Gertrude's apartment was evidently a very large one; I had vaguely the
sensation of passing down a long hall with an ell in it, and so into a
small, simply furnished, but tasteful room--the sitting-room for her
maids, as I later decided. Sergeant Conlon shut the door and locked it.
"That's not to keep you in," he said; "it's to keep others out. Sit
down, Mr. Hunt. Smoke somethin'. Let's make ourselves comfortable."
The click of the shot bolt in the lock had suddenly, I found, restored
my power of cooerdination. It had been like the sharp handclap which
brings home a hypnotized subject to reason and reality. I was now, in a
moment, not merely myself again, but peculiarly alert and steady of
nerve, and I gave matter-of-fact assent to Sergeant Conlon's
suggestions. I lit a cigarette and took possession of the most
comfortable chair. Conlon remained standing. He had refused my
cigarettes, but he now lighted a long, roughly rolled cigar.
"I get these from a fellow over on First Avenue," he explained affably.
"He makes them up himself. They're not so bad."
I attempted a smile and achieved a classic reaction. "They
look--efficient," I said. "And now, sergeant, what has happened here? If
I've seemed dazed for the past ten minutes, it's little wonder. I
hurried down in response to a telegram saying my wife.... You know we've
lived apart for years?" He grunted assent.... "Saying she had died
suddenly. And I walk in, unprepared, on people who seem to me to be
acting parts in a crook melodrama of the crudest type. Be kind enough to
tell me what it's all about!"
Sergeant Conlon's gray-blue eyes fixed me as I spoke. He was a big,
thickset man, nearing middle age; the bruiser build, physically; but
with a solidly intelligent-looking head and trustworthy eyes.
"I'll do that, Mr. Hunt," he assented. "I got Mrs. Arthur to send you
that telegram; but I'll say to you first-off, now you've come, I don't
suspect you of bein' mixed up in this affair. When I shot that 'It looks
like murder' at you, I did it deliberate. Well--that's neither here nor
there; but I always go by the way things strike me. I have to." He
twirled a light chair round to face me and seated himself, leaning a
little forward, his great stubby hands propped on his square knees.
"Here's the facts, then--what we know are facts: It seems, Mrs.
Arthur--she's been visitin' Mrs. Hunt for two weeks past--she went to
the opera to-night with a Mr. Phar; she says you know him well." I
nodded. "Durin' the last act of the opera they were located by somebody
in the office down there and called out to the 'phone--an accident to
Mrs. Hunt--see?--important." Again I nodded. "Mrs. Arthur answered the
'phone, and Doctor Askew--he lives in this house, but he's Mrs. Hunt's
reg'lar doctor--well, he was on the wire. He just told her to hurry back
as fast as she could--and she and Mr. Phar hopped a taxi and beat it up
here. Doctor Askew met them at the door, and a couple of scared maids.
The doc's a good man--big rep--one of the best. He'd taken charge and
sent on the quiet for us. I got here with a couple of my men soon after
Mrs. Arthur----"
"But----"
"I know, _I_ know!" he stopped me off. "But I want you to get it all
straight. Mrs. Hunt, sir, was killed--somehow--with a long,
sharp-pointed brass paper-knife--a reg'lar weapon. I've examined it. And
someone drove that thing--and it must'a' took some force, believe
_me_!--right through her left eye up to the handle--a full inch of metal
plumb into her brain!"
I tried to believe him as he said this; as, seeing my blankness, he
repeated it for me in other words. For the moment it was impossible.
This sort of thing must have happened in the world, of course--at other
times, to other people. But not now, not to Gertrude. Certainly not to
Gertrude; a woman so aloof, so exquisite, self-sheltered,
class-sheltered, not merely from ugliness, from the harsh and brutal,
but from everything in life even verging toward vulgarity, coarse
passion, the unrestrained....
"That's the way she was killed, Mr. Hunt--no mistake. Now--who did
it--and why? That's the point."
At my elbow was a table with a reading-lamp on it, a desk-set, a
work-basket, belonging, I suppose, to one of the maids, and some
magazines. One magazine lay just before me--_The Reel World_--a
by-product of the great moving-picture industry. I had been
staring--unseeingly, at first--at a flamboyant advertisement on its
cover that clamored for my attention, until now, with Conlon's question,
it momentarily gained it. The release of a magnificent Superfeature was
announced--in no quavering terms. "The Sins of the Fathers" it shrieked
at me! "All the thrilling human suspense"; "virile, compelling";
"brimming over with the kind of action and adventure your audiences
crave"; "it delivers the wallop!"
Instantly, with a new force, Lucette's outcry swept back upon me. "Susan
did it! Wasn't she with her? Alone with her? _It's in her blood!_"
And at once every faculty of my spirit leaped, with an almost
supernatural acuteness, to the defense of the one being on earth I
wholly loved. All sense of unreality vanished. Now for it--since it must
be so! Susan and I, if need be, against the world!
"Go on, sergeant. What's your theory?"
"Never mind my theory! I'd like to get _yours_ first--when I've given
you all I know."
"All right, then! But be quick about it!"
"Easy, Mr. Hunt! It's not as simple as all that. Well, here it is:
Somewhere round ten o'clock, a Miss Blake--a magazine-writer livin' on
West 10th Street--your ward, I understand----"
"Yes."
"Well, she calls here, alone, and asks for Mrs. Arthur. Mrs. Hunt's
personal maid--English; she's no chicken either--she lets her in and
says Mrs. Arthur isn't here--see--and didn't the door boy tell her so?
Yes, says Miss Blake, but she'll wait for her anyway. The maid--name of
Iffley--says she thought that was queer, so she put it to Miss Blake
that maybe she'd better ask Mrs. Hunt. Oh, says Miss Blake, I thought
she was out, too. But it seems Mrs. Hunt was in her private sittin'
room; she'd had a slight bilious attack, and she'd got her corsets off
and somethin' loose on, the way women do, and was all set for a good
read. So the maid didn't think she could see Miss Blake, but anyhow she
took in her card--and Mrs. Hunt decided to see her. That maid Iffley's
an intelligent woman; she's all broke up, but she ain't hysterical like
the cook--who didn't see nothin' anyway. The parlor maid was havin' her
night off, but she's back now, too, and I've got 'em all safe where they
can't talk to outsiders, yet. I don't want this thing in the papers
to-morrow, not if I can help it; I want to keep it dark till I know
better where I'm gettin' off."
"Right!" I approved. "What's the maid's story?"
"Well, I've questioned her pretty close, and I think it's to be relied
on. It hits me that way. Mrs. Hunt, she says, when she took in Miss
Blake's card, was lyin' on her couch in a long trailin' thing--what
ladies call a negligee."
"Yes?"
"And she was cuttin' the pages of some new book with that paper-knife I
spoke of."
"Yes?"
"And her dog, a runty little French bull, was sleepin' on the rug beside
the couch."
"What does that matter?"
"More'n you'd think! He's got a broken leg--provin' some kind of a
struggle must'a'----"
"I see. Go on!"
"Well, Mrs. Hunt, the maid says, looked at Miss Blake's card a minute
and didn't say anythin' special, but seemed kind of puzzled. Her only
words was, 'Yes, I ought to see her.' So the maid goes for Miss Blake
and shows her to the door, which she'd left ajar, and taps on it for
her, and Mrs. Hunt calls to come in. So Miss Blake goes in and shuts the
door after her, and the maid comes back to this room we're in now--it's
round the corner of the hall from Mrs. Hunt's room--see? But she don't
much more than get here--just to the door--when she hears the dog give a
screech and then go on cryin' like as if he'd been hurt. The cook was in
here, too, and she claims she heard a kind of jarrin' sound, like
somethin' heavy fallin'; but Iffley--that's the maid, they call her
Iffley--says all she noticed was the dog. Anyway she listened a second,
then she started for Mrs. Hunt's room--and the cook, bein' nervous,
locked herself in here and sat with her eyes tight shut and her fingers
in her ears. Fact. She says she can't bear nothin' disagreeable. Too bad
about her, ain't it!"
"And then?" I protested, crossly.
"Well, Mr. Hunt, when the Iffley woman turned the hall corner--the door
of your poor wife's room opens, and Miss Blake walks out. She had the
paper-knife in her right hand, and the knife and her hand was all
bloody; her left hand was bloody too; and we've found blood on her
clothes since. There was a queer, vacant look about her--that's what the
maid says. She didn't seem to see anythin'. Naturally, the maid was
scared stiff--but she got one look in at the door anyway--that was
enough for her. She was too scared even to yell, she says.
Paralyzed--she just flopped back against the wall half faintin'.
"And then she noticed somethin' that kind of brought her to again! Mr.
Hunt, that young woman, Miss Blake--she'd gone quiet as you please and
curled herself down on a rug in the hallway--that bloody knife in her
hand--and she was either dead or fast asleep! And then the doorbell
rang, and the Iffley woman says she don't know how she got past that
prostrate figger on the rug--her very words, Mr. Hunt--that prostrate
figger on the rug--but she did, somehow; got to the door. And when she
opened it, there was Doctor Askew and the elevator man. And then she
passed out. And I must say I don't much blame her, considerin'."
"Where's Miss Blake now?" I sharply demanded.
"She's still fast asleep, Mr. Hunt--to call it that. The doc says
it's--somethin' or other--due to shock. Same as a trance."