ON TO RICHMOND
Strangely enough, I was not disturbed that day. McKnight did not appear
at all. I sat at my desk and transacted routine business all afternoon,
working with feverish energy. Like a man on the verge of a critical
illness or a hazardous journey, I cleared up my correspondence, paid
bills until I had writer’s cramp from signing checks, read over my
will, and paid up my life insurance, made to the benefit of an elderly
sister of my mother’s. I no longer dreaded arrest. After that morning
in the station, I felt that anything would be a relief from the
tension. I went home with perfect openness, courting the warrant that I
knew was waiting, but I was not molested. The delay puzzled me. The
early part of the evening was uneventful. I read until late, with
occasional lapses, when my book lay at my elbow, and I smoked and
thought. Mrs. Klopton closed the house with ostentatious caution, about
eleven, and hung around waiting to enlarge on the outrageousness of the
police search. I did not encourage her.
“One would think,” she concluded pompously, one foot in the hall, “that
you were something you oughtn’t to be, Mr. Lawrence. They acted as
though you had committed a crime.”
“I’m not sure that I didn’t, Mrs. Klopton,” I said wearily. “Somebody
did, the general verdict seems to point my way.”
She stared at me in speechless indignation. Then she flounced out. She
came back once to say that the paper predicted cooler weather, and that
she had put a blanket on my bed, but, to her disappointment, I refused
to reopen the subject.
At half past eleven McKnight and Hotchkiss came in. Richey has a habit
of stopping his car in front of the house and honking until some one
comes out. He has a code of signals with the horn, which I never
remember. Two long and a short blast mean, I believe, “Send out a box
of cigarettes,” and six short blasts, which sound like a police call,
mean “Can you lend me some money?” To-night I knew something was up,
for he got out and rang the door-bell like a Christian.
They came into the library, and Hotchkiss wiped his collar until it
gleamed. McKnight was aggressively cheerful.
“Not pinched yet!” he exclaimed. “What do you think of that for luck!
You always were a fortunate devil, Lawrence.”
“Yes,” I assented, with some bitterness, “I hardly know how to contain
myself for joy sometimes. I suppose you know”—to Hotchkiss—“that the
police were here while we were at Cresson, and that they found the bag
that I brought from the wreck?”
“Things are coming to a head,” he said thoughtfully “unless a little
plan that I have in mind—” he hesitated.
“I hope so; I am pretty nearly desperate,” I said doggedly. “I’ve got a
mental toothache, and the sooner it’s pulled the better.”
“Tut, tut,” said McKnight, “think of the disgrace to the firm if its
senior member goes up for life, or—” he twisted his handkerchief into a
noose, and went through an elaborate pantomime.
“Although jail isn’t so bad, anyhow,” he finished, “there are fellows
that get the habit and keep going back and going back.” He looked at
his watch, and I fancied his cheerfulness was strained. Hotchkiss was
nervously fumbling my book.
“Did you ever read _The Purloined Letter_, Mr. Blakeley?” he inquired.
“Probably, years ago,” I said. “Poe, isn’t it?”
He was choked at my indifference. “It is a masterpiece,” he said, with
enthusiasm. “I re-read it to-day.”
“And what happened?”
“Then I inspected the rooms in the house off Washington Circle. I—I
made some discoveries, Mr. Blakeley. For one thing, our man there is
left-handed.” He looked around for our approval. “There was a small
cushion on the dresser, and the scarf pins in it had been stuck in with
the left hand.”
“Somebody may have twisted the cushion,” I objected, but he looked
hurt, and I desisted.
“There is only one discrepancy,” he admitted, “but it troubles me.
According to Mrs. Carter, at the farmhouse, our man wore gaudy pajamas,
while I found here only the most severely plain night-shirts.”
“Any buttons off?” McKnight inquired, looking again at his watch.
“The buttons were there,” the amateur detective answered gravely, “but
the buttonhole next the top one was torn through.”
McKnight winked at me furtively.
“I am convinced of one thing,” Hotchkiss went on, clearing his throat,
“the papers are not in that room. Either he carries them with him, or
he has sold them.”
A sound on the street made both my visitors listen sharply. Whatever it
was it passed on, however. I was growing curious and the restraint was
telling on McKnight. He has no talent for secrecy. In the interval we
discussed the strange occurrence at Cresson, which lost nothing by
Hotchkiss’ dry narration.
“And so,” he concluded, “the woman in the Baltimore hospital is the
wife of Henry Sullivan and the daughter of the man he murdered. No
wonder he collapsed when he heard of the wreck.”
“Joy, probably,” McKnight put in. “Is that clock right, Lawrence? Never
mind, it doesn’t matter. By the way, Mrs. Conway dropped in the office
yesterday, while you were away.”
“What!” I sprang from my chair.
“Sure thing. Said she had heard great things of us, and wanted us to
handle her case against the railroad.”
“I would like to know what she is driving at,” I reflected. “Is she
trying to reach me through you?”
Richey’s flippancy is often a cloak for deeper feeling. He dropped it
now. “Yes,” he said, “she’s after the notes, of course. And I’ll tell
you I felt like a poltroon—whatever that may be—when I turned her down.
She stood by the door with her face white, and told me contemptuously
that I could save you from a murder charge and wouldn’t do it. She made
me feel like a cur. I was just as guilty as if I could have obliged
her. She hinted that there were reasons and she laid my attitude to
beastly motives.”
“Nonsense,” I said, as easily as I could. Hotchkiss had gone to the
window. “She was excited. There are no ‘reasons,’ whatever she means.”
Richey put his hand on my shoulder. “We’ve been together too long to
let any ‘reasons’ or ‘unreasons’ come between us, old man,” he said,
not very steadily. Hotchkiss, who had been silent, here came forward in
his most impressive manner. He put his hands under his coat-tails and
coughed.
“Mr. Blakeley,” he began, “by Mr. McKnight’s advice we have arranged a
little interview here to-night. If all has gone as I planned, Mr. Henry
Pinckney Sullivan is by this time under arrest. Within a very few
minutes—he will be here.”
“I wanted to talk to him before he was locked up,” Richey explained.
“He’s clever enough to be worth knowing, and, besides, I’m not so
cocksure of his guilt as our friend the Patch on the Seat of
Government. No murderer worthy of the name needs six different motives
for the same crime, beginning with robbery, and ending with an
unpleasant father-in-law.”
We were all silent for a while. McKnight stationed himself at a window,
and Hotchkiss paced the floor expectantly. “It’s a great day for modern
detective methods,” he chirruped. “While the police have been guarding
houses and standing with their mouths open waiting for clues to fall in
and choke them, we have pieced together, bit by bit, a fabric—”
The door-bell rang, followed immediately by sounds of footsteps in the
hall. McKnight threw the door open, and Hotchkiss, raised on his toes,
flung out his arm in a gesture of superb eloquence.
“Behold—your man!” he declaimed.
Through the open doorway came a tall, blond fellow, clad in light gray,
wearing tan shoes, and followed closely by an officer.
“I brought him here as you suggested, Mr. McKnight,” said the
constable.
But McKnight was doubled over the library table in silent convulsions
of mirth, and I was almost as bad. Little Hotchkiss stood up, his
important attitude finally changing to one of chagrin, while the blond
man ceased to look angry, and became sheepish.
It was Stuart, our confidential clerk for the last half dozen years!
McKnight sat up and wiped his eyes.
“Stuart,” he said sternly, “there are two very serious things we have
learned about you. First, you jab your scarf pins into your cushion
with your left hand, which is most reprehensible; second, you
wear—er—night-shirts, instead of pajamas. Worse than that, perhaps, we
find that one of them has a buttonhole torn out at the neck.”
Stuart was bewildered. He looked from McKnight to me, and then at the
crestfallen Hotchkiss.
“I haven’t any idea what it’s all about,” he said. “I was arrested as I
reached my boarding-house to-night, after the theater, and brought
directly here. I told the officer it was a mistake.”
Poor Hotchkiss tried bravely to justify the fiasco. “You can not deny,”
he contended, “that Mr. Andrew Bronson followed you to your rooms last
Monday evening.”
Stuart looked at us and flushed.
“No, I don’t deny it,” he said, “but there was nothing criminal about
it, on my part, at least. Mr. Bronson has been trying to induce me to
secure the forged notes for him. But I did not even know where they
were.”
“And you were not on the wrecked Washington Flier?” persisted
Hotchkiss. But McKnight interfered.
“There is no use trying to put the other man’s identity on Stuart, Mr.
Hotchkiss,” he protested. “He has been our confidential clerk for six
years, and has not been away from the office a day for a year. I am
afraid that the beautiful fabric we have pieced out of all these scraps
is going to be a crazy quilt.” His tone was facetious, but I could
detect the undercurrent of real disappointment.
I paid the constable for his trouble, and he departed. Stuart, still
indignant, left to go back to Washington Circle. He shook hands with
McKnight and myself magnanimously, but he hurled a look of utter hatred
at Hotchkiss, sunk crestfallen in his chair.
“As far as I can see,” said McKnight dryly, “we’re exactly as far along
as we were the day we met at the Carter place. We’re not a step nearer
to finding our man.”
“We have one thing that may be of value,” I suggested. “He is the
husband of a bronze-haired woman at Van Kirk’s hospital, and it is just
possible we may trace him through her. I hope we are not going to lose
your valuable co-operation, Mr. Hotchkiss?” I asked.
He roused at that to feeble interest, “I—oh, of course not, if you
still care to have me, I—I was wondering about—the man who just went
out, Stuart, you say? I—told his landlady to-night that he wouldn’t
need the room again. I hope she hasn’t rented it to somebody else.”
We cheered him as best we could, and I suggested that we go to
Baltimore the next day and try to find the real Sullivan through his
wife. He left sometime after midnight, and Richey and I were alone.
He drew a chair near the lamp and lighted a cigarette, and for a time
we were silent. I was in the shadow, and I sat back and watched him. It
was not surprising, I thought, that she cared for him: women had always
loved him, perhaps because he always loved them. There was no
disloyalty in the thought: it was the lad’s nature to give and crave
affection. Only—I was different. I had never really cared about a girl
before, and my life had been singularly loveless. I had fought a lonely
battle always. Once before, in college, we had both laid ourselves and
our callow devotions at the feet of the same girl. Her name was
Dorothy—I had forgotten the rest—but I remembered the sequel. In a
spirit of quixotic youth I had relinquished my claim in favor of Richey
and had gone cheerfully on my way, elevated by my heroic sacrifice to a
somber, white-hot martyrdom. As is often the case, McKnight’s first
words showed our parallel lines of thought.
“I say, Lollie,” he asked, “do you remember Dorothy Browne?” _Browne_,
that was it!
“Dorothy Browne?” I repeated. “Oh—why yes, I recall her now. Why?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I was thinking about her. That’s all. You remember
you were crazy about her, and dropped back because she preferred me.”
“I got out,” I said with dignity, “because you declared you would shoot
yourself if she didn’t go with you to something or other!”
“Oh, why yes, I recall now!” he mimicked. He tossed his cigarette in
the general direction of the hearth and got up. We were both a little
conscious, and he stood with his back to me, fingering a Japanese vase
on the mantel.
“I was thinking,” he began, turning the vase around, “that, if you feel
pretty well again, and—and ready to take hold, that I should like to go
away for a week or so. Things are fairly well cleaned up at the
office.”
“Do you mean—you are going to Richmond?” I asked, after a scarcely
perceptible pause. He turned and faced me, with his hands thrust in his
pockets.
“No. That’s off, Lollie. The Seiberts are going for a week’s cruise
along the coast. I—the hot weather has played hob with me and the
cruise means seven days’ breeze and bridge.”
I lighted a cigarette and offered him the box, but he refused. He was
looking haggard and suddenly tired. I could not think of anything to
say, and neither could he, evidently. The matter between us lay too
deep for speech.
“How’s Candida?” he asked.
“Martin says a month, and she will be all right,” I returned, in the
same tone. He picked up his hat, but he had something more to say. He
blurted it out, finally, half way to the door.
“The Seiberts are not going for a couple of days,” he said, “and if you
want a day or so off to go down to Richmond yourself—”
“Perhaps I _shall_,” I returned, as indifferently as I could. “Not
going yet, are you?”
“Yes. It is late.” He drew in his breath as if he had something more to
say, but the impulse passed. “Well, good night,” he said from the
doorway.
“Good night, old man.”
The next moment the outer door slammed and I heard the engine of the
Cannonball throbbing in the street. Then the quiet settled down around
me again, and there in the lamplight I dreamed dreams. I was going to
see her.
Suddenly the idea of being shut away, even temporarily, from so great
and wonderful a world became intolerable. The possibility of arrest
before I could get to Richmond was hideous, the night without end.
I made my escape the next morning through the stable back of the house,
and then, by devious dark and winding ways, to the office. There, after
a conference with Blobs, whose features fairly jerked with excitement,
I double-locked the door of my private office and finished off some
imperative work. By ten o’clock I was free, and for the twentieth time
I consulted my train schedule. At five minutes after ten, with McKnight
not yet in sight, Blobs knocked at the door, the double rap we had
agreed upon, and on being admitted slipped in and quietly closed the
door behind him. His eyes were glistening with excitement, and a purple
dab of typewriter ink gave him a peculiarly villainous and stealthy
expression.
“They’re here,” he said, “two of ’em, and that crazy Stuart wasn’t on,
and said you were somewhere in the building.”
A door slammed outside, followed by steps on the uncarpeted outer
office.
“This way,” said Blobs, in a husky undertone, and, darting into a
lavatory, threw open a door that I had always supposed locked. Thence
into a back hall piled high with boxes and past the presses of a
bookbindery to the freight elevator.
Greatly to Blobs’ disappointment, there was no pursuit. I was
exhilarated but out of breath when we emerged into an alleyway, and the
sharp daylight shone on Blobs’ excited face.
“Great sport, isn’t it?” I panted, dropping a dollar into his palm,
inked to correspond with his face. “Regular walk-away in the
hundred-yard dash.”
“Gimme two dollars more and I’ll drop ’em down the elevator shaft,” he
suggested ferociously. I left him there with his blood-thirsty schemes,
and started for the station. I had a tendency to look behind me now and
then, but I reached the station unnoticed. The afternoon was hot, the
train rolled slowly along, stopping to pant at sweltering stations,
from whose roofs the heat rose in waves. But I noticed these things
objectively, not subjectively, for at the end of the journey was a girl
with blue eyes and dark brown hair, hair that could—had I not seen
it?—hang loose in bewitching tangles or be twisted into little coils of
delight.