“Yes. He moved swiftly, straight to the electric switch, and pressed it. Then I could see no more.”
“Of course not. But you heard his steps returning, you said.”
“Yes, he went stealthily, but I heard him feel his way by the furniture and walls.”
“And at the same time you heard a sound from Mr. Stannard?”
“Yes, a sort of gasp or groan.”
“Right. It was this, then, that attracted the attention of Mrs. Stannard and Miss Vernon, and they entered at about the same time?”
“So far as I can judge. They were both there when the lights re-appeared.”
“And in that brief instant the man had slipped past one of them and escaped.”
“That is as the vision revealed it.”
“Only one more question. Past which woman did he go?”
“I cannot say. I merely heard a quick footstep at that end of the room.”
“It couldn’t have been past Miss Vernon,” said Bobsy. “She was too near the door, according to her own account. And I don’t see how he could have passed Mrs. Stannard, as there was a low light in the Billiard Room, and she must have seen him pass.”
“Both women were looking toward the source of the sound they heard. Also, at that very moment, the wounded man gave a faint cry of ‘Help!’ An instant after, the servant turned on the light. In that instant the man disappeared, unnoticed by any one. I am not explaining these occurrences, Mr. Roberts; I am describing them. It is for you to interpret their meaning.”
Bobsy fell into a brown study, and timidly Natalie put forth a question.
“How do you know he said, or tried to say, ‘Neither Joyce nor Natalie’?”
Orienta looked at the girl with an affectionate expression.
“You are a ‘sensitive’ yourself, Miss Vernon. It will not be difficult for you to understand. By my clairvoyance I read the thought in his mind. I know he feared one or other of the two women he saw might be suspected. The dying often have abnormally acute prescience. To ward off any such danger, and in reply to the servant’s inquiry, he strove to say neither of you were implicated,—he raised his hand in protest,—but he was physically unable to articulate clearly, and so his words were misconstrued.”
“You heard the words,” said Natalie to Beatrice Faulkner; “does it seem to you he meant that?”
“Yes,” was the reply. “Now that I think it over I feel sure he did. At the moment, you know, I could scarcely control my senses, and his voice sounded so queer and unnatural, it was difficult to gather his meaning.”
“I think so, too,” broke in Joyce. “I know that’s what he meant. Eric’s very nature was against his accusing any woman of wrong-doing. He meant just what Madame Orienta has told us. And I am glad there can be no more doubt about it.”
“Could a man have brushed by you that moment, Mrs. Stannard?” asked Bobsy.
“I suppose so. I came from a lighted room into one of pitch blackness. I heard a quick breathing from the opposite side of the room, where Natalie was. I daresay I involuntarily took a step forward, and the man slipped past, behind me. It all happened so quickly, and I was so frightened, I can’t describe my exact sensations. But I accept Madame Orienta’s revelation as the truth, and——” Joyce’s face paled a little, and she spoke very sternly, “I positively forbid any further investigation of the whole matter.”
“Then you suspect some one?” asked Bobsy, quickly.
“Not at all,” was the haughty answer, and Joyce looked like a queen issuing commands. “I have no idea who the intruder was, nor do I want to know. But if this story is made public, a dozen men will be found to fit the description, and it will mean no end of trouble and injustice. Therefore, I request, Mr. Roberts, that you let it go no further.”
“I can’t promise that,” said Bobsy, gravely. “I am bound to report to my chief. But if he agrees, I will stop all investigation.”
“That won’t do,” said Joyce, her dark eyes troubled. “You must promise what I ask.”
“I think you need have no fear, Mrs. Stannard, of any injustice being done. One moment, Madame Orienta. You saw the footman, Blake, followed by Mrs. Faulkner, enter the room and turn on the light, just as they testified?”
“The light was flashed on, and then I saw the servant, his hand still on the switch. Behind him, at his very shoulder, was Mrs. Faulkner, her face drawn with fear and horror. Naturally I turned my attention at once to the other end of the room, and there saw, for the first time, the two women whom I had heard enter a moment before.”
“Thank you, that is all,” and rising, Bobsy Roberts made brief adieus and hurried away.
He went straight to headquarters and sought Captain Steele.
“Got Stannard’s murderer,” he announced excitedly.
“Again or yet?” asked his unmoved listener.
“Got it in the queerest way, too,” Bobsy went on, as he fished for his notebooks in the pocket of the overcoat he had laid off. “Do you believe in mejums, Cap?”
“Not so’s you’d notice it. Spill your yarn.”
“Well, to begin at the beginning of this chapter of it, Mrs. Stannard engaged a clairvoyant lady to see visions.”
“Spooks?”
“Not exactly that, but to—well, to reconstruct the murder scene,—mentally, you know,—and see who did the stabbing. And by Jove, she told us!”
“Come now, Bobsy, I’ll stand for a good deal from you——”
“Now, hold on, she didn’t know she told——”
“What! Didn’t know what she told——”
“If you could listen without butting in every minute, I’d give you the whole story.”
“I’ll try,” and Captain Steele folded his hands and listened without a word while Bobsy told him every detail of the Orienta revelation.
Often he referred to his notes, and again he told vividly from memory the exact words of the priestess.
“And you fell for that?” cried Steele, as the tale ended.
“Sure I did, and so would you if you’d been there. You can sort of sense the difference between the professional fake mediums and this—this lady. She was the real thing, all right. I felt just as you do, before I saw her, but I was soon convinced. Why, man, that reading the sealed messages was enough.”
“Pooh, they have lots of ways of doing that.”
“But she didn’t use any of their ‘ways.’ I, myself, handed the bunch to her, and immediately she read them out, and in pitch dark, too. No, there was no chance for trickery. She read them in dark or light, equally well. And not a seal broken or an envelope torn. Now, then!”
“No chance for a confederate?”
“Not the least. We sat in a row, and she sat facing us, fully eight feet away. And what could a confederate do? I handed her the envelopes,—she gave them back to me,—intact. Not one of us moved. When it was dark, her voice proved she was in her chair, and when I flashed on the light suddenly, there she was, without a change of posture, holding the envelopes exactly as I had given them to her. I tell you she’s the real thing. I’ve read up on the trickery business, and all the books say that while there is lots of fraud, there is also a certain amount of telepathy or clairvoyance or whatever you call it, that’s true. And that’s her sort.”
“Well, who is the man? Did she tell you?”
“No, she didn’t know. But I know.”
“Who, then?”
“Eugene Courtenay.”
“What?”
“Of course it is. I’ve had him in the back of my head for some time, but I couldn’t get a peg to hang a clue on. Now, I see how he could have done it. He did do it, just as the lady said. He slipped in, stabbed his man, turned off the light, and—slipped out again, past Mrs. Stannard.”
“Why didn’t she know it?”
“She did know it! Don’t you see? Those two are in love. They wanted Stannard out of the way. But I don’t think there was collusion. I think it was this way. You know, it is hi
story that Mrs. Stannard and Courtenay were alone in the Billiard Room. Of course he was making love to her, and bemoaning the fact of Stannard’s existence. Now, either he went from her into the studio, and she knew it, or else, he went away, as they say, and returned, through the Billiard Room—and she didn’t know it.”
“How could she help seeing him?”
“Oh, say she was crying,—or had buried her face in a sofa cushion,—or was sitting before the fire and he passed behind her. But admit that he could have gone through that room unknown to her,—which, of course, he could. Well, he goes in, and, later, in the dark, he goes out the same way. I don’t know about her knowledge of any part of this performance, but I think she knew nothing of it, or she wouldn’t have engaged the occult lady.”
“She did that to clear herself.”
“Yes, and Miss Vernon, too. But when the Priestess, as they call her, spoke of a tall, dark man, with a beard, Mrs. Stannard was scared to death and wanted it all called off.”
“A tall man, with a beard?”
“Yes, a dark, pointed beard! Isn’t that Courtenay?”
“Sounds like him. Did she describe him further?”
“Yes, but only when I dragged it out of her. She vowed she couldn’t see him clearly, and I pretended I wanted her to say a round, smooth-shaven face, and little by little I wormed it out, and it was Courtenay to the life. Then, Mrs. Stannard weakened on the whole show, which proves it.”
“You say you’ve thought of him before?”
“Only vaguely. But you know his story. How he sat on the lawn bench and watched the lights go off and on! Good work, that! He himself turned them off and then escaped to the lawn, and cleverly sat there to see what occurred, instead of going home, and thereby being suspected.”
“And kept still when he found those two women were accused?”
“Sure. He knew they’d get off all right, and if he expected to marry Mrs. Stannard, he couldn’t let himself get into the game. So he made up his simple, clever yarn, and stuck to it. Yes, sir, Courtenay’s your man!”
“Wait, what about that conversation Mrs. Stannard overheard? She says her husband was talking to a woman.”
“She made that up. Probably she had a glimmer of suspicion toward Courtenay, and did anything she could to make it seem somebody else.”
“Then she hired this visionary, and that brought about the very revelation she didn’t want!”
“But she never dreamed it would do so. She had no faith in the thing, and thought it would merely divert suspicion to some unknown intruder. And so it would, if I hadn’t pinned the Seeress down to a careful description. Then, the more Mrs. Stannard showed discomfiture the more I knew I was right.”
“I believe you, Bobsy. Now, how shall we go about proving it?”
“It will prove itself. It’s a case of murder will out. You’ll see!”
CHAPTER XIII
An Alibi Needed
Very discreetly Bobsy conducted his interview with Eugene Courtenay. The detective wanted to trap his man before he could realise any danger, so he called on him the morning after his talk with Steele.
Courtenay was not a business man. He called himself a farmer, but his farming was of the fancy variety and was done almost entirely by expert gardeners. His place was not far from the Folly, and when Bobsy called, at about eleven o’clock, he was received courteously enough by the man he desired to see.
“It’s this way, Mr. Courtenay,” said Bobsy, after a few preliminaries, “in the interests of law and justice, I want you to tell me a little more in detail the story you told at the inquest.”
“There are no further details than those I related, Mr. Roberts. What have you learned that makes you think my testimony of sudden importance?”
Clearly, this was not a man to be easily hoodwinked. Bobsy felt his way. “Not of sudden importance. But all testimony is important, and sometimes by elaboration it becomes illuminative.”
“Good word, illuminative,” remarked Courtenay. “But I cannot help to shed light for you, I fear. Just what do you want to know?”
Here was an opening. Bobsy accepted it as such.
“At what time did you leave the Stannard house that night?”
“I don’t know, really. One doesn’t note hours when not on business matters. It must have been between eleven and half-past. That’s as near as I can come to it. Why?”
The last word was shot at him, and Bobsy almost jumped.
“It is my duty to ask,” he said coolly. “At what time did you reach home? I suppose you don’t know that, either.”
“I do not. But I didn’t come home at once——”
“Yes, I know; you sat on a bench on the Folly lawn. Were you in evening togs, Mr. Courtenay?”
“I was.”
“Had you on a hat?”
Eugene Courtenay started. But he answered at once: “Not a hat. I wore a cap over there. I often do when I go to a neighbour’s.”
“And you had it on when you sat on the bench?”
“Why, confound it, man. I don’t know! I suppose I did. No, let me see. I believe I was carrying it, and laid it on the bench beside me.”
“And left it there?”
Courtenay laughed a little self-consciously. “Yes, I did. I came nearly home before I thought of it. Then I went back and gathered it in. Why?”
Again that direct, snapped-out question.
“What was going on at the house when you went back?”
“How should I know? After events prove that the tragedy in the studio was then being gone through with—but I had no idea of that at the time. I glanced at the house, of course. There was a light in the studio—in fact, lights over most of the house. I found my cap and came on home. Why?”
“I’ll answer your whys, Mr. Courtenay. Because the police have reason to think your story is not entirely true. Because we think it was you, yourself, who turned off the studio light.”
“Do I understand, Mr. Roberts, you mean that I—let us speak plainly—that I killed Eric Stannard?”
“Did you, Mr. Courtenay?”
“I refuse to answer such an absurd question! In the first place, I was out on the lawn, when the light went out.”
“So you say. But who corroborates that?”
“I was also out there when the light flashed on again.”
“Yes, that may be true, but your first statement is not. You left Mrs. Stannard in the Billiard Room, you went into the studio—whether in the interim you had been out on the lawn or not, doesn’t matter—you stabbed Eric Stannard, you turned off the light, and returning through the Billiard Room, you went back to that bench, and awaited developments.”
“You must be insane!”
“Oh, no, I’m not insane. Neither were you. It was a clever dodge. You didn’t know the women would be implicated, but when they were, however you might regret that, you couldn’t confess your own guilt——”
“Why couldn’t I?”
“Because,” Bobsy looked squarely at him, “because you love Mrs. Stannard——”
“Stop! Don’t you dare to speak her name! You mischief-maker! You absolute and unqualified——”
“Stop, yourself, Mr. Courtenay! These heroics harm your case—they don’t help it.”
“But it’s false! It isn’t true! I didn’t do it! I was——”
“Yes?”
“I was on that bench all the time, till I went home——”
“Did you see any one, any servant or gardener, perhaps, who can vouch for your story?”
“No—I can’t remember that I did. But, man, alive, how could I get in and out of that room? It has been proved——”
“It has been proved that you could have entered unseen and could have left unseen.”
“But how?”
“Answer this question truthfully. What was Mrs. Stannard doing, when you left her in the Billiard Room?”
“She was sitting on one of the leather seats that are built to the wall.�
�
“Was she looking at you, as you left?”
“No. She had buried her face in a pillow against which she leaned.”
“Why did she do this? Was she feeling ill?”
“No.”
“Then why the act?”
“I cannot say.”
“You mean you will not. Was it because you had said something to her that caused her emotion?”
“I refuse to answer, and you have no right to ask.”
“Very well, don’t answer. But, you must admit, that if her face was buried in the pillow, she could not see if a man passed through the Billiard Room to the studio.”
“But no one did!”
“How do you know?”
“Because I should have seen him from the bench where I sat.”
“No, you would not, because you were the man.”
“You accuse me?”
“I do.”
“I deny it. But I shall say no more to you. Have you a warrant for my arrest?”
“I have not.”
“Then go—and go quickly, before I tell you what I think of you!”
But Bobsy Roberts was no fool. He said, quietly, “I’d rather you would tell me what you think of me. It may help me to get at the truth. There are reasons why we are inquiring into your connection with this matter—you will hear the reasons soon enough. There is peculiar but direct evidence that you are the man who stabbed Mr. Stannard.”
“Evidence? What do you mean?”
“Just what I say. But never mind that. You have nothing else to tell me? No proof to adduce that you were just where you claim to have been when the studio was darkened?”
“No! No proof, because none is needed. You can’t have evidence—it is impossible!”
“Then that is all, Mr. Courtenay. You needn’t tell me what you think of me. Your opinion doesn’t interest me. But perhaps after you hear the evidence I speak of, you’ll sing another tune. Oh, I’m not going to tell you about it. Ask Mrs. Stannard.”
“I asked you not to mention that lady’s name. Good morning, Mr. Roberts.”
“Good morning.” And Bobsy went away, filled with conviction of Eugene Courtenay’s guilt.
The Alan Ford Mystery MEGAPACK® Page 32