JACK TELLS THE STORY
That night Babbitts, O’Mally and I left for Quebec. Before we went the
wires that connected us with the Canadian city had been busy. St. Foy
584 had been located, a house on a suburban road, occupied for the last
two weeks by an American called Henry Santley. Instructions were carried
over the hundreds of intervening miles to surround the house, to
apprehend Santley if he tried to get away, and to watch for the lady who
would join him that night. Unless something unforeseen and unimaginable
should occur we had Barker at last.
As we rushed through the darkness, we speculated on the reasons for his
last daring move—the sending for his daughter. O’Mally figured it out as
the result of a growing confidence—he was feeling secure and wanted to
help her. He had had ample proof of her discretion and had probably some
plan for her enrichment that he wanted to communicate to her in person.
I was of the opinion that he expected to leave the country and intended
to take her with him, sending back later for the mother. He was assured
of her trust and affection, knew she believed in him, and was certain
the murder hadn’t been and now never would be discovered. He could count
on safety in Europe and with his vast gains could settle down with his
wife and his daughter to a life of splendid ease. Well, we’d see to
_that_. The best laid schemes of mice and men!
The sun was bright, the sky sapphire clear as the great rock of Quebec,
crowned with its fortress roofs, came into view. The two rivers clasped
its base, ice-banded at the shore and in the middle their dark currents
flowing free. Snow and snow and snow heaved and billowed on the
surrounding hills, paved the narrow streets, hooded the roofs of the
ancient houses. Through the air, razor-edged with cold and crystal
clear, came the thin broken music of sleigh bells, ringing up from every
lane and alley, jubilant and inspiring, and the sleighs, low running,
flew by with the wave of their streaming furs and the flash of scarlet
standards.
Glorious, splendid, a fit day, all sun and color and music, for me to
come to Carol!
A man met us at the depot, a silent, wooden-faced policeman of some
kind, who said yes, he thought the lady was there, and then piloted us
glumly into a sleigh and mounted beside the driver. A continuous, vague
current of sound came from Babbitts and O’Mally as we climbed a steep
hill with the Frontenac’s pinnacled towers looming above us and then
shot off down narrow streets where the jingle of the bells was flung
back and across, echoing and reverberating between the old stone houses.
It made me think of a phrase the boys in the office used, "coming with
bells!"
We went some distance through the town and out along a road, where the
buildings drew apart from one another, villas and suburban houses behind
walls and gardens. At a smaller one, set back in a muffling of whitened
shrubberies, the sleigh drew in toward the sidewalk. Before the others
could disentangle themselves from the furs and robes, I was out and
racing up the path.
My eyes, ranging hungrily over the house, thinking perhaps to see her at
one of the windows, saw in it something ominous and secretive. There was
not a sign of life, every pane darkened with a lowered blind. All about
it the snow was heaped and curled in wave-like forms as if endeavoring
to creep over it, to aid in the work of hiding its dark mystery.
Barker’s lair, his last stand! It looked like it, white wrapped, silent,
inscrutable.
As I leaped up the piazza steps the door was opened by a man in uniform.
He touched his hat and started to speak, but I pushed him aside and came
in peering past him down a hall that stretched away to the rear. At the
sound of his voice a door had opened there and a woman came out. For a
moment she was only a shadow moving toward me up the dimness of the
half-lit passage. Then I recognized her, gave a cry and ran to her.
My hands found hers and closed on them, my eyes looking down into the
dark ones raised to them. Neither of us spoke, it didn’t occur to me to
explain why I was there and she showed no surprise at seeing me. It
seemed as if we’d known all along we were going to meet in that dark
passage in that strange house. And standing there silent, hand clasped
in hand, I saw something so wonderful, so unexpected, that the
surroundings faded away and for me there was nothing in the world but
what I read in her beautiful, lifted face.
I never had dared to hope, never had thought of her as caring for me.
All I had asked was the right to help and defend her. Perhaps under
different circumstances, when things were happy and easy, I’d have
aspired, gone in to try and win. But in the last dark month, when we’d
come so close, we’d only been a woman set upon and menaced, and a man
braced and steeled to do battle for her. Now, with her stone-cold hands
in mine, I saw in the shining depths of her eyes—Oh, no, it’s too
sacred. That part of the story is between Carol and me.
There had been sounds and voices in the vestibule behind us. They came
vaguely upon my consciousness, low and then breaking suddenly into a
louder key, phrases, exclamations, questions. I don’t think if the house
had been rocked by an earthquake I’d have noticed it, and it wasn’t till
O’Mally came down the passage calling me, that I dropped her hands and
turned. His face was creased into an expression of excited
consternation, and he rapped out, not seeing Carol:
"What the devil are you doing there? Haven’t you heard?" Then his eye
catching her, "Oh, it’s Miss Whitehall. Well, young lady, you must have
had a pretty tough time here last night."
She simply drooped her eyelids in faint agreement.
"What do you mean?" I cried, and looked from O’Mally’s boisterously
concerned countenance to Carol’s worn, white one. "What is it, something
more?"
She gave a slight nod and said:
"The last—the end this time."
O’Mally wheeled on me:
"She hasn’t told you. He shot himself—here, last night, shortly after
she arrived."
Before I had time to answer, Babbitts and the man in uniform, a police
inspector, were beside us. Babbitts was speechless—as I was myself—but
the inspector, pompous and stolid, answered my look of shocked
amazement:
"A few minutes after one. Fortunately I’d got your instructions and the
house was surrounded. My men heard the report and the screams and broke
in at once."
I looked blankly from one to the other. There was a confused horror in
my mind, but from the confusion one thought rose clear—Barker had done
the best, the only thing.
The inspector, ostentatiously cool in the midst of our aghast concern,
volunteered further:
"He didn’t die till near morning and we got a full statement out of him.
For an hour afterward he was as clear as a bell—they are that way
sometimes—and gave us all the particulars, seemed to want to. I’ve got
it upstairs and from what I can make out he was one of the sharpest,
most daring criminals I ever ran up against. I’ve had the body kept here
for your identification. Will you come up and see it now?"
He moved off toward the stairs. O’Mally and Babbitts, muttering
together, filing after him. I didn’t go but turned to Carol, who had
thrust one hand through the balustrade that ran up beside where we were
standing. As the tramp of ascending feet sounded on the first steps, she
leaned toward me, her voice hardly more than a whisper:
"Do you know who it is?"
"Who what is?" I said, startled by her words and expression.
"The man upstairs?"
I was terror-stricken—the experiences of the night had unhinged her
mind. I tried to take her hand, but she drew it back, her lips forming
words just loud enough for me to hear:
"You don’t. It’s Hollings Harland."
"Carol!" I cried, certain now she was unbalanced.
She drew farther away from me and slipping her hand from the balustrade
pointed up the stairs:
"Go and see. It’s he. There’s nothing the matter with me, but I want you
to see for yourself. Go and see and then come back here and I’ll tell
you. I know everything now."
I went, a wild rush up the stairs. In a room off the upper hall, the
light tempered by drawn blinds, were O’Mally, Babbitts and the
inspector, looking at the dead body of Hollings Harland.