A SCARLET EVENING COAT
It was a real faint. They had a good bit of difficulty in getting her
out of it.
There wasn’t much room in Jim Barrison’s mind for anything except
self-reproach. He _knew_ that the tidings of Mortimer’s murder had come
upon Kitty Legaye like a stroke of lightning. She had no more been
prepared for it than she would have been prepared for the end of the
world. He had an idea that the end of the world would, as a general
proposition, have affected her much less. Barrison was no new hand, and
not too soft-hearted or gullible; and he knew that what he had looked
upon that morning was sheer, absolute shock and grief, unlooked for,
terrible, devastating.
Poor little Kitty, with all her frivolities, had bigness in her. As she
struggled back into the gray world, she obviously tried to straighten
up and steady herself. The terror was all the time at the back of
her brown eyes, but she was doing her best to be game, to be, as she
herself would have expressed it, “a good sport.”
Of course, she wanted particulars, and he gave them to her, feeling
like a pickpocket all the time. Papers were obtained, and she was
induced to take coffee with brandy in it, and—at last—she broke down
and cried, which was what every one had been praying for since the
beginning.
Probably never in his clear-cut, well-established career had Jim
Barrison experienced what he was experiencing now: The sense that he
had brought unnecessary suffering upon an innocent person, and brought
it in a peculiarly merciless and unsportsmanlike way. He felt savage
when he thought of that “tip” of Miss Templeton’s—or did he, really?
He was obliged to confess to himself that, where she was concerned,
he would be almost sure to discover approximately extenuating
circumstances!
It was partly to soothe his own aching conscience that Jim forced
himself to ask a few perfunctory questions.
“You don’t mind?” he asked Kitty.
“Naturally I don’t,” she said, trying not to cry, and choking down
coffee. “You’ve been awfully kind, Mr. Barrison. If there’s anything I
can do to help, please let me. You know”—she looked at him in a sudden,
piteous way—“I had expected to marry Mr. Mortimer. Maybe you can guess
what all this means to me? Will you tell me what you wanted to know?”
“For one thing,” he said, “we want to establish as nearly as we can
when the murderer—the murderess, as we think it was—entered the
theater. Old Roberts says that he went out through the alley to the
street to get you a taxi——”
“Dear old thing!” she whispered.
“Yes; he is a nice old sort. He made it very clear that it was only
his devotion to you that induced him to leave his post. Well, it seems
almost certain that some one passed him, and perhaps you, in the alley
last night. You don’t remember seeing even a shadow that might be
suspicious?”
She shook her head thoughtfully.
“No, I don’t,” she said. “But I was in a hurry, and wasn’t looking out
for anything of that sort. Roberts knows I was in a hurry?” She spoke
quickly.
“Oh, yes. He says you were in a hurry, and not feeling well. The point
is, did you see anything at all on your way to the taxi?”
“Nothing. I was only thinking of getting home and to bed; it had been a
horrid evening.”
Now, of course, the obvious thing for Jim Barrison to do then was to
take his leave. More, it was manifestly the only decent thing for him
to do. He had proved conclusively that Kitty had not expected the
news of Mortimer’s murder; in addition, she had declared that she had
noticed no one on her way out to the taxi the night before. On the face
of it, there was nothing further to be found out here. And yet, after
he had got to his feet and taken up his hat, he lingered. As a matter
of fact, he never was able, in looking back afterward, to tell just
what insane impulse made him blurt out suddenly:
“Miss Legaye, you were wearing a red wrap last night, weren’t you?
Something quite bright, scarlet?”
She looked up at him faintly surprised. “Why, yes,” she answered, “you
saw it yourself, just as I was going out.”
Jim hesitated, and then said something still more crazy: “Would you—do
you very much mind letting me see it—now?”
She stared at him in undisguised astonishment. “Certainly,” she said,
rather blankly. “Celine, will you bring my red evening coat, please?”
The maid did so at once; it flamed there in the gray light of that
rainy morning like some monstrous scarlet poppy. Barrison lifted a
shimmering, brilliant fold, and looked at it.
“It’s a gorgeous color!” he said, rather irrelevantly.
“Scarlet!” whispered Kitty, in a strange tone. “And to think I was
wearing _that_ last night. I do not believe that I shall ever feel like
wearing scarlet again! You are going, Mr. Barrison?”
“Yes; you have been very patient with me, and very forgiving for having
been the bearer of such bad news. Good-by. I won’t even try to express
the sympathy——”
“Don’t; I understand. Mr. Barrison, _why_ did you want to see this
coat?”
“It was just an impulse!” he declared quickly. “You forgive me for
that, too?”
She bent her head without speaking, and the two men went away.
“Tony,” said Jim Barrison, when they were in the street once more,
facing the wet blast, “it’s no lie to say that facts are misleading.”
“It’s no lie to say they very often mislead _you_!” retorted Tony,
somewhat acidly. He felt the loss of sleep more and more, and was
fretful. Also, he was hungry. “What wild-goose chase are you off on
now?”
“None; I’m going round in circles.”
“You said it!”
“It’s a fact,” continued Barrison, unheeding, “that the little woman
back there was genuinely shocked and upset by hearing of Mortimer’s
death.”
“Rather!”
“But it is also a fact—also a fact, Tony—that that evening coat of hers
is damp this morning, and it didn’t begin to rain till after midnight!”