Patton Telephones—“It's Murder”
Ranville, at the invitation to play golf, informed us very earnestly
that he did not care for the game. So, leaving him with his nose
buried deep in a magazine, we went out to the car. The morning was
cool, with a breeze sweeping across the lake from the distant hills.
Forty-five minutes later we drove up the sweeping road which led to
the club house.
As we waited our turn to drive off from the first tee, I sank on the
bench and studied the view before me. The club house was on a small
elevation, and one could take in the countryside for miles around. The
lake lay several miles away, its surface dark blue. Six miles in front
of us we could see the church steeples in the town as they peered
through the leaves of the trees. Across the lake the mountains stood
forth etched into sharp lines by the clear air.
Golf was a game Bartley loved but one which, strange to say, he failed
to play very well. Sometimes his game would be wonderful, at other
times directly opposite. He started out with his first drive by one of
the worst slices I have ever seen—one which took his ball off the
fairway, across the rough and on to the fairway of another hole. When
he sank the ball into the first hole with his eighth shot, he turned
to give me a little grin.
By the time we had reached the fifth hole, his score was approaching
forty. I had seen him play some rather poor golf, but never such a
game as he was playing to-day. When the ball had dropped into the
sixth hole, he motioned to me and walked over to a clump of trees by
the side of the course. As he flung himself down upon the ground, I
followed his example, wondering why he had interrupted his game. He
took a cigarette from a case, which he passed to me, lighted it, and
then said:
“I have been wondering, Pelt, if you told me everything that you
observed that night you found Warren dead in his library. From what
Ranville and the chief tell me, there have been no clews of any sort.
Not a thing which would point to any particular person as the
murderer. In a sense that is unusual. And as I have run this thing
over in my mind, I have been wondering—wondering if there is anything
which you did not tell me.”
I assured him that he must know, either from what I had told him or
Ranville, everything that was of importance. But he shook his head as
if he did not agree. He suggested I start in at the beginning and tell
him the story as if he was hearing it for the first time. And so,
carefully picking my words, I started to tell him of everything we had
seen from the time we left the house until after we had found the
body. When I came to the place where I said the body lay in a queer
position on the floor he stopped me.
“There is something new, Pelt. What do you mean by a queer position?”
“Why, the arms were extended from the body,” was my reply.
He gave me one look, and then drew a figure with the end of his golf
stick—a figure upon the grass in the shape of a cross.
“Like that?” he asked.
I nodded, and as he said nothing, added I had told Carter it seemed
impossible for a man to fall in such a position. For a moment I saw
his face become very thoughtful, and then he said:
“You are right about that, Pelt. He was struck by a dagger—struck
suddenly through the heart. When he fell from his chair to the floor,
the odds were a thousand to one against his falling in that position.”
Across the green a squirrel dashed down a tree, ran across the grass
and scampered up another tree. Bartley watched it with a very peculiar
expression on his face. Then he turned to me:
“As I understand it, Pelt, the Chinaman was at the library just before
six o'clock. He says the door was open, and that he found Warren dead.
Let us believe the story. The housekeeper was at the library sometime
between six and seven. She found the door locked; what is more, she
claimed she thought she heard some one in the building. That may not
be so; her fear and nervousness might have suggested it.”
All at once I remembered the gardener had testified at the inquest
that as he came from his work after six he saw a boat just rounding
the point. I mentioned this, reminding him that the point was below
the library. He thought this over for a while, then asked what time it
was the boy who had been picking berries had seen the figure on the
wall.
“Just before six,” I said. “He told me the whistle in the town blew a
moment after the man dropped on the ground. He went down the other
side of the wall.”
“He meant that the man went along the wall outside of the Warren
grounds?”
I nodded. Very slowly he took a cigar and lighted it, blowing the
first ring carefully. Then he said thoughtfully:
“That may mean one thing.”
“What?” I asked.
“We may have to juggle the time limit a little,” he commented. “But
suppose we assume this—Warren was killed before six; the murderer did
leave the door open. Perhaps it was because he saw the Chinaman coming
up the hill. If he did, he went out the back door and returned when
the oriental left. When he climbed the wall, he threw the dagger into
the swamp, dropped on the ground and followed the wall down to the
shore. Here he had a boat, and as he was going away, was seen by the
gardener. In fact the gardener must have been coming across the
grounds, inside the wall, when this person was going down to the
shore, outside.”
“But who closed the door of the library?” I ventured.
“We do not know, of course. But we can make a guess. It would be a
very easy matter for this person in the boat to watch the library from
the lake. It was on a hill and could be easily seen. Suppose he saw
the gardener. If so, he might return to the shore and go back to the
library. Why he went back, I cannot understand. It must have been for
some other purpose than to close the doors; that was not necessary. He
knew that one person had discovered the murder; but then again it is a
very queer crime all the way around.”
Though after this he asked me a number of other questions, I could
give him nothing which seemed of any importance. For a while we
talked, then rising with the remark that he did not feel like playing
golf any longer, we walked across the course to the club house. Here
we had a drink of ginger ale and then, going to the car, started for
the house.
We discovered Ranville in the same position as when we had left.
Carter was not in sight, and we found that he had not returned. As we
dropped into easy chairs, Ranville drawled out some question about our
game, then returned to his magazine. Finally, he flung it aside and,
after a glance around, turned to Bartley:
“Have you any ideas about this murder?”
“Have you?” was the retort.
The Englishman smiled as he shook his head, then said:
“A few. Of course, what interests me is to watch the apparent lack of
interest the police are taking. That, however, is no doubt due to the
fact you have no Central Police System as we do in England. I should
think you would be lost without it.”
“We are at times,” was the dry reply.
“Yes, so I would think,” commented Ranville. “You see that's why this
case interested me; I felt there were no clews and such things. And I
see that your local police are not familiar with these technical
crimes. So I have been mulling it over. First, I thought about the
Chinaman, but the way the body had been marked put him out, in my
mind.”
He shot a look at Bartley, who nodded his agreement; then went on:
“Of course, it would be silly to think the secretary killed him. Then
it dawned upon me that after all the thing I perhaps could not
understand was the psychology of you Americans. Studying the whole
affair, I could not find a motive—” He paused, then smiled, “At least
a motive which would suit an Englishman.”
Bartley shot him an admiring look, then laughed as he replied:
“And in what you last said is, perhaps, the whole solution of the
crime. On the face of it there is no apparent motive in sight. Warren
had no enemies one can think of. There seems no apparent reason for
killing him. And the whole thing is a matter of—well, perhaps what you
call the psychology of us Americans.”
I gave him a puzzled look, wondering what under heavens he meant by
his remark. But Ranville seemed to find nothing out of the way in it,
for he nodded in a very wise manner. I was just on the verge of asking
Bartley what he meant when we heard Carter's car drive into the yard.
And when he came up the steps, the first thing he asked was if lunch
was ready.
It seemed to have turned warmer after lunch, and we spent the early
hours of the afternoon in just lying around. Bartley buried himself in
a book, while Carter, after telling us very frankly that he was lazy,
went to sleep in the hammock. Ranville, who had some letters he wished
to write, vanished to his room, and for several hours the piazza was
silent. When at length Bartley flung aside his book, it was to give a
glance in my direction and to ask if I cared to take a stroll.
We went rather leisurely out of the yard, turning up the tree-lined
sidewalk, and passed the little stone church. I pointed it out to
Bartley saying that it was the church of the minister who had visited
us. He gave it a curious glance and remarked that the tower divided
the church from the rectory. Then he chuckled as he assured me that
the minister was, to say the least, a fanatic.
We walked about a mile—until the pavement gave place to a country
road, and the summer estates to farmhouses. Then we retraced our steps
to the house. For some reason, as we walked back, Bartley was very
silent. He seemed to be pondering over something, but what it was I
did not know as he gave no indication. As once again we passed the
green expanse of lawn which led to the stone church, he stopped. I saw
him study the granite building with the ivy climbing over the stones.
Then to my surprise he said:
“What do you say if we pay the minister a visit?”
He did not wait for me to make any reply, but started up the winding
gravel path which led to the rectory. I followed rather puzzled at his
sudden desire to call upon the clergyman. Ministers, as a rule, were
very much out of his line, and as we waited at the rectory steps, I
could not but wonder why he wished to see him.
The door was at length opened by a woman. She was a very old lady and
extremely deaf. I judged by her appearance that she must be the person
who looked after the house, for Carter had told us that he was
unmarried. To Bartley's inquiry if the minister was in, she said he
was not. I expected Bartley would then turn to go, but instead he
suggested that we might wait in the study. She led us into a rather
ill-kept room. There were a great many books in the bookcases along
the wall, but they were dusty. In fact, the whole room could have been
much cleaner. The desk was covered with newspapers, books and
pamphlets. Even the chairs were dusty. It needed but a look at the
room to understand the housekeeper did not believe that cleanliness
was next to Godliness.
The woman excused herself and went out leaving us alone. For a moment
Bartley's eyes went over the row of books, and then he went closer to
examine them. From their appearance most of them had not been taken
from their places in many days. The dust lay thick upon the dingy
volumes—volumes which seemed to be mostly theological works, and of a
very orthodox character. Of novels and works of science there was not
a trace. All the books along the wall dealt with theology.
I watched Bartley pull one of the volumes from the shelf and turn the
pages. As his eyes fell upon some sentence, he gave a shrug of his
shoulders and replaced the book. Walking over to the desk, he stood
for a moment glancing at the disordered contents. Then he went over to
the window and looked out. When he turned, his eyes searched the room
as if looking for something, and at length came to rest on a bookcase
which was near the door.
It was an old-fashioned bookcase. One of those affairs with glass
doors with some kind of figured cloth covering the glass within the
case. Not a very large case, and I doubted if there were more than
four rows of shelves. This case seemed to interest Bartley, for he
went across the floor, and in a moment knelt before it to try the
door. Not very much interested, I walked to the window and for a few
moments stood looking out. When I turned, it was to discover that the
bookcase was open.
I did not bother to go closer to see what the books might be. From
where I stood I could see the contents of the four shelves—shelves
which were not all filled. But those which were seemed to interest
Bartley very much. He pulled first one book and then another forth,
only to replace them and take another, finding several over which he
spent some time. Then all at once he rose to his feet, closed the
glass door, and said we better be going.
Wondering a little why he had not waited until the minister returned,
I followed him out into the hall. The woman was washing the windows by
the front door, and Bartley explained we were unable to wait any
longer. When we reached the open air, he struck across the lawn to the
hedge which divided Carter's estate from the church. He said nothing,
walking in a hurried manner. And when we came through the hedge and
crossed the grass, he paused in front of the house long enough to say
that he was going to take the car and go to town.
As he said nothing regarding my going with him, I went into the house,
to find Carter in his library. He asked me where Bartley was, and I
told him he was going to town, hearing the sound of his car in the
drive as I spoke. Then, as Carter was engaged in writing a letter, I
picked up the paper and for a while ran through its contents. There
was little news, however, and I soon threw it aside.
When Carter had finished his letter, he dropped into a large chair,
and we started to talk—a conversation which was mostly one-sided. He
told me Patton had been very much pleased to find, when he reached the
library, that the young woman who had been Warren's secretary was
there. She had promised to work with him, and, as she knew more about
the library than Patton did, her offer had taken quite a load off his
mind. Then he suddenly said that he thought he knew why the Chinaman
had not taken the box of opium away when he discovered Warren
murdered.
That had been one of the things which had puzzled me, that is, if we
were to accept the story the man had told as being true. He had found
the door of the library open, and Warren dead. The box of opium was
his reason for being there; yet he had not taken it, and it had been
on the stand all the time. That had rather puzzled me, and when Carter
said he thought he knew why it had been untouched, naturally I asked
his reason.
“Well,” he grinned, “it is what they call in the mystery yarns
‘deduction.’ Now, of course, he must have known there was a box in the
library which contained opium. He must have known that.”
“Right you are,” came a voice from the doorway, and Ranville came into
the room and dropped into the nearest chair.
“All right then,” retorted Carter seriously. “But if he did not take
it away with him, it was because he did not know which one of the
three boxes it was.”
“Not so good,” was Ranville's dry comment. He threw one leg over his
knee and added: “He might not have been very sure when he went in. But
I wager that he knew before he went out.”
“What makes you say that?”
“It is very simple to me. He told the gardener to bring him the box
near the safe. That was the right one as we discovered. If he did not
take the box away, there was a reason why he could not; some one must
have been approaching the library or else he did not care to be seen
with the large box under his arm.”
Carter at length agreed this might be so, and after a while he went up
to his room. Ranville and myself talked a few moments, and then he
went over to the desk to write a letter. In my chair I dreamed away
the moments. The afternoon wore away, and in the silence of the
library I half dozed—dozed, to be awakened by a muttered oath from
Ranville. As I gave a start, it was to see him looking at a piece of
paper in his hand. As his eyes met mine, he said, with a rather
sheepish expression on his face:
“What a confounded ass I have been!”
“What's the matter?” I drawled as I noticed his eyes on the paper he
held.
“Why, I forgot all about that bit of paper with the letters; you
know—those ‘Anani’ and that sort of thing.”
I had found the paper by Warren's body. The letters had puzzled us at
the time, but we had paid very little attention to them. Just what
they meant, I had not known nor any one else. But Ranville had placed
the paper in his pocket, and then apparently forgotten all about it.
Now, in reaching into his pocket, he had found it; and the fact he had
forgotten all about it had put him in a decidedly bad humor.
I half laughed as I reminded him that we did not suppress evidence in
that manner in the States. He gave me a rueful smile and again
wondered what the letters might mean. But I shook my head, saying I
had not the slightest idea. While we were arguing about it, Bartley
came into the room and asked what we were talking about.
Extending the paper to him, Ranville told how I had found it beside
the body. He seemed chagrined as he remarked that he had placed it in
his pocket and forgotten all about it. He added that I had said it
meant nothing anyway. With a look in my direction, Bartley took the
piece of paper, glanced at it, spelled out the words, and suddenly
chuckled. Then he slowly spelt out the letters—“Anani—”
“So it means nothing, Pelt?” he asked.
I assured him that it meant nothing in my life. Rising, I said that no
word I knew anything about was spelled like that. Again he looked at
the paper, then laughed, but the laughter lasted but a second, and his
face grew serious. He started to speak, checked himself, and placed
the paper in his bill case. Though we asked him what he thought the
letters meant, the only reply we received was that he would tell us
later.
It was almost six, and at Bartley's suggestion we went to our rooms to
be ready for dinner. Patton was to eat with us, and I was eager to
hear what he had done during the day. Perhaps deep in my mind was the
wish he would inform us what the wonderful discovery was that Warren
had made in China.
After a quick shower I dressed and went down to the piazza, where I
was joined by the three men. For a while we talked of various people
we knew, and then Ranville and Bartley got into a discussion as to
where was the best place to eat in London. Then, as there came a lull
in the conversation, Carter looked at his watch and said that Patton
was late. He was just on the point of saying something else when the
telephone in the hall rang shrilly.
As I was nearest the door, I rose and, going into the house, took the
receiver from the hook. For a moment I had trouble in hearing the
person at the other end. And then all at once the line was clear, and
I recognized Patton's voice—broken and hesitating but very much
excited and at the same time filled with horror. The first question he
asked was who was talking. I told him and there came a pause. Then
came the gasping, excited words in a voice which shook:
“Pelt, for God's sake, get Bartley and Carter down to the library. I
am in here with the gardener, and the man's dead—murdered.”
I gave a startled cry and stammered out something. What it was I said
I do not know; but he was too excited to say more. Then came his voice
again, breaking with excitement, as he cried:
“Get them down here quick, Pelt—it is murder.”