Mr. Reynolds did not come home to dinner after all. The water had got
into the basement at the store, he telephoned, one of the flood-gates
in a sewer having leaked, and they were moving some of the departments
to an upper floor. I had expected to have him in the house that
evening, and now I was left alone again.
But, as it happened, I was not alone. Mr. Graves, one of the city
detectives, came at half past six, and went carefully over the
Ladleys' room. I showed him the towel and the slipper and the
broken knife, and where we had found the knife-blade. He was very
non-committal, and left in a half-hour, taking the articles with him
in a newspaper.
At seven the door-bell rang. I went down as far as I could on the
staircase, and I saw a boat outside the door, with the boatman and a
woman in it. I called to them to bring the boat back along the hall,
and I had a queer feeling that it might be Mrs. Ladley, and that I'd
been making a fool of myself all day for nothing. But it was not Mrs.
Ladley.
"Is this number forty-two?" asked the woman, as the boat came back.
"Yes."
"Does Mr. Ladley live here?"
"Yes. But he is not here now."
"Are you Mrs. Pittock?"
"Pitman, yes."
The boat bumped against the stairs, and the woman got out. She was as
tall as Mrs. Ladley, and when I saw her in the light from the upper
hall, I knew her instantly. It was Temple Hope, the leading woman from
the Liberty Theater.
"I would like to talk to you, Mrs. Pitman," she said. "Where can we
go?"
I led the way back to my room, and when she had followed me in, she
turned and shut the door.
"Now then," she said without any preliminary, "where is Jennie Brice?"
"I don't know, Miss Hope," I answered.
We looked at each other for a minute, and each of us saw what the
other suspected.
"He has killed her!" she exclaimed. "She was afraid he would do it,
and--he has."
"Killed her and thrown her into the river," I said. "That's what I
think, and he'll go free at that. It seems there isn't any murder when
there isn't any corpse."
"Nonsense! If he has done that, the river will give her up,
eventually."
"The river doesn't always give them up," I retorted. "Not in
flood-time, anyhow. Or when they are found it is months later, and you
can't prove anything."
She had only a little time, being due at the theater soon, but she sat
down and told me the story she told afterward on the stand:
She had known Jennie Brice for years, they having been together in the
chorus as long before as _Nadjy_.
"She was married then to a fellow on the vaudeville circuit," Miss
Hope said. "He left her about that time, and she took up with Ladley.
I don't think they were ever married."
"What!" I said, jumping to my feet, "and they came to a respectable
house like this! There's never been a breath of scandal about this
house, Miss Hope, and if this comes out I'm ruined."
"Well, perhaps they were married," she said. "Anyhow, they were always
quarreling. And when he wasn't playing, it was worse. She used to come
to my hotel, and cry her eyes out."
"I knew you were friends," I said. "Almost the last thing she said to
me was about the black and white dress of hers you were to borrow for
the piece this week."
"Black and white dress! I borrow one of Jennie Brice's dresses!"
exclaimed Miss Hope. "I should think not. I have plenty of my own."
That puzzled me; for she had said it, that was sure. And then I
remembered that I had not seen the dress in the room that day, and I
went in to look for it. It was gone. I came back and told Miss Hope.
"A black and white dress! Did it have a red collar?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Then I remember it. She wore a small black hat with a red quill with
that dress. You might look for the hat."
She followed me back to the room and stood in the doorway while I
searched. The hat was gone, too.
"Perhaps, after all, he's telling the truth," she said thoughtfully.
"Her fur coat isn't in the closet, is it?"
_It_ was gone. It is strange that, all day, I had never thought of
looking over her clothes and seeing what was missing. I hadn't known
all she had, of course, but I had seen her all winter in her fur
coat and admired it. It was a striped fur, brown and gray, and very
unusual. But with the coat missing, and a dress and hat gone, it began
to look as if I had been making a fool of myself, and stirring up a
tempest in a teacup. Miss Hope was as puzzled as I was.
"Anyhow, if he didn't kill her," she said, "it isn't because he did
not want to. Only last week she had hysterics in my dressing-room,
and said he had threatened to poison her. It was all Mr. Bronson, the
business manager, and I could do to quiet her."
She looked at her watch, and exclaimed that she was late, and would
have to hurry. I saw her down to her boat. The river had been falling
rapidly for the last hour or two, and I heard the boat scrape as it
went over the door-sill. I did not know whether to be glad that the
water was going down and I could live like a Christian again, or to be
sorry, for fear of what we might find in the mud that was always left.
Peter was lying where I had put him, on a folded blanket laid in a
clothes-basket. I went back to him, and sat down beside the basket.
"Peter!" I said. "Poor old Peter! Who did this to you? Who hurt you?"
He looked at me and whined, as if he wanted to tell me, if only he
could.
"Was it Mr. Ladley?" I asked, and the poor thing cowered close to his
bed and shivered. I wondered if it had been he, and, if it had, why he
had come back. Perhaps he had remembered the towel. Perhaps he would
come again and spend the night there. I was like Peter: I cowered and
shivered at the very thought.
At nine o'clock I heard a boat at the door. It had stuck there, and
its occupant was scolding furiously at the boatman. Soon after I heard
splashing, and I knew that whoever it was was wading back to the
stairs through the foot and a half or so of water still in the hall. I
ran back to my room and locked myself in, and then stood, armed with
the stove-lid-lifter, in case it should be Ladley and he should break
the door in.
The steps came up the stairs, and Peter barked furiously. It seemed to
me that this was to be my end, killed like a rat in a trap and thrown
out the window, to float, like my kitchen chair, into Mollie Maguire's
kitchen, or to be found lying in the ooze of the yard after the river
had gone down.
The steps hesitated at the top of the stairs, and turned back along
the hall. Peter redoubled his noise; he never barked for Mr. Reynolds
or the Ladleys. I stood still, hardly able to breathe. The door was
thin, and the lock loose: one good blow, and--
The door-knob turned, and I screamed. I recall that the light turned
black, and that is all I _do_ remember, until I came to, a half-hour
later, and saw Mr. Holcombe stooping over me. The door, with the lock
broken, was standing open. I tried to move, and then I saw that my
feet were propped up on the edge of Peter's basket.
"Better leave them up." Mr. Holcombe said. "It sends the blood back to
the head. Half the damfool people in the world stick a pillow under a
fainting woman's shoulders. How are you now?"
"All right," I said feebly. "I thought you were Mr. Ladley."
He helped me up, and I sat in a chair and tried to keep my lips from
shaking. And then I saw that Mr. Holcombe had brought a suit case with
him, and had set it inside the door.
"Ladley is safe, until he gets bail, anyhow," he said. "They picked
him up as he was boarding a Pennsylvania train bound east."
"For murder?" I asked.
"As a suspicious character," he replied grimly. "That does as well
as anything for a time." He sat down opposite me, and looked at me
intently.
"Mrs. Pitman," he said, "did you ever hear the story of the horse that
wandered out of a village and could not be found?"
I shook my head.
"Well, the best wit of the village failed to locate the horse. But one
day the village idiot walked into town, leading the missing animal by
the bridle. When they asked him how he had done it, he said: 'Well,
I just thought what I'd do if I was a horse, and then I went and did
it.'"
"I see," I said, humoring him.
"You _don't_ see. Now, what are we trying to do?"
"We're trying to find a body. Do you intend to become a corpse?"
He leaned over and tapped on the table between us. "We are trying to
prove a crime. I intend for the time to be the criminal."
He looked so curious, bent forward and glaring at me from under his
bushy eyebrows, with his shoes on his knee--for he had taken them off
to wade to the stairs--and his trousers rolled to his knees, that I
wondered if he was entirely sane. But Mr. Holcombe, eccentric as he
might be, was sane enough.
"Not _really_ a criminal!"
"As really as lies in me. Listen, Mrs. Pitman. I want to put myself
in Ladley's place for a day or two, live as he lived, do what he did,
even think as he thought, if I can. I am going to sleep in his room
to-night, with your permission."
I could not see any reason for objecting, although I thought it silly
and useless. I led the way to the front room, Mr. Holcombe following
with his shoes and suit case. I lighted a lamp, and he stood looking
around him.
"I see you have been here since we left this afternoon," he said.
"Twice," I replied. "First with Mr. Graves, and later--"
The words died on my tongue. Some one had been in the room since my
last visit there.
"He has been here!" I gasped. "I left the room in tolerable order.
Look at it!"
"When were you here last?"
"At seven-thirty, or thereabouts."
"Where were you between seven-thirty and eight-thirty?"
"In the kitchen with Peter." I told him then about the dog, and about
finding him shut in the room.
The wash-stand was pulled out. The sheets of Mr. Ladley's manuscript,
usually an orderly pile, were half on the floor. The bed coverings had
been jerked off and flung over the back of a chair.
Peter, imprisoned, _might_ have moved the wash-stand and upset the
manuscript--Peter had never put the bed-clothing over the chair, or
broken his own leg.
"Humph!" he said, and getting out his note-book, he made an exact
memorandum of what I had told him, and of the condition of the room.
That done, he turned to me.
"Mrs. Pitman," he said, "I'll thank you to call me Mr. Ladley for the
next day or so. I am an actor out of employment, forty-one years of
age, short, stout, and bald, married to a woman I would like to be
quit of, and I am writing myself a play in which the Shuberts intend
to star me, or in which I intend the Shuberts to star me."
"Very well, Mr. Ladley," I said, trying to enter into the spirit of
the thing, and, God knows, seeing no humor in it. "Then you'll like
your soda from the ice-box?"
"Soda? For what?"
"For your whisky and soda, before you go to bed, sir."
"Oh, certainly, yes. Bring the soda. And--just a moment, Mrs. Pitman:
Mr. Holcombe is a total abstainer, and has always been so. It is
Ladley, not Holcombe, who takes this abominable stuff."
I said I quite understood, but that Mr. Ladley could skip a night, if
he so wished. But the little gentleman would not hear to it, and when
I brought the soda, poured himself a double portion. He stood looking
at it, with his face screwed up, as if the very odor revolted him.
"The chances are," he said, "that Ladley--that I--having a nasty piece
of work to do during the night, would--will take a larger drink than
usual." He raised the glass, only to put it down. "Don't forget," he
said, "to put a large knife where you left the one last night. I'm
sorry the water has gone down, but I shall imagine it still at the
seventh step. Good night, Mrs. Pitman."
"Good night, Mr. Ladley," I said, smiling, "and remember, you are
three weeks in arrears with your board."
His eyes twinkled through his spectacles. "I shall imagine it paid,"
he said.
I went out, and I heard him close the door behind me. Then, through
the door, I heard a great sputtering and coughing, and I knew he had
got the whisky down somehow. I put the knife out, as he had asked me
to, and went to bed. I was ready to drop. Not even the knowledge that
an imaginary Mr. Ladley was about to commit an imaginary crime in the
house that night could keep me awake.
Mr. Reynolds came in at eleven o'clock. I was roused when he banged
his door. That was all I knew until morning. The sun on my face
wakened me. Peter, in his basket, lifted his head as I moved, and
thumped his tail against his pillow in greeting. I put on a wrapper,
and called Mr. Reynolds by knocking at his door. Then I went on to the
front room. The door was closed, and some one beyond was groaning. My
heart stood still, and then raced on. I opened the door and looked in.
Mr. Holcombe was on the bed, fully dressed. He had a wet towel tied
around his head, and his face looked swollen and puffy. He opened one
eye and looked at me.
"What a night!" he groaned.
"What happened! What did you find?"
He groaned again. "Find!" he said. "Nothing, except that there was
something wrong with that whisky. It poisoned me. I haven't been out
of the house!"
So for that day, at least, Mr. Ladley became Mr. Holcombe again,
and as such accepted ice in quantities, a mustard plaster over his
stomach, and considerable nursing. By evening he was better, but
although he clearly intended to stay on, he said nothing about
changing his identity again, and I was glad enough. The very name of
Ladley was horrible to me.
The river went down almost entirely that day, although there was still
considerable water in the cellars. It takes time to get rid of that.
The lower floors showed nothing suspicious. The papers were ruined, of
course, the doors warped and sprung, and the floors coated with mud
and debris. Terry came in the afternoon, and together we hung the
dining-room rug out to dry in the sun.
As I was coming in, I looked over at the Maguire yard. Molly Maguire
was there, and all her children around her, gaping. Molly was hanging
out to dry a sodden fur coat, that had once been striped, brown and
gray.
I went over after breakfast and claimed the coat as belonging to Mrs.
Ladley. But she refused to give it up. There is a sort of unwritten
law concerning the salvage of flood articles, and I had to leave the
coat, as I had my kitchen chair. But it was Mrs. Ladley's, beyond a
doubt.
I shuddered when I thought how it had probably got into the water.
And yet it was curious, too, for if she had had it on, how did it get
loose to go floating around Molly Maguire's yard? And if she had not
worn it, how did it get in the water?