It was after four when Mr. Holcombe had finished going over the room.
I offered to make both the gentlemen some tea, for Mr. Pitman had been
an Englishman, and I had got into the habit of having a cup in the
afternoon, with a cracker or a bit of bread. But they refused. Mr.
Howell said he had promised to meet a lady, and to bring her through
the flooded district in a boat. He shook hands with me, and smiled at
Mr. Holcombe.
"You will have to restrain his enthusiasm, Mrs. Pitman," he said. "He
is a bloodhound on the scent. If his baying gets on your nerves, just
send for me." He went down the stairs and stepped into the boat.
"Remember, Holcombe," he called, "every well-constituted murder has
two things: a motive and a corpse. You haven't either, only a mass of
piffling details--"
"If everybody waited until he saw flames, instead of relying on the
testimony of the smoke," Mr. Holcombe snapped, "what would the fire
loss be?"
Mr. Howell poled his boat to the front door, and sitting down,
prepared to row out.
"You are warned, Mrs. Pitman," he called to me. "If he doesn't find a
body to fit the clues, he's quite capable of making one to fill the
demand."
"Horn--" said Mr. Holcombe, looking at the slip again. "The tail of
the 'n' is torn off--evidently only part of a word. Hornet, Horning,
Horner--Mrs. Pitman, will you go with me to the police station?"
I was more than anxious to go. In fact, I could not bear the idea of
staying alone in the house, with heaven only knows what concealed
in the depths of that muddy flood. I got on my wraps again, and Mr.
Holcombe rowed me out. Peter plunged into the water to follow, and had
to be sent back. He sat on the lower step and whined. Mr. Holcombe
threw him another piece of liver, but he did not touch it.
We rowed to the corner of Robinson Street and Federal--it was before
Federal Street was raised above the flood level--and left the boat in
charge of a boy there. And we walked to the police station. On the way
Mr. Holcombe questioned me closely about the events of the morning,
and I recalled the incident of the burned pillow-slip. He made a note
of it at once, and grew very thoughtful.
He left me, however, at the police station. "I'd rather not appear in
this, Mrs. Pitman," he said apologetically, "and I think better along
my own lines. Not that I have anything against the police; they've
done some splendid work. But this case takes imagination, and the
police department deals with facts. We have no facts yet. What we
need, of course, is to have the man detained until we are sure of our
case."
He lifted his hat and turned away, and I went slowly up the steps to
the police station. Living, as I had, in a neighborhood where the
police, like the poor, are always with us, and where the visits of
the patrol wagon are one of those familiar sights that no amount
of repetition enabled any of us to treat with contempt, I was
uncomfortable until I remembered that my grandfather had been one of
the first mayors of the city, and that, if the patrol had been at my
house more than once, the entire neighborhood would testify that my
boarders were usually orderly.
At the door some one touched me on the arm. It was Mr. Holcombe again.
"I have been thinking it over," he said, "and I believe you'd better
not mention the piece of paper that you found behind the wash-stand.
They might say the whole thing is a hoax."
"Very well," I agreed, and went in.
The police sergeant in charge knew me at once, having stopped at my
house more than once in flood-time for a cup of hot coffee.
"Sit down, Mrs. Pitman," he said. "I suppose you are still making the
best coffee and doughnuts in the city of Allegheny? Well, what's the
trouble in your district? Want an injunction against the river for
trespass?"
"The river has brought me a good bit of trouble," I said. "I'm--I'm
worried, Mr. Sergeant. I think a woman from my house has been
murdered, but I don't know."
"Murdered," he said, and drew up his chair. "Tell me about it."
I told him everything, while he sat back with his eyes half closed,
and his fingers beating a tattoo on the arm of his chair.
When I finished he got up and went into an inner room. He came back in
a moment.
"I want you to come in and tell that to the chief," he said, and led
the way.
All told, I repeated my story three times that afternoon, to the
sergeant, to the chief of police, and the third time to both the
others and two detectives.
The second time the chief made notes of what I said.
"Know this man Ladley?" he asked the others. None of them did, but
they all knew of Jennie Brice, and some of them had seen her in the
theater.
"Get the theater, Tom," the chief said to one of the detectives.
Luckily, what he learned over the telephone from the theater
corroborated my story. Jennie Brice was not in the cast that week, but
should have reported that morning (Monday) to rehearse the next week's
piece. No message had been received from her, and a substitute had
been put in her place.
The chief hung up the receiver and turned to me. "You are sure about
the clock, Mrs. Pitman?" he asked. "It was there when they moved
up-stairs to the room?"
"Yes, sir."
"You are certain you will not find it on the parlor mantel when the
water goes down?"
"The mantels are uncovered now. It is not there."
"You think Ladley has gone for good?"
"Yes, sir."
"He'd be a fool to try to run away, unless--Graves, you'd better get
hold of the fellow, and keep him until either the woman is found or a
body. The river is falling. In a couple of days we will know if she is
around the premises anywhere."
Before I left, I described Jennie Brice for them carefully. Asked what
she probably wore, if she had gone away as her husband said, I had no
idea; she had a lot of clothes, and dressed a good bit. But I recalled
that I had seen, lying on the bed, the black and white dress with the
red collar, and they took that down, as well as the brown valise.
The chief rose and opened the door for me himself. "If she actually
left town at the time you mention," he said, "she ought not to be hard
to find. There are not many trains before seven in the morning, and
most of them are locals."
"And--and if she did not, if he--do you think she is in the
house--or--or--the cellar?"
"Not unless Ladley is more of a fool than I think he is," he said,
smiling. "Personally, I believe she has gone away, as he says she did.
But if she hasn't--He probably took the body with him when he said he
was getting medicine, and dropped it in the current somewhere. But we
must go slow with all this. There's no use shouting 'wolf' yet."
"But--the towel?"
"He may have cut himself, shaving. It _has_ been done."
"And the knife?"
He shrugged his shoulders good-naturedly.
"I've seen a perfectly good knife spoiled opening a bottle of
pickles."
"But the slippers? And the clock?"
"My good woman, enough shoes and slippers are forgotten in the bottoms
of cupboards year after year in flood-time, and are found floating
around the streets, to make all the old-clothesmen in town happy. I
have seen almost everything floating about, during one of these annual
floods."
"I dare say you never saw an onyx clock floating around," I replied a
little sharply. I had no sense of humor that day. He stopped smiling
at once, and stood tugging at his mustache.
"No," he admitted. "An onyx clock sinks, that's true. That's a very
nice little point, that onyx clock. He may be trying to sell it, or
perhaps--" He did not finish.
I went back immediately, only stopping at the market to get meat for
Mr. Reynolds' supper. It was after half past five and dusk was coming
on. I got a boat and was rowed directly home. Peter was not at the
foot of the steps. I paid the boatman and let him go, and turned to go
up the stairs. Some one was speaking in the hall above.
I have read somewhere that no two voices are exactly alike, just as no
two violins ever produce precisely the same sound. I think it is what
they call the timbre that is different. I have, for instance, never
heard a voice like Mr. Pitman's, although Mr. Harry Lauder's in a
phonograph resembles it. And voices have always done for me what odors
do for some people, revived forgotten scenes and old memories. But the
memory that the voice at the head of the stairs brought back was not
very old, although I had forgotten it. I seemed to hear again, all at
once, the lapping of the water Sunday morning as it began to come in
over the door-sill; the sound of Terry ripping up the parlor carpet,
and Mrs. Ladley calling me a she-devil in the next room, in reply to
this very voice.
But when I got to the top of the stairs, it was only Mr. Howell, who
had brought his visitor to the flood district, and on getting her
splashed with the muddy water, had taken her to my house for a towel
and a cake of soap.
I lighted the lamp in the hall, and Mr. Howell introduced the girl.
She was a pretty girl, slim and young, and she had taken her wetting
good-naturedly.
"I know we are intruders, Mrs. Pitman," she said, holding out her
hand. "Especially now, when you are in trouble."
"I have told Miss Harvey a little," Mr. Howell said, "and I promised
to show her Peter, but he is not here."
I think I had known it was my sister's child from the moment I lighted
the lamp. There was something of Alma in her, not Alma's hardness or
haughtiness, but Alma's dark blue eyes with black lashes, and Alma's
nose. Alma was always the beauty of the family. What with the day's
excitement, and seeing Alma's child like this, in my house, I felt
things going round and clutched at the stair-rail. Mr. Howell caught
me.
"Why, Mrs. Pitman!" he said. "What's the matter?"
I got myself in hand in a moment and smiled at the girl.
"Nothing at all," I said. "Indigestion, most likely. Too much tea the
last day or two, and not enough solid food. I've been too anxious to
eat."
Lida--for she was that to me at once, although I had never seen her
before--Lida was all sympathy and sweetness. She actually asked me to
go with her to a restaurant and have a real dinner. I could imagine
Alma, had she known! But I excused myself.
"I have to cook something for Mr. Reynolds," I said, "and I'm better
now, anyhow, thank you. Mr. Howell, may I speak to you for a moment?"
He followed me along the back hall, which was dusk.
"I have remembered something that I had forgotten, Mr. Howell," I
said. "On Sunday morning, the Ladleys had a visitor."
"Yes?"
"They had very few visitors."
"I see."
"I did not see him, but--I heard his voice." Mr. Howell did not move,
but I fancied he drew his breath in quickly. "It sounded--it was not
by any chance _you_?"
"I? A newspaper man, who goes to bed at three A.M. on Sunday morning,
up and about at ten!"
"I didn't say what time it was," I said sharply.
But at that moment Lida called from the front hall.
"I think I hear Peter," she said. "He is shut in somewhere, whining."
We went forward at once. She was right. Peter was scratching at the
door of Mr. Ladley's room, although I had left the door closed and
Peter in the hall. I let him out, and he crawled to me on three legs,
whimpering. Mr. Howell bent over him and felt the fourth.
"Poor little beast!" he said. "His leg is broken!"
He made a splint for the dog, and with Lida helping, they put him to
bed in a clothes-basket in my up-stairs kitchen. It was easy to see
how things lay with Mr. Howell. He was all eyes for her: he made
excuses to touch her hand or her arm--little caressing touches
that made her color heighten. And with it all, there was a sort of
hopelessness in his manner, as if he knew how far the girl was out of
his reach. Knowing Alma and her pride, I knew better than they how
hopeless it was.
I was not so sure about Lida. I wondered if she was in love with the
boy, or only in love with love. She was very young, as I had been. God
help her, if, like me, she sacrificed everything, to discover, too
late, that she was only in love with love!