CONFESSION VOLUNTARY
Braceway leaned against the mantel, relaxed, swinging his cane slowly in
his right hand, a careless, easy grace in his attitude. He addressed
himself to Fulton and Greenleaf, an occasional glance including
Abrahamson in the circle of those for whose benefit he spoke.
Bristow listened now in unfeigned absorption, estimating every statement,
weighing each detail. The tenseness of his pale face showed how he forced
his brain to concentration.
"Having decided that the bearded man and the murderer were the same,"
Braceway began, "I asked myself this question: 'Who, of all those in
Furmville, is so connected with the case now that I am warranted in
thinking he did the previous blackmailing and this murder?' And I
eliminated in my own mind everybody but Lawrence Bristow. He was the one,
the only one, who could have annoyed Mrs. Withers one and four years ago,
respectively, and also could have murdered her.
"Morley was at once out of the reckoning; he had known the Fultons for
only the past three years. To consider the negro, Perry Carpenter, would
have been absurd. Withers, of course, was beyond suspicion. Everything
pointed to Bristow.
"With that decision last Wednesday afternoon, I went to Number Five and
got all the finger-prints visible on the polished surfaces of the chair
which was handled, overturned, in the living room the night of the
murder. Fortunately, this polish was inferior enough to have been made
gummy by the rain and dampness that night; and, in the stress of the few
days following, had been neither dusted nor wiped off.
"Bristow did not touch this chair the morning the murder was discovered.
In fact, he cautioned everybody not to touch it.
"Reliable witnesses say he didn't touch it between then and the time I
got the finger-prints. He declares he was never in the bungalow before he
entered it in response to Miss Fulton's cry for help.
"I found on the chair the finger-prints of five different persons, four
afterwards identified: Miss Fulton, the coroner, Miss Kelly and Lucy
Thomas. The fifth I was unable to check up then.
"I did so later, in Washington.
"It was identical with the print of Bristow's fingers on the glass top of
a table in his hotel room there. I didn't depend on my own judgment for
that. I had with me an expert on finger-prints. And finger-prints, as you
all know, never lie.
"All this established the fact, beyond question, that Bristow had been
secretly in the living room of Number Five before, or at the time of, the
commission of the crime."
He paused, giving them time to appreciate the full import of that chain
of facts.
For the space of half a minute, the room was a study in still life. The
sound of Fulton's grating teeth was distinctly audible. Bristow made a
quick move, as if to speak, but checked the impulse.
"In Washington," Braceway resumed, "he had the hemorrhage. It was
faked--a red-ink hemorrhage. Before the arrival of the physician who was
summoned, Bristow had ordered a bellboy to wrap the 'blood-stained'
handkerchief and towel in a larger and thicker towel and to have the
whole bundle burned at once.
"This, he explained to the boy, was because of his desire that nobody be
put in danger of contracting tuberculosis.
"By bribing the porter who had been directed to do the burning, I got a
look at both the handkerchief and the towel. They were soaked right
enough, thoroughly soaked--in the red ink.
"The physician was easily deceived because, when he came in, all traces
of the so-called blood had been obliterated. Altogether, it was a clever
trick on Bristow's part.
"His motive for staging it and for arranging for a long and uninterrupted
sleep was clear enough. There was something he wanted to do unobserved,
something so vital to him that he was willing to take an immense amount
of trouble with it. Golson's detective bureau let me have the best
trailer, the smoothest 'shadow,' in the business--Tom Ricketts.
"At my direction he followed Bristow from the Willard Hotel to the
electric car leaving Washington for Baltimore at one o'clock. Reaching
Baltimore at two-thirty, Bristow pawned the emeralds and diamonds at two
pawnshops. He caught the four o'clock electric car back to Washington,
and was in his room long before six, the hour at which his nurse, Miss
Martin, was to wake him.
"On the Baltimore trip he had a left leg as sound as mine and wore no
brace of any kind. He did wear a moustache, and bushy eyebrows, which
changed his appearance tremendously. Also, he had changed the outline of
his face and the shape of his lips.
"While he was in Baltimore, I searched the bedroom in which he was
supposed to be asleep.
"Miss Martin, in whom I had been obliged to confide, helped me. We found
in the two-inch sole of the left shoe, which of course he did not take
with him, a hollow place, a very serviceable receptacle. In it was the
bulk of the missing Withers jewelry, the stones unset, pried from their
gold and platinum settings.
"They are, I dare say, there now."
The two policemen stared wide-eyed at Bristow. He was, they decided, the
"slickest" man they had ever seen.
"You see why he executed the trick? It was to establish forever, beyond
the possibility of question, his innocence. Plainly, if an unknown man
pawned the Withers jewelry in Baltimore while Bristow slept, exhausted by
a major hemorrhage, in Washington, his case was made good, his alibi
perfect.
"You can appreciate now how he built up his fake case against Perry
Carpenter, his use of the buttons, his creeping about at night, like a
villain in cheap melodrama, dropping pieces of the jewelry where they
would incriminate the negro most surely, and his exploitation of the
'winning clue,' the finger nail evidence.
"Furthermore, he gave Lucy Thomas a frightful beating to force from her
the statement against Perry. In this, he was brutal beyond belief. I saw
that same afternoon the marks of his blows on her shoulders. They were
sufficient proofs of his capacity for unbridled rage. The sight of them
strengthened my conviction that, in a similar mood, he had murdered Mrs.
Withers."
"The negro lied!" Bristow broke in at last, his words a little fast
despite his surface equanimity. "I subjected her to no ill treatment
whatever. Anyway"--he dismissed it with a wave of his hand--"it's a minor
detail."
Braceway, without so much as a glance at him, continued:
"And that gave me my knowledge of her being a partial albino. She has
patches of white skin across her shoulders, and Perry, in struggling with
her for possession of the key to Number Five, had scratched her there
badly. That, I think, disposes of the finger nail evidence against
Carpenter.
"The rest followed as a matter of course. An examination of Major Ross'
collection of circulars describing those 'wanted' by the police of the
various cities for the past six years revealed the photograph of Splain.
Bristow has changed his appearance somewhat--enough, perhaps, to deceive
the casual glance--but the identification was easy.
"I then ran over to New York and got the Splain story. I knew he was so
dead sure of having eluded everybody that he would stay here in
Furmville. But, to make it absolutely sure, I sent him yesterday a
telegram to keep him assured that I was working with him and ready to
share discoveries with him. And I confess it afforded me a little
pleasure, the sending of that wire. I was playing a kind of cat-and-mouse
game."
Bristow put up his hand, demanding attention. When Braceway ignored the
gesture, he leaned back, smiling, derisive.
"Morley's embezzlement and its consequences gave me a happy excuse for
keeping on this fellow's trail while he was busy perfecting the machinery
for Perry's destruction. The man's self-assurance, his conceit----"
"I've had enough of this!" Bristow cut in violently, exhibiting his first
deep emotion. He turned to Greenleaf:
"Haven't you had enough of this drool? What's the man trying to establish
anyhow? He talks in one breath about my having changed the outline of my
face and the shape of my mouth, and in the next second about recognizing
as me a photograph which he admits was taken at least six years ago!
"It's an alibi for himself, an excuse for not being able to prove that
I'm the man who pawned the jewelry in Baltimore! It's thinner than air!"
But Greenleaf's defection was now complete.
"Go on," he said to Braceway. The more he thought of the full extent to
which the embezzler had gulled him for the past week, the more he raged.
"Not for me! I don't want any more of the drivel!" Bristow objected
again, his voice raucous and still directed to Greenleaf. "What's _your_
idea? I admit I'm wanted in New York on a trumped-up charge of
embezzlement. This detective, by a stroke of blind luck, ran into that;
and, as I say, I admit it.
"You can deal with that as you see fit; that is, if you want to deal with
it after what I've done for law and order, and for you, in this murder
case.
"But you can't be crazy enough to take any stock in this nonsense about
my having been connected with the crime. Exercise your own intelligence!
Great God, man! Do you mean to say you're going to let him cram this into
you?"
He got himself more in hand.
"Think a minute. You know me well, chief. And you, Mr. Fulton, you're no
child to be bamboozled and turned into a laughing stock by a detective
who finds himself without a case--a pseudo expert on crime who tries to
work the age-old trick of railroading a man guilty of a less offense!"
"This is no place for an argument of the case," Braceway said crisply.
"Mr. Abrahamson, tell us what you know about this man."
"It is not much, Mr. Braceway," the Jew replied; "not as much as I would
like. I've seen him several times; once in my place when he was fixed up
with moustache and so forth, and twice when he was fixed up with a beard
and a gold tooth; once again when he was sitting out here on his porch."
Abrahamson talked rapidly, punctuating his phrases with quick gestures,
enjoying the importance of his role.
"Mr. Braceway," he explained smilingly to Greenleaf, "talked to me about
the man with the beard--talked more than you did, chief. You know Mr.
Braceway--how quick he is. He talked and asked me to try to remember
where and when I had seen this Mr. Bristow. I had my ideas and my
association of ideas. I remembered--remembered hard. That afternoon I
took a holiday--I don't take many of those--and I walked past here.
'I bet you,' I said to myself--not out real loud, you understand--'I bet
you I know that man.' And I won my bet. I did know him.
"This Mr. Splain and the man with the beard are the same, exactly the
same."
Bristow's smile was tolerant, as if he dealt with a child. But Fulton,
his angry eyes boring into the accused man, saw that, for the first time,
there were tired lines tugging the corners of his mouth. It was an
expression that heralded defeat, the first faint shadow of despair.
"You have my story, and I've the facts to prove it a hundred times over,"
Braceway announced. "Why waste more time?"
"For the simple reason," Bristow fought on, "that I'm entitled to a fair
deal, an honest----"
On the word "honest" Braceway turned with his electric quickness to
Greenleaf, and, as he did so, Bristow leaned back in his chair, as if
determined not to argue further. His face assumed its hard, bleak calm;
his cold self-control returned.
"Now, get this!" Braceway's incisive tone whipped Greenleaf to closer
attention. "You've an embezzler and murderer in your hands. He admits one
crime; I've proved the other. The rest is up to you. Put the irons on
him. Throw him into a cell! You'll be proud of it the rest of your life.
Here's the warrant."
He drew the paper from his hip pocket and tossed it to the chief.
"Get busy," he insisted. "This man's the worst type of criminal I've ever
encountered. Not content with blackmailing and robbing a woman, he
murdered her; not satisfied with that, he deliberately planned the death
of an innocent man because he, in his cowardice, was afraid to take the
ordinary chances of escaping detection. By openly parading his pursuit of
breakers of the law, he secured secretly his opportunity to excel their
basest actions. He----"
Quicker than thought, Braceway lunged forward with his cane and struck
the hand Bristow had lifted swiftly to his throat. The blow sent a pocket
knife clattering to the floor. A policeman, picking it up, saw that the
opened blade worked on a spring.
The accused man sank back in his chair. The gray immobility of his face
had broken up. The features worked curiously, forming themselves for a
second to a pattern of mean vindictiveness. His right hand still numbed
by the blow, he took his handkerchief with the left and flicked from his
neck, close to the ear, a single red bead.
"Search him," Braceway ordered one of the officers.
Bristow submitted to that. When he looked at Braceway, his face was still
bleak.
"You've got me," he said in a tone thoroughly matter-of-fact. "I'm
through. I'll give you a statement."
"You mean a confession?"
"It amounts to that."
"Not here," Braceway refused curtly. "We've no stenographer."
"I'd prefer to write it myself anyway," he insisted. "It won't take me
fifteen minutes on the typewriter." Seeing Braceway hesitate, he added:
"You'll get it this way, or not at all. Suit yourself."
The detective did not underestimate the man's stubborn nerve.
"I'm agreeable, chief," he said to Greenleaf, "if you are."
"Yes," the chief agreed. "It's as good here as anywhere else."
Darkness had grown in the room. Abrahamson and the policeman pulled down
the window shades. Greenleaf turned on the lights.
Bristow limped to the typewriter and sat down. Braceway opened the drawer
of the typewriter stand and saw that it contained nothing but sheets of
yellow "copy" paper cut to one-half the size of ordinary letter paper.
Every trace of agitation had left Bristow. Colour crept back into his
cheeks.
Braceway and Greenleaf watched him closely. They had the idea that he
still contemplated suicide, that he sought to divert their attention from
himself by interesting them in what he wrote. They remembered the boast
he had made in the cell in New York.
He felt their wariness, and smiled.