In the Library
George returned to the library, and sorting the smaller keys from the
others on the ring he tried them one after the other in the lock of
the trunk. He was beginning to despair when at length one fitted, and
snapping down the hasps he threw back the lid.
They could not have packed very well, he and Norman, or else the
expressmen had been unusually rough in handling the trunk. Its
contents had been flung about in wild disorder, and George thought
ruefully of the delicate clock and the glass ink-well of the desk set.
He picked out the caps and a mackinaw which might come in handy, and
was on the point of closing the trunk when he hesitated. It might be
as well to see if that clock were damaged or not; it had been Leila’s
gift and George knew how much Norman thought of it.
He lifted the other garments out and then the books, revealing the
remaining articles wrapped loosely in newspaper. He felt about among
them until he found the clock, and as he took it up the paper fell
from it and partially opened as it dropped to the floor.
The clock looked all right; its works might be damaged, but at least
it was not smashed!
With a sigh of thankfulness George stooped to pick up the paper, when
the printed line upon the top margin caught his eye.
“Daily Bulletin, June 1st.”
That was an odd coincidence! His thoughts strayed back to the notes he
had taken from Millard’s disclosures in the Horton case. How many
thousands of those newspapers were scattered throughout the city and
its environs! Somewhere, someone had put a copy identical with this to
its sinister use. Poor Horton!
These were only the outside sheets, too! That was funny! The inside
ones must be about another package in the trunk, of course. On a
sudden impulse George picked up the desk blotter and unwrapped it. Its
covering proved to be the outer double page of the ‘Daily Bulletin’
for May 28th! Another of the corresponding dates to those on the
papers in Horton’s bag!
By jingo, there was something queer about this! Without consciously
following his bewildered train of thought any farther, George took
each package one by one from the trunk and unwrapped it carefully,
laying the papers in a neat pile. When he had finished and the trunk
was empty he took the newspapers to the table, and spreading them out
with trembling hands he sorted them.
Four were complete copies of the ‘Bulletin’ for June sixth, seventh,
eighth, and ninth; the remainder were the outside pages of that paper
for——he caught his breath sharply as he examined them——for _May
twenty-eighth_, _thirtieth_, and _thirty-first_, _June first_,
_third_, and _fourth_! And on each of them was scrawled a rough circle
with Storm’s apartment number, “_One-A_”, within it!
No other scrap of newspaper was visible anywhere, and George knew they
had left none about in that living-room in town when they finished
packing. Where could the inside pages be?—He must be mistaken in the
dates of those papers found in Horton’s bag! His memory had failed
him!
With shaking fingers he tore the notebook from his pocket and read the
entry, his eyes fairly starting from his head. No, there had been no
mistake! The dates were identical!
This was the most extraordinary, unheard-of coincidence in all the
world! But even as his slow-moving mind strove to grasp it, the
conviction came that it _could_ not be a coincidence! One newspaper,
maybe, or two, but not six and only six with the inner sheets gone;
_the same six_ whose outer pages were missing from those in Horton’s
bag!
As the monstrous, almost unbelievable fact was borne in upon him,
George started back from the table, both hands clutching at the meager
hair on his temples. He must be going mad! His mind, usually slow and
groping, raced back over the events of the past few days, seizing upon
events scarcely considered then but now standing out in awful
confirmation.
On Wednesday afternoon at the club Colonel Walker had told of meeting
Storm near the Grand Central Station on Wednesday of the previous week
around dinner time; the day and hour at which the train Horton took
from Poughkeepsie arrived! Storm had tried to deny it, but when Walker
added that it was raining as additional proof of the day, Storm
hurriedly admitted an errand to his tobacconist’s. _Why had he denied
it at first?_
Then, too, when George arrived at the club he heard Griffiths
commiserating with Storm over having been swindled by Du Chainat, and
Storm indignantly denying that, too. He remembered the conversation
later at dinner in the grill-room, when he had taxed Storm with
concealing his acquaintance with the swindler from him. Storm said
that he had not told him of it because he was ashamed to admit that Du
Chainat had almost duped him. _Almost?_ Had Storm not been fleeced, he
would not have concealed his acquaintance with the swindler! His
egotism would have made him boast of his escape at the moment of the
furore over the Du Chainat exposure!
Griffiths had said that Storm was down in the swindler’s list for
sixty thousand; that would have meant every cent and more than George
knew Storm possessed in the world! From whence, if he had indeed lost
that, had come the money for this long foreign trip so suddenly
decided upon without apparent reason?
George recalled his own theory of Horton’s death: that he had met
someone he knew well and trusted absolutely, and placing himself
utterly in the supposed friend’s hands, had been done to death without
warning.
It could not have been Norman Storm! Not that old friend of twenty
years, sleeping so peacefully upstairs! George tried to thrust the
thought from him in an agony of unspeakable horror, but it remained
and would not be exorcised.
Suppose by sheer accident or stroke of fate Horton and Storm had met
near the station and the latter had taken Horton to his rooms? His
rooms, which were so near the place on the Drive where the body was
afterward found! Suppose Horton had told of the huge amount in cash
that he carried, exhibited it, perhaps, and the sight proved too great
a temptation for Storm, already half-crazed with the loss of the last
of his fortune?
George could not conceive of the man he had loved as a brother
deliberately planning a cold-blooded murder, but every known fact
fitted in with this hideous supposition. Storm could not have killed
Horton in his own rooms and conveyed the body to the place where it
was found, but if he could have induced Horton to accompany him there
on some pretext——
Then the testimony of the policeman whom he himself had met and
questioned on Wednesday evening recurred to George’s mind, and he
commenced to pace the floor in short, nervous steps as though to get
away from the fearful thought that hounded him.
The policeman’s description of the heavier set of the two pedestrians
whom he had passed on the night of the murder might have fitted
Horton—according to the newspaper report on the body—or any of a
million other men, perhaps. But his account of the taller man——!
George picked up his notebook from the floor where it had fallen from
his paralyzed fingers in the shock of the verification of his
discovery and read the description again:—“Tall, thin, with a
smooth-shaved face and small hands——I saw that much when he put a
match to his cigarette. He was dressed all in dark clothes; black,
maybe.”
George closed the notebook and put it back slowly into his pocket.
Tall, thin, smooth-shaven, in mourning, with the inevitable cigarette!
It was Storm to the life! His heart, all the accumulating affection of
years cried out against the justice of that verdict. A tall, thin man
dressed in dark clothes; were there not thousands in the city? But
that methodical, inexorable brain of George’s had gone back swiftly to
the night after that on which the murder must have taken place, when
he and Storm had motored out in Abbott’s car up the road for dinner.
They passed twice by the very spot where Horton’s body must still have
been lying, and on the first occasion——God! how it had all come
back!—Storm had leaned forward, staring, then uttered a sharp
exclamation and sank back in his seat; George had had to speak to him
twice before he answered. _He knew then what lay beyond that wall!_
The visit to the Police Headquarters, the wager with Millard: all that
had been sheer bravado. But what horrible manner of man was this whom
he had thought he knew so well! With what outward calm he had received
Millard’s revelations at that dinner on Tuesday night! The fact that
the newspapers stuffed in Horton’s bag—from which he had thought to
remove all clues by taking off these outer sheets with the apartment
number on them—had been made special note of must have been a shock to
him, and also the news that the bills were marked and a warning had
been sent out for them. But perhaps he had already discounted that,
perhaps he was depending on the ten thousand in gold to get him out of
the country.
But why should he go? His salary at the trust company each year was
that amount and half again as much. Unless he were quite mad he would
not have dreamed of throwing up such a position and committing murder
for a comparatively paltry sum in order to gratify a sudden whim for a
few months of travel in the East.
George’s heart rebounded in a sudden leap of loyalty, and he sought
eagerly for evidence in rebuttal. That desperately tired, harassed man
who was his friend; that man whose presence was so near, who even now
was sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion upstairs was not guilty of
this fearful thing! Storm would certainly have been mad to commit a
crime; but Storm was certainly not mad! He was nervous and worn out
and grief-stricken, but he was unquestionably sane. By what ruse could
he have gotten Horton’s pistol from him? How separated him from the
bag in his charge and how and why become possessed of his hat?
These were but trivial details and immaterial to the mass of
circumstantial evidence, George realized, and his heart sank once
more. Storm could easily have persuaded Horton to leave the bag and
pistol there in his own rooms while they went for a short midnight
stroll. But what of the hat——?
The policeman’s testimony again! He had said that the stocky,
heavy-built man wore a cap of some sort! George’s eyes traveled
shrinkingly to those he had taken from the trunk. No cap had been
found near the body. Perhaps—perhaps it was one of these, here in this
room!
If events had really occurred as he was mentally evolving them, the
bag, together with the hat and pistol, would be all the evidence of
the crime except the money itself which remained in Storm’s hands; and
he could very readily have been the one to check the bag with the
other articles inside at the terminal the next morning as the easiest
method of disposing of them. But what had he done with the money?
Where was it now?
George dropped limply into a chair, his mind struggling with the
problem. It did not matter so much at the moment what had become of
the money as why Storm had done this fearful thing.
For he must have done it! Here was the evidence of the outer sheets of
the newspapers, with the apartment number scrawled upon them to
corroborate the police theory as to why they had been removed; and
every fact, known and surmised, bore out the hideous truth!
Why had he killed Horton? The obvious reason, of course, was the
possession of the money, but although his capital must have been swept
away if he had really been duped by the swindler, he had still his
comfortable income in a life-long sinecure. Only desperate men kill,
but why was Storm desperate? To get away?
Surely that mere impulse would not have been strong enough to force
him to murder! What had he to get away from? Only grief-stricken
memories of his dead wife; and other men lived down such sorrow. Grief
alone could not drive a man from his assured place in the world to
become a wanderer in strange lands, a self-exiled pariah! Nothing but
the consciousness of guilt could do that, and the fear of retributive
justice; but Storm had been guiltless of anything then. George could
well imagine his desire to flee the country after Horton was found
with his head crushed in—
_So, too, had Leila died!_ George sprang from his chair with both
clenched fists raised above his head. She, too, had been found with
her head crushed, as though by the blow of some heavy, blunt
instrument!
But, no! No! He was going crazy! Poor Leila had suffered an attack of
_petit mal_, she had fallen and struck her head on that rounded brass
knob of the fender! _But had she?_ Storm had told him that Dr. Carr
had advanced that theory, but George recalled in a sickening wave of
horror that the doctor himself had unconsciously contradicted that
statement when he was called hurriedly to attend Storm on the night
after the funeral; after the visit of the Brewsters with their
confession, when Storm had broken down for the first time.
Carr had said then that it was Storm who suggested the accidental
cause of Leila’s death, but George had been too worried and upset to
note the discrepancy at the time.
It could not be! It was too vile, too impossible! He was letting his
mind run away with him! What cause could Storm have had to kill the
thing he loved best in all the world? Leila had been a perfect wife,
their happiness was unalloyed. Men only did such a fearful thing in a
fit of jealous rage or madness, and Leila had been the last woman in
the world——
Then the Brewster’s visit recurred to him once more, and Leila’s
little white lie which he himself had called forth. And then, without
warning, that almost forgotten scene of the morning on the down-town
street, before the entrance to the Leicester Building to which he had
been a wholly inadvertent witness flashed before his mental vision as
though thrown upon a screen, and the whole truth was revealed.
George cowered back aghast as from the mouth of a yawning abyss, but
he could not deny what his inmost soul confirmed.
Storm could not have learned of her birthday surprise for him. His
face as George had seen it from across the street had revealed utter
stupefaction at seeing his wife issue from the Leicester Building.
Then that same evening on the veranda when Leila denied having been in
town for weeks and told that palpable falsehood about lunch at the
Ferndale Inn: what murderous demon must have entered his breast with
the jealous conviction that his wife was deceiving him! George knew
his pride, his swift, uncontrollable passion; the thought must have
been like a white-hot iron searing his brain!
But who could he have imagined had supplanted him? The answer came
even as the question formed itself in his mind. Brewster! Richard
Brewster had called on Leila the following night to ask about his own
wife’s affair. Could Storm have returned early and in secret and found
him there? Brewster’s office was in the Leicester Building, too;
George had called there on him more than once. Why, the thing was as
clear as day!
Storm and Leila must have had a fearful scene in the den after
Brewster’s departure, and the culmination must have come with that
swift, awful blow which laid her dead at her husband’s feet! But with
what weapon had that blow been struck?
George closed his eyes, shuddering, and visualized the room which was
as familiar to him as his own. It contained nothing which could have
been put effectively to such a foul use. Even the poker had been
removed from the fireplace when it had been banked with ferns for the
spring.
Horton might have been killed—and probably was—by the blow from a
heavy cane, but there was none in the den——
The golf sticks! They had been lying there across the den table where
he had found them to-night. Storm’s oath when George had brought them
here to the library a few hours ago, his gesture of horror and
repulsion, his cry to take them out of his sight, that he should never
play again—how comprehensible it all was now!
All but overcome with the horror of the thought, George went silently
out into the hall, gathered up the sticks and returned to the library.
As he did so a bestial, raucous snore drifted down from above, and for
a minute the very soul of him shook with the longing to rush up the
stairs and destroy with his bare hands the vile thing which lay there.
The years of friendship were gone wholly now, blotted by his hideous
knowledge of the truth. The Norman Storm whom he had known had
vanished; indeed, had never existed. In his stead this dissembling
creature with a murderer’s black heart had walked among men, free
until this hour!
Trembling, George laid the sticks one by one across the couch and
examined them. No mid-iron could have struck that blow; it would have
crashed through the temple and left a frightful, gaping, ragged wound.
It must have been something round and smooth, not unlike the brass
knob on the fender, since the doctor and coroner had both been easily
deceived. Not the putter nor the brassie nor the cleek,—the driver!
George picked it up and carried it close to one of the candles. Could
it be that he really saw a faint tinge of brown upon its hardwood
knob?
He laid it aside with a sigh and started once more his restless pacing
up and down, as his thoughts returned to the events immediately
following Leila’s death, from the moment when he himself had been
summoned to the house.
No wonder Storm had collapsed in the presence of Richard and Julie
Brewster. They had all unconsciously revealed to him his wife’s
innocence of the sin for which he had taken her life. It had been not
grief alone, but remorse which struck him down! What credulous fools
they had all been not to have seen the truth!
A confirming memory came to him of Storm’s manner when he awakened
from his drugged sleep on the following morning. How anxious he had
been to know what he had said during his unconsciousness! That was an
effort to learn if he had betrayed himself. How they had all played
into his hands!
No wonder, too, that later, after George had returned to town, when he
telephoned to Storm that Potter’s rooms were to be vacant, he had
required little urging to escape from the scene of his unspeakable
crime! No wonder that he had said it was “hell” at Greenlea!
The consciousness of the undeserved fate which he had visited upon the
woman who at the altar had placed her life in his keeping must have
driven him all but mad!
And yet how quickly his conscience, if he had ever possessed one, had
died in the quick fire of his egotism at the ease with which he had
evaded justice! George recalled his wild talk about crime; how a man
could do anything and get away with it if he only had brains enough.
His remorse had been swallowed up by his malevolent, distorted pride
of achievement.
How easy it was now to trace the subsequent steps! The constantly
reiterated condolences of his acquaintances on every hand must have
driven him to frenzy; and then had come the chance of miraculous
wealth through Du Chainat, for Griffiths must have been right. A
lawyer of his brains and reputation would not have referred to it
unless he had seen the virtual proof, and George remembered the
skepticism with which he had received Storm’s hasty denial.
Storm had staked his all on the chance, and lost! Then, hounded by
guilty memories and desperate, he had encountered Horton, and the rest
was explained.
But the money! Where could it be? Having risked so much for it, he
would scarcely be likely to leave it out of his immediate possession,
and a bag full of money——
_The valise upstairs!_ The obviously heavy valise which he would not
permit George to touch, which no one else must carry but
himself!——Leila’s letters? George’s lip curled in bitter self-scorn.
How credulous he had been!
Storm must have intended to secrete the money here about the house
somewhere until their return from the fishing trip and then make his
getaway. But why had he so suddenly changed his mind and evinced
willingness to go on the trip at all? Was it to get out of sight and
still keep in touch with the progress of the investigation until it
had ceased through lack of further evidence to engage the activities
of the police?
Or was it to get George himself away? Storm knew his theory; George
cursed himself for his stupidity, his blindness! He had descanted at
length upon his idea of the murder, and Storm, realizing how
dangerously near the truth it was, may have planned to keep him out of
mischief until the case was dropped.
_But was that all he had planned?_ George stood still, stunned with
the thought which came to him. Storm had killed two people and gotten
away with it; why not a third? Why not George himself, if he suspected
that George was likely to come upon the truth? The red trilogy!
That selection of a deserted lodge hidden miles away in the heart of
the wilderness far from the beaten paths for their headquarters during
the fishing trip; the determination to be absolutely alone with
George, without even the services of a guide; the insistence upon
taking the pistol along——!
George eyed the thing with horror and loathing as it lay in the top of
the open bag. Then he walked grimly over to it, and picking it up
together with the box of cartridges he took it to the table and loaded
it with awkward, unaccustomed hands.
There was no doubt in his mind as to the course he must pursue; there
had been no question of it, from the first moment when conviction came
to him that Storm had killed Horton. Now, at the thought of Leila, a
passionate regret that his part was not to be a more active one filled
his soul, but it brought no hesitation.
Laying the pistol down he crossed to the door, and as he closed it
softly that harsh, stertorous snore came down the stairs once more,
and again that primitive instinct to destroy laid hold upon George;
but he shook it off resolutely and returned to the desk. Yet with his
hand upon the receiver of the telephone he paused.
Dare he speak? That man lying there upstairs in brutish
unconsciousness was surely the vilest thing that lived! Yet dare he
speak and throw out into the world the knowledge of this fearful
thing?
Slowly, determinedly, George lifted the receiver.