,
done so recently that the ink is not yet black--done with that ink in
the stand. It was blotted with this." She lifted a hand-blotter to show
me the print of a line of ink. There were other markings on the face of
the soft paper, and I took it eagerly. Barbara smiled.
"You will get little from that," she said. I had not even seen her give
it attention. "Scattered words--and parts of words, blotted frequently
as they were written. Perhaps, with care, we might learn something, but
we can turn more easily to the last pages of his diary and--"
"There are no last pages," I interrupted. "The 1920 book is missing."
"Gone--stolen?" she exclaimed. It brought a smile to my face. For the
first time in my experience of this pretty, little bunch of brains, she
had hazarded a guess.
"Gone," I admitted coolly--a bit sarcastically. "I've no reason to say
stolen."
"But--yes, you have--you have, Mr. Boyne! If it is gone, it was stolen.
Is it gone--are you sure it is gone?" Eagerly her eyes were searching
desk, cabinet, the shelf where the other diaries made their long row. I
satisfied her on that score.
"I have searched the study thoroughly; it is not in this room."
"Was here last night," Worth cut in. "I saw it on the desk."
"And was stolen last night," Barbara reaffirmed, quickly. "These books
are too big to be slipped into a pocket, so we can't believe it was left
upon Mr. Gilbert's person; and he wouldn't lend it--wouldn't willingly
let it go from his possession. So it was stolen; and the man who stole
it--killed him." She shuddered.
That was going too swift for me to follow, but I saw on Worth Gilbert's
face his acceptance of it. Either conviction of Barbara's infallibility,
or some knowledge locked up inside his own chest, made him certain the
diary had been stolen, and the thief was his father's murderer. In a
flash, I remembered his words, "putting every damn' word of our row into
it," and I shot straight at him,
"Did you take that book, Worth?"
He only shook his head and answered,
"You heard what Bobs said, Jerry."
If he took the book he killed his father; that was Barbara's inference,
Worth's acceptance. I threw back my shoulders to cast off the suspicion,
then reached across to place my fingers under the girl's hand and pull
from it the only record of that last written page, the blotter.
"Will you read me that?" I asked her. "Every word and part of a
word--every letter?"
Her eyes smiled into mine with a reassurance that was like balm. Worth
rose and found her a hand-glass on the mantel, passing it to her, and
with this to reverse the scrawlings, she read and I wrote down in my
memorandum book two complete words, two broken words and five single
letters picked from overlying marks that were too confused to be
decipherable. Though the three of us struggled with them, they held no
meaning.
Worth's interest quickly ceased.
"I'll join Jim Edwards in the house," he said, but I stopped him.
"One minute, Worth. There was a woman visitor here last night. It would
seem she carried away with her the diary of 1920 and three leaves from
the book of 1916. I want you--you and Barbara--to tell me what you know
that happened here in Santa Ysobel on the dates of the missing pages,
May 31 and June 1, 1916."
Barbara accepted the task, turning that wonderful cinematograph memory
back, and murmured,
"I never tried recollecting on just a bare date this way, but--" then
glanced around at me and finished--"nothing happened to me in Santa
Ysobel then, because I wasn't in Santa Ysobel. I was in San Francisco
and--"
"And I was in Flanders, so that lets me out," Worth broke in brusquely.
"I'll go into the house."
"Wait, Worth." I placed a hand on his shoulder. "Go on, Barbara; you had
thought of something."
"Yes. Father died in January of that year, and in March I had to vacate
the house. It had been sold, and they wanted to fix it over. I left
Santa Ysobel on the eighteenth of March, but they didn't get into the
house until June first."
Again Worth interrupted.
"Which jogs my memory for an unexciting detail." He smiled
enigmatically. "I was jilted June first."
"In Flanders?" How many times had this lad been jilted?
"No. Right here. I wasn't here of course, but the letter which did the
trick was written here, and bore that date--June one, 1916."
"How do you get the date so pat?"
"It was handed me by the mail orderly--I was on the Verdun sector
then--on the morning of the Fourth of July. Remember the date the letter
was written because of the quick time it made. Most of our mail took
from six weeks to eternity. What are you smiling at, Bobs?"
"Just a little--you don't mind, do you?--at your saying you remember
Ina's letter by the quick time it made in reaching you."
"Who bought your house, Barbara?" I asked her.
"Dr. Bowman--or rather Mrs. Bowman's uncle bought it and gave it to
her."
"And they went in on the first of June, 1916?" I was all excitement,
turning the pages of the diary to get to certain points I remembered.
"What can either one of you tell me about the state of affairs at that
time between Dr. Bowman and his wife--and that man who was just in
here--Jim Edwards?"
Worth turned a hostile back; Barbara seemed to shrink in her chair. I
hated like a whipping to pull this sort of stuff on them, but I knew
that Barbara's knowledge of Worth's danger would reconcile her to
whatever painful thing must be done, and I had to know who was that
visitor of last night.
"Is that--that stuff in those damnable books?" I saw the hunch of
Worth's broad shoulders.
"Some of it is--some of it has been cut out," I replied.
"And you connect Jim Edwards with this crime?"
"I don't connect him--he connects himself--by them, and by his manner."
"Burn them!" He faced me, came over and reached for the book. "Dump the
whole rotten mess into the fire, Jerry, and be done with it."
"Easy said, but that would sure be a short cut to trouble. Tell me, I've
got to know, if you think this man Edwards--under great
provocation--capable of--well, of killing a fellow creature."
"Jerry," Worth took the book out of my hand and laid it on the table,
"what you want to do is to forget this--dirt--that you've been reading,
and go at this thing without prejudice. If you open any trails and they
lead in my direction, don't be afraid to follow them. This thing of
trying to find a criminal in some one that my father has already deeply
injured--some one that he's made life a hell for--so that suspicion
needn't be directed to me, makes me sick. If I'd allow you to do it, I'd
be yellow clear through."
That was about the longest speech I'd heard Worth Gilbert make since his
return from France. And he meant every word of it, too; but it didn't
suit me. This "Hew to the line" stuff is all right until the chips begin
whacking the head of your friend. In this case there wasn't a doubt in
my mind that when a breath of suspicion got out that Thomas Gilbert had
not killed himself, that minute would see the first finger point at
Thomas Gilbert's son as the murderer. So I grumbled,
"Just the same, Edwards has something on his mind about last night."
"He has--and it's pretty nearly tearing him to pieces," Worth admitted,
but would go no further.
"He was here last night, I'm sure--and Mrs. Bowman was with him," I
ventured.
Barbara, who had been sitting through this her eyes on Worth, turned
from him to me and pronounced, gently,
"Yes, he was here, and Laura was with him."
"Bobs!" Worth spoke so sternly that she glanced up startled. "I'll not
stand for you throwing suspicion on Jim."
"Did I--do that?" her lip trembled. Worth's eyes were on the fire.
"Don't quarrel with the girl," I remonstrated. Barbara had told me the
visitor; I covered my elation with, "She's only looking out for your
safety."
"I can look out for myself," curtly. He turned hard eyes on us. It made
me feel put away from him, chucked out from his friendship. "And I never
quarreled with anybody in my life. Sometimes--" he turned from one to
the other of us, speaking slowly, "Sometimes I seem to antagonize
people, for no reason that I can see; and sometimes I fight; but I never
quarrel."
"No offense intended--or taken," I assured him hastily. My heart was
full of his danger, and I told myself that it was his misery spoke, and
not the true Worth Gilbert. But a very pale and subdued Barbara said
tremulously,
"I guess I'd better go home now," suggesting, after the very slightest
pause, "Mr. Boyne can take me."
"Don't, Bobsie." Worth's voice was gentle again, but absent. It sounded
as though he had already forgotten both of us, and our possible cause of
offense. "Go to the house with Jerry. I'll bar the door and follow."
"Can't I help with that?" I offered.
"No. Eddie will give me a hand if I need it. Go on. I'll be with you in
a minute."