Kitabı oku: «No Clue», sayfa 6
X
THE WHISPERED CONFERENCE
Dr. Garnet, reaching Sloanehurst half an hour later, found Webster in complete collapse. He declared that for at least several days the sick man must be kept quiet. He could not be moved to his apartment in Washington, nor could he be subjected to questioning about anything.
"That is," he explained, "for three or four days – possibly longer. He's critically ill. But for my knowledge of the terrific shock he's sustained as a result of the murder, I'd be inclined to say he'd broken down after a long, steady nervous strain.
"I'll have a nurse out to look after him. Miss Sloane has volunteered, but she has troubles of her own."
Judge Wilton took the news to Hastings, who was on the front porch, whittling, waiting to see Lucille before returning to Washington.
"I think Garnet's right," Wilton added. "I thought, even before last night, Berne acted as if he'd been worn out. And you handled him rather roughly. That sort of questioning, tantalizing, keeping a man on tenterhooks, knocks the metal out of a high-strung temperament like his. I don't mind telling you it had me pretty well worked up."
"I'm sorry it knocked him out," Hastings said. "All I wanted was the facts. He wasn't frank with me."
"I came out here to talk about that," Wilton retorted, brusquely. "You're all wrong there, Hastings! The boy's broken all to pieces. He sees clearly, too clearly, the weight of suspicion against him. You've mistaken his panic for hostility toward yourself."
The old man was unconvinced, and showed it.
"Suspicion doesn't usually knock a man into a cocked hat – unless there's something to base it on," he contended.
"All right; I give up," Wilton said, with a short laugh. "All I know is, he came to me before we saw you in the music room, and told me he wanted me to be there, to see that he omitted not even a detail of what he knew."
Hastings, looking up from the intricate pattern he was carving, challenged the judge:
"Has it occurred to you that, if he's not guilty, he might suspect somebody else in this house, might be trying to shield that person?"
In the inconsiderable pause that followed, Wilton's lips, parting for an incredulous smile, showed the top of his tongue against his teeth, as if set for pronunciation of the letter "S." Hastings, in a mental flash, saw him on the point of exclaiming: "Sloane!" But, if that was in his mind, he put it down, elaborating the smile to a laughing protest:
"That's going far afield, isn't it?"
Hastings smiled in return: "Maybe so, but it's a possibility – and possibilities have to be dealt with."
"Which reminds me," the judge said, now all amiability; "don't forget I'm always at your service in this affair. I see now that you might have preferred to question Webster alone, in the music room; but my confidence in his innocence blinded me to the fact that you could regard him as actually guilty. I expected nothing but a friendly conference, not a fierce cross-examination."
"It didn't matter at all," Hastings matched Wilton's cordial tone; "and I appreciate your offer, judge. Suppose you tell me anything that occurs to you, anything that will throw light on this case any time; and I'll act as go-between for you with the authorities – if necessary."
"You mean – ?"
"I'd like to do the talking for this family and its friends. I can work better if I can handle things myself. The half of my job is to save the Sloanes from as many wild rumours as I can."
Wilton nodded approval.
"How about Arthur? You want me to take any questions to him for you?"
"No; thanks. – But," Hastings added, "you might make him see the necessity of telling me what he saw last night. If he doesn't come out with it, he'll make it all the harder on Webster."
"I don't think he saw anything."
"Didn't he? Why'd he refuse to testify before the coroner, then?"
Sheriff Crown's car came whirling up the driveway; and Hastings spoke hurriedly:
"You know he's not as sick as he makes out. He's got to tell me what he knows, judge! He's holding back something. That's why he wants to make me so mad I'll quit the case. Who's he shielding? That's what people will want to know."
Wilton pondered that.
"I'll see what I can do," he finally agreed. "According to you, it may appear – people may suspect – that Webster's guilty or shielding somebody else; and Arthur's guilty or shielding Webster!"
When Mr. Crown reached the porch, they were discussing Webster's condition, and Hastings, with the aid of the judge's penknife, was tightening a screw in his big barlowesque blade. They were careful to say nothing that might arouse the sheriff's suspicion of their compact – an agreement whereby a private detective, and not the law's representative, was to have the benefit of all the judge's information bearing on the murder.
Mr. Crown, however, was dissatisfied.
"I'm tied up!" he complained, nursing with forefinger and thumb his knuckle-like chin. "The only place I can get information is at the wrong end – Russell!"
"What's the matter with me?" the detective asked amiably. "I'll be glad to help – if you think I can."
"What good's that to me?" He wore his best politician's smile, but there was resentment in his voice. "Your job is keeping things quiet – for Sloanehurst. Mr. Sloane's ill, too ill to see me without endangering his life, so his funeral-faced valet tells me. Miss Lucille says, politely enough, she's told all she knows, told it on the stand, and I'm to go to you if I want anything more from her. The judge here knows nothing about the inside relationships of the family and Webster, or of Webster and the Brace girl. And Webster's down and out, thoroughly and conveniently! If all that don't catch your uncle Robert where the hair's short, I'll quit!"
"What do you want to know?" Hastings countered. "You've had access to everything, far as I can see."
Reply to that was delayed by the appearance of Jarvis, summoning the judge to Arthur Sloane's room.
"I want to get at Webster," Crown told Hastings. "And here's why: if Russell didn't kill her, Webster did."
"Why, you've weakened!" the old man guyed head bent over his whittling. "You had Russell's goose cooked this morning – roasted to a rich, dark brown!"
"Yes; and if I could break down his alibi, I'd still have him cooked!"
"You accept the alibi, then?"
"Sure, I accept it."
"I don't."
"Why don't you?" objected Crown. "He didn't have an aeroplane in his hip pocket, did he? That's the only way he could have covered those four miles in fifteen minutes. – Or does his alibi have to fall in order to save Miss Sloane's fiancé?"
He slapped his thigh and thrust out his bristly moustache. "You're paid to fasten the thing on Russell," he said, clearly pugnacious. "I don't expect you to help me work against Webster! I'm not that simple!"
The old man, with a gesture no more arresting than to point at the sheriff with the piece of wood in his left hand, made the official jaw drop almost to the official chest.
"Mr. Crown," he said, "get this, once and for all: a man ain't necessarily a crook because he's once worked for the government. I'm as anxious to find the guilty man now, every time, as when I was in the Department of Justice. And I intend to. From now on, you'll give me credit for that! – Won't you, Mr. Sheriff?"
Crown apologized. "I'm worried; that's what. I'm up a gum stump and can't get down."
"All right, but don't try to make a ladder out of me! Why don't you look into that alibi?"
Crown was irritated again. "What do you stick to that for?"
"Because," Hastings declared, "I'm ready to swear-and-cross-my-heart he lied when he said he ran that four miles. I'm ready to swear he was here when the murder was done. When a man's got as good an alibi as he said he had, his adam's-apple don't play 'Yankee Doodle' on his windpipe."
"Is that so!"
"It is – and here's another thing: when's Mrs. Brace going to break loose?"
"Now, you're talking!" agreed Crown, with momentary enthusiasm. "She told me this morning she'd help me show up Webster – she wouldn't have it that Russell killed the girl. Foxy business! Mixed up in it herself, she runs to the rescue of the man she – "
The sheriff paused, unable to bring that reasoning to its logical conclusion.
"No," he said, dejected; "I can't believe she put him up to murdering her daughter."
"That woman," Hastings said, "is capable of anything – anything! We're going to find she's terrible, I tell you, Crown. She's mixed up in the murder somehow – and, if you don't find out how, I will!"
"How can we get her?" Crown argued. "She was in her flat when the killing was done. We've searched these grounds, and found nothing to incriminate anybody. All we've got is a strong suspicion against two men. She's out and away."
"Not if we watch her. She's promised to make trouble – she'll be lucky if she makes none for herself. Let's keep after her."
"I'm on! But," the sheriff reminded, again half-hearted, "that won't get us anything soon. She won't leave her flat before the funeral."
"That won't keep her quiet very long," Hastings contended. "She told me the funeral would be at nine o'clock tomorrow morning – from an undertaker's. – Anyway, I've instructed one of my assistants to keep track of her. I'm not counting on her grief absorbing her, even for today."
But he saw that Crown was not greatly impressed with the possibility of finding the murderer through Mrs. Brace. The sheriff was engrossed in mental precautions against being misled by "the Sloanehurst detective."
He was still in that mood when Miss Sloane sent for Hastings.
The detective found her in the music room. She had taken the chair which Judge Wilton had occupied an hour before, and was leaning one elbow on an arm of it, her chin resting in the cup of her hand. Her dress – a filmy lavender so light that it shaded almost to pink, and magically made to bring out the grace of her figure – drew his attention to the slight sag of her shoulders, suggestive of great weariness.
But he was captivated anew by her grave loveliness, and by her fortitude. She betrayed her agitation only in the fine tremour in her hands and a certain slowness in her words.
On the porch, talking to Judge Wilton, he had wondered, in a moment of irritation, why he continued on the case against so much apparent opposition in the very household which he sought to help. He knew now that neither his sense of duty nor his fee was the deciding influence. He stayed because this girl needed him, because he had seen in her eyes last night the haggard look of an unspeakable suspicion.
"You wanted to see me – is there anything special?" she asked him, immediately alert.
"Yes; there is, Miss Sloane," he said, careful to put into his voice all the sympathy he felt for her.
"Yes?" She was looking at him with steady eyes.
"It's this, and I want you to bear in mind that I wouldn't bring it up but for my desire to put an end to your uncertainty: I'm afraid you haven't told me everything you know, everything you saw last night in – "
When she would have spoken, he put up a warning hand.
"Let me explain, please. Don't commit yourself until you see what I mean. Judge Wilton and Mr. Webster seem to think I'm not needed here. It may be a natural attitude – for them. They're both lawyers, and to lawyers a mere detective doesn't amount to much."
"Oh, I'm sure it isn't that," she flashed out, apologizing.
"Oh, I don't mind, personally," he said, with a smile for which she felt grateful. "As I say, it's natural for them to think that way, perhaps. Your father, however, is not a lawyer; and, when I went into his room at your request, he took pains to offend me, insult me, several times." That brought a faint flush to her face. "So, that leaves only you to give me facts which I must have – if they exist."
He became more urgent.
"And you employed me, Miss Sloane; you appealed to me when you were at a loss where to turn. I'm only fair to myself as well as to you when I tell you that your distress, far more than financial considerations, persuaded me to undertake this work without first consulting your father."
She leaned toward him, bending from the waist, her eyes slightly widened, so that their effect was to give her a startled air.
"You don't mean you'll give it up!" she said, plainly entreating. "You won't give it up!"
"Are you quite sure you don't want me to give it up? Judge Wilton has asked me twice, out of politeness, not to give it up. Are you merely being polite?"
She smiled, looking tired, and shook her head.
"Really, Mr. Hastings, if you were to desert us now, I should be desperate – altogether. Desperate! Just that."
"I can't desert you," he said gently. "As I told Mr. Webster, I know too little and I suspect too much to do that."
Before she spoke again, she looked at him intently, drawing in her under lip a little against her teeth.
"What, Mr. Hastings?" she asked, then. "What do you suspect?"
"Let me answer that with a question," he suggested. "Last night, your one idea was that I could protect you and your father, everybody in the house here, by acting as your spokesman. I think you wanted to set me up as a buffer between all of you on the one side and the authorities and the reporters on the other. You wanted things kept down, nothing to get out beyond that which was unavoidable. Wasn't that it?"
"Yes; it was," she admitted, not seeing where his question led.
"You were afraid, then, that something incriminating might be divulged, weren't you?"
"Oh, no!" she denied instantly.
"I mean something which might seem incriminating. You trusted the person whom it would seem to incriminate; and you wanted time for the murderer to be found without, in the meantime, having the adverse circumstance made public. Isn't that it, Miss Sloane?"
"Yes – practically."
"Let's be clear on that. Your fear was that too much questioning of you or the other person might result in a slip-up – might make you or him mention the apparently damaging incident, with disastrous effect. Wasn't that it?"
"Yes; that was it."
"Now, what was that apparently incriminating incident?"
She started. He had brought her so directly to the confession that she saw now the impossibility of withholding what he sought.
"It may be," he tried to lighten her responsibility, "the very thing that Webster and the judge have concealed – for I'm sure they're keeping something back. Perhaps, if I knew it, things would be easier. People closely affected by a crime are the last to judge such things accurately."
She gave a long breath of relief, looking at him with perplexity nevertheless.
"Yes – I know. That was why I came to you – last night – in the beginning."
"And it was about them, Webster and Wilton," he drew the conclusion for her, still encouraging her with his smile, regarding her over the rims of his spectacles with a fatherly kindness.
She turned from him and looked out of the window. It was the middle of a hot, still day, no breeze stirring, and wonderfully quiet. For the moment, there was no sound, in the house or outside.
"Oh!" she cried, her voice a revelation of the extent to which her doubts had oppressed her. "It was like that, out there – quiet, still! If you could only understand!"
"My dear child," he said, "rely on me. The sheriff is bound to assert himself, to keep in the front of things; he's that kind of a man. He'll make an arrest any time, or announce that he will. Don't you see the danger?" He leaned forward and took her hand, a move to which she seemed oblivious. "Don't you see I must have facts to go on – if I'm to help you?"
At that, she disengaged her hand, and sat very straight, her face again a little turned from him. A twitch, like a shudder cut short, moved her whole body, so that the heel of her slipper rapped smartly on the floor.
"I wish," she whispered dully, "I wish I knew what to do!"
"Tell me," he urged, as if he spoke to a child.
She showed him her face, very white, with sudden shadows under the eyes.
"I must, I think; I must tell you," she said, not much louder than the previous whisper. "You were right. I didn't tell the whole story of what I saw. Believe me, I didn't think it mattered. I thought, really, things would right themselves and explanations be unnecessary. But you knew – didn't you?"
"Yes. I knew." He realized her ordeal, helping her through it. "What were they doing?"
She held her chin high.
"It was all true, what I told you in the library, my being waked up by father's moving about, my going to the window, my seeing Berne and the judge facing each other across – her – there at the end of the awful yellow arm of light. But that wasn't all. The moment the light flashed on, the judge threw back his head a little, like a man about to cry out, shout for help. I am sure that was it.
"But Berne was too quick for that. Berne put out his hand; his arm shot across her; and his hand closed the judge's mouth. The judge made no noise whatever, but he shook his head from side to side two or three times – I'm not certain how many – while Berne leant over the body and whispered to him. It seemed to me I could almost hear the words, but I didn't.
"Then Berne took his hand from the judge's mouth. I think, before that, the judge made a sign, tried to nod his head up and down, to show he would do as Berne said. Then, when they saw she was dead, they both hurried around the corner to the front of the house, and I heard them come in; I heard the judge call to father and run up to your room."
She was alarmed then by the amazement and disapproval in his face.
"Oh!" she said, and this time she took his hand. "You see! You see! You don't understand! You think Berne killed her!"
"I don't know," he said, wondering. "I must think." For the moment, indignation swept him. "Wilton! A judge, a judge! – keeping quiet on a thing like that! I must think."
XI
MOTIVES REVEALED
She let go his hand and, still leaning toward him, waited for him to speak. A confusion of misgivings assailed her – she regretted having confided in him. If his anger embraced Berne as well as Judge Wilton, she had done nothing but harm!
Seeing her dismay, he tried again to reassure her.
"But no matter!" he minimized his own sense of shock. "I'm sure I'll understand if you'll tell me more – your explanation."
Obviously, the only inference he could draw from her story as she had told it was that Webster had killed the woman and, found bending over her body, had sprung forward to silence the man who had discovered him. Nevertheless, it was equally evident that she was sincere in attributing to Webster a different motive for preventing the judge's outcry. Consideration of that persuaded Hastings that she could give him facts which would change the whole aspect of the crime.
Her hesitance now made him uneasy; he recognized the necessity of increasing her reliance upon him. If she told him only a part of what she knew, he would be scarcely in a better position than before.
"Naturally," he added, "you can throw light on the whole incident – light by which I must be guided, to a great degree."
"If Berne were not ill," she responded to that, "I wouldn't tell. – It's because he's lying up there, his lips closed, unable to keep a look-out for developments, at the mercy of what the sheriff may do or say! – That's why I feel so dreadfully the need of help, Mr. Hastings!"
She slid back in her chair, moving farther from him, as if his kindly gaze disconcerted her.
"If he hadn't suffered this collapse, I should have left the matter to him, I think. But now – now I can't!" She straightened again, her chin up, the signal with her of final decision. "He acted on his impulsive desire to prevent my being shocked by that discovery – that horror out there on the lawn. Things had happened to convince him that such a thing, shouted through the night, would be a terrific blow to me. I'm sure that that was the only idea he had when he put his hand over Judge Wilton's mouth."
"I can believe that," he said. "Tell me why you believe it."
"Oh!" she protested, hands clenched on her knees; "if it affected only him and me!"
Her suspicion of her father recurred to him. It was, he thought, back of the terror he saw in her eyes now.
"But it does affect only him and me, after all!" she continued fiercely, as much to strengthen herself in what she wanted to believe as to force him to that belief. "Let me tell you the whole affair, from beginning to end."
She proceeded in a low tone, the words slower, as if she laboured for precision and clarity.
"I must go back to Friday – the night before last – it seems months ago! I had heard that Berne had become involved in some sort of relationship with his stenographer – that she had been dismissed from his office and refused to accept the dismissal as final. I mean, of course, I heard she was in love with him, and he'd been in love with her – or should have been.
"It was told me by a friend of mine in Washington, Lucy Carnly. It seems another stenographer overheard the conversation between Berne and Miss – Miss Brace. It got out that way. It was very circumstantial; I couldn't help believing it, some of it; Lucy wouldn't have brought me idle gossip – I thought."
She drew in her under lip, to hide its momentary tremour, and shook her head from side to side once.
"All that, Mr. Hastings, came up, as a matter of course, when Berne reached here evening before last for the week-end. I'd just heard it that day. He denied it, said there had been nothing remotely resembling a love affair. – He was indignant, and very hurt! – He said she'd misconstrued some of his kindnesses to her. He couldn't explain how she had misconstrued them. At any rate, the result was that I broke our engagement. I – "
"Friday night!" Hastings exclaimed involuntarily.
He grasped on the instant how grossly Webster, by withholding all this, had deceived him, left him in the dark.
"Yes; and I told father about it," she hurried her words here, the effect of her manner being the impression that she hoped this fact would not bulk too large in the detective's thoughts. "The three of us had a talk about it Friday night. Father's wonderfully fond of Berne and tried to persuade me I was foolishly ruining my life. I refused to change my mind. When I went upstairs, they stayed a long time in the library, talking.
"I think they decided the best thing for Berne was to stay on here, through yesterday and today, in the hope that he and father might change my mind. Father tried to, yesterday morning. He was awfully upset. That's one reason he's so worn out and sick today. – I love my father so, Mr. Hastings!" She held her lips tight-shut a moment, a sob struggling in her throat. "But my distress, my own hurt pride – "
"What did your father say about Mildred Brace?" Hastings asked, when she did not finish that sentence.
She looked at him, again with widened eyes, a startled air, putting both her hands to her throat.
"There!" she said, voice falling to a whisper.
Then, turning her face half from him, she whispered so low that he heard her with difficulty: "I wish I were dead!"
Her words frightened him, they had so clearly the ring of truth, as if she would in sober fact have preferred death to the thought which was breaking her heart – suspicion of her father.
"That was why Berne stopped the judge's outcry," she said at last, turning her white face to him; "he had the sudden wild idea that I'm afraid you have – that father might have killed her. And Berne did not want that awful fact screamed through the night at me. Oh, can't you see – can't you see that, Mr. Hastings?"
"It's entirely possible; Mr. Webster may have thought that. – But let's keep the story straight. What had your father said about Mildred Brace – to arouse any such suspicion?"
"He was angry, terribly indignant. You know I made no secret to you of his high temper. His rages are fierce. – Once, when he was that way, I saw him kill a dog. If it had – but I think all men who're unstrung nervously, as he is, have high tempers. He felt so indignant because she had come between Berne and myself. He blamed neither Berne nor me. He seemed to concentrate all his anger upon her.
"He said – you see, Mr. Hastings, I tell you everything! – he threatened to go to her and – He had, of course, no definite idea what he would do. Finally, he did say he would buy her off, pay her to leave this part of the country. After that, he said, he knew I would 'see things clearly,' and Berne and I would be reconciled."
Hastings remembered Russell's assertion that Mildred had her ticket to Chicago.
"Did he buy her off?" he asked quickly.
"Oh, no; he was merely wishing that he could, I think."
"But he made no attempt to get in touch with her yesterday? You're sure?"
"Quite," she said. "But don't you see. Mr. Hastings? Father was so intense in his hatred of her that Berne thought of him the moment he found that body – out there. He thought father must have encountered her on the lawn in some way, or she must have come after him, and he, in a fit of rage, struck her down."
"Has Webster told you this?"
"No – but it's true; it is!"
"But, if your supposition is to hold good, how did your father happen to be in possession of that dagger, which evidently was made with malice aforethought, as the lawyers say?"
"Exactly," she said, her lips quivering, hands gripping spasmodically at her knees. "He didn't do it! He didn't do it! Berne's idea was a mistake!"
"Who, then?" he pressed her, realizing now that she was so unstrung she would give him her thoughts unguarded.
"Why, that man Russell," she said, her voice so low and the words so slow that he thought her at the limit of her endurance. "But I've said all this to show you why Berne put his hand over the judge's mouth. I want to make it very clear that he feared father – think of it, Mr. Hastings! – had killed her! At first, I thought – "
She bowed her face in both her hands and wept unrestrainedly, without sobs, the tears streaming between her fingers and down her wrists.
The old man put one hand on her hair, and with the other brought forth his handkerchief, being bothered by the sudden mistiness of his spectacles.
"A brave girl," he said, his own voice insecure. "What a woman! I know what you mean. At first, you feared your father might have been concerned in the murder. I saw it in your eyes last night. You had the same thought that young Webster had – rather, that you say he had."
Her weeping ceased as suddenly as it had begun. She looked at him through tears.
"And I've only injured Berne in your eyes; I think, irreparably! This morning I thought you heard me when I asked him not to let it be known that our engagement was broken? Don't you remember? You were on the porch as we came around the corner."
For the first time since its utterance, he recalled her statement then, "We'll have to leave it as it was," and Webster's significant rejoinder. He despised his own stupidity. Had he magnified Webster's desire to keep that promise into guilty knowledge of the crime itself? And had not the mistake driven him into false and valueless interpretations of his entire interview with Webster?
"He promised," Lucille pursued, "for the same reason I had in asking it – to prevent discovery of the fact that father might have had a motive for wishing her dead! It was a mistake, I see now, a terrible mistake!"
"Can you tell me why you didn't have the same thoughts about Berne?" He was sorry he had to make that inquiry. If he could, he would have spared her further distress. "Why wouldn't he have had the same motive, hatred of Mildred Brace, a thousand times stronger?"
"I don't know," she said. "I simply never thought of it – not once."
Fine psychologist that he was, Hastings knew why that view had not occurred to her. Her love for Webster was an idealizing sentiment, putting him beyond even the possibility of wrong-doing. Her love for her father, unusual in its devotion as it was, recognized his weaknesses nevertheless.
And, while seeking to protect the two, she had told a story which, so far as bald facts went, incriminated the lover far more than the father. She had attributed to Sloane, in her uneasiness, the motive which would have been most natural to the discarded Webster. Even now, she could not suspect Berne; her only fear was that others, not understanding him as she did, might suspect him! Although she had broken with him, she still loved him. More than that: his illness and consequent helplessness increased her devotion for him, brought to the surface the maternal phase of it.
"If she had to choose between the two," Hastings thought, "she'd save Webster – every time!"
"I know – I tell you, Mr. Hastings, I know neither Berne nor father is at all responsible for this crime. I tell you," she repeated, rising to her feet, as if by mere physical height she hoped to impress her knowledge upon him, "I know they're innocent. – Don't you know it?"
She stood looking down at him, her whole body tense, arms held close against her sides, the knuckles of her fingers white as ivory. Her eyes now were dry, and brilliant.
He evaded the flat statement to which she pressed him.
"But your knowledge, Miss Sloane, and what we must prove," he said, also standing, "are two different things just now. The authorities will demand proofs."
"I know. That's why I've told you these things." Somehow, her manner reproached him. "You said you had to have them in order to handle this – this situation properly. Now that you know them, I'm sure you'll feel safe in devoting all your time to proving Russell's guilt." She moved her head forward, to study him more closely. "You know he's guilty, don't you?"
"I'm certain Mrs. Brace figured in her daughter's murder," he said. "She was concerned in it somehow. If that's true, and if your father approached neither her nor her daughter yesterday, it does seem highly possible that Russell's guilty."
He turned from her and stood at the window, his back to her a few long moments. When he faced her again, he looked old.
