JACK TELLS THE STORY
The account of Molly’s dinner with Tony Ford was given Sunday morning by
Molly herself to George and the chief in the Whitney home. I went there
in the afternoon—dread of possible developments drew me like a
magnet—and heard the news. It was more ominous than even I, steeled and
primed for ill tidings, had expected. I didn’t say much. There was no
use in showing my disbelief; besides if they suspected its strength
there was a possibility of their confidence being withheld from me. I
had to hear everything, be familiar with every strand in the net they
were weaving round the woman of whose guilt they were now certain.
George was going to call somewhere on Fifth Avenue, and I walked up with
him, for the pleasure of his company he supposed, in reality to hear in
detail how he and the chief had pieced into logical sequence the broken
bits of information.
"Roughly speaking," he said, "it’s this way: Barker was the brains of
the combination, Ford and Miss Whitehall the instruments he used. Ford
did the killing and was paid. Miss Whitehall’s part, which was puzzling
before, is now clear. She takes her place as The Woman in the Case, the
spider that decoyed the fly into the web."
He paused for me to answer, but I could say nothing.
"It was one of the most ingenious plots I’ve ever come up against. A
master mind conceived it and must have been days perfecting it. Think of
the skill with which every detail was developed, and those two
alibis—Ford’s and Barker’s. How carefully they were carried out. That
afternoon visit of Harland to Miss Whitehall was planned. Barker
followed it and heard that all was ready—the trap set and the quarry
coming. Then he went up to the floor above establishing his presence
there, and knowing, when Harland left, that the girl was waiting below
to meet and hold him in the front room.
"Then comes Tony Ford, finds Harland and Miss Whitehall, apologizes and
goes through to the private office where Barker is lying low. That the
murder was committed there is proved by the two blood spots. Ford
established his alibi by leaving; Barker’s is already established—he is
in the room above unable to get out without being seen. Even if a crime
_had_ been discovered, they were both as safe from suspicion as if
they’d been in their own homes.
"Miss Whitehall and Barker stay in the Azalea Woods Estates office till
the excitement in the street subsides. They’re perfectly safe there; the
police, when they come, are going to go to the floor above. When the
crowd disperses they leave by the service stairs, she first, Barker a
short while afterward. The building and the street are deserted, but
even if he _is_ seen, nobody knows enough at that time to question his
movements. After that it all goes without a hitch, even the arrest of
the chauffeur was all to the good, as it delayed the search for two
days.
"When it’s known that he has voluntarily disappeared, what’s the
explanation? He’s welched on his associates and found it best to take to
the tall timber. At this moment he’s probably congratulating himself on
his success. There’s just one thing that, so far, he hasn’t been able to
accomplish—get his girl."
I walked along, not answering. It was pretty sickening to hear how
straight they had it. But there was one weak spot; at least I thought it
was weak.
"Just why do you think a girl like Miss Whitehall—a woman without a spot
or stain on her—would lend herself to an affair like that?"
"Perfectly simple," he answered. "She expects to marry Barker. Whether
she loves him or his money, her actions prove that she is ready to join
him whenever he sends for her—ready to do what he tells her. He’s a
tremendous personality, stronger than she, and he’s bent her to his
will."
"Oh, rot!" I said. "You can’t bend a perfectly straight woman to help in
such a crime unless she’s bent that way by nature, and _she_ isn’t."
He grinned in a complacent, maddening way.
"I guess Barker could. He’s as subtle as the serpent in Eden. Besides,
how can you be so sure what kind of a girl she is? Who knows anything of
these Whitehalls? They came from the West two years ago and settled on a
farm—quiet, ladylike women—but not a soul has any real information about
them or their antecedents. And _they_ haven’t given out much. They’ve
been curiously secretive all along the line. I’m not saying the girl’s a
natural born criminal—she doesn’t look the part—but you’ll have to admit
her speech and her actions are not those of a simple-minded rustic
beauty. In my opinion she’s fallen under Barker’s spell, and he’s molded
her to his purpose. _He’s_ the one, _he’s_ the brain. She and Ford were
only the two hands."
We’d reached the place he was bound for, and I was glad to break away. I
wanted to think, and the more I thought the more wild and fantastic and
incredible it seemed. A week ago a girl like any other girl, and today
suspected of complicity in a primitively savage crime. I thought of the
case they were building up against her and I thought of her in her room
that morning, and it seemed the maddest nightmare. Then her face that
day in the Whitney office rose on my memory, the stealthily watching
eyes with their leaping fires, the equivocations, the lies! I walked for
the rest of the afternoon, miles, somewhere out in the country. My brain
was dried like a sponge in the sun as I came home—I couldn’t get
anywhere, couldn’t get beyond that fundamental conviction that it wasn’t
true. I think if she’d confessed it with her own lips I’d have gone on
persisting she was innocent.
Two days after that a chain of events began that put an end to all
inaction and plunged the Harland case deeper than ever into sinister
mystery. I will write them down in the order in which they occurred.
The first was on Tuesday—the Tuesday night following Molly’s dinner with
Tony Ford. That night an unknown man attacked Ford in his room, leaving
him for dead.
For some years Ford had lived in a lodging house on the East Side near
Stuyvesant Park. The place was decent and quiet, run by a widow and her
daughter, the inmates of a shabby-genteel class—rather an odd place for
a man of Ford’s proclivities to house himself. It was one of those
old-fashioned, brown-stone fronts, set back from the street behind a
little square of garden, a short flagged path leading to the front door.
On the evening of the attack Ford had come in about half-past eight,
and, after a few words with his landlady, who was sitting in the
reception room, had gone upstairs. A little after ten, as they were
closing up for the night, there was a ring at the bell and the door was
opened by the servant, a Swede. The widow was as economical with her gas
as lodging-house keepers usually are, and the Swede said she could only
dimly see the figure of a man in the vestibule. He asked for Mr. Anthony
Ford, and she told him Mr. Ford was in and directed him to a room on the
third floor back. Without more words he entered and went up the stairs.
After locking the door she followed him, being on her way to bed. When
she reached the third floor he was standing at Ford’s door, and, as she
ascended to the fourth, she heard his knock and Ford’s voice from the
inside call out, "Hello, who’s that?"
When the police asked her about the man’s appearance her description was
meager. He had worn the collar of his overcoat turned up and kept on his
hat. All that she could make out in the brief moment when he crossed the
hall to the stairs was that his eyes looked bright and dark, that he
wore glasses, and that he had a large aquiline nose. She thought he had
a white mustache, but on this point was uncertain, as the upturned
collar hid the lower part of his face.
Babbitts, who reported the affair for the _Dispatch_ and for the Whitney
office on the side, questioned the girl carefully. She was stupid, not
long landed, and could only be sure of the nose and the glasses. But one
thing he elicited from her was an important touch in this impressionist
picture—the man was small. When he passed her in the hall she noticed
that he was not so tall as she was, and he moved quickly and lightly as
he went up the stairs.
On the third floor front were two rooms, one vacant, one occupied by a
boy named Salinger, a clerk in a near-by publishing house. Salinger came
in at half-past ten, and as he passed Ford’s door heard in the room
men’s voices, one loud, one low. A sentence in the raised voice—it did
not sound like Ford’s—caught his ear. The tone denoted anger, likewise
the words: "I’ve come for something more than talk. I’ve had enough of
that."
Knowing Ford was out of work he supposed he was having a row with a dun,
and passed on to his own room, where he went to bed and read a novel. He
was so engrossed in this that he said he would not have heard anyone
come or go in the hall, but the landlady, who with her daughter occupied
the parlor on the ground floor, at a little before eleven heard steps
descending the stairs and the front door open and close.
It wasn’t till nearly two in the morning that Salinger was wakened by a
feeble knocking. He jumped up, and before he could reach the door heard
a heavy fall in the passage. There, prostrate by the sill, lay Ford,
unconscious, his head laid open by a deep wound.
Salinger dragged him back to his room, then roused the landlady, who
sent for a doctor. He told Babbitts that the place gave no evidence of a
struggle, the droplight was burning, a chair drawn close to it, and a
book lying face down on the table as if Ford had been reading when the
stranger interrupted him. On the floor near a desk standing between the
two windows, a trickle of blood showed where Ford had fallen, suggesting
that the attack had been made from behind as he stood over the desk. The
doctor pronounced the injury serious. The blow had been delivered on the
back of the head, and Ford’s condition was critical.
When the police turned up they could find nothing to give them a clue to
the assailant—no finger prints, no foot marks, no weapon or implement.
Ford had been stricken down by one violent blow, falling on him suddenly
and evidently unexpectedly. He was taken to the hospital, unconscious,
no one knowing whether he would die before they could get a statement
out of him.
The cause of the assault was at first puzzling. Robbery seemed
improbable, as a man in Ford’s position was not likely to have much
money and as his gold watch and chain were found in full view on the
table. But when the first excitement quieted down one of the women in
the house came forward with the story that a few days before Ford had
told her he had recently been left a legacy by an uncle up-state, and in
proof of his newly acquired wealth had shown her two fifty-dollar bills.
This put a different face on the matter. If Ford had carried such sums
on him, it was probable the fact had become known and burglary been the
motive of the attack.
The police looked over the papers in his wallet and desk but found
nothing that threw any light on the mystery. Babbitts was present at
this search and found three letters—tossed aside by the city detectives
as having no bearing on the subject—that he knew must be seen by Whitney
& Whitney. He and the precinct captain had hobnobbed together over many
cases, and a few sentences in the hall resulted in the transfer of the
papers to Babbitts’ breast pocket with a promise to return them the next
day.
I’ll give you these letters later on—when we pored over them in the old
man’s private office.
In the hospital Ford came back to consciousness long enough to make an
ante-mortem statement. It was short and explicit, satisfying the
authorities, who didn’t know that the victim himself was a criminal with
matters in his own life to hide. Here it is, copied from the evening
paper:
I don’t know who the man was. I never saw him before. He had
some story that he knew me and asked for money. I tried to stand
him off, but when he got threatening, not wanting him to make a
row in the house, I went to the desk where I had a few loose
bills in a drawer. It was while I was standing there with my
back to him, that he struck me. I don’t know what he did it
with—something he had under his coat. When I came to myself
later I got to Salinger’s door. That’s all I know. A week ago
I’d had some money on me—part of a small legacy—but I’d banked
it a few days before. He must have heard of it some way and was
after it.
That settled the question as far as the police and the general public
went. That the watch and chain were not touched nor the few dollars in
the desk drawer was pointed to as positive proof that Ford’s assailant
was no common sneak thief or second-story man. He was not wasting his
time on small change or articles difficult to dispose of. For a few days
the police hunted for him, but not a trace of him was to be found. "An
old hand," they had it, "dropped back into the darkness of the
underworld."
There was not a detective or reporter in New York who connected that
half-seen figure, stealing by night into a cheap lodging house, with the
financier whose disappearance had been the nine days’ wonder of the
season.
On Wednesday evening Babbitts brought the letters to the Whitney office
(we were all there but Molly), and we sat round the table passing the
papers from hand to hand.
One was on a sheet of Harland’s business stationery and was in Harland’s
writing, which both George and the chief knew. It was dated January
second, and ran as follows:
_Dear Ford_,
Excellent. If possible, I’ll try to see you tomorrow. I’ll be
going down to lunch about one. Yours,
H. H.
As a document in the case it had no especial value, beyond confirming
the fact that Ford was—as he had told Molly—on friendly terms with the
lawyer.
The others were of vital significance. They were on small oblongs of
white paper, the finely nicked upper edge indicating they had been
attached to a writing tablet. Both were in ink, and in the same hand,
rapid and scratchy, the words trailing off in unfinished scrawls.
Neither had any address, but both bore dates: one December 27 and the
other January 10.
Here is the first:
_December 27._
_Dear Girl_,
Thanks for your note. Things begin to look more encouraging.
That I must stand back and let you do so much—win our way by
your cleverness and persuasion—is a trial to my patience. But my
time will come later.
J. W. B.
The signature was a hurried scratch. Babbitts said the police had
glanced at the letter, set it down as the copy of a note Ford had
written to some girl, and thrown it aside. Those half-formed initials
might have been anything to the casual, uninterested eye.
The second, dated January 10, was a little longer:
_Dearest_,
I hoped to see you today but couldn’t make it. So our end seems
to be in sight—at last approaching after our planning and
waiting. What a sensation we’re going to make! But it won’t
touch us. We’re strong enough to dare anything when our
happiness is the stake.
J. W. B.
We agreed with O’Mally when he sized these letters up as copies in
Ford’s hand—he had samples of it—of notes written by Barker to Carol
Whitehall. The reason for Ford’s taking them was not hard to guess with
our knowledge of the gunman’s character.
"It shows him up as a pretty tough specimen," said the detective,
astride on a chair with a big black cigar in the corner of his mouth.
"He wasn’t going to lose a trick. While he was working for Barker he was
gathering all the evidence against his employer that his position in the
Whitehall office gave him access to."
"Laying his plans for blackmail," said George.
"That’s it. He had his eagle eye trained on the future. When Barker and
his girl were feeling safe in some secluded corner, these
letters—documentary testimony to the plot—could be used as levers to
extort more money."
"Do you suppose Barker was on to it and decided to get him out of the
way before he had a chance to use them?" said Babbitts.
"No—I don’t see it that way. There was no indication in the room of a
search. I guess Barker acted on the principle that the fewer people
share a secret the easier it is to keep."
"Looks to me," said George, "as if Ford _had_ made some move that scared
the old man. Coming back that way into a house full of people!
Considering the circumstances he took a mighty big risk."
"Not as big a one as having Ford at large," answered O’Mally. "You’ve
got to remember that not one of the three knows the murder has been
discovered. They think they’re as safe as bugs in a rug. With Ford out
of it the only menace to Barker’s safety is removed. I look at this as a
last perfecting touch, the coping stone on the edifice."
The chief, who had been silently pacing back and forth across the end of
the room, came slouching to the table and picked up the longer of the
two letters. Holding it to the light he read it over murmuringly, then
dropped it and said:
"Curious that a man who had conceived such a plot would allude to it in
writing."
I spoke up. What seemed to me the first rational words of the meeting
gave me my cue.
"What makes you so sure the thing alluded to in those letters _is_ the
murder?"
I was standing back between the window and the table. They all squared
round in their chairs to stare at me, O’Mally bending his head to level
a scornful glance below the shade of the electric standard.
"What else _could_ they allude to?" he said.
"I don’t know. Nobody, not a person here, knows all that existed between
Barker and Miss Whitehall. There’s no reason to take for granted that
the plan, scheme, whatever you like to call it those letters indicate,
was the killing of Harland."
O’Mally gave an exasperated grunt and cast an eye of derisive question
at the chief. It enraged me and my hands gripped together.
"Oh, Lord, Jack, you’re nutty," said George. "We know Barker and Miss
Whitehall were in love, and we know Barker committed the murder, and we
know she helped. That was enough to occupy their minds without going off
on side mysteries."
Nature has cursed me with a violent temper. During the last two
years—since the dark days of the Hesketh tragedy—I’ve thought it was
conquered—a leashed beast of which I was the master. Now suddenly it
rose, pulling at its chain. I felt the old forgotten stir of it, the
rush of boiling blood that in the end made me blind. I had sense enough
left to know I’d got to keep it down and I did it. But if there’d been
no need for restraint, for dissimulation, it would have burst out as it
has in the past, burst against O’Mally with a fist in the middle of his
cock-sure, sneering face. I heard my voice, husky, but steady, as I
said,
"That’s all very well, but how about what the chief has just said? Why
should Barker _write_ when he could say what he wanted? Why did he, so
cautious in every other way, do a thing a green boy would have known the
danger of? You’re building up your whole case on the vaguest surmises."
O’Mally took his cigar out of his mouth, his eyes narrowed and full of
an ugly fire.
"I suppose the initial fact that a murder’s been committed is surmise?"
"No," I came nearer the table, the blood singing in my ears, "it’s your
evidence against the woman, that you’re twisting and coloring to match
your preconceived theories. There’s not an attempt been made to
reconcile her previous record with the villainous act of which you
accuse her. There’s a gulf there you can’t bridge. Why don’t you go down
into the foundations of the thing instead of putting your attention on
surface indications? Why don’t you go into the psychology of it, build
on that, not the material facts that a child could see?"
I don’t believe one of them guessed the state I was in—took my vehemence
as an enthusiasm for impartial justice. But a few minutes more of it and
the old fury would have broken loose. I saw O’Mally’s face, red through
a red mist, saw he was mad, mad straight through, enraged at the
aspersions on his ability. He got up, ready to answer, and Lord knows
what would have happened—a rough and tumble round the room probably—if
the door hadn’t opened and a clerk put in his head with the
announcement:
"A gentleman on the phone wants Mr. O’Mally."
The words transformed the detective; his anger vanished as if it never
had been. Quick as a wink he made for the door, flinging back over his
shoulder:
"I told them at the office if anything turned up I’d be here. There’s
something doing."
A hush fell on the rest of us, the tense quiet of expectancy. The fire
in me died like a flame when a bellows is dropped. News—any news—might
bring help for her, exonerate her, wipe away the stain of the suspicions
that no one but we six would ever know.
The door opened and O’Mally entered. His face was illuminated, shining
with an irrepressible triumph, his movements quick and instinctively
stealthy. Pushing the door to behind him he said as softly as if the
walls had ears:
"They’ve got Barker in Philadelphia."