DR. BOWMAN
But it was considerably more than a minute before Worth followed us to
the house. We walked slowly, talking; when I looked back from the
kitchen porch, Worth had already come outside, and I thought Eddie
Hughes was with him, though I heard no voices and couldn't be sure on
account of the shrubbery between.
Getting into the house we found that Chung had the downstairs all opened
up through, lights going, heat turned on from the basement furnace;
everywhere that tended, homelike appearance a competent servant gives a
place. On the hall table as we passed, I noticed a doctorish top coat,
with a primly folded muffler laid across it.
"Dr. Bowman is here," Barbara said hardly above her breath.
We listened; no sound of voices from the living room; then I got the
tramp of feet that moved back and forth in there. We opened the door,
and there were the two men; a queer proposition!
Bowman had taken a chair pretty well in the middle of the room. It was
Jim Edwards whose feet I had heard as he roamed about. No word was going
between them; apparently they hadn't spoken to each other at all; the
looks that met or avoided were those strange looks of persons who live
in lengthened and what might be termed intimate hostility.
"Ah--Boyne--isn't it?" Bowman greeted me; I thought our coming relieved
the situation. He shook hands, then turned to Barbara with, "Mrs.
Thornhill said you were here; I told her I would bring you back with
me."
I rather wondered not to hear him insist on being taken at once to the
study, but his next words gave the reason. He'd reached Santa Ysobel too
late for the inquest itself, but not too late to make what he informed
us was a thorough investigation of everything it treated of.
Barbara and I found places on the davenport; Edwards prowled up and down
the other end of the room, openly in torment. Those stormy black eyes of
his were seldom off Bowman, while the doctor's gray, heavy-lidded gaze
never got beyond the toes of the restless man's moving boots. He had
begun a grumbling tale of the coroner's incompetence and neglect to
reopen the inquest when he, the family physician, arrived, as though
that were important, when Worth came in.
Instantly the doctor was on his feet, had paced up to the new master of
the house, and began pumping his arm in a long handshake, while he
passed out those platitudes of condolence a man of his sort deals in at
such a time. The stuff I'd been reading in those diaries had told me
what was the root and branch of his friendship with the dead man; it
made the hair at the back of my neck lift to hear him boasting of it in
Jim Edwards' presence, and know what I knew. "And, my dear boy," he
finished, "they tell me you've not been to view the body--yet. I
thought perhaps you'd like to go--with me. I can have my machine here in
a minute. No?" as Worth declined with a wordless shake of the head.
I hoped he'd leave then; but he didn't. Instead, he turned back to his
chair, explaining,
"If Mrs. Thornhill's cook hadn't phoned me, when Mrs. Thornhill had a
second collapse last night, I suppose I should be in San Francisco
still. The coroner seemed to think there was no necessity for having
competent medical testimony as to the time of death, and the physical
condition of the deceased. I should have been wired for. The inquest
should have been delayed until I arrived. The way the thing was managed
was disgraceful."
"It was merciful." Jim Edwards spoke as though unwillingly, in a
muttered undertone. Evidently it was the first word he'd addressed to
Bowman--if he could be said to address him now, as he finished, "I
hadn't thought of an inquest. Yet of course there'd be one in a case of
suicide."
Bowman only heard and wholly misconstrued him, snatching at the
concluding words,
"Of course it was suicide. Done with his own weapon, taken from the
holster where we know it always hung, fully loaded. The muzzle had been
pressed so close against the breast when the cartridge exploded that the
woolen vest had taken fire. I should say it had smouldered for some
time; there was a considerable hole burned in the cloth. The flesh
around the wound was powder-scarred."
Worth took it like a red Indian. I could see by the glint of his eye as
it flickered over the doctor's face, the smooth white hands, the whole
smooth personality, that the boy disliked, and had always disliked him.
Yet he listened silently.
I rather hoped by leading questions to get Bowman to express the opinion
that Thomas Gilbert had been killed in the small hours of the morning.
Circumstances then would have fitted in with Eddie Hughes. Eddie Hughes
was to me the most acceptable murderer in sight. But no--nothing would
do him but to stick to the hour the coroner had accepted.
"Medical science cannot determine closer than that," he was very final.
"The death took place within an hour preceding midnight."
"You are positive it couldn't be this morning?" I asked.
"Positive."
Well, Dr. Bowman's testimony, if accepted at the value the doctor
himself placed upon it, would clear Worth of suspicion, for the lad was
with me at Tait's from a few minutes past ten until after one; and Jim
Edwards, now pacing the floor so restlessly, had also been there the
greater part of that time. I had had too much experience with doctor's
guesses based on _rigor mortis_ to let it affect my views.
In the minute of silence, we could hear Chung moving about at the back
of the house. The doctor spoke querulously.
"Never expect anything of a Chinaman, but I should think when the
chauffeur found the body he might have had sense enough to summon
friends of the family. He could have phoned me--I was only in San
Francisco."
"He could have phoned me at the ranch," Jim Edwards' deep voice came in.
"You? Why should he phone for you?" Bowman wheeled on him at last. "I
was the man's physician, as well as his close friend. Everybody knows
you weren't on good terms with him. Gad! You wouldn't be here in this
house to-night, if he were alive."
In the sort of silence that comes when some one's been suddenly struck
in the face, Worth crossed to Edwards and laid an arm along his
shoulders.
"I've asked Jim to stay in my place, here, in my house, while I'm away
over Monday--and he can do as he likes about whom he chooses to have
around."
Bowman gradually got to his feet, his face a study.
"I see," he said. "Then I'll not trespass on your time any longer. I
felt obliged to offer my services ... patients of mine ... for years ...
in affliction ..." a gleam of anger came into his fishy eyes. "I've been
met with damned insolence.... Claiming of the house before your father's
decently in his grave." He jerked fully erect. "Leave your affairs in
the hands of that degenerate. If he doesn't do you dirt, you'll be the
first he's let off! Come, Miss Barbara," to the girl who sat beside me,
looking on mutely observant.
"Thank you, doctor." She answered him as tranquilly as though no voice
had been raised in anger in that room. "I think I'll stay a little
longer. Jim will take me home."
The doctor glared and stalked out. To the last I think he was expecting
some one to stop him and apologize. I suppose this was what Worth
described naïvely as "antagonizing people without intending to." Well,
it might not be judicious; I certainly was glad the doctor was so sure
of the time at which his friend Gilbert had met death; yet I couldn't
but enjoy seeing him get his. As soon as the man's back was turned,
Edwards beckoned Barbara to the window. Worth and I left them talking
together there in low tones, he to get something he wanted from a case
in the hall, where he called me to the phone, saying long distance
wanted me. While I was waiting for my connection (Central, as usual,
having gotten me, now couldn't get the other party) the two came from
the living room and Barbara said "Good night" to us in passing.
"Those two seem to have something on hand," I commented as they went
out. "The little girl gave Bowman one for himself--in the nicest
possible way. Don't wonder Edwards likes her for it."
"Poor Laura Bowman! Her friends take turns giving that bloodless lizard
she's tied to, one for himself any time they can," Worth said. "My
mother used to handle the doctor something like that; and now it's
Barbara--little Bobsie Wallace--God bless her!"
He went on into the dining room. I looked after his unconscious,
departing figure and thought he deserved a good licking. Why couldn't he
have spoken that way to the girl herself? Why hadn't he taken her home,
instead of leaving it to Edwards? Then I got my call and answered,
"This is Boyne. Put them through."
In a minute came Roberts' voice.
"Hello, Mr. Boyne?"
"Yes. What you got?"
"Telegram--Hicks--Los Angeles. He's located Steve Skeels--"
"Read me the wire," I broke in.
"All right." A pause, then, "'Skeels arrived here from 'Frisco this
morning shall I arrest?'"
"Good!" I exclaimed. "Wire him to keep Steve under surveillance and
await instructions. Tell him not to lose him. Get it, Roberts? Hustle
it. I'll be in by nine. Good-by," and I hung up.
I looked around; Worth had gone into the dining room; I stepped to the
door and saw him kneeling before an open lower door of the built-in
sideboard, and noted that the compartment had been steel lined and
Yale-locked, making a sort of safe. A lamp at the end of an extension
wire stood on the floor beside him; he looked around at me over his
shoulder as I put my head in to say,
"Stock in your old suitcase has gone up a notch, Worth. We've caught
Skeels."
"So soon?" was all he said. But my news seemed to decide something for
him; with a sharp gesture of finality, he put into his breast pocket the
package of papers he had been looking at.
When a little later, Edwards came in, Worth was waiting for him in the
hall.
"Do we go now?" the older man asked, wincing. Worth nodded.
"Take your machine, Jim," he said. "We can park it at Fuller's and walk
back from there. Boyne's roadster is in our garage."
"Anything wrong with Eddie Hughes?" Edwards asked as he stepped in to
get his driving gloves. "I passed him out there headed for town lugging
a lot of freight, and the fellow growled like a dog when I spoke to
him."
"I fired him. Come on, Jim--let's get out of this."
"Hold on, Worth," I took a hand. "Fired Hughes? When?"
"While I was fixing up that door--after you and Bobs came to the house."
"What in God's name for?" I asked in exasperation.
"For giving me back talk," said the youth who never quarreled with any
one.
He and Edwards tramped out together. I realized that the hostile son and
an alienated friend had gone for a last look at the clay that had
yesterday been Thomas Gilbert. Of course Worth would do that before he
left Santa Ysobel. But would Edwards go in with him--or was he only
along to drive the machine? It might be worth my while to know. But I
could ask to-morrow; it wasn't worth a tired man's waiting up for. We
must make an early start in the morning. I went upstairs to bed.