THE BREATH OF SCANDAL
A telegraph messenger laboured up to the hill on his bicycle and climbed
the steps to the porch of No. 5, displaying in his hand several
telegrams. Two other boys had preceded him within the last hour. Friends
of the Fulton family, having read of the tragedy in afternoon papers
throughout the country, were wiring their messages of sympathy.
This was no little local, isolated affair, Bristow reflected. The
prominence of the victim in Washington and in the South, together with
the mystery surrounding the crime, made it a matter of national interest.
If he could bring the thing to a successful issue, the capture and
punishment of the right man, there would be fame in it for him. The
thought stimulated him.
A few minutes later Withers came up Manniston Road and went into No. 5.
Soon after that Miss Kelly brought Bristow a little paper packet.
"I'm not sure I ought to do this," she said, "but, as long as the
authorities have ordered it, I guess I'm safe. This is what I get as a
result of 'doing' Miss Fulton's nails."
He thanked her and reassured her.
Mattie appeared at the door to tell him his supper was ready. Before he
sat down at the table, he telephoned Greenleaf.
"There's something else I want you to send to Charlotte with the Perry
package."
"Same sort of thing?" inquired the chief.
"Yes--Miss Fulton's."
"Wow!" barked Greenleaf over the wire. "I never thought of that."
"That's all right, I nearly forgot it myself. How will you send for it?"
The chief thought a moment.
"I'll come after it myself," he said. "I'll be up there as soon as I see
Withers. I want to talk to you about the inquest. It will be held at
eleven o'clock tomorrow morning."
"Come ahead," Bristow invited. "You'll have to be up here in this
neighbourhood anyway if you want to see Withers. He came up to Number
Five just a few minutes ago. You can catch him there."
After supper he went back to the front porch in time to see in the dusk
the white uniform and cap of a trained nurse as she came down the hill.
He surmised that she was one of the six nurses who lived in No. 7, the
house between his and that of the murdered woman. These nurses were
employed throughout the day at the big sanitarium located just over the
brow of the hill at the end of Manniston Road.
Perhaps, she could tell him what he wanted to know.
"I beg your pardon," he called to her persuasively, "but may I trouble
you to come up here for a moment?"
She obeyed the summons with slow, hesitant steps.
He pushed forward a chair for her and bowed.
"Unfortunately," he apologized, "I don't know your name."
She enlightened him: "Rutgers; Miss Emily Rutgers." In his turn, he told
her briefly of his connection with the murder.
"I was wondering," he began, "whether you had ever heard anything unusual
from Number Five."
Miss Rutgers, who was blond and too fat, had a heavy, peculiarly hoarse
voice. She wanted to be certain that he had authority to "question
people" about the case. He made that clear to her.
"Well, yes," she finally said. "Mrs. Withers and Miss Fulton quarreled a
good deal. We girls had remarked on it. And yesterday they had an awful
row. I heard some of it because it was in the middle of the day, and I
had run down here from the sanitarium to fix up the laundry we'd
forgotten early in the morning."
"What did you hear?"
"It was something about money. I didn't really try to listen, but I
couldn't help hearing some of it, they talked so loud."
"Yes?"
"I got the idea that Miss Fulton wanted to borrow some money from Mrs.
Withers for a purpose that Mrs. Withers didn't approve of. 'Well,' I
heard Mrs. Withers say after Miss Fulton had almost screamed about it,
'you can't have any more. I haven't got it. That's all there is to that.
I can't let you have it when I haven't got it!'
"Miss Fulton said something--I think it was about Mr. Withers or about
asking him for the money.
"'You'd better not do that,' Mrs. Withers warned her. 'I tried that once,
and he flew into a perfect rage. He was so worked up that he looked like
a crazy man, like a man who would do anything. He looked as if he might
kill me, choke me to death, anything!'"
"Did Miss Fulton answer that?"
"If she did, I didn't hear it. I just got the impression that they were
both angry and mixed up in a terrific quarrel."
"Have you ever heard anything else like that at any other time?"
"Oh, we often heard them fussing. Miss Fulton did the fussing. Mrs.
Withers was almost always gentle and calm. One other time I did hear Mrs.
Withers say she'd lent Miss Fulton all she could afford."
"When was that?"
"Some time ago--a month or six weeks ago; maybe two months."
"Money, always money," the lame man said.
He was silent, thoughtful, for several minutes.
"I'm ever so much obliged, Miss Rutgers," he said at last. "Every bit of
evidence we can get will help us--perhaps."
Miss Rutgers had risen.
"There's one other thing, Mr. Bristow," she volunteered. "There was a
man hanging around Number Five last night; rather, it was early this
morning."
"How do you know that?" His voice was at once urgent.
"Bessie--Miss Hardesty and I have our beds on the sleeping porch. Hers is
the one nearest to Number Five. She told me about it this morning. At
about one o'clock--or between one and two--she thought she heard a sloppy
footstep near the sleeping porch. At that time it was raining, but
not hard--just a fine drizzle.
"She went to the wiring that walls the sleeping porch on the end toward
Number Five, and she made out the figure of a man coming from the front
of Number Five and going toward the back fence. He had just passed the
sleeping porch. She turned on the little flashlight we keep out there and
saw him."
"Who was it? Could she make him out at all?"
"She said it was a negro."
"Did she see his face?"
"Not enough to recognize him, but enough to make her sure he was a black
man."
"She didn't try to identify him?"
"Well, she thought it was the darky Perry who does so much work in this
neighbourhood. She said she thought so because the figure of the man she
saw in the rain reminded her of Perry's general appearance."
"Did she call out to him?"
"No; and he didn't run. He just walked fast and was out of sight in a
moment. When I heard of the murder early this afternoon, I was up at the
sanitarium, and I went to the matron and told her what I've just told
you. It was her advice that, as soon as I got off duty, I should come
down here and telephone what I knew to the police. She didn't want me to
do it from the sanitarium because the patients might have heard it and
become too much excited."
"I see. Where's Miss Hardesty now?"
"This is her night on duty at the sanitarium."
"I see. Well, she'll have to testify at the inquest tomorrow. You might
tell her that. Never mind, though. The police will notify her."
"I know she won't like that much," Miss Rutgers declared; "but, of
course, she'll tell what she knows. How about me?"
"I can't say yet, but I don't think we'll need you at the inquest. We may
need you later."
"Very well," she consented. "Let me know when the time comes. Good
night, Mr. Bristow."
He went inside and picked up a novel. He wanted to "clear his brain" for
the talk with the chief of police.
Greenleaf came in, looking downcast.
"What did you get from Withers?" Bristow asked.
"Nothing but a good bawling out," the chief said testily. "We won't get
anything more from him for some time. He told me so. He said: 'You
fellows have been carrying things with a high hand today, questioning and
frightening everybody with your hidden threats and third degrees. Get
out! I'll do my talking to Sam Braceway tomorrow.' But I did ask him one
question--the thing you wanted to know. I asked him whether he had worn
rubber shoes last night."
"What did he say?" Bristow was inwardly amused by Greenleaf's
pertinacity.
"He said it was none of my business; and he flew into a rage about
it--worse than he was in here this morning. He looked like a crazy man.
I watched him gesticulate and get red in the face and foam and splutter.
Why, he looked like a man who might commit murder any moment."
At that, Bristow started. The chief's words were strikingly like what
Miss Rutgers had told him she had heard Mrs. Withers say: "He looked as
if he might kill me, choke me to death, anything!"
"He's going to spend the night in Number Five," Greenleaf concluded; "he
and Miss Fulton and the nurse, Miss Kelly."
Bristow tossed his novel into a vacant chair and spread out his hands.
"Well, chief," he said, "what do you make out of all this? What do you
intend to do at the inquest tomorrow? By the way, here's something you'll
need."
He related what Miss Rutgers had told him.
"I'm willing to take your advice," Greenleaf announced, "but this is my
idea: we'll present all we have against Perry, and have him held for the
grand jury. We've got enough to do that--the buttons evidence, his
failure to present anything like an alibi, the mark of the rubber sole on
the front porch, the inability of the woman, Lucy Thomas, to say whether
or not she gave Perry the kitchen key to Number Five."
"She can't remember that, can she?"
"No; not even when we've got her locked up in jail."
"Chief, do you think Perry killed and robbed Mrs. Withers?"
"I think this," he replied: "it's an even chance he did. If he didn't,
it's a sure thing that his being accused of it and locked up for it may
make the real criminal more careless and give us a better chance to catch
him."
"Yes; you're right. What reports have you had on the mysterious man
Withers says he saw, the fellow with the long-visored cap, long raincoat,
and gold tooth?"
"A little something. Jenkins has scoured the town pretty well in the time
he had, A clerk at Maplewood Inn thinks--_thinks_--he saw such a man in
the lobby there about three weeks ago. And one of our patrolmen, Ashurst,
says he's pretty certain he saw him two months ago near here, in fact
down on Freeman Avenue near where Manniston Road branches off from it. It
was at night, nearly midnight."
"Did Ashurst watch him?"
"Only carelessly. Says he saw him walk on down Freeman Avenue as if he
intended going into the town."
"What did the clerk see? What did this fellow do in the Maplewood Inn
lobby?"
"Nothing--came in, bought a pack of cigarettes, and went out."
"Anybody else seen him?"
"Not so far as we've been able to discover."
"Has he ever registered at any of the hotels here?"
"Not that we can find; no, never."
"Funny," ruminated Bristow, "very funny. Yes, I think you're right,
chief. Put up the case against Perry until we can do something better
or prove it on him absolutely. Of course, if the laboratory test shows
that he had human flesh--a white person's flesh--under his finger nails,
that will settle it in my mind. There couldn't be any other answer."
"Will the test show whether it's a white person's skin or a nigger's?"
"Of course. There's no pigment in a white person's skin."
"Is that so? That's something I never knew before. Anyway, it certainly
will nail him, won't it? But, you don't feel anyways sure Perry's the
guilty man, do you?"
"No, I can't say I do. I'll tell you what we've got to consider, and it's
not a very pretty theory; either that Morley killed Mrs. Withers, and
Miss Fulton knows it; or that Morley and Miss Fulton together killed her;
or that, although Perry killed her, we, in looking for the murderer, have
come pretty near to stumbling on some sort of a nasty family scandal,
something in which Maria Fulton, Enid Withers and George Withers, with
perhaps another man, all have been mixed up.
"I mean a scandal ugly enough for all the rest of them to make desperate
attempts to keep it hidden, even when Mrs. Withers is dead and gone.
Frankly, I didn't believe Withers was in on the murder or that he
believes Maria had anything to do with it or knows how it was done.
"But Maria Fulton--that's different. How else are we to explain her
behaviour with us when we tried to interview her, the fact of her sudden
abhorrence for Morley, the man to whom she was engaged only yesterday?
"And how else are we to explain Morley's unexplained two hours of last
night, and his apparent terror today, and his whole connection with the
case--the matter of the ring found in his hotel room, and all that?
There's something fishy about this thing somehow, something fishy that
includes Maria Fulton and Morley.
"This fellow with the brown beard and the gold tooth strengthens the
theory of some rotten scandal. He must be mixed up in it some way. I'll
bet anything, though, that he had nothing to do with the murder. That's
what we want to get at--this inside scandal, this something which existed
long before the murder but yet may have led indirectly to the murder."
Greenleaf sighed and passed his hand wearily across his eyes. He had had
a hard day, the hardest day of his life.
"But you think my plan for the inquest is all right?" he asked once more.
"Yes; it's the best thing possible. By the way, don't have me summoned to
testify. Leave my evidence until the trial. I don't want to wear myself
out going down there for merely an inquest."
"All right; I'll fix that. We've enough evidence without yours--enough
for the inquest, anyway."
"Thanks."
Bristow looked at his watch, and Greenleaf got up to go.
"I'll be up here between eight and nine tomorrow morning," he said, "if
that suits you."
"What for?"
"To get a good look at the grounds back of Number Five. If the murderer
dropped anything, I want to be the man to pick it up."
"Oh, I'd forgotten that," Bristow said in a tone indicating his
hopelessness of finding anything worth while. "Yes; I'll be ready for
you."
Something else was on Greenleaf's mind.
"This Braceway," he said sarcastically, "the smartest detective in the
South. He'll be here in the morning. What will we do? Work with him?"
"Sure," Bristow replied heartily, as if to fore-stall the other's dislike
of the new-comer. "Even if he were no good, the best thing we could do
would be to work with him. And, as he's something of a world-beater,
we'll get the benefit of his ideas. By all means, let's all keep together
on this thing."
"All right," Greenleaf agreed, his tone a little surly. "Your appointment
to my force is O. K. I fixed that this afternoon. Good night."
"Good night--and don't forget to send that stuff off to the Charlotte
laboratory tonight. If we can find out who scratched somebody last night,
if we can determine who had little bits of foreign skin under the finger
nails today, we've got the answer to this murder mystery. That's one
thing sure."
Bristow turned off the lights in the living room and went to his dressing
room to prepare for bed on the sleeping porch.
"Money," he was thinking as he undressed; "money and fifteen thousand
dollars' worth of jewelry. Where has it all gone? That's the thing that
will settle this case, and I think--I think I've a pretty good idea of
what will be proved about it."