ON THE HILL-TOP
Morning dawned on the good ship Jerry Boyne not so dismasted and
rudderless as you might have thought. I'd carried that 1920 diary to my
room and, before I slept, read the whole of it. This was the last word
we had from the dead man; here if anywhere would be found support for
the suggestions of a weakening mind and suicide.
Nothing of that sort here; on the contrary, Thomas Gilbert was very much
his clear-headed, unpleasant, tyrannical self to the last stroke of the
pen. But I came on something to build up a case against Eddie Hughes,
the chauffeur.
I didn't get much sleep. As soon as I heard Chung moving around, I went
down, had him give me a cup of coffee, then stationed him on the back
porch, and walked to the study, shut myself in, and discharged my heavy
police revolver into a corner of the fireplace; then with the front door
open, fired again.
"How many shots?" I called to Chung.
"One time shoot."
Worth's head poked from his upstairs window as he shouted,
"What's the excitement down there?"
"Trying my gun. How many times did I fire?"
"Once, you crazy Indian!" and the question of sound-proof walls was
settled. Nobody heard the shot that killed Gilbert twenty feet away
from the study if the door was closed. Mrs. Thornhill's ravings, as
described in Skeet's letter to Barbara, were merely delirium.
I walked out around the driveway to the early morning streets of Santa
Ysobel. The little town looked as peaceful and innocent as a pan of
milk. In an hour or so, its ways would be full of people rushing about
getting ready for the carnival, a curious contrast to my own business,
sinister, tragic. It seemed to me that two currents moved almost as one,
the hidden, dark part under--for there must be those in the town who
knew the crime was murder; the murderer himself must still be here--and
the foam of noisy gayety and blossoms riding atop. A Blossom Festival;
the boyhood of the year; and I was in the midst of it, hunting a
murderer!
An hour later I talked to Barbara in the stuffy little front room at
Capehart's, brow-beaten by the noise of Sarah getting breakfast on the
other side of the thin board partition; more disconcerted by the girl's
manner of receiving the information of how I had found the 1920 diary
hidden in Worth's bureau drawer. There was a swift, very personal anger
at me. I had to clear myself instantly and thoroughly of any suspicion
of believing for a moment that Worth himself had stolen or mutilated the
book, protesting,
"I don't--I don't! Listen, Barbara--be reasonable!"
"That means 'Barbara, be scared!' And I won't. When they're scared,
people make mistakes."
"You might see differently if you'd been there last night when Cummings
made his charge against Worth. That seventy two thousand dollars Worth
carried up to the city Monday morning, he had taken from his father's
safe the night before."
For a minute she just looked at me, and not even Worth Gilbert's
dare-devil eyes ever held a more inclusively defiant light than those
big, soft, dark ones of hers.
"Well--wasn't it his?"
"All right," I said shortly. "I'm not here to talk of Worth's financial
methods; they're scheduled to get him into trouble; but let that pass.
Look through this book and you'll see who it is I'm after."
She had already opened the volume, and began to glance along the pages.
She made a motion for me to wait. I leaned back in my chair, and it was
only a few moments later that she looked up to say,
"Don't make the arrest, Mr. Boyne. You have nothing here against
Eddie--for murder."
Because I doubted myself, I began to scold, winding up,
"All the same, if that gink hasn't jumped town, I'll arrest him."
"It would be a good deal more logical to arrest him if he had jumped the
town," Barbara reminded me. "If you really want to see him, Mr. Boyne,
you'll find him at the garage around on the highway. He's working for
Bill."
That was a set-back. A fleeing Eddie Hughes might have been hopeful; an
Eddie Hughes who gave his employer back-talk, got himself fired, and
then settled down within hand-reach, was not so good a bet. Barbara saw
how it hit me, and offered a suggestion.
"Mr. Boyne, Worth and I are taking a hike out to San Leandro canyon this
afternoon to get ferns for the decorating committee. Suppose you come
along--anyhow, a part of the way--and have a quiet talk, all alone with
us. Don't do anything until you have consulted Worth."
"All right--I'll go you," I assented, and half past two saw the three of
us, Worth in corduroys and puttees, Barbara with high boots and short,
dust-brown skirt, tramping out past the homes of people toward the open
country. At the Vandeman place Skeet's truck was out in front, piled
with folding chairs, frames, light lumber, and a lot of decorative
stuff. The tall Chinaman came from the house with another load.
"You Barbie Wallace!" the flapper howled. "Aren't you ashamed to be
walking off with Worth and Mr. Boyne both, and good men scarce as hen's
teeth in Santa Ysobel to-day!"
"I'm not walking off with them--they're walking off with me," Barbara
laughed at her.
"Shameless one!" Skeet drawled. "I see you let Mr. Cummings have a day
off--aren't you the kind little boss to 'em!"
I just raised my brows at Barbara, and she explained a bit hastily,
"Skeet thinks she has to be silly over the fact that Mr. Cummings has
gone up to town, I suppose." She added with fine indifference, "He'll be
back in the morning."
"You bet he'll be back in the morning," Worth assured the world.
"Now what does he mean by that, Mr. Boyne?"
"He means Cummings is out after him."
"I don't," Worth contradicted me personally. "I mean he's after Bobs.
She knows it. Look at her."
She glanced up at me from under her hat-brim, all the stars out in those
shadowy pools that were her eyes. The walk had brought sumptuous color
to her cheeks, where the two extra deep dimples began to show.
"You both may think," she began with a sobriety that belied the dimples
and shining eyes, "looking on from the outside, that Mr. Cummings has an
idea of, as Skeet would say, 'rushing' me; but when we're alone
together, about all he talks of is Worth."
"Bad sign," Worth flung over a shoulder that he pushed a little in
advance of us. "Takes the old fellows that way. Their notion of falling
for a girl is to fight all the other Johnnies in sight. Guess you've got
him going, Bobs."
I walked along, chewing over the matter. She'd estimated Cummings
fairly, as she did most things that she turned that clear mind of hers
on; but her lack of vanity kept her from realizing, as I did, that he
was in the way to become a dangerous personal enemy to Worth. His
self-interest, she thought, would eventually swing him to Worth's side.
She didn't as yet perceive that a motive more powerful than
self-interest had hold of him now.
"Why, Mr. Boyne," she answered as though I'd been speaking my thoughts
aloud, "I've known Mr. Cummings for years and years. He never--"
"You said a mouthful there, Bobs." Worth halted, grinning, to interrupt
her. "He never--none whatever. But he has now."
"He hasn't."
"Leave it to Jerry. Jerry saw him that first night in at Tait's; then
afterward, in the office."
"Oh, come on!" Barbara started ahead impatiently. "What difference would
it make."
They went on ahead of me, scrapping briskly, as a boy and girl do who
have grown up together. I stumped along after and reflected on the folly
of mankind in general, and that of Allen G. Cummings in particular. That
careful, mature bachelor had seen this lustrous young creature blossom
to her present perfection; he'd no doubt offered her safe and sane
attention, when she came to live in San Francisco where they had friends
in common. But it had needed Worth Gilbert's appearance on the scene to
wake him up to his own real feeling. Forty-five on the chase of nimble
sweet and twenty; Cummings was in for sore feet and humiliating
tumbles--and we were in for the worst he could do to us. I sighed. Worth
had more than one way of making enemies, it seemed.
At last we came in sight of the country club upon its rise of ground
overlooking the golf links. The low, brown clubhouse, built bungalow
fashion, with a long front gallery and gravel sweep, was swarming with
people--the decorators. Motors came and went. The grounds were being
strung with paper lanterns. We skirted these, and the links itself where
there were two or three players, obstinate, defiant old men who would
have their game in spite of forty blossom festivals--climbed a fence,
and crossed the grass up to the crest of a little round hill, halting
there for the view. It wasn't high, but standing free as it did, it
commanded pretty nearly the entire Santa Ysobel district. Massed acres
of pink and white, the great orchards ran one into the other without
break for miles. The lanes between the trunks, diamonded like a
harlequin's robe in mathematical primness, were newly turned furrows of
rich, black soil, against which the gray or, sometimes, whitewashed
trunks of apricot, peach and plum trees gave contrast. Then the cap of
glorious blossoms, meeting overhead in the older orchards, with a warm
blue sky above and puffs of clouds that matched the pure white of the
plum trees' bloom.
The spot suited me well; we had left the town behind us; here neither
Dykeman's spotter nor any one he hired to help him could get within
listening distance, I dropped down on a bank; Worth and Barbara disposed
themselves, he sprawling his length, she sitting cross-legged, just
below him.
It wasn't easy to make a beginning. I knew it wouldn't do me any
particular good with Worth to dwell on his danger. But I finally managed
to lay fairly before them my case against Eddie Hughes, and I must say
that, as I told it, it sounded pretty strong.
I didn't want to put too much stress on having found my evidence in the
diaries; I knew Worth was as obstinate as a mule, and having said that
he would not stand for any one being prosecuted on their evidence, he'd
stick to it till the skies fell. I called on my memory of those pages,
now unfortunately ashes and not get-atable, and explained that Worth's
father hired Hughes directly after a jail-break at San Jose had roused
the whole country. Three of the four escapes were rounded up in the
course of a few days, but the fourth--known to us as Eddie Hughes--was
safe in Thomas Gilbert's garage, working there as chauffeur, having been
employed without recommendation on the strength of what he could do.
"And the low wages he was willing to take," Worth put in drily. "Old
stuff, Jerry. I wasn't sure till you spilled it just now that my father
was wise to it. But I knew. What you getting at?"
"Just this. When I talked to Hughes that first night I came down here
with you, while we all supposed the death a suicide, he couldn't keep
his resentment against your father, his hatred of him, from boiling over
every time he was mentioned."
"Get on," said Worth wearily. "Father hired a jail-bird that came cheap.
Probably put it to himself that he was giving the man a chance to go
straight."
I glanced up. This was just about what I remembered Thomas Gilbert to
have said in the entry that told of the hiring of Eddie. Worth nodded
grimly at my startled face.
"Eddie's gone straight since then," he filled in. "That is, he's kept
out of jail, which is going straight for Eddie. He'd certainly hate the
man who held him as he's been held for five years. Not motive enough for
murder though."
"There's more. The 1920 diary you gave me last night tells when and why
the extra bolts were put on the study doors. Your father had been
missing liquor and cigars and believed Hughes was taking them."
"Pilfering!" with an expression of distaste. "That doesn't--"
"Hold on!" I stopped him. "On February twelfth your father left money,
marked coin and paper money, as if by accident, on the top of the liquor
cabinet; not exposed, but dropped in under the edge of the big ash tray
so it might look as though it were forgotten--in a sense, lost there."
"How much?" came the quick question.
"Fifty one dollars." He looked around at me.
"Just one dollar above the limit of petty larceny; a hundred cents added
to put it in the felony class that meant state's prison. So he could
have sent Eddie to the pen,--eh? I guess you've got a motive there,
Boyne."
"Well--er--" I squirmed over my statement, blurting out finally. "Hughes
didn't take the money."
"Knew it was a trap," Worth's laugh was bitter. "And hated the man who
cold-bloodedly set it to catch him. If he didn't take it, don't you
think he counted it?"
"Worth," I said sharply. "Your father put those bolts on--and continued
to find that he was being robbed. He was mad about it. Any man would be.
Say what you will, no one likes to find that persons in his employ are
stealing from him. The aggravating thing was that he couldn't bring it
home to Hughes, though he was sure of the fact."
"So he went back to what he had known of Eddie when he hired him? After
profiting by it for five years, he was going to rake that up?"
"He was,"--a bit nettled--"and well within his rights to do so. Three
weeks before he was shot, he wrote that he'd started the inquiry. There
was no further mention of the matter in the book as it stands, but don't
you see that the result of the inquiry must have been on that torn-out
last page? Eddie's Saturday night alibi won't hold water. His cannery
girl, of course, will swear he was with her; but there's no
corroborating testimony. No one saw them together from nine till
twelve."
Dead silence dropped on us, with the white clouds standing like
witnesses in the blue above, the wind bringing now and again on its
scented wings little faint echoes of the noise down at the clubhouse.
"What more do you want?" Both young faces were set against me, cold and
hostile. "Here was motive, opportunity, a suspect capable of the deed.
My theory is that Mr. Gilbert came in on Hughes, caught him in the act
of stealing from the cabinet. Hughes jumped for the pistol over the
fireplace, got it, fired the fatal shot, and placed the dead man's
fingers about the butt of the gun. Then he picked up the diary lying on
the table, tore out the leaf about himself, and poked the rest of the
book down the drain pipe."
"And the shot?" Worth resisted me. "Why didn't the shot bring Chung on
the run?"
"Because he couldn't hear it. Nobody'd hear it ten paces away. That's
what I was trying out this morning. You told me I'd fired once. Well, I
fired twice; once with the door shut, and neither you nor Chung heard
it; afterward, with the door open--the report you registered."
"The blotter--and it had been used on that last page--showed no words to
strengthen this theory of yours," said Barbara as confidently as though
the little blue square had been clear print, instead of broken blurring.
Perhaps it was clear to her. I was glad I'd given it a thorough
reëxamination the night before.
"I think it does," I struggled against the tide, manfully, buoying
myself up with the tracing of the blotter. "Here's the word 'demanded,'
reasonably connected with the affair. The letters 'ller' may be the last
end of 'caller,' or possibly 'fuller'; I noticed Gilbert spoke in a
former entry of the bottle in the cabinet and Hughes snitching from it,
and used the word 'fuller.' Here's the word 'Avenue,' complete, and
Lizzie Watkins, Hughes' girl, lives on Myrtle Avenue."
The silence after that was fairly derisive. Worth broke it with an
impatient,
"And the fact of the bolted doors throws all that stuff out."
"Well," I grunted, "Barbara deduced the slipping of some bolts to please
you once--why can't she again?"
"Mr. Boyne," the girl spoke quickly, "it wouldn't help you a bit to be
assured that Eddie Hughes could enter the study and leave it bolted
behind him when he went out--help you to the truth, I mean. These facts
you've gathered are all wabbly; they'll never in the world fit in trim
and true. They're hardly facts at all. They're partial facts."
"Wouldn't help me?" I ejaculated. "It would cinch a case against him.
We've got to have some one in jail, and that shortly. We're forced to."
"Forced?" Worth had sat up a little and reached far forward for a stone
that lay among the weeds down there. He spoke to me sidewise with a
challenging flicker of the eye. Barbara kept her lips tight shut.
"I need a prisoner," trying to correct my error; then burst out, "My
Lord, children! An arrest isn't going to hurt a man like Hughes,--even
if he proves to be innocent. It's an old story to him. Barbara, you said
yourself that the man who stole the 1920 diary was the murderer."
"But I didn't say Eddie Hughes stole it." Her tone was significant, and
it checked me. I couldn't remember what the deuce she had said that
night. There recurred to me her mimicry of a woman's voice--Laura
Bowman's as I believed--to determine through Chung who Thomas Gilbert's
feminine visitor had been. Should that clue have been followed up before
I moved on Eddie Hughes? Even as I got to this point, I heard Worth,
punctuating his remarks with the whang of his rock on the bit of twig he
was pounding to pieces,
"Boyne, I won't stand for any arrest being made except in all
sincerity--the person you honestly believe to be the criminal."
"Does that mean you forbid me, in so many words, to proceed against
Hughes on what I've got?"
"It does," Worth said. "You're not convinced yourself. Leave it alone."
"'Nough said!" I jumped to my feet. If he wouldn't let me lay hands on
Hughes--there was nothing to do but go after the next one. "You two run
along. Get your ferns. There's a man at the club here I have to see."
Barbara was afoot instantly; Worth lay looking at her for a moment,
then heaved himself up, shook his shoulders, and stood beside her.
"Race you to the foot of the hill," she flashed up at him.
"You're on," he chuckled. "I'll give you a running start--to the tree
down there--and beat you."
They were off. She ran like a deer. Worth got away as though he was in
earnest. He caught her up just at the finish; I couldn't see which won;
but they walked a few rods hand in hand.
Something swelled in my throat as I watched them away: life's
springtime--and the year's; boy and girl running, like kids that had
never known a fear or a mortal burden, over an earth greener than any
other, because its time of verdure is brief, dreaming already of the
golden-tan of California midsummer, under boughs where tree blooms made
all the air sweet.
For sake of the boy and the girl who didn't know enough to take care of
their own happiness, I wheeled and galloped in the direction of the
country club.
There is an institution known--and respected--in police circles as the
Holy Scare. I was determined to make use of it. I'd throw a holy scare
into a man I knew, and see what came out.