A CHALLENGE
At four o'clock the following afternoon Carroll received from Chief
Leverage a detailed report on Gerald Lawrence:
"He's a manufacturer," said Leverage. "President of the Capitol City
Woolen Mills. Rated about a hundred thousand--maybe a little more. He's
on the Board of Directors of the Second National. Has the reputation of
being hard, fearless--and considerable of a grouch. Age forty-two.
"Married Naomi Rogers about five years ago. She was twenty-five
then--thirty now. Supposed to be beautiful--and would be a society light
except that Lawrence doesn't care for the soup-and-fish stuff. Report has
it that they're not very happy together. His parents and hers all dead.
Evelyn, her kid sister, lives with them.
"They employ a cook and two maids. No man-servant at all. Roland Warren
was pretty intimate at the house, but so far as I can discover there was
no scandal linking the names of Warren and Mrs. Lawrence. Of course, him
knowing her pretty intimately and being friendly at the house, you could
probably find a good many folks who would say nasty things. But there
hasn't been the real gossip about her and him that there was about a heap
of other women in this town.
"Warren and Lawrence were pretty good friends. Warren was a stockholder
in the woolen mills. On the other hand it seems as though Warren was at
the house a good deal more than just ordinary friendship would have
indicated. But that's just an idea. And there's your dope--"
"And on the night of the murder?" questioned Carroll. "Where were they?"
"Mrs. Lawrence was at home. Lawrence--if you're thinking of him in
connection with it--seems to have an iron-clad alibi. He went to
Nashville on a business trip and didn't get back until the
following morning."
"Alibi, eh?" Carroll's eyes narrowed speculatively, "are you _sure_ he
was in Nashville all that time?"
"Hm-m!" Leverage shook his head. "I don't know--but I can find out."
Carroll rose. "Do it please. And get the dope straight."
Carroll went to his apartment where he reluctantly commenced dressing for
the ordeal of the night. He felt himself rather ridiculous--a man of his
age calling on a girl not yet out of high school. The thing was funny--of
course--but just at the moment the joke was too entirely on him for the
full measure of amusement.
At that, he dressed carefully, selecting a new gray suit, a white
jersey-silk shirt and a blue necktie for the occasion. At six-thirty
Freda served his dinner and at fifteen minutes after eight o'clock he
rang the bell of the Lawrence home.
The door was opened by Evelyn: palpitant with excitement, and garbed
attractively in the demi-toilette of very-young-ladyhood.
"Mr. Carroll--so good of you to come. I'm simply tickled to death. Let me
have your hat and coat. Come right into the living room--I want you to
meet my brother-in-law and my sister--"
Sheepishly, Carroll followed the girl into the room. Mr. and Mrs.
Lawrence rose politely to greet him.
At the sight of the man he had really come to see, Carroll was conscious
of an instinctive dislike. Lawrence was of medium height, slightly
stooped and not unpleasing to the eye. But his brows were inclined to
lower and the eyes themselves were set too closely together. He was
dressed plainly--almost harshly, and he stared at Carroll in a manner
bordering on the hostile.
The detective acknowledged the introduction and then turned his gaze upon
the woman of the family. There he met with a surprise as pleasant as his
first glance at Lawrence had been unpleasant.
There was no gainsaying the fact that Naomi Lawrence was a beautiful
woman. Dressed simply for an evening at home in a strikingly plain gown
of a rich black material, and with her magnificent neck and shoulders
rising above the midnight hue--she caused a spontaneous thrill of
masculine admiration to surge through the ordinarily immune visitor in
the gray suit.
Her face was almost classic in its contour: her coloring a rich brunette,
her hair blue-black. No jewelry, save an engagement ring, adorned her
perfect beauty, and Carroll felt a loathing at the idea that this
magnificent creature was the wife of the stoop-shouldered, sour-faced man
who stood scowling by the living room table.
He gravely acknowledged the introduction of the young lady upon whom he
had called: feeling a faint sense of amusement at Lawrence's overt
disdain--and a considerable embarrassment under Naomi's questioning,
level gaze. For a few moments they talked casually--but that did not
satisfy Evelyn, and she dragged him into the parlor--
"--just the eleganest jazz piece--" Carroll heard as through a
haze "--just got it--feet can't keep still--play it for you--"
He found himself standing by the piano, the door between the music room
and the living room unaccountably closed. Evelyn banging out the opening
measures of the "elegant jazz piece."
He was still staring moodily at the closed door when the din ceased and
he again heard Evelyn's voice. "A penny for your thoughts, Mr. Carroll. A
real honest-to-goodness-spendable penny!"
"I was thinking," he remarked quietly, "that your sister is a very
beautiful woman."
"Naomi? Shucks! She isn't bad looking--but she's _old_. Abominably
old! Thirty!"
He glanced down on the girl and smiled. "That does seem old to you,
doesn't it?"
"Treacherously! I don't know what I'd ever do if I was to get that old.
Take up crocheting, probably."
The conversation died of dry-rot. Carroll was not at all pleased. His
excuse--the plea that he had come to call upon Evelyn--had been taken too
literally. He had fancied--in his blithe ignorance of the
seventeen-year-old ladies of the present day--that he could engineer
himself into a worthwhile conversation with the Lawrences. Since meeting
them, he was doubly anxious. There was a thinly veiled hostility about
the man which demanded investigation. And about the woman there was a
subtle atmosphere of tragedy which appealed to the masculine
protectiveness which surged strong in his bachelor breast.
But Carroll was a sportsman. The girl had carried things her own way--and
he was too game to spoil her evening. Therefore, he temporarily gave over
all thought of a chat with the Lawrences and devoted himself to her
amusement. He informed her that the jazz music she had strummed was
simply "glorious" and that he regretted he knew very little popular
stuff. She leaped upon his remark--
"Oh! do _you_ play: _really_?"
He was in again. "I have--a little."
"I wonder if you would? Here's the _grandest_ little old song I bought
downtown--" and she placed on the piano a gaudy thing with the modest
title--"All Babies Need Daddies to Kiss 'Em." Its cover exposed a tender
love scene wherein a gentleman in evening clothes was engaged in an act
of violent osculation with a young lady whose dress was as short as her
modesty. Carroll shrugged, placed his long, slender fingers on the
keys--shook his head--and went to it.
He played! A genuine artist--he tried to enter into the spirit of the
thing and succeeded admirably. The itchy syncopation rocked the room. His
hostess snapped her fingers deliciously and executed a few movements of a
dance which Carroll had heard referred to vaguely as the shimmy. In the
midst of the revelry he gave thought to Eric Leverage and chuckled.
He played the chorus a second time--then stopped on a crashing chord.
Evelyn's face was beaming--
"Gracious! You can play, can't you?"
"I used to--Suppose we talk awhile."
She agreed--reluctantly. They seated themselves in easy chairs before the
gas logs. Evelyn glanced hopefully at the chandelier. "I wish the belt
would slip at the power house, don't you?"
"Why?" innocently.
"Oh! just because Bright lights are such a nuisance when a girl has a
feller calling on her. And these logs give a perfectly respectable light,
don't they?"
"Indeed they do--but perhaps we'd better leave the others on."
She sighed resignedly. "I guess we'd better. Sis is so darned proper and
Gerald is an old crab--they might say something."
"I suppose they might. By they way, didn't they think it
was--er--strange: my coming to see you tonight?"
She turned red. "Suppose they did--what difference does that make? I'm
not a child and if a gentleman wants to call on me I guess they haven't
got any kick."
"What did they say when you told them I was coming?"
"They didn't believe me at first. Then Sis said you were too old--and
you're not old at all--and Gerald said--he said--" she giggled.
"What did Gerald say?"
"He said, 'Damned impertinence!'"
"H'm-m! I wonder just what he meant?"
"Oh! goodness! It doesn't matter what Gerald means. He makes me weary.
He's simply _impossible_--and I can't see what Sis ever married him for."
"I suppose she saw more in him than you do. They must be very happy
together."
"Happy? Poof! Happy as two dead sardines in a can. They can't get out--so
they might as well be happy. Besides, he's away a good deal."
"He is, eh? When was his last out-of-town trip?"
Carroll was interested now--he had steered the conversation back to
matters of importance: "Oh! 'bout four days ago--you know--the day dear
Roland was killed by that vampire in the taxicab."
"He was away that night: all night?"
"Uh-huh! All night long. And would you believe that Sis--who is scared of
her shadow at night--was the one who suggested that I go spend the night
with Hazel? And it's certainly fortunate she did, because if she hadn't
I wouldn't have been with Hazel all night and you awful detectives would
probably not have believed her story that she was at home in bed, and
then you would have arrested her for murdering Roland--and she'd have
gone to jail and been hanged--or something. Wouldn't she?"
"Hardly that bad. But it was fortunate that you were there. It made the
establishing of the alibi a very simple matter. And you say your
sister--Mrs. Lawrence--is nervous at night?"
"Oh! fearfully. She's just like all women--scared of rats, scared of the
dark, scared of being alone--perfectly disgusting, I call it."
"Quite a few women are that way, though--"
"I'm not. I'm scared of snakes and flying bugs and things like that. But
I don't get scared of the dark--pff! Who's going to hurt you? That's what
I always say. I believe in figuring things out, don't you I read in a
book once where--"
"But maybe you do Mrs. Lawrence an injustice. Maybe she isn't as afraid
at night as you imagine."
"She is, too."
"Yet you say she let you spend the night at Miss Gresham's house when
Mr. Lawrence was out of the city and there wasn't anybody on the place
but the servants--"
"Worse than that: the servants don't even live on the place. She spent
the night here all alone--!"
"Then all I'll say is that she is a brave woman. When did Mr. Lawrence
get back from Nashville?"
"Oh! not until ten o'clock the following morning. And believe me, he was
all excited when he read about Roland in the papers. Poor Roland! If you
were only a girl, Mr. Carroll--you'd know how terrible it is to have a
man who's crazy about you and engaged to your best friend and
everything--go and get himself murdered. Why, when I read the papers that
morning, I couldn't hardly believe my own eyes. I just said to myself 'it
can't be!' I said it over and over again just like that. Having faith, I
think they call it. I was reading in a book once about having faith--"
She talked interminably. Carroll ceased to hear the plangent voice. He
was thinking of what she had just told him--thinking earnestly. He knew
he was desperately anxious to have a talk with the Lawrences, to talk
things over in a casual manner. And tonight was his opportunity. He knew
he'd never have another like it. He didn't want to be forced to seek them
out in his capacity of detective.
From somewhere in the rear of the house he heard the clamor of a
doorbell, then the sound of footsteps in the hall, the opening and
closing of the front door--and then Naomi Lawrence appeared in the music
room. Carroll could have sworn that her eyes were twinkling with
amusement as she addressed Evelyn--pointedly ignoring him.
"Evelyn--that Somerville boy is here."
"Oh! bother! What's he doin' here?"
"He says he came to call. He's got a box of candy."
"Piffle! What do I care about candy? He's just a kid!"
Naomi went to the hall door. "Right this way, Charley." And as the
slender, overdressed young gentleman of nineteen entered the room,
Carroll again glimpsed the light of amusement in Naomi's eyes.
Mr. Charley Somerville expressed himself as being "Pleaset'meetcha" and
tried to conceal his vast admiration when Evelyn informed him that this
was _the_ David Carroll. Charley was impressed but he was not particular
about showing it--Charley fancying himself considerable of a cosmopolite,
thanks to a year at Yale. His dignity was excruciatingly funny to Carroll
as the very young man seated himself, crossed one elongated and
unbelievably skinny leg over the other and arranged the creases so that
they were in the very middle.
"A-a-ah! Taking a vacation from your work on the Warren murder case,
I presume?"
Carroll nodded. "Yes--for awhile."
"Detective work must be a terrible bore--mustn't it?"
"Sometimes," answered Carroll significantly.
"Charley Somerville!" Evelyn flamed to the defense of her friend's
profession. "At least Mr. Carroll ain't--isn't--a college freshman."
"I'm a sophomore," asserted Charley languidly. "Passed all of my exams."
"Anyway," snapped Evelyn, "he ain't any kid!"
For a time the atmosphere was strained. Then Carroll recalled a
particularly good college joke he knew and he told it well. After which
Evelyn explained to Charley that Mr. Carroll was the wonderfulest piano
player in the world and David Carroll, detective, strummed out several
popular airs while the youngsters danced.
Horrible as the situation was, it appealed irresistibly to his sense of
humor. He found himself almost enjoying it. And he worked carefully.
Eventually his patience was rewarded. He succeeded in getting them
together on a lounge with a photograph album between them. And then, very
quietly and positively, and with a brief--"Excuse me for a moment," he
walked through the hall and into the living room.
Lawrence and his wife were at opposite sides of the library table. At
sight of Carroll, Lawrence laid down his paper and rose to his feet.
"Well?" he inquired inhospitably.
Carroll laughed lightly. "It got too much for me. Too much youth. I
dropped in here for a chat with you folks."
"I didn't understand that you had come to call on us," said
Lawrence coldly.
"Why, I didn't--"
"You did!" snapped Lawrence. "I'm no fool, Carroll. From the minute I
heard you were coming, I knew what you had up your sleeve. You wanted
to talk about the Warren case! Now suppose you go ahead and
talk--then get out!"