A MATTER OF TASTE
Upon our few moments of strained waiting, Vandeman breezed in, full of
apologies for his shirtsleeves. I remember noticing the monogram worked
on the left silken arm, the fit and swing of immaculate trousers, as
smoothly modeled to the hip as a girl's gown; his ever smiling face; the
slightly exaggerated way he wiped fingers already clean on a
handkerchief pulled from a rear pocket. He was the only unconstrained
person in the room; he hardly looked surprised; his glance was merely
inquiring. Edwards apparently couldn't stand it. He jumped up and began
his characteristic pacing of one end of the constricted place, jerking
out as he walked,
"Bronse, it's my fault that Boyne sent for you. He's working on this
trouble of Worth's, you know. He's had me in here, grilling me, shaking
me over hell; and something I said--God knows why--sent him after you."
"Trouble of Worth's!" Vandeman had been about to sit; his half bent
knees straightened out again; he stood beside the chair and spoke
irritably. "Told you, Boyne, if you meddled with that coroner's verdict
you'd get your employer in the devil of a tight place. Nobody had any
reason for wanting Worth's father out of the way--except Worth, himself.
Frankly, I think you're wrong. But everything that I can do--of
course--"
"All right," I said, letting it fly at him. "Where was your wife from
seven to half past nine on the evening of Gilbert's murder?"
Back went his head; out flashed all the fine teeth; the man laughed in
my face.
"Excuse me, Mr. Boyne. I understand that this is serious--nothing funny
about it--but really, you know, recalling the date, what you've said is
amusing. My dear man," he went on as I stared at him, "please remember,
yourself, where Ina was on that particular evening."
"The wedding and reception were done with by seven o'clock," I objected.
This ground was familiar with me. I'd been over it in considering what
opportunity Laura Bowman would have had for a call on Thomas Gilbert at
the required hour. If she could slip away for it, why not Ina Vandeman?
As though he read my thoughts and answered them, Vandeman filled in,
"A bride, you know, is dead certain to have at least half a dozen
persons with her every minute of the time until she leaves the house on
her wedding trip. Ina did, I'm sure. We'll just call her in, and she'll
give you their names."
He was up and starting to bring her; I stopped him.
"We'll not bother with those names just now. I'd rather have you--or
Mrs. Vandeman--tell me what you suppose would be the entry in Thomas
Gilbert's diary for May 31 and June 1, 1916. I have already identified
it as the date on which the Bowmans first moved into the Wallace house.
I think Mr. Edwards knows something more, but he's not so communicative
as you promise to be."
He looked as if he wished he hadn't been so liberal with his assurances.
I saw him glance half sulkily at Edwards, as he exclaimed,
"But those diaries are burned--they're burned. Worth told us the other
night that he burned them without reading."
At the words, Edwards stopped stock-still, something almost humorous at
the back of the suffering gaze he fastened on my face. I met it
steadily, then answered Vandeman,
"Doesn't make any difference to anybody that those books are burned. I'd
read them; I know what was in them; and I know that three leaves--six
pages--covering the entries of May 31 and June 1, 1916, were cut out."
"But what the deuce, Boyne?" Vandeman wrinkled a smooth brow. "What
would some leaves gone from Mr. Gilbert's diary four years ago have to
do with us here to-day--or even with his recent death?"
"Pardon me," I said shortly. "The matter's not as old as that. True, the
stuff was written four years ago; it recorded happenings on those dates;
but the ink that was used in marking out a run-over on the next
following page was fresh. Anyhow, Mr. Vandeman, we know that a woman
came weeping to Mr. Gilbert on the very night of his death, only a short
time before his death--as nearly as medical science can determine
that--and we believe that she came after those leaves out of the diary,
and got them--whatever she had to do to secure them."
I was struck with the difference in the way these two men took inquiry.
Edwards had writhed, changed color, started to speak and caught himself
back, showed all the agony of a clumsy criminal who dreads the probing
that may give him away: temperament; the rotten spot in his affairs.
Vandeman, younger, not entangled with an unhappy married woman, sat
looking me in the eye, still smiling. The blow I had to deal him would
be harder. It concerned his bride; but he'd take punishment well. I
proceeded to let him have it.
"I can see that Mr. Edwards has an idea what the entries on those pages
covered. He has inadvertently shown me that your wife was the woman who
came and got them from Thomas Gilbert on the night he was murdered."
At that he turned on Edwards, and Edwards answered the look with,
"I didn't. On my honor, Bronse, I never mentioned your name or Ina's.
The Chinaman told him that--about some woman coming that evening--"
"Mr. Vandeman," I broke in, "there's no use beating about the bush.
Chung recognized your wife's voice. She was the woman who came weeping
to get those diary leaves."
He took that with astonishing quietness, and,
"Suppose you were shown that she wasn't out of her mother's house?"
"Wouldn't stop me. Allow that her alibi's perfect. Yet you men have
something. There's something here I ought to know."
"Something you'll never find out from me," Jim Edwards' deep voice was
full of defiance. "Bronse, I owe you an apology; but you can depend on
me to keep my mouth shut."
After a minute's consideration Vandeman said,
"I don't know why we should any of us keep our mouths shut."
Jim Edwards looked utterly bewildered as the man sat there, thinking the
thing over, glanced up pleasantly at me and suggested,
"Edwards has a little different slant on this from me. I don't know why
I shouldn't state to you exactly what happened--right there in Gilbert's
study on the date you mentioned."
"Oh, there did something unusual happen; and you've just remembered it."
"There did something unusual happen, and I've just remembered it, aided
thereto by your questions and Edwards' queer looks. Cheer up, old man;
we haven't all got your southern chivalry. From a plain, commonsense
point of view, what I have to tell is not in the least to my wife's
discredit. In fact, I'm proud of her all the way through."
Jim Edwards came suddenly and nervously to his feet, strode to the
further corner of the room and sat down at as great a distance from
Vandeman as its dimensions would permit. He turned his face to the small
window there, and through all that Vandeman said, kept up a steady,
maddening tattoo with his fingernails on the sill.
"This has to do with what I told you the first night I ever talked with
you, Boyne. You threw doubt on Thomas Gilbert's death being suicide. I
gave as a reason for my belief that it was, a knowledge and conviction
that the man's mind was unhinged."
Edwards' tattoo at the window ceased for a minute. He stared, startled,
at the speaker, then went back to it, and Vandeman proceeded,
"I'm not telling Jim Edwards anything he doesn't know, and what I say to
you, Boyne, that's discreditable to the dead, I can't avoid. Here it is:
on the evening of June first, 1916, I had dinner alone at home. You'll
find, if you look at an old calendar, that it falls on a Sunday. Jim
Edwards had dined informally at the Thornhills'. As he told it to me
later, they were all sitting out on the side porch after dinner, and
nobody noticed that Ina wasn't with them until they heard cries coming
from somewhere over in the direction of the Gilbert place. At my house,
I'd heard it, and we both ran for the garage, where the screams were
repeated again and again. We got there about the same time, found the
disturbance was in the study, and Edwards who was ahead of me rushed up
and hammered on its door."
Again Jim Edwards stopped the nervous drumming of his fingers on the
window-sill while he stared at the younger man as at some prodigy of
nature. Finally he seemed unable to hold in any longer.
"Hammered on the door!" he repeated. "If you're going to turn out the
whole damn' thing to Boyne, tell it straight; door was open; we couldn't
have heard a yip out of Ina if it hadn't been. Tom there in full sight,
sitting in his desk chair, cool as a cucumber, letting her scream."
"I'm telling this," Vandeman snapped. "Gilbert looked to me like an
insane man. Jim, you're crazy as he was, to say anything else. Never
supposed for a minute you thought otherwise--that poor girl there, dazed
with fright, backed as far away from him as she could get, hair flying,
eyes wild."
I looked from one to the other. What Edwards had said of the cold,
contemptuous old man; what Vandeman told of the screaming girl; no
answer to such a proposition of course but an attempted frame-up. To let
the bridegroom get by would best serve my purpose.
"All right, gentlemen," I said. "And now could you tell me what action
you took, on this state of affairs?"
"Action?" Vandeman gave me an uneasy look. "What was there to do? Told
you I thought the man was crazy."
"And you, Edwards?"
"Let it go as Bronse says. I cut back to Mrs. Thornhill's, scouting to
see what the chance was for getting Ina in without the family knowing
anything."
"That's right," Vandeman said. "I stayed to fetch her. She was fine. To
the last, she let Gilbert save his face--actually send her home as
though she were the one to blame. Right then I knew I loved her--wanted
her for my wife. On the way home, I asked her and was accepted."
"In spite of the fact that she was engaged to Worth Gilbert?"
"Boyne," he said impatiently, "what's the matter with you? Haven't I
made you understand what happened there at the study? She had to break
off with the son of a man like that. Ina Thornhill couldn't marry into
such a breed."
"Slow up, Vandeman!" Edwards' tone was soft, but when I looked at him, I
saw a tawny spark in his black eyes. Vandeman fronted him with the
flamboyant embroidered monogram on his shirt sleeve, the carefully
careless tie, the utterly good clothes, and, most of all, at the moment,
the smug satisfaction in his face of social and human security. I
thought of what that Frenchman says about there being nothing so
enjoyable to us as the troubles of our friends. "Needn't think you can
put it all over the boy when he's not here to defend himself--jump on
him because he's down! Tell that your wife discarded him--cast him
off--for disgraceful reasons! Damnitall! You and I both heard Tom giving
her her orders to break with his son, she sniffling and hunting hairpins
over the floor and promising that she would."
"Cut it out!" yelled Vandeman, as though some one had pinched him. "I
saw nothing of the sort. I heard nothing of the sort. Neither did you."
I think they had forgotten me, and that they remembered at about the
same instant that they were talking before a detective. They both
turned, mum and startled looking, Edwards to his window, Vandeman to a
nervous brushing of his trouser edges, from which he looked up,
inquiring doubtfully,
"What next, Boyne? Jim's excited; but you understand that there's no
animus; and my wife and I are entirely at your disposal in this matter."
"Thank you," I said.
"Would you like to talk to her?"
"I would."
"When?"
"Now."
"Where?"
"Here--or let the lady say."
Vandeman gave me a queer look and went out. When he was gone, I found
Jim Edwards scrabbling for his hat where it had dropped over behind the
desk. I put my back against the door and asked,
"Is Bronson Vandeman a fatuous fool; or does he take me for one?"
"Some men defend their women one way, and some another. Let me out of
this, Boyne, before that girl gets here."
"She won't come in a hurry," I smiled. "Her husband's pretty free with
his promises; but more than likely I'll have to go after her if I want
her."
"Well?" he looked at me uncomfortably.
"Blackmail's a crime, you know, Edwards. A woman capable of it, might be
capable of murder."
"You've got the wrong word there, Boyne. This wasn't exactly blackmail."
"What, then?"
"The girl--I never liked her--never thought she was good enough for
Worth--but she was engaged to him, and--in this I think she was fighting
for her hand."
He searched my face and went on cautiously,
"You read the diaries. They must have had complaints of her."
"They had," I assented.
"Anything about money?"
I shook my head.
"You said there were two entries gone; the first would have told you, I
suppose--Before we go further, Boyne, let me make a little explanation
to you--for the girl's sake."
"Shoot," I said.
"It was this way," he sighed. "Thornhill, Ina's father, made fifteen or
twenty thousand a year I would say, and the family lived it up. He had a
stroke and died in a week's time. Left Mrs. Thornhill with her
daughters, her big house, her fine social position--and mighty little to
keep it up on. Ina is the eldest. She got the worst of it, because at
the first of her being a young lady she was used to having all the money
she wanted to spend. The twins were right on her heels; the thing for
her to do was to make a good marriage, and make it quick. But she got
engaged to Worth; then he went to France. There you were. He might never
come back. Tom always hated her; watched her like a hawk; got onto
something she--about--"
"Out with it," I said. "What? Come down to cases."
"Money." He uttered the one word and stood silent.
I made a long shot, with,
"Mr. Gilbert found she'd been getting money from other men--"
"Borrowing, Boyne--they used the word 'borrowed,'" Edwards put in. "It
was always Tom's way to summon people as though he had a little private
judgment bar, haul them up and lecture them; I suppose he thought he had
a special license in her case."
"And she went prepared to frame him and bluff him to a standoff. Is that
the way you saw it?"
"My opinion--what I might think," said Mr. James Edwards of Sunnyvale
ranch, "wouldn't be testimony in a court of law. You don't want it,
Boyne."
"Maybe not," I grunted. "Perhaps I could make as good a guess as you
could at what young Mrs. Vandeman's capable of; a dolly face, and behind
it the courage of hell."
"Boyne," he said, as I left the door free to him, "quit making war on
women."
"Can't," I grinned and waved him on out. "The detective business would
be a total loss without 'em."