THE SUIT-CASE AGAIN
Carroll drove direct to his apartments, despite his original intention of
dropping by headquarters for a chat with Leverage. He wanted to be
alone--to think--
The evening had borne fruit beyond his wildest imaginings. Fact had piled
upon fact with bewildering rapidity. As yet he had been unable to sort
them in his mind, to catalogue each properly, to test for proper value.
He reached his apartment and found it warm and comfortable. He donned
lounging robe and slippers which the thoughtful Freda had left out for
him, settled himself in an easy chair, lighted a fire which he kept
always ready in the grate and turned out the lights. Then, with his cigar
glowing and great clouds of rich smoke filling the air--he sank into a
revelry of thinking.
Certain disclosures of the evening stood out with startling clarity.
Chief among them was the inevitable belief that Gerald Lawrence had
either killed Roland Warren or else knew who had done so--and how it was
done. Yet Carroll tried not to allow his thoughts and personal prejudices
to run away with him. He knew that now, of all times, he must keep a
tight grip on himself.
Great as was the dislike which he had conceived for Lawrence--an
instinctive repugnance which still obtained--he was grimly determined
that he would not be swayed by his emotions. Therefore he deliberately
reviewed Lawrence's story in the light of its possible truth.
Lawrence claimed that he belonged to that none too rare class of
prominent citizens who once every so often respond to the call of the
wild within them by going to a nearby city where they are not known and
giving themselves over to the dubious delights of a spree. Publication of
this fact alone would prove sufficient to injure Lawrence socially and in
the commercial world. The old case of the Spartan lad--Carroll reflected.
The disgrace lay in being discovered.
Also, it was perfectly plain to Carroll that at the outset of his
conversation Lawrence had been smugly satisfied that he was possessed of
a perfect alibi. It was only under Carroll's merciless grilling that he
had been brought abruptly to realization that he had no alibi whatever.
The same logic applied there, as in Leverage's theory that Barker's
arrest would be an excellent strategic move. All Carroll had to do now
was to arrest Lawrence for Warren's murder--and the burden of proof
would have been shifted from the shoulders of the detective to that of
the suspect. It would then devolve upon Lawrence to prove an alibi that
Carroll knew perfectly well he could not prove--save by merest accident.
But that was a procedure which Carroll abhorred. Those were police
department methods: wholesale arrests in the hope of somewhere in the
net trapping the prey. Such a course was at the bottom--and Carroll knew
it--of an enormous number of convictions of innocent men. And Carroll
had no desire to injure Lawrence provided Lawrence was free of guilt in
this particular instance. He didn't like the man--in fact his feelings
toward him amounted to a positive aversion. But through it all he tried
to be fair-minded--and he could not quite rid himself of the picture of
Naomi Lawrence--Carroll was far from impervious to the appeal of a
beautiful woman.
So much for the probable truth of Lawrence's story. The reverse side
of the picture presented an entirely different set of facts. There was
not alone the strange procedure of checking out of the big hotel at
four o'clock in the afternoon when he intended catching an early
morning train: but there was the information so innocently dropped by
the loquacious Evelyn Rogers regarding Naomi's actions on the night of
the murder.
According to Evelyn, her sister was an intensely nervous woman: one who
stood in fear of being alone at night. And yet this sister had
volunteered the suggestion that Evelyn spend the night with Hazel Gresham
when her husband was supposed to be out of the city.
Carroll, well versed in applied psychology, knew that in such a
combination of facts there lay an important clue. He was well satisfied
that Naomi Lawrence had been satisfied that she was not to be alone
that night!
Arguing with himself from that premise, the conclusion was inevitable:
she knew that her husband would return from Nashville at midnight. She
did not wish anyone--even Evelyn, to learn that he had done so. Therefore
she got Evelyn out of the house!
The conclusion developed a further train of reasoning--one which Carroll
did not at all relish, but which he faced with frank honesty. If he was
right in his argument--then Naomi Lawrence had known of the murder before
it was committed!
He shrank from the idea, but it would not down. He was not ready to admit
its truth--but there was no denying its logic. There was something
inexpressibly repugnant in the thought. He infinitely preferred to
believe that Naomi hated her husband--was miserable with him--he
preferred that to the idea that they were accomplices in the murder of a
prominent young man.
Then, too, there were the strange visits of William Barker, former valet
to Warren, to the home of the Lawrences. There was no doubt remaining in
Carroll's mind that Barker knew a very great deal about Warren's murder.
That being the case it was fairly well established that he was cognizant
of the Lawrences' connection with the crime.
Carroll had started off with the idea that someone, in addition to the
woman in the taxi-cab, had been instrumental in ending Warren's life.
Here, following a casual line of investigation, he had uncovered the
tracks of two men, both of whom he was convinced knew more about it than
they had cared to tell.
Both men--Barker and Lawrence--had acted peculiarly under the grilling of
the detective. The former had been surly and non-informative, only to
leap eagerly upon the first verbal trend which tended to throw suspicion
upon a person whom Carroll knew--and whom Carroll knew Barker knew--was
innocent. Gerald Lawrence, on the other hand, had been downright
antagonistic until he made the startling discovery that his supposed
alibi was no alibi at all--at which his attitude changed from open
hostility to something closely akin to suppliance.
Then, too, there was the danger of injuring an innocent man because of
his inability to prove an alibi. If Lawrence's story was true, it was
perfectly natural that even in a condition of intoxication he would
maintain his instinct for concealment of a personal weakness. The chances
were then that no one had seen him either in Nashville--after the four
o'clock train had left, or on the two a.m. train homeward bound.
Matters could not right themselves in Carroll's mind. He knew one thing,
however--Evelyn Rogers was a wellspring of vital information. The very
fact that she talked inconsequentialities incessantly--and occasionally
let drop remarks of vital import--made her the more valuable. He knew
that he had not seen the last of the seventeen-year-old girl. And he felt
a consuming eagerness to be with her again, for now he had a definite
line of investigation to pursue.
He slept soundly that night, and the following morning dropped in on
Leverage. The Chief of Police had a little information--with all of which
Carroll was already familiar. He told Carroll that Lawrence had been in
Nashville and that he had checked out of the Hermitage hotel in time to
catch the four o'clock train on the afternoon preceding the murder.
Carroll satisfied Leverage by accepting it as information, made sure that
nothing else of importance had developed, requested Leverage to ask the
Nashville police to determine whether Lawrence had been seen in Nashville
after 4:30 p.m.--if necessary to send one of his own men there--and left
headquarters.
He made his way directly to a public telephone booth. He telephoned the
Lawrence home and asked for Evelyn Rogers. A maid answered and informed
him that Evelyn had left home fifteen minutes previously.
"Any idea where she was going?" questioned Carroll.
The answer came promptly: it mentioned the city's leading department
store--"she's gone there to get a beauty treatment," vouchsafed the maid.
Carroll was not a little chagrined. Evelyn Rogers had put him in more
hopeless positions in their brief acquaintanceship than he had
experienced in years. There was his call upon her the previous night with
its role of dual entertainer to the young lady with a nineteen-year-old
college freshman. And now a vigil outside a beauty parlor.
But he went grimly to work. He located the beauty parlor on the third
floor of the giant store, and paced determinedly back and forth before
its doors.
A half hour passed; an hour--two hours. He concluded that Evelyn must be
purchasing her beauty in job lots. When two hours and thirty-five
minutes had elapsed Evelyn emerged--and Carroll groaned. With her were
three other girls, as chattery, as immature, as Evelyn herself.
She swept down upon him in force--tongue wagging at both ends--
"You naughty, _naughty_ man!" she chided. "You abso_lute_ly deserted me
last night. Why, I didn't even know that you had gone--until Sis came in
and said you had asked her to extend your respects. Good gracious! I
almost _died_!"
"I'm sorry--really," returned Carroll humbly--"But you seemed so
interested in that young man--and I had gotten into an absorbing
conversation with your sister and brother-in-law. I'm not used to girls,
you know."
"Kidder! I think you're simply elegant!" She turned to her giggling
friends and introduced them gushingly. Carroll was in misery--a martyr to
the cause. But Evelyn would not let him get away. Through her sudden
friendship with the great detective, Evelyn was building up a reputation
that was destined to survive for years, and she was not one to fail to
make the most of her opportunities.
It was not until almost an hour later, when the other three girls had
left for their homes--left only after they had hung around until the
ultimate moment before lunch--that Carroll found himself alone with his
little gold mine of data. He bent his head hopefully--
"Were you planning to eat lunch downtown?"
She nodded. "Uh-huh!"
"Suppose we eat together?"
"Scrumptious!" There was no hint of hesitation in her manner. "I've been
hoping ever since we met that you'd ask me."
They found a table mercifully secluded in the corner of the main dining
room of the city's leading hotel. For once Carroll felt gratitude for the
notoriously slow service. He begged her to order--and she did: ordered a
meal which contained T.N.T. possibilities for acute indigestion. Carroll
smiled and let her have her way--he was amused at her valiant efforts to
appear the blasé society woman.
"I really did enjoy our conversation last night, Miss Rogers."
"Oh! piffle! I don't fall for that."
"I did."
"Then why did you beat it so quick?"
"Well, you see--I suppose I was jealous of your elegantly dressed
young friend."
"Him? He's just a kid. A mere _child_!"
"He seemed very much at home."
"Kids like him always do. They make me sick--always putting on as though
they were grown up."
She secured an olive and bit into it with a relish. "Awful good--these
olives. I love queen olives, don't you. I used to be crazy about ripe
olives, but I read in a book once that sometimes they poison you, and
when they do--there just simply isn't any anecdote in the world that can
save you. So I figured there wasn't any use taking chances--"
Carroll let her run on until the meal was served. And it was then when
she was satisfying a normal youthful appetite that he drove straight to
the subject which had led to this masculine martyrdom.
"The day before Mr. Warren died," he said mildly--"are you sure that your
sister made the suggestion that you spend the night with Miss Gresham?"
"Her? Sure she did."
"Didn't it strike you as peculiar--knowing that she'd be in the house
alone all that night?"
"I'll say it did. I asked her was she nutty and she scolded me for being
slangy. So I told her I should worry--if she wanted to suffer alone, and
I went with Hazel. And it's an awful good thing I did, because if I
hadn't she would have been arrested and tried and convicted and
hanged--or something, and--"
"Oh! hardly that bad. You're sure your sister was alone in the house
that night?"
"Sure. Who could have been there with her?"
"I'm not answering riddles. I'm asking them."
"I've got my fingers crossed. The answer is that there wasn't any one
there. At first I thought she was going out--but she wasn't, and when I
asked her was she, she got real peeved at me."
"Aa-a-h! You thought she was going out that night?"
"Uh-huh," came the answer between bites at a huge lobster salad.
"What made you think that?"
"Oh! just something. You know, I don't get credit for having eyes, but I
sure have. And I never did understand that business anyway. But then Sis
always has been the queerest thing--ever since she married Gerald.
Say--" she looked up eagerly--"ain't he the darndest old crab you ever
saw in your life?"
"Why, I--"
"Ain't he? Honest?"
"He's not exactly jovial."
"He's a lemon! Just a plain juicy lemon. And I think she was a nut for
marrying him."
"But--" Carroll proceeded cautiously--"you made the remark just now that
something was the queerest thing. What did you mean by that?"
"Oh! I guess I was crazy--or something. But she got sore at me when I
asked her--"
"Who?"
"Sis."
"What did you ask her?"
"Why--" she looked up innocently--"about that suit-case!"
"What suit-case? When was it?"
"It was the day before Mr. Warren died--I always remember everything
now by that date. Anyway--I went in her room that morning to ask
something about what I should take to Hazel's--and what do you think
she was doing?"
"I'll bite," he answered with assumed jocularity--"what was she doing?"
"Packing a suit-case!"
"No?" Carroll was keenly interested--struggling not to show it.
"Yes, sir. I asked her what was she doing it for--and that's when she got
peeved. I told you she was a queer one."
"Indeed she must be. Packing a suit-case--"
"And that ain't all that was funny about that, either, Mr. Carroll."
"No? What else about it was peculiar?"
"That suit-case--" and Evelyn lowered her voice to an impressive
whisper--"was gone from the house the next day--and the day after it
showed up again and when I asked Sis wasn't that funny she told me to
mind my own business!"