WORD FROM SPOTTY
"Well," remarked Jack Young, as he critically observed the smoke from
his cigar curling upward toward the ceiling in the colonel's hotel
room, "we have our work cut out for us all right."
"I should say so!" agreed Mr. Kettridge, who sat before a little table,
on top of which were strewed parts of a watch. Mr. Kettridge had a
jeweler's magnifying glass stuck in one eye, and it gave him a most
grotesque appearance as he glanced from the wheels, springs and levers,
spread out in front of him, over to Colonel Ashley.
"There is only one thing to do, gentlemen," observed the detective, who
had one finger keeping a certain place in a certain green book. "And
that is--"
"Make an arrest at once!" exclaimed Young. "He may get away from us if
we don't, drunk as he is."
"No, there's time enough for that," objected the colonel. "What I was
going to say is that we must take one thing at a time. Otherwise we'll
get into a tangle."
"I think we're in one now," said Young. "For the life of me I can't
figure out who did the killing, and the only reason I said we ought to
arrest Harry King is because there's some game on between him and
Larch, and those diamonds King is trying to dispose of may be part of
some of those Mrs. Darcy had, and about which she never said anything.
If King took them, he may have killed the old lady and he ought to be
locked up and take his chance with Darcy."
"If he did it--yes," admitted the colonel. "But I haven't said he
_did_. I haven't said Larch did it. I just don't know. Certainly
King and Larch have been pretty thick of late, and Larch's bailing
Harry out showed there was more than mere friendliness in it. And, as
you say, Jack, if King or Larch sold some loose diamonds, it looks as
though there was something wrong. But we don't want to make a mistake."
"If we don't do something pretty soon they'll so fasten this crime on
Jimmie Darcy that you'll never be able to get him out of the tangle,"
said Mr. Kettridge, as he poked a pair of pliers among the parts of the
watch. "Carroll and Thong, now that they know about the electrical
wires, think they have all the evidence they need, and the prosecutor
agrees with them, I guess."
"Still, we may be able to combat that," observed the colonel. "Now let
me understand you about this watch, Mr. Kettridge. You don't believe
Darcy ever put that poison needle arrangement in it?"
"No, I don't. That mechanism was built into the watch after it was
originally made, I'm sure. But even so it was done a number of years
ago. I can tell that by the type of small screws used. They don't
make that kind in this country. Darcy never could have got possession
of any, to say nothing of some of the other parts used."
Following some days of strenuous work after Amy Mason had expressed her
belief in her lover's innocence in spite of the finding of the electric
wires, and had urged the detective to use every endeavor to clear
Darcy, the colonel had summoned Mr. Kettridge to hold a sort of autopsy
over the Indian watch which was still in possession of the old
detective. With the suicide of the East Indian the case had been
dropped by Donovan and the authorities, they taking it for granted that
Singa Phut had killed Shere Ali and then ended his own life, by help
from outside in getting poison. So if Donovan thought anything about
the watch, he said nothing.
"Then you think Darcy is cleared of any connection with the poison
watch?" asked the colonel.
"I think so--yes," answered the jeweler. "As a matter of fact, I don't
believe Jimmie did any repair work on it at all. Singa Phut brought it
in to have it fixed, it is true, but Jimmie was a great chap for
promising work and then not having it ready on time. I've known him to
do that more than once, and he lost Mrs. Darcy customers that way. He
probably promised Singa Phut to have the watch ready for him, and then,
either in working on his pet invention, the electric lathe, or because
of his quarrel with his cousin, forgot about the East Indian's watch.
He may, as he says, have gotten up early to redeem his promise to
repair it."
"But he never did?" asked the colonel.
"It bears no evidence of it," and the jeweler focused his glass on the
dismembered timepiece.
"Do you think he knew the deadly nature of the watch?" went on the
detective.
"It is doubtful. This watch is of peculiar construction. As I have
showed you, the poison needle could only be made to protrude when the
watch reached a certain time, which time could be set in advance as an
alarm clock is set. I think this is what happened, though I may be
wrong.
"Singa Phut, for purposes of his own, had this poisoned watch in his
possession. He, of course, knew just what it would do, and how to set
it so that if a person, at a certain hour, took it into his or her
hands, and exerted any pressure on the rim, the needle would shoot out
and puncture the flesh. The poison on the point then caused death."
"And very speedy death," added the colonel. "Witness what happened to
poor little Chet. The watch was wound up--I wound it myself as a
matter of fact, though I did not dream that the time mechanism had
anything to do with the poisoned needle. Then the dog, playing with
it, as he would with a bone, bit on the rim, just at the time when the
needle was set to operate. It shot out, punctured his lip, and Chet
died."
"Did you know it was a poisoned watch?" asked Jack Young.
"I had guessed that after what happened, and that is why I warned
Donovan to be careful. But, as I said, I thought it was like a sword
cane or a spring dagger--that only pressure on a certain part was
needed to force out the needle with its death-carrying smear of some
subtle Indian poison. I never dreamed it was like an alarm clock."
"Well, it was," said Mr. Kettridge. "I can easily see all the parts,
now that I have taken it apart, and the time-setting arrangement is
very compact, simple and effective."
"You were careful not to scratch yourself on the needle?" asked the
colonel quickly.
"Oh, yes indeed! I took that out first. But do you think, Colonel, in
spite of what I have said about Jimmie not knowing how this watch
operated, and, presumably, not having done any work on it--do you think
he can have planned to kill Mrs. Darcy with it?"
"Hardly. And yet it is possible that Mrs. Darcy may have been killed
by the watch."
"Killed by it?--how?" gasped Jack Young. "I thought she was stabbed,
and her skull fractured."
"She had both those injuries, it is true. But what is to have
prevented her from having been punctured by the watch just before she
received those hurts?
"I mean in this way," went on the colonel. "We will assume that Singa
Phut, finding some trifling thing the matter with his devilish watch,
brought it to the Darcy shop, where he was fairly well known.
"Darcy promised to fix the timepiece but neglected or forgot to do it,
leaving it on his table. Then, remembering it early in the
morning--perhaps feeling guilty at having spent part of the night
working on his electric lathe--he got up to do as he had promised,
and--"
"Finds his cousin dead!" interrupted Mr. Kettridge.
"So he _says_!" added Jack Young significantly.
"Well, we won't go into that," observed the colonel. "I was going to
make another point. Leaving Darcy out of it, and assuming that he had
left the watch on his table intending to get up in the morning and fix
it, what is to have prevented Mrs. Darcy from coming down to her
store--say, before midnight, after Darcy left her.
"She saw the watch on the table, and, picking it up, may have wound it.
This set in motion the death-dealing mechanism, and her hand may have
been punctured with the poison."
"But, even then," put in Young, as he puffed out another cloud of
smoke, "if the poison from the watch killed her, why would any one
strike her on the head and stab her?"
"That may have occurred just after her hand was punctured by the needle
of the watch," said the detective, "and before the poison had time to
work. It is not instantaneous."
"But who would have struck or stabbed her after that?" asked Mr.
Kettridge. "I mean, of course, leaving Jimmie out, for I don't believe
he did it."
"Could not Singa Phut have done it?" asked Colonel Ashley quietly.
"Singa Phut!" cried both his auditors.
"Yes. Suppose, after he had left the watch to be repaired with young
Darcy, the East Indian happened to think that he had not warned against
winding it up, which a jeweler would be most apt to do after making
repairs. Singa Phut had no reason for wishing harm to Darcy. He may
have come to the store late at night intending to warn him to be
careful."
"Well, assuming that, what next?" asked Jack Young.
"Well, Singa, coming say at eleven o'clock to the jewelry store, finds
Mrs. Darcy there. She has picked up the watch--she must have done
that, for it was in her hand. Singa sees it and fearful of what might
happen he rushes in and tries to take it away from her. She, thinking
him a thief, resists and he, fearful that he will be caught and
arrested as a robber, struggles to get the watch and to make his escape.
"Now remember that he is of excitable nature, that he is a foreigner,
fearful of our laws, and that he knows the deadly nature of the poison
in the watch. Could not he have both struck Mrs. Darcy with the hunter
statue and stabbed her in trying to get away from her? That would
account for the killing."
"But there would have been an alarm--the struggle would have made a
noise," objected Jack Young.
"Yes, but there are not many people passing the store around midnight.
Every one in the place had gone to bed--the sleeping rooms are quite a
distance from the shop. Then, too, very little noise may have been
made. I remember in the Peal case two strong and vigorous men battled
at midnight, one killing the other, in a store on a main street in a
big city. But trolley cars and autos going past drowned all sounds of
the fight. It may have been so in this case."
"Are you going to offer that to the jury to clear Darcy?" asked Mr.
Kettridge.
"I may have to," was the colonel's answer. "How does it sound to you,
gentlemen?"
"Very plausible," admitted Jack Young. "But what about the electric
wires on Darcy's table?"
"They are a problem, I admit. However, though Carroll thinks he can
prove they were arranged deliberately to shock any one who, at the
proper moment, might touch the showcase, yet I think we can prove that
an accidental crossing of perfectly harmless wires to Darcy's lathe
with the city's electric light circuit may have caused the two
accidents. That is a point I have yet to consider. But we have
settled something regarding the watch, anyhow. Now, Jack, I want to
talk to you about Harry King."
"He needs to be talked about," was the response. "I don't say he had
anything to do with the murder--especially not after what you have said
about Singa Phut. But Harry King needs watching."
"I agree with you. You say he and Larch have been looking at a packet
of diamonds?"
"Yes; diamonds wrapped in those little squares of white paper that
jewelers use. Looks like they'd been robbing a gem store."
"You don't know of any diamonds missing from Mrs. Darcy's stock, do
you?" asked the colonel of Mr. Kettridge. "Mr. Young and I talked of
this before but didn't settle it."
"No. But then she may have had a private stock of which Darcy nor I
knew nothing. It is a point worth looking into."
"I agree with you. So stick to Harry, Jack, my boy."
"He won't require much sticking to at present. He and Larch are both
so well pickled that they'll easily keep until morning."
"Well, watch them after that. Maybe you'd better put up at the
Homestead."
"I will, though I guess it won't be the Homestead long."
"Why not?"
"Well, Larch is going to lose it, I hear. It's mortgaged up to the
roof and he can't meet his payments. The old place has gone to the
bow-wows since he started drinking, gambling, speculating and since his
wife left him. All the decent crowd stopped coming."
"Yes, I suppose so," agreed the colonel. "Well, keep watch of Harry
King. He may provide us with a clew that will make it possible to
prove Darcy innocent more directly than by the inference of Singa Phut."
"And do you think Singa Phut killed his partner with the watch also,
Colonel?" asked Jack.
"No. I imagine they quarreled over the possession of the watch, and
Shere Ali, perhaps forgetting the deadly nature of it, or knowing the
time mechanism was set not to go off for some hours, grabbed it away
from Singa. Then came a quarrel and the killing with the candlestick.
However I don't want to speculate too far afield. We have certain
matters settled at any rate."
"Yes, and I'll get back to the Homestead and watch King," observed Jack
Young with a laugh.
"And I must get back to the shop," said Mr. Kettridge. "I have some
work to do. Shall I leave the watch apart this way, Colonel?"
"Yes, I may need it to show to the jury. Leave it as it is, but put it
under glass, and the needle away carefully. We may have to kill a rat
in court as we did in Singa Phut's cell."
"I think we are coming on," mused Colonel Ashley, when his two visitors
had gone. "I am entitled to a bit of recreation," and, opening his
book, he read:
"Thus you having found and fitted for the place and depth thereof, then
go home and prepare your ground-bait, which is, next to the fruit of
your labors, to be regarded."
"I wonder," mused the colonel, "If my ground bait is all prepared? Am
I right or wrong? If I could see the diamond cross that Grafton says
Larch sent back to his wife--if I knew where he got it--"
The telephone rang.
"Yes, what is it?"
"A telegram for you, Colonel."
"Send it up!"
Tearing open the envelope Colonel Ashley read:
"Spotty Morgan has confessed everything and agrees to extradition.
Shall we send him on?"
"Send him on? I should say so!" cried the colonel to himself, as he
made a grab for the telephone to dictate a message telling the police
of Sango, the Western city, to hold Spotty Morgan until he could come
for him. "And so Spotty has confessed? Well, that let's me out, even
if he did save my, life! But it was a close call!"