A SUMMONS
Once in the open air again, with the sunshine streaming upon him,
Garrison felt a rebound in his thoughts. He started slowly up the road
to Branchville, thinking of the murder as he went.
The major requisite, he was thoroughly aware, was motive. Men were
never slain, except by lunatics, without a deeply grounded reason. It
disturbed him greatly to realize that Dorothy might have possessed such
a motive in the danger of losing an inheritance, depending upon her
immediate marriage. He could not dismiss the thought that she had
suddenly found herself in need of a husband, probably to satisfy
conditions in her uncle's will; that she had paid Mr. Hardy a visit as
a bride, but _without her husband_, and had since been obliged to come
to himself and procure his professional services _as such husband_,
presumably for a short time only.
She was cheating the Robinsons now through him.
Of this much there could be no denial. She was stubbornly withholding
important information from himself as the masquerading husband. She
was, therefore, capable of craft and scheming. The jewel mystery was
equally suspicious and unexplainable.
And yet, when his memory flew to the hour in which he had met her for
the very first time, his faith in her goodness and honesty swept upon
him with a force that banished all doubt from his being. Every word
she had uttered, every look from her eyes, had borne her sincerity in
upon him indelibly.
This was his argument, brought to bear upon himself. He did not
confess the element of love had entered the matter in the least.
And now, as he walked and began to try to show himself that she could
not have done this awful crime, the uppermost thought that tortured his
mind was a fear that she might have a _genuine_ husband.
He forced his thoughts back to the box of cigars, through the medium of
which John Hardy's death had been accomplished. What a diabolically
clever device it had been! What scheme could be more complete to place
the deadly poison on the tongue of the helpless victim! The cigar is
bitten--the stuff is in the mouth, and before its taste can manifest
itself above the strong flavor of tobacco, the deadly work is done!
And who would think, in ordinary circumstances, of looking in a cigar
for such a poison, and how could such a crime be traced?
The very diabolism of the device acquitted Dorothy, according to
Garrison's judgment. He doubted if any clever woman, perhaps excepting
the famous and infamous Lucrezia Borgia, could have fashioned a plan so
utterly fiendish and cunning.
He began to reflect what the thing involved. In the first place, many
smokers cut the end from every cigar, preliminary to lighting up to
smoke. The person who had loaded this cigar must have known it was
John Hardy's habit to bite his cigars in the old-fashioned manner. He
hated this thought, for Dorothy would certainly be one to know of this
habit in her uncle.
On the other hand, however, the task of placing the poison was one
requiring nicety, for clumsy work would of course betray itself at the
cigar-end thus prepared. To tamper with a well-made cigar like this
required that one should deftly remove or unroll the wrapper, hollow
out a cavity, stuff in the poison, and then rewrap the whole with
almost the skill and art of a well-trained maker of cigars. To
Garrison's way of thinking, this rendered the task impossible for such
a girl as Dorothy.
He had felt from the first that any man of the inventive, mechanical
attributes doubtless possessed by Scott could be guilty of working out
this scheme.
Scott, too, possessed a motive. He wanted money. The victim was
insured in his favor for a snug little fortune. And Scott had returned
to Hardy's room, according to Mrs. Wilson, while Hardy was away, and
could readily have opened the box, extracted one or two cigars, and
prepared them for Hardy to smoke. He, too, would have known of Hardy's
habit of biting the end from his weed.
There was still the third possibility that even before Dorothy's visit
to her uncle the cigars could have been prepared. Anyone supplied with
the knowledge that she had purchased the present, with intention to
take it to her uncle, might readily have conceived and executed the
plan and be doubly hidden from detection, since suspicion would fall
upon Dorothy.
Aware of the great importance of once more examining the dead man's
effects at the coroner's office, Garrison hastened his pace. It still
lacked nearly an hour of noon when he re-entered Branchville. The
office he sought was a long block away from his hotel; nevertheless,
before he reached the door a hotel bell-boy discerned him, waved his
arm, then abruptly disappeared inside the hostelry.
The coroner was emerging from his place of business up the street.
Garrison accosted him.
"Oh, Mr. Pike," he said, "I've returned, you see. I've nearly
concluded my work on the Hardy case; but I'd like, as a matter of form,
to look again through the few trifling articles in your custody."
"Why, certainly," said Mr. Pike. "Come right in. I've got to be away
for fifteen minutes, but I guess I can trust you in the shop."
He grinned good-naturedly, opened the drawer, and hurriedly departed.
Garrison drew up a chair before the desk.
At the door the hotel-boy appeared abruptly.
"Telegram for you, Mr. Garrison," he said. "Been at the office about
an hour, but nobody knew where you was."
Garrison took it and tore it open. It read:
"Return as soon as possible. Important.
"DOROTHY."
"Any answer?" inquired the boy.
"No," said Garrison. "What's the next train for New York?"
"Eleven-forty-five," answered the boy. "Goes in fifteen minutes."
"All right. Have my suit-case down at the office."
He returned to his work.
Ignoring the few piled-up papers in the drawer, he took up the three
cigars beside the box, the ones which had come from Hardy's pocket, and
scrutinized them with the most minute attention.
So far as he could possibly detect, not one had been altered or
repasted on the end. He did not dare to cut them up, greatly as he
longed to examine them thoroughly. He opened the box from which they
had come.
For a moment his eye was attracted and held by the birthday
greeting-card which Dorothy had written. The presence of the card
showed a somewhat important fact--the box had been opened once before
John Hardy forced up the lid, in order that the card might be deposited
within.
His gaze went traveling from one even, nicely finished cigar-end to the
next, in his hope to discover signs of meddling. It was not until he
came to the end cigar that he caught at the slightest irregularity.
Here, at last, was a change.
He took the cigar out carefully and held it up. There could be no
doubt it had been "mended" on the end. The wrapper was not only
slightly discolored, but it bulged a trifle; it was not so faultlessly
turned as all the others, and the end was corkscrewed the merest
trifle, whereas, none of the others had been twisted to bring them to a
point.
Garrison needed that cigar. He was certain not another one in all the
box was suspicious. The perpetrator of the poisoning had evidently
known that Hardy's habit was to take his cigars from the end of the row
and not the center. No chance for mistake had been permitted. The two
end cigars had been loaded, and no more.
How to purloin this cigar without having it missed by Mr. Pike was a
worry for a moment.
Garrison managed it simply. He took out a dozen cigars in the layer on
top and one from the layer next the bottom; then, rearranging the
underlying layer so as to fill in the empty space, he replaced the
others in perfect order in the topmost row, and thus had one cigar left
over to substitute for the one he had taken from the end.
He plumped the suspicious-looking weed into his pocket and closed the
box.
Eagerly glancing at the letters found among the dead man's possessions,
he found a note from Dorothy. It had come from a town in
Massachusetts. The date was over six weeks old.
It was addressed, "Dear Uncle John," and, in a girlish way, informed
him she had recently been married to a "splendid, brilliant young man,
named Fairfax," whom she trusted her uncle would admire. They were off
on their honeymoon, it added, but she hoped they would not be long
away, for they both looked forward with pleasure to seeing him soon.
It might have been part of her trickery; he could not tell.
The envelope was missing. Where Hardy had been at the time of
receiving the note was not revealed. The picture postal-card that Pike
had mentioned was also there. It, too, apparently, had come from
Dorothy, and had been sent direct to Hickwood.
Once more returning to the box of cigars, Garrison took it up and
turned it around in his hand. On the back, to his great delight, he
discovered a rubber-stamp legend, which was nothing more or less than a
cheap advertisement of the dealer who had sold the cigars.
He was one Isaac Blum, of an uptown address on Amsterdam Avenue, New
York, dealer in stationery, novelties, and smokers' articles. Garrison
jotted down the name and address, together with the brand of the
cigars, and was just about to rise and close the drawer when the
coroner returned.
"I shall have to go down to New York this morning," said Garrison. "I
owe you many thanks."
"Oh, that's all right," Mr. Pike responded. "If you're goin' to try to
catch fifteen, you'd better git a move. She's whistled for the station
just above."
Garrison hastened away. He was presently whirling back to Dorothy.
His "shadow," with his bruised hand gloved, was just behind him in the
car.