Harry Kent inserted his key in his office door with more vigor than good
judgment, and spent some seconds in re-adjusting it in the lock. Once
inside the office he put up the latch and closed the door. A glance
around the empty office showed him that Sylvester had obeyed his
telephone instructions and gone out to luncheon.
Kent noted with satisfaction as he put his hat and cane in the coat
closet that he had over two hours before Mrs. Brewster's expected
arrival; ample time in which to consider in quietude the events of the
past few days, and plan for his interview with the pretty widow. He had
spent the time between Rochester's sudden reappearance and a hastily
swallowed lunch at a downtown cafe, in arranging bail for Rochester.
Ferguson had proved obdurate and had persisted in taking the lawyer to
Police Headquarters.
Dr. Stone had accompanied the trio, and his testimony, supported by two
chemists, regarding the time required for aconitine poison to act, had
gone far to weaken the detective's case against Rochester.
Rochester, to Kent's unbounded astonishment, had appeared indifferent to
the whole proceedings; and to his partner's urgent inquiries as to where
he had spent the past four days, and why he had disappeared, he had
returned one invariable answer.
“I'll explain in good time, Harry,” and it was not until they were
leaving Police Headquarters that his apathy vanished.
“When are you to see Mrs. Brewster?” he asked.
“She will be at our office at four o'clock. Say, Phil”--but Rochester,
shaking off his detaining hand, darted across the street and sprang into
a passing taxi bearing the sign, “For Hire,” and that was the last Kent
had seen of his elusive partner.
Kent dropped into his chair and glanced askance at the mail piled in
neat array on his desk; he was not in a frame of mind to handle routine
office business. Other clients would have to wait until later in
the day. A memorandum pad, bearing a message in Sylvester's precise
penmanship attracted his wandering attention and he picked it up.
“Mr. Kent:” he read. “Colonel McIntyre called just after I talked with
you on the 'phone; he waited in your office for half an hour, then left,
stating he would come back. Miss Barbara McIntyre called immediately
afterwards, but would not wait more than five minutes. Mr. Clymer came
as she was going out and left a note on your desk. I will return soon.
“SYLVESTER.”
Kent laid down the pad and picked up a twisted three-cornered note
bearing his name in pencil. Unfolding it, he scanned the hurriedly
written lines:
“Dear Kent--McIntyre telephoned there were new developments in the
Turnbull affair. Will be back later.
“Yours--
“B. A. CLYMER.”
Kent judged from the use of his initials that Clymer was stirred out of
his ordinary calm, nothing else explained his failure to sign his full
name, and he wondered what confidences McIntyre had made to the bank
president.
Tossing down the note, Kent lighted his pipe, tilted back in his swivel
chair, and reviewed the facts which implicated Rochester in Jimmie
Turnbull's murder. Rochester's quarrels with Jimmie, his persistent
assertion that his friend had died from angina pectoris, his unexplained
disappearance on Tuesday night, the fake telegram from Cleveland stating
he was there, the withdrawal of his bank deposits, the forged checks,
his mysterious visits to his own apartment, when considered together,
presented a chain of circumstantial evidence connecting him with the
crime. But in the light of Dr. Stone's testimony, the poison “could not
have been administered in the glass of water Rochester had given Jimmie
in the police court.”
Four hours at least had to elapse before the fatal dose of aconitine
could take effect--four hours! Kent told them off on his fingers;
it placed the crime in the McIntyre house. Which one of its inmates
administered the poison to Jimmie and how had it been done? What motive
had prompted the cashier's murder?
It was preposterous to think that either of the twins was guilty of the
crime. Helen's devotion to Jimmie, her insistence upon an autopsy being
held indicated her innocence. She had stated at the inquest that she had
not known the burglar's identity; Kent paused as the thought occurred
to him--the twins had swapped identities on the witness stand, and
therefore Helen had not been called upon to answer that question! To the
best of his recollection she had only been asked if she had recognized
Jimmie in the court room and not at her home. But Helen it was who had
summoned Officer O'Ryan on discovering the burglar and had him arrested.
She surely would never have done so had she guessed his identity.
As for Barbara McIntyre--Kent's heart beat faster at thought of the
girl he loved so well. Circumstantial evidence had seemed for a time
to involve her in the crime. Grimes' outrageous insinuation that he had
been assaulted on account of confiding to her that the box of aconitine
pills had been left on the hall table where any one could get them, was
the outcome of his battered condition. When physical strength returned,
the butler would forget his hallucinations. The handkerchief with its
embroidered letter “B,” used by Jimmie to inhale the fumes from his
amyl nitrite capsules, was finally traced to its rightful owner--Mrs.
Brewster.
And Mrs. Brewster was due in his office within a very short time. Kent's
square jaw became more pronounced; she should not leave until she had
either confessed her connection with Turnbull's death, or established
her innocence. Surely it would be easy for Mrs. Brewster to do so,
but--aconitine had been prescribed for her; she was familiar with the
poison, she had it at hand, she went to the police court, and kept her
trip a secret, and she had laughed when Jimmie was carried dying from
the court room. But what motive could have inspired her to murder
Jimmie? Was he an old lover--Kent, unable to keep quiet any longer, rose
and paced up and down the office, stopping a moment to glance out of
the window. As he passed the safe he saw the door was ajar. Kent paused
abruptly. Who had opened the safe?
Crossing to the outer office he looked around; no one was there. It
flashed into Kent's mind that he had seen Rochester's light top coat and
walking stick in the coat closet as he hung up his hat on his arrival,
and he again opened the closet door. The coat and stick were still
there; so Rochester had come to the office immediately after leaving
him, and carelessly left the safe open! Kent smiled in spite of his
vexation; the act was typical of his eccentric partner.
Going back to his own office Kent opened the safe and glanced inside.
The pigeon holes and compartments appeared untouched, except the door
of one small compartment on Rochester's side. An envelope was wedged in
such a manner that the small door would not shut and that had prevented
the closing of the outer safe door.
Kent, preparatory to shutting the safe, drew out the envelope intending
to place it in another pigeon-hole where there was more room. As he
turned the envelope over he was thunderstruck to recognize it as the one
which Helen McIntyre had placed in the safe on Wednesday morning. He had
last seen the envelope lying on the table in the smoking porch of the
Club de Vingt, from whence it had mysteriously disappeared, and now it
was back again in Rochester's safe!
Had it ever been missing from the safe? The question forced itself on
Kent as he returned to his chair, envelope in hand, and sat down before
his desk. He had accepted Detective Ferguson's statement that he had
removed the envelope from the safe, and therefore had never looked in
the compartment where Helen had put it to verify its disappearance.
Ferguson had removed it, Kent concluded as he examined the envelope with
more care; it was the identical one, unaddressed, with the same red
seal holding down the flap. The same red seal, but with a difference--a
corner was missing.
Kent stared at the seal for a moment in doubt, then his fingers
sought his vest pocket and fumbled about for a minute. Taking out
Mrs. Brewster's check, he laid it on the desk alongside the envelope,
unfolded it, and picked out a piece of red sealing wax which had slid
inside the check. Kent placed the red wax on the broken section of the
seal--it fitted exactly, forming a perfect letter “B.”
Kent sat in dumbfounded silence, regarding the red seal and the
envelope. The piece of wax broken off from the seal had caught on his
coat sleeve when he had been in the Venetian casket in the library at
the McIntyre house. It was proof positive that not only he had been in
the casket, but the sealed envelope also. Helen McIntyre had left the
envelope in his care. Mrs. Brewster and Colonel McIntyre had both been
present when the envelope was stolen from him. Which of them had taken
it? Which one had afterwards secreted it in the Venetian casket? And
which had brought it back to the safe in his office?
Colonel McIntyre had been in his office within the hour--the question
was answered, and Kent's eyes brightened, then clouded--Barbara had been
there as well, and Grimes had stated that before he received a knock-out
blow in the McIntyre library he heard the swish of skirts!
Kent laid his hand on the envelope. It was time that he found out what
it contained; but his finger, inserted under the flap, paused as his
eyes fell on the check bearing Mrs. Brewster's signature. It was the
check he had picked up from the floor of the McIntyre limousine that
morning and inadvertently carried away with him.
From her signature his glance wandered to Sylvester's memorandum pad;
it was uncanny the way his eye picked out the letter “B” as he stared at
Clymer's note and its signature. Slowly his hand dropped away from the
envelope and he left it lying forgotten on the desk as he picked up
piece after piece of blotting paper, glancing intently at each and
finally, pulling open a drawer of his desk, he hunted in feverish haste
for a hand-mirror.
Some ten minutes later Kent rose, placed the papers he had been
examining in the inside pocket of his coat and, using the private
entrance from his office into the corridor, he hurried away.
When Helen McIntyre entered the office of Rochester and Kent for the
second time that afternoon she found Sylvester transcribing stenographic
notes on his typewriter.
“Mr. Kent is expecting you, miss,” he said, holding open the inner
office door, and with a courteous word of thanks, Helen passed the clerk
and the door closed behind her. Kent rose at her approach and bowed
formally.
“Take this chair,” he suggested, and not until she was seated did Helen
realize he had placed her where the light fell full upon her. “I asked
you to come here,” he began, as she waited for him to speak, “Because I
must have your confidence--if I am to aid you. Did you meet, recognize,
and talk to Jimmie Turnbull in your house sometime between Monday
midnight and his arrest on Tuesday morning?”
She colored hotly, then paled. “My testimony at the inquest,”--she
commenced, but he gave her no opportunity to add more.
“Your testimony there does not cover the question,” he explained. “You
stated then that you had not recognized Jimmie in the court room. Had
you already penetrated his disguise at your house?”
“And if I had?”
“Did you?” Kent was doggedly persistent, and Helen's fingers closed
around her handbag with convulsive force. Why had she not sent Barbara
to see Kent in her place?
“Did I what?” she parried.
“Did you recognize and talk with Jimmie Turnbull in your house?”
“I talked with him, yes,” she admitted, and her voice dropped almost to
a whisper.
“As Jimmie Turnbull or Smith the burglar?”
“As Jimmie”--she confessed, after a slight pause.
“Then why did you go through the farce of having Jimmie arrested as a
burglar?” Kent demanded.
“So that Barbara might win her wager,” promptly. Kent stared at her
incredulously.
“Do you mean that, notwithstanding the risk to which you were subjecting
him with his weak heart, you kept up the farce simply that Barbara might
win an idiotic wager?” Kent asked.
Helen passed one nervous hand over the other; her palms were hot and
dry, and two hectic spots had appeared in each white cheek.
“Jimmie was quite well Monday night,” she protested. “He--he--had some
heart medicine with him.”
“Amyl nitrite?”
“No.”
“Nitro-glycerine?”
“I--I think that was it, I am not quite sure,” she spoke with
uncertainty, and Kent knew that she lied. His heart sank.
“Did he swallow any medicine in your presence?”
She shook her head vigorously. “No, he did not.”
Kent lowered his voice. “Did you see him take Mrs. Brewster's aconitine
pills off the hall table?”
Helen shifted her gaze to his face and then back to her ever restless
hands. “No,” she said. “I did not see him take the pills.”
Kent studied her in a silence which, to her, seemed never-ending.
“I want the true answer to this question,” he announced with meaning
emphasis. “Why did Jimmie go in disguise to your house on Monday night?”
Helen blanched. “How should I know,” she muttered evasively. “He--he
didn't come to see me--the admission was barely above a whisper.
“But you know what transpired in your house on Monday night?” demanded
Kent eagerly.
His question met with no response, and he repeated it, but still the
girl remained silent. Kent gave her a moment's grace, then drawing out
the unaddressed envelope from his pocket he held it toward her. A low
cry broke from her, and her expression changed as she caught sight of
the broken seal.
“You have opened it!”
“Not yet,” Kent held the envelope just beyond her reach. “I will only
give it to you with the understanding that you open the envelope now in
my presence and let me see its contents.”
Helen drew back, then impulsively extended her hand.
“I agree,” she said. “Give me the envelope.”
“Stop!” The word rang out, startling Kent as well as Helen, and Mrs.
Brewster, whose noiseless entrance a few seconds before had gone
unobserved, hurried to them. “The envelope is mine.”