THE WOMAN IN THE CASE.
Nick Carter entered the Ashburton Chambers soon after eight o’clock that
evening. He did not send up his card to Kate Crandall. He sauntered in
and bought some cigars off a girl clerk in charge of the counter. While
lighting one, he inquired carelessly:
“Have you seen Ralph Sheldon here this evening?”
“Yes, sir,” said the girl. “He came in half an hour ago. I saw him
talking with the clerk. I guess he went up to his suite.”
“To the woman’s suite,” thought Nick, recalling what Danny had reported.
Then, indifferently: “I heard to-day that Mr. Sheldon is living here.”
“Yes, sir. He has a suite with Mr. Floyd on the third floor. They have
been here about two months.”
“Philip Floyd?”
“Yes, sir. But I don’t think he is here to-day. He travels a good deal
of the time. The clerk can tell you.”
“It’s not material,” said Nick, turning away.
He sauntered out and around to the side door of the house, throwing away
his cigar, then entered and took the elevator, saying to the man in
charge:
“Miss Crandall’s apartments.”
“Third floor, sir,” directed the man. “Number ninety-eight, to the
right.”
“Number ninety-eight?” queried Nick. “I thought Ralph Sheldon had that
suite.”
“No, sir. He and Mr. Floyd have number ninety-four, rear corridor.”
Nick did not reply. He stepped out on the third floor and turned to the
right. The dimly lighted corridor was deserted. It ran parallel with one
side of the house and led to a stairway and a narrow passage back of
some of the rear apartments, evidently a passage and stairway designed
for the use of servants and the removal of sweepings and rubbish.
Nick found that Kate Crandall’s suite was the last in the side corridor.
He paused at the door and listened, hearing nothing, and he then
crouched and peered through the keyhole. He could see a thread of light
under an inner door, which precluded hearing voices from within, and he
then knocked sharply on one of the panels.
There was no response.
Nick waited a few moments, then knocked again, which had the desired
result. The door was opened by the woman he was seeking.
She was not conventionally clad for receiving visitors. Her fine figure
was enveloped in a voluminous woolen wrapper. Her feet were thrust into
a pair of worsted slippers. She appeared to have been on the verge of
getting ready for bed. She drew back with a look of surprise on her
darkly handsome face.
“Goodness!” she exclaimed. “I thought one of the hall-boys knocked. What
do you want?”
“An interview with you,” Nick tersely informed her. “Don’t pretend, Miss
Crandall, that you do not recognize me. A woman never forgets the face
of a person she dislikes.”
“I did not so pretend,” Kate retorted. “I knew you immediately, Mr.
Carter, but I cannot imagine why you want an interview with me.”
“I will presently inform you,” said Nick. “May I come in?”
“Certainly.”
“You are alone?”
“Of course. I am nearly always alone here. I have a headache and was
thinking of going to bed,” Kate glibly asserted.
“That is why, perhaps, you were so long in answering my knock,” Nick
remarked, more sharply eying her.
“Precisely,” Kate nodded. “I was near not answering it at all. I am glad
I did, however. As for disliking you, Mr. Carter, that is absurd. I bear
you no ill will for the part you played in that Maybrick affair. I was
not seriously involved in it. I always make it a point not to lay myself
liable.”
“To the law, you mean?”
“To the law--certainly,” she bluntly admitted. “What else would I mean?
I’ll keep out of the grabnet of the law, Mr. Carter, you can safely bet
on that.”
Nick wondered whether it was true, or only a bluff designed to dispel
his suspicions. He had followed her into an attractively furnished
parlor, where he instantly detected the odor of cigarette smoke. He
wondered, too, whether he really had found her alone, or whether some
male visitor, possibly Ralph Sheldon, had hurriedly concealed himself in
one of the adjoining rooms.
“Have a chair,” Kate added. “Really, Mr. Carter, I am quite pleased to
see you, for all you think I dislike you. What do you want to interview
me about? You have piqued my curiosity.”
“You said you were alone here,” Nick remarked, instead of answering her
question.
“So I was until you came in.”
“Really?”
“Sure! Why should I deceive you?”
“That’s the question,” said Nick. “I think that you have.”
He had leaned nearer to her while taking a chair, so near that his head
almost touched hers, for she then was seated.
“That I have deceived you?” she asked, gazing at him.
“Surely.”
“How so?”
“Some person was smoking a cigarette here within a very few minutes.”
Kate Crandall laughed and tossed her head.
“Dear me, is that why you think so?” she said derisively. “Really, Mr.
Carter, you are not near as keen and clever as you think you are.”
“No?”
“Far from it. It was cute in you, of course, to detect cigarette smoke
so quickly. But I was the smoker. You’ll find the end of my cigarette in
the cuspidor, if you care to look. Here is the box.” Kate took it from
the pocket of her woolen robe. “Have one. They seem to steady one’s
nerves for a time. It may sharpen you up a bit.”
“My wits don’t need the grindstone,” Nick replied dryly.
“No?” queried Kate, with his own tentative intonation.
“Far from it,” said Nick, imitating her. “You are the one who is not
keen and clever. You were not the smoker, Miss Crandall. When a woman
has just smoked a cigarette, the scent of it may be easily detected in
her hair. I smelled of yours when I sat down.”
“Oh, indeed!”
“Now, having eliminated you, who was your visitor? Why did he hide when
I knocked? I know, of course, that he did not depart, or I should have
seen him.”
Kate Crandall’s mocking smile had given way to a frown, but it was not
of long duration.
“You are very much mistaken, Mr. Carter,” she replied. “He left just
before you arrived. If you think any person is concealed in my
apartments, you are at liberty to search them.”
“No, indeed; it is not material.”
“I fail to see why you have any interest in me, or my visitor,” Kate
quickly added. “Please explain. Why are you here? What have you to say?”
“I want you to do most of the saying,” Nick replied. “Tell me, and give
it to me straight, what do you know about Mr. Cyrus Darling?”
Kate Crandall heard him without a change of countenance.
“Well, just now, Mr. Carter, I know nothing about him,” she said
pointedly. “He’s dead.”
“What did you know about him when alive, then?” Nick demanded.
“Very little. So little, Mr. Carter, that I’m quite ashamed of myself.”
“Why so?”
“Because, when I discovered the truth, it was not at all to my liking.”
“What truth?”
“That he was a married man.”
“Do you mean that you did not know it before he died?”
“That’s just what I mean.”
“How long had you known him?”
“Something like three months.”
“Were you friends?”
“The best of friends. I supposed, in fact, that we were to become
something more,” Kate significantly added.
“You mean?”
“In other words, Mr. Carter, I supposed that Cyrus Darling was going to
marry me, and that I should roll in wealth for the rest of my life.
Imagine my chagrin, dismay, and disappointment, therefore, when I
learned that he had killed himself--and that a wife was mourning his
tragic end. Perdition! I could have cut off my two ears for having
listened to his treacherous love avowals.”
Nick Carter now saw plainly that this woman had no intention of bolting,
that she had taken a position she felt sure she could maintain, and that
she was not to be easily frightened or intimidated. All this appeared in
her darkly glowing eyes, her look of covert contempt and defiance, and
in the utter lack of anything like apprehension on her part. Nick gazed
at her intently for a moment, then asked bluntly:
“Do you expect me to believe, Miss Crandall, that you did not know
Darling was married?”
“I don’t care whether you believe it, Mr. Carter, or not,” she
deliberately answered, meeting him eye to eye while she lighted a
cigarette. “What is that to me? The fact is not altered by what you
believe.”
“It is a fact, then?”
“Yes, positively.”
“You are acquainted with Ralph Sheldon, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“And Philip Floyd?”
“Yes.”
“Are they friends of yours?”
“I think so,” Kate coolly nodded. “I have no reason to doubt it.”
“Why, then, did they not tell you that Darling was a married man?” Nick
demanded. “They knew it.”
“And they supposed that I knew it,” Kate curtly explained. “They had no
idea that I was ignorant of it. They saw me with Darling only
occasionally, and they attributed no special significance to it.”
“No?”
“Why should they?” she added, a bit sharply. “Why should they meddle
with my affairs? I wonder at your presuming to do so--though I know, of
course, that yours is a meddlesome business and you a prince of
meddlers. What’s it all about? What’s the answer? What are you driving
at, anyway?”
“You will learn in time,” Nick informed her. “If what you imply is true,
then, you were not used quite right by Darling.”
“No--quite the contrary.”
“Why have you still an interest in his affairs, then?”
“In his affairs?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Nonsense! I have no such interest,” Kate declared, with a stony stare.
“I have wiped his name off my slate.”
“Who is your friend, then, who has such an interest?”
“My friend?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand you,” snapped Kate. “Come across plainly, Mr.
Carter, if you wish me to continue this interview. I’ll not stand for
any beating around a bush. What friend of mine do you mean?”
“The man you talked with on the street a short time ago,” Nick said
bluntly. “The man who told you he had seen my touring car at the Darling
residence this afternoon.”
Kate Crandall’s eyes dilated perceptibly under her knitted brows. The
shot was evidently not expected, but it did not appear to disturb her
seriously. She tossed away her cigarette, nevertheless, asking, a bit
resentfully:
“What is it to you, Carter, anyway? Why are you putting me through the
wringer in this fashion? What are you trying to dig up? I tell you right
here and now that you’ve got nothing on me. My relations with Cyrus
Darling were open and above board. He was the only one guilty of any
duplicity. I was the one deceived--and his wife! What are you out after,
anyway?”
“You are evading my question,” Nick said pointedly.
“What question?”
“Who is the man with whom you talked this afternoon?” Nick repeated. “If
you are strictly on the level, as you assert, you should be willing to
tell me.”
“Willing be hanged!” snapped Kate inelegantly. “You make me tired,
Carter, when you get one of these meddlesome wasps in your bonnet. Why,
I am more than willing to tell you, if you are really anxious to know.”
“Tell me, then.”
“The man was Jim Dacey, a very good friend of mine,” said Kate. “That’s
why he came to tell me that he had seen a car thought to be yours at the
Darling residence. He even went and looked up the number, to be sure of
it.”
“But why did he hasten to inform you?”
“He feared that I might be involved in some way because of my relations
with Darling, so he came to put me on my guard,” Kate glibly explained.
“But there was no occasion, not the slightest occasion.”
“Indeed?”
“Not the slightest,” Kate forcibly repeated.
“Who is this man, Dacey, and where does he hang out?” Nick then
inquired, not yet in a position to contradict the woman. “Why was he
going to the Darling residence? What is his interest there? Why did
he----”
“Stop a moment!” Kate exclaimed, lurching forward in her chair. “What do
you think I am, Carter, an information bureau? I’ll stand for this no
longer. I don’t know what you suspect, nor care, and you evidently don’t
intend to enlighten me. It’s a mighty poor rule that won’t work both
ways. I’ve told you all I’m going to tell you. If you want to learn more
of Cyrus Darling, or of Jim Dacey, or of Sheldon and Floyd--go and
question them. You’ll get no more out of me.”
Nick saw that she meant it.
“Wait and see,” he remarked, rising.
“I can wait,” Kate retorted. “Go elsewhere with your questions.”
“That is precisely what I shall do.”
“Go ahead, then. It’s up to you. Go where you please--I’m going to
bed.”