THE MAGNET
I had all set for next morning: my roadster at Capehart's for repair,
old Bill tipped off that I didn't want any one but Eddie Hughes to work
on it; and to add to my satisfaction, there arrived in my daily grist
from the office, the report that they had Skeels in jail at Tiajuana.
"Well, Jerry, old socks," Worth hailed my news as I followed out to his
car where he was starting for San Francisco, and going to drop me at the
Capehart garage, "Some luck! If Skeels is in jail at Tiajuana, and what
I'm after to-day turns out right, we may have both ends of the string."
Pink-and-white were the miles of orchards surrounding Santa Ysobel,
pink-and-white nearly all the dooryards, every tree its own little
carnival of bloom with bees for guests. Already the streets were full of
life, double the usual traffic. As we neared the Capehart cottage, on
its quiet side street about half a block from the garage, there was
Barbara under the apple boughs at the gate, talking to some man whose
back was to us. She bowed; I answered with a wave toward the garage; but
Worth scooted us past without, I thought, once glancing her way, sent
the roadster across Main where he should have stopped and let me out,
went on and into the highway at a clip which rocked us.
"Was that Cummings?" holding my hat on. No answer that I could hear,
while we made speed toward San Francisco. And still no word was spoken
until we had outraged the sensibilities of all whose bad luck it was to
meet us, those whom we passed going at a more reasonable pace, scared a
team of work horses into the ditch, and settled down to a steady whiz.
We were getting away from Santa Ysobel a good deal further and a good
deal faster than I felt I could afford. I took a chance and remarked, to
nobody in particular, and in a loud voice,
"I asked Barbara not to make a break with Cummings; it would be awkward
for us now if she did."
"Break?" Worth gave me back one of my words.
"Yes. I was afraid she might throw him down for the carnival ball."
Without comment or reply, he slowed gently for the big turn where the
Medlow road comes in, swept a handsome circle and headed back. Then he
remarked,
"Thought I'd show you what the little boat could do under my management.
Eddie had her in fair shape, but I've tuned her up a notch or two
since."
I responded with proper enthusiasm, and would have been perfectly
willing to be let out at Main Street. But he turned the corner there,
ran on to the garage, jumped out and followed me in. Bill, selling some
used tires to a customer in the office, nodded and let us go past to
where my machine stood. We heard voices back in the repair shop and a
hum of swift whirring shafts and pulleys. Worth kept with me. It
embarrassed me--made me nervous. It was as though he had some notion of
my purpose there. Hughes, at his lathe, caught sight of us and growled
over his shoulder,
"Yer machine's ready."
This wouldn't do. I stepped to the door, with,
"Fixed the radiator, did you?"
"Sure. Whaddye think?" Hughes was at work on something for a girl; she
perched at one end of his bench, swinging her feet. Worth, behind me,
touched my shoulder, and I saw that the girl over there was Barbara
Wallace.
She looked up at us and smiled. The sun slanting through dirt covered
windows, made color effects on her silken black hair. Eddie gave us
another scowl and went on with his work.
"Hello, Bobs," Worth's greeting was casual. "Thought I'd stop and tell
you I was on my way--you know." A glance of understanding passed between
them. "Better come along?"
"I'd like to," she smiled. "You'll be back by dinner time. If it wasn't
the last day, and I hadn't promised--"
Neither of them in any hurry.
"Hughes," I said, "there's another thing needs doing on that car of
mine--"
"Can't do nothing at all till I finish her job," he shrugged me off.
"All right," and I stepped through into the grassy back yard, put a
smoke in my face, and began walking up and down, my glance, each time I
turned, encountering that queer bunch inside: Worth, hands in pockets;
the chauffeur he had discharged--and that I was waiting to get for
murder--bending at his vise; Barbara's shining dark head close to the
tousled unkemptness of his poll, as she explained to him the pulley
arrangement needed to raise and anchor the banner she and Skeet were
painting.
Suddenly, at the far end of my beat, I was brought up by a little outcry
and stir. As I wheeled toward the door, I saw Bobs and Worth in it,
apparently wrestling over something. Laughing, crying, she hung to his
wrist with one hand, the other covering one of her eyes.
"Let me look!" he demanded. "I won't touch it, if you don't want me to.
You have got something in there, Bobs."
But when she reluctantly gave him his chance, he treacherously went for
her with a corner of his handkerchief in the traditional way, and she
backed off, uttering a cry that fetched Hughes around from the lathe,
roaring at Worth, above the noise of the machinery,
"What's the matter with her?"
"Steel splinter--in her eye," Worth shouted.
With a quick oath, the belt pole was thrown to stop the lathe; down the
length of the shop to the scrap heap of odds and ends at the rear Hughes
raced, returning with a bit of metal in his hand. Barbara was backed
against the bench, her eyes shut, and tears had begun to flow from under
the lids.
"Now, Miss Barbie," Hughes remonstrated. "You let me at that thing.
This'll pull it out and never touch you." I saw it was a horse-shoe
magnet he carried.
"Do you think it will?"
"Sure," and Eddie approached the magnet to her face. "It won't hurt you
a-tall. She'll begin to pull before she even touches. Now, steady. Want
to come as near contact as I can. Don't jump.... Hell!"
Barbara had sprung away from him. But for Worth's quick arm, she would
have been into the machines.
"No!" she said between locked teeth, tears on her cheeks, "I can't let
him."
"Why, Barbara!" I said, astonished; and poor Eddie almost blubbered as
he begged,
"Aw, come on, Miss Barbie. It was my fault in the first place--leavin'
that damned lathe run. Yuh got to let me--"
"But if it doesn't work?"
"Sure it'll work. Would I offer to use it for you if I hadn't tried it
out lots o' times--to pull splinters and--"
"Give me that magnet," Worth reached the long arm of authority, got what
he wanted, shouldered Hughes aside, and took hold of the girl with,
"Quit being a little fool, Barbara. That thing's only caught in your
lashes now. Let it get in against the eyeball and you'll have trouble.
Hold still."
The command was not needed. Without a word, Barbara raised her face, put
her hands behind her and waited.
Delicately, Worth caught the dark fringe of the closed eye, turned back
the lid so that he could see just what he was at, brought the horse-shoe
almost in touch, then drew it away--and there was the tiny steel
splinter that could have cost her sight, clinging to the magnet's edge.
"Here you are," he smiled. "Wasn't that enough to call you names for?"
"You didn't call me names," dabbing away with a small handkerchief. "You
told me to quit being a little fool. Maybe I will. How would you like
that?"
Apparently Hughes did not resent Barbara's refusing his help and
accepting Worth's. He went back to his vise; the two others strolled
together through the doorway into the garage, talking there for a moment
in quick, low tones; then Barbara returned to perch on the end of
Eddie's bench, play with the magnet and watch him at work. I lit up
again and stepped out.
I could see Barbara gather some nails, screws and loose pieces of iron,
hold a bit of board over them, and trail the magnet back and forth along
its top. Though a half inch of wood intervened, the metal trash on the
bench followed the magnet to and fro. I got nothing out of that except
that Barbara was still a child, playing like a child, till I looked up
suddenly to find that she had ceased the play, brought her feet up to
curl them under her in the familiar Buddha pose, while the busy hands
were dropped and folded before her. Her rebellion of yesterday
evening--and now her taking up the concentration unasked--she wouldn't
want me to notice what she was doing; I ducked out of sight. I had
walked up and down that yard a half dozen times more, when over me with
a rush came the significance of those moving bits of iron, trailing a
magnet on the other side of a board. Three long steps took me to the
door.
"Hughes," I shouted, "I'm taking my machine now. Be back directly."
The man grunted without turning around. I had forgotten Barbara, but as
I was climbing into the roadster, I heard her jump to the floor and
start after me.
"Mr. Boyne! Wait! Mr. Boyne!"
I checked and sat grinning as she came up, the magnet in her hand. I
reached for it.
"Give me that," I whispered. "Want to go along and see me use it?"
"No--no--" in hushed protest. "You're making a mistake, Mr. Boyne."
"Mistake? I saw what you did in there. Said you never would again--then
went right to it! You sure got something this time! Girl--girl! You've
turned the trick!"
"Oh, _no_! You mustn't take it like that, Mr. Boyne. This is nothing--as
it stands. Just a single unrelated fact that I used with others to
concentrate on. Wait. Do wait--till Worth comes back, anyhow."
"All right." I felt that our voices were getting loud, that we'd talked
here too long. No use of flushing the game before I was loaded. "First
thing to do is to verify this." I felt good all over.
"Yes, of course," she smiled faintly. "You would want to do that." And
she climbed in beside me.
I drove so fast that Barbara had no chance to question me, though she
did find openings for remonstrating at my speed. I dashed into the
driveway of the Gilbert place and came to an abrupt stop at the doors of
the garage. And right away I bumped up against my first check. I gripped
the magnet, raced to the study door with it, she following more slowly
to watch while I passed it along the wooden panel where the bolt ran on
the other side; and nothing doing!
Again she followed as I ran around to the outside door, opened up and
tried it on the bare bolt itself; no stir. While she sat in the desk
chair at that central table, her elbows on its top, her hands lightly
clasped, the chin dropped in interlaced fingers, following my movements
with very little interest, I puffed and worked, opened a door and tried
to move the bolt when it wasn't in the socket, and felt like cursing in
disappointment.
"A little oil--" I grumbled, more to myself than to her, and hurried to
the garage workbench for the can that would certainly be there. It was,
but I didn't touch it. What I did lean over and clutch from where they
lay tossed in carelessly among rubbish and old spare parts, were three
more magnets exactly the same as the one we had brought from Capehart's.
I sprinted back with them.
"Barbara," I called in an undertone. "Come here. Look."
Held side by side, the four, working as one, moved the bolts as well as
fingers could have done, and through more than an inch of hard wood.
"Yes," she looked at it; "but that doesn't prove Eddie Hughes the
murderer."
"No?" her opposition began to get on my nerves. "I'm afraid that'll be a
matter for twelve good men and true to settle." She stood silent, and I
added, "I know now whose shadow I saw on the broken panel of that door
there, the first Sunday night."
"Oh, it was Eddie's," she agreed rather unexpectedly.
"And he came to steal the 1920 diary," I supplied.
"He came to get a drink from the cellaret, and a cigar from the case.
That's the use he made of his power to move these bolts."
"Until the Saturday night when he killed his employer, the man he hated,
and left things so the crime would pass as suicide. Barbara, are you
just plain perverse?"
Instead of answering, she went back to the table, got the contraption
Hughes had made for her, and started as if to leave me. On the
threshold, she hesitated.
"I don't suppose there's anything I can say or do to change your mind,"
her tone was inert, drained. "I know that Eddie is innocent of this. But
you don't want to listen to deductions."
"Later," I said to her, briskly. "It'll keep. I've something to do now."
"What? You promised Worth to make no move against Eddie Hughes until you
had his permission." She seemed to think that settled it. I let her keep
the idea.
"Run along, Barbara," I said, "get to your paint daubing. I'll forgive
you everything for deducing--well, discovering, if you like that
better--about these bolts and magnets."
Skeet burst from the kitchen door of the Thornhill house, caught sight
of us, shouted something unintelligible, and came racing through the
grounds toward Vandeman's.
"Been waiting for me long, angel?" she called, as Barbara moved up with
a lagging step, then, waving two pairs of overalls, "Got pants for both
of us, honey. The paints and brushes are over there. We'll make short
work of that old banner, now."
Promised Worth, had I? But the situation was changed since then. No man
of sense could object to my moving on what I had now. I locked the study
door, went back to my roadster, and headed her uptown.