WHAT THE PAPERS SAID
There are occasions when speech is an intrusion and sympathy an
affront. An occasion of this kind coincided with Fanny's exit. On the
mantel the clock still ticked. Otherwise there was silence in that
room.
Orr, finishing with his glove, made for the door. "If I can be of
use," he said, "let me know."
Annandale stood up. "You can," he answered. For a moment he hesitated.
He seemed lost and dizzy. Then, with an effort, he got himself
together. "Tell Sylvia it is not true."
Orr passed out. But instead of returning at once to Irving Place he
went up the steps of an adjoining house. There he was told that Mrs.
Loftus could see no one. He had not expected to be received. But he
felt for her, felt, too, how she must feel.
That a Loftus should die would, he knew, be enough. But that a Loftus
should be murdered, and that Loftus be her son, there was something
which, Orr thought, might perhaps overwhelm her. And, as Orr afterward
learned, Mrs. Loftus was then sitting, her attendants about her,
absently and ceaselessly shaking her head. Nor did the motion of it
ever cease. She was palsied.
Before Orr learned of that other things supervened, primarily fresh
extras. These of course were indicated. The imagination of the public
had been stirred. Of all things mystery affects the imagination most.
Here was one agreeably heightened by subsequent editions announcing
the projection of the eternal feminine.
Then those that read these sheets felt that they were getting their
money's worth. But the feeling was accentuated when one of the papers
gratified them with a picture of a girl who they saw was an
exceedingly fetching young woman and who they were informed had
vanished from her residence, the Arundel, where she was known as Miss
Leroy.
Her connection with Loftus, a connection which the neighborhood
generally understood, was shown with reportorial ease. With the same
ease it was established that he had been with her the evening
preceding the night of his death. Bag and baggage the next morning she
had flown.
That fact in itself was prodigiously interesting. A young and pretty
assassin, what! It was quite like fiction. It was almost too good or
too bad to be true. Besides, the picture displayed a girl not merely
pretty but quasi-ideal, a face infinitely delicate, disdainful yet
sad.
Orr saw the picture and saw too that, while perhaps rather flattering,
it did not resemble Marie in the least. As a matter of fact it was an
art editor's fake. But that, of course, the public did not know and
being fed on fakes would not have cared if it had known.
Then more mystery followed. What were her antecedents? Who were her
people? Whence had she come? No one could say. What alone could be
said was that a year previous Loftus had taken for her an apartment at
the Arundel, where she had resided in a manner otherwise genteel,
though with, latterly, but one servant, a negress named Blanche.
At the time the police were as much interested in the servant as the
public in the girl. The latter in departing had had the forethought to
leave the former behind, and, from her, information relevant and
irrelevant was obtained.
To Mr. Peacock for instance, one of the district attorneys, Blanche
related that at dinner her mistress liked sweetbreads and sorrel
with, now and then, a chocolate souffle.
Mr. Peacock was a florid man with the face of a cupid, the guile of a
fox and the voice of an ogre. "I don't care for that," he told her.
"Nor I," Blanche agreeably replied.
"I mean," said Mr. Peacock, "that I don't care about her victuals. She
was in love with the dead man, wasn't she?"
"I guess so," Blanche with profound if unconscious psychology replied.
"She was always scrapping with him. She----"
"Tell me," Peacock interrupted, "what happened the last night he was
there."
"It was awful. He was trying to get rid of her. He wasn't much and I
told him so, but he was all she had. When I first came to her she said
she was an orphan, that she hadn't anybody anywhere, that they were
all dead."
"She may have meant," Peacock with even profounder psychology
interjected, "that she was dead to them."
But this insinuation Blanche resented. "She could be lively enough
when she liked."
"Who came to see her?"
"Mr. L."
"No one else?"
Blanche shook her head.
"Whom did she write to?"
"How do I know?"
"Didn't you ever see her write to anyone?"
"Well, the last night, after he had gone, she did write a letter and
gave it to me to post. When I came back----"
"Whom was it addressed to?"
Blanche shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know, I can't read. When I
came back she was crying and getting a few duds together and I helped
her."
"Did she tell you where she was going?"
"Sure. To Europe. I saw her off the next day. She went in the
sewerage."
"In the steerage, do you mean?" asked Peacock. "But she hadn't any
money? Didn't Loftus give her any?"
"She wouldn't take his money, she threw it back at him. She would not
take anything he had given her. She left a room full of dresses and
jewelry. They are at the Arundel now. She told me----"
"Did you see her on board?"
Blanche nodded.
"Mightn't she have left the ship before it sailed?"
"Yes, if she had wanted. I wouldn't have stopped her. But I stood
there and as the ship went out she waved her little hand at me
and--and----"
"Do you remember the ship's name?"
But now Blanche was weeping profusely.
"No matter," said Peacock. "I can find out."
He did. He found out, too, that when Loftus was shot Marie Leroy was
on the high seas. And there he was without a clue. What is worse,
there was the eager public quite as deficient.
Yet though the clue which the girl represented was necessarily
abandoned, there remained a theory. There remained even two theories.
The first was robbery.
Loftus, when found, had about him not so much as a five-cent piece.
The wad of bills which men of means are supposed to carry, and which,
having credit everywhere, they never do, was absent. Absent too was
the customary watch. The precise use which a man of means and
particularly of leisure can have for a watch the police and press did
not stop to consider. The absence of watch and money suggested a
theory. That was enough.
The theory, however, like all theories, had its defects. Loftus had
been found within the park, a few feet from the fence. The shooting
might have occurred from without, but unless the assassin had a key
or a ladder or a balloon or wings he could not possibly have got in to
go through him. Eliminating ladder, balloon and wings, a key the
assassin could not have had unless he were a resident in the
neighborhood, the agent of a resident, or a caretaker of the park
itself. People of this order are as eliminable as balloons and wings.
The theory therefore had its defects. It had, though, this in its
favor--the lock of one of the gates might have been picked. It had
something else in its favor. It suited the Loftus clan.
Mrs. Loftus, though childless now, was not otherwise alone. Behind her
were all the Loftuses, a contingent of relatives socially eminent,
ponderable politically, super-respectable, synonymous with the best.
To them the death of Royal, however dismal, was not disgraceful--not
disgraceful, that is, assuming that it was a footpad's work. On their
escutcheon it put a mourning band but not a blackening blot. That blot
they feared. They had cause to. The dark, donjuanesque story about
Marie Leroy might have been followed by other stories darker still,
dirtier if possible, that would begrime them all.
The footpad theory they accepted therefore at once. Had they been
able, had circumstances favored them, had the man, for instance, been
shot in some way or in some place unknowable to the police, they
would have arranged to have had him die decorously, if suddenly, of
some genteel complaint, of appendicitis or pleuro-pneumonia. Then
there would have been no stories, no extras, no pictures, no
notoriety, no fear of that blot.
The fear subsisting, they accepted the footpad theory, glad to find it
ready-made, declining to consider any other, desisting from further
effort, hushing the matter as well as they could, refusing, though
urged, to offer a reward.
Yet, though the theory suited them it did not satisfy the public. It
was too tame. They demanded something else. That demand the press, as
was its duty, attempted to supply. Through methods unfathomably
vidocqesque, the young gentleman connected with the _Chronicle_--one
of the most enterprising sheets--discovered more about Loftus dead
than Loftus living could himself have known. They discovered that in
the panic he had dropped a bagatelle of five millions, and announced
that he had committed suicide. But while at the autopsy it was not
demonstrated that Loftus could not have shot himself, at the inquest
it was shown that the obligatory instrument had not been found. Even
to vidocqesque young gentlemen the suicide theory ceased then to
appeal.
But that only deepened the mystery. To dissipate it and, at the same
time, to display an endearing pro bono publicanism, the _Chronicle_
offered a reward of five thousand dollars for such information as
would lead to the arrest and conviction of the assassin.
Immediately there was a clue.
It was Harris who produced it. Under the guidance of a reporter he was
led to the office of the _Chronicle_, where the young gentleman turned
him over to the managing editor quite as though the clue were his own.
"Here, Mr. Digby, is a party that knows who shot Loftus."
Mr. Digby was a small man with a big beard, very well dressed,
remarkably civil.
"Yes," he said. "And who did?"
"Mr. Arthur Annandale."
Mr. Digby smiled. He did not believe it. But it stirred him
pleasurably. The _Chronicle_ stood for the people. Annandale
represented the predatory rich. Besides, it was in front of
Annandale's house that Loftus had been found. At once he saw scoops,
extras, headlines. Also the possible libel. Meanwhile at a glance he
had taken Harris in.
"You are in his employment?"
"Yes, sir," Harris, amazed at such perspicacity, replied. "I am the
butler."
"And you saw him do it?"
"No, sir, but I heard him say he would."
"When?"
"The night Mr. Loftus was shot."
"To whom did he say it? To you?"
"To Mrs. Annandale, sir."
"Oho! How was that?"
"It was after dinner, sir. I was in the dining-room. The second man
was with me cleaning up. On the floor under the table he found a
necklace. I took it in through the hall to the drawing-room. Mrs.
Annandale was there with Mr. Annandale. When I was just at the door I
heard him say, 'I'll kill Loftus.' I went in and gave him the
necklace."
"But why?" Mr. Digby interrupted. "What was he going to kill him for?
What was the motive?"
"Mr. Loftus had just gone, sir. He had been dining with us. He and
several others."
"Well?"
"Well, sir, when I was in the hall I heard Mrs. Annandale say as how
she wanted a divorce."
"Aha!" exclaimed Mr. Digby. "The plot thickens. Was she in love with
Loftus?"
"She was that, sir. Anyone could see it."
"Then what?"
"Mr. Annandale went upstairs, came down again and went out."
"Did you attach any importance to his going upstairs?"
"He went to get his pistol, sir."
"Oho! He had a pistol, had he?"
"Yes, sir. A 32-calibre. I bought it for him myself."
"That is a very good story," said Mr. Digby, who was a judge.