She had told them at home that she was going to spend the night with a friend; but only her driver knew who that friend was. Therefore a very natural sense of guilt mingled with her emotions at finding herself alone on a scene whose gruesome mystery she could solve only by identifying herself with the place and the man who had perished there.
Dismissing from her mind all thought of self, she strove to think as he thought, and act as he acted on the night when he found himself (a man of but little courage) left in this room with an ailing child.
At odds with himself, his wife, and possibly with the child screaming away in its crib, what would he be apt to do in his present emergency? Nothing at first, but as the screaming continued he would remember the old tales of fathers walking the floor at night with crying babies, and hasten to follow suit. Violet, in her anxiety to reach his inmost thought, crossed to where the crib had stood, and, taking that as a start, began pacing the room in search of the spot from which a bullet, if shot, would glance aside from the mirror in the direction of the window. (Not that she was ready to accept this theory of Mrs. Hammond, but that she did not wish to entirely dismiss it without putting it to the test.)
She found it in an unexpected quarter of the room and much nearer the bed-head than where his body was found. This, which might seem to confuse matters, served, on the contrary to remove from the case one of its most serious difficulties. Standing here, he was within reach of the pillow under which his pistol lay hidden, and if startled, as his wife believed him to have been by a noise at the other end of the room, had but to crouch and reach behind him in order to find himself armed and ready for a possible intruder.
Imitating his action in this as in other things, she had herself crouched low at the bedside and was on the point of withdrawing her hand from under the pillow, when a new surprise checked her movement and held her fixed in her position, with eyes staring straight at the adjoining wall. She had seen there what he must have seen in making this same turn – the dark bars of the opposite window-frame outlined in the mirror – and understood at once what had happened. In the nervousness and terror of the moment, George Hammond had mistaken this reflection of the window for the window itself, and shot impulsively at the man he undoubtedly saw covering him from the trellis without. But while this explained the shattering of the mirror, how about the other and still more vital question, of where the bullet went afterward? Was the angle at which it had been fired acute enough to send it out of a window diagonally opposed? No; even if the pistol had been held closer to the man firing it than she had reason to believe, the angle still would be oblique enough to carry it on to the further wall.
But no sign of any such impact had been discovered on this wall. Consequently, the force of the bullet had been expended before reaching it, and when it fell–
Here, her glance, slowly travelling along the floor, impetuously paused. It had reached the spot where the two bodies had been found, and unconsciously her eyes rested there, conjuring up the picture of the bleeding father and the strangled child. How piteous and how dreadful it all was. If she could only understand– Suddenly she rose straight up, staring and immovable in the dim light. Had the idea – the explanation – the only possible explanation covering the whole phenomena come to her at last?
It would seem so, for as she so stood, a look of conviction settled over her features, and with this look, evidences of a horror which for all her fast accumulating knowledge of life and its possibilities made her appear very small and very helpless.
A half-hour later, when Mrs. Hammond, in her anxiety at hearing nothing more from Miss Strange, opened the door of her room, it was to find, lying on the edge of the sill, the little detective’s card with these words hastily written across it:
I do not feel as well as I could wish, and so have telephoned to my driver to come and take me home. I will either see or write you within a few days. But do not allow yourself to hope. I pray you do not allow yourself the least hope; the outcome is still very problematical.
* * *
When Violet’s employer entered his office the next morning it was to find a veiled figure awaiting him which he at once recognized as that of his little deputy. She was slow in lifting her veil and when it finally came free he felt a momentary doubt as to his wisdom in giving her just such a matter as this to investigate. He was quite sure of his mistake when he saw her face, it was so drawn and pitiful.
“You have failed,” said he.
“Of that you must judge,” she answered; and drawing near she whispered in his ear.
“No!” he cried in his amazement.
“Think,” she murmured, “think. Only so can all the facts be accounted for.”
“I will look into it; I will certainly look into it,” was his earnest reply. “If you are right – but never mind that. Go home and take a horseback ride in the Park. When I have news in regard to this I will let you know. Till then forget it all. Hear me, I charge you to forget everything but your balls and your parties.”
And Violet obeyed him.
Some few days after this, the following statement appeared in all the papers:
“Owing to some remarkable work done by the firm of – – , the well-known private detective agency, the claim made by Mrs. George Hammond against the Shuler Life Insurance Company is likely to be allowed without further litigation. As our readers will remember, the contestant has insisted from the first that the bullet causing her husband’s death came from another pistol than the one found clutched in his own hand. But while reasons were not lacking to substantiate this assertion, the failure to discover more than the disputed track of a second bullet led to a verdict of suicide, and a refusal of the company to pay.
“But now that bullet has been found. And where? In the most startling place in the world, viz.: in the larynx of the child found lying dead upon the floor beside his father, strangled as was supposed by the weight of that father’s arm. The theory is, and there seems to be none other, that the father, hearing a suspicious noise at the window, set down the child he was endeavouring to soothe and made for the bed and his own pistol, and, mistaking a reflection of the assassin for the assassin himself, sent his shot sidewise at a mirror just as the other let go the trigger which drove a similar bullet into his breast. The course of the one was straight and fatal and that of the other deflected. Striking the mirror at an oblique angle, the bullet fell to the floor where it was picked up by the crawling child, and, as was most natural, thrust at once into his mouth. Perhaps it felt hot to the little tongue; perhaps the child was simply frightened by some convulsive movement of the father who evidently spent his last moment in an endeavour to reach the child, but, whatever the cause, in the quick gasp it gave, the bullet was drawn into the larynx, strangling him.
“That the father’s arm, in his last struggle, should have fallen directly across the little throat is one of those anomalies which confounds reason and misleads justice by stopping investigation at the very point where truth lies and mystery disappears.
“Mrs. Hammond is to be congratulated that there are detectives who do not give too much credence to outward appearances.
“A spokesman for the police stated that they expect soon to capture the man who sped home the death-dealing bullet.”
* * *
THE SHOPLIFTERS
ARTHUR B. REEVE
(Sleuth: Constance Dunlap.)
Arthur B. Reeve carved out a niche all his own in the mystery hall of fame when he created the first scientific detective, Craig Kennedy, who applied newly emerging discoveries to crime fighting in the age of the horseless carriage. Unfortunately, the demand for Kennedy tales kept Reeve so busy that he only found time to write one volume of stories featuring his female sleuth, Constance Dunlap: Woman Detective (1916). This is a shame, for unlike most masculine detectives, whose interest in crime and criminals ends with its detection, Ms Dunlap remains concerned for fate of criminal and victim alike after the crime is solved, often effecting
the reformation and rehabilitation of a former miscreant.
“Madam, would you mind going with me for a few moments to the office on the third floor?”
Constance Dunlap had been out on a shopping excursion. She had stopped at the jewellery counter of Stacy’s to have a ring repaired and had gone on to the leather goods department to purchase something else.
The woman who spoke to her was a quietly dressed young person, quite inconspicuous, with a keen eye that seemed to take in everything within a radius of a wide-angled lens at a glance.
She leaned over and before Constance could express even surprise, added in a whisper, “Look in your bag.”
Constance looked hastily, then realized what had happened. The ring was gone!
It gave her quite a shock, too, for the ring, a fine diamond, was a present from her husband, one of the few pieces of jewellery, treasured not only for its intrinsic value but also as a remembrance of Carlton and the supreme sacrifice he had made for her.
She had noticed nothing in the crowd, nothing more than she had noticed scores of times before. The woman watched her puzzled look.
“I’ve been following you,” she said. “By this time the other store detectives must have caught the shoplifter and bag-opener who touched you. You see, we don’t make any arrests in the store if we can help it, because we don’t like to make a scene. It’s bad for business. Besides, if she had anything else, we are safer when the case comes to court, if we have caught her actually leaving the store with it. Of course, when we make an arrest on the sidewalk, we bring the shoplifter back, but in a private, back elevator.”
Constance was following the young woman mechanically. At least there was a chance of recovering the ring.
“She was standing next to you at the jewellery counter,” she continued, “and if you will help identify her, the store management will appreciate it – and make it worth your while. Besides,” she urged, “It’s really your duty to do it, madam.”
Constance remembered now the rather simply but richly gowned young woman who had been standing next to her at the counter, seemingly unable to decide which of a number of beautiful rings she really wanted. She remembered because, with her own love of beauty, she had wanted one herself, in fact had thought at the time that she, too, might have difficulty in choosing.
With the added feeling of curiosity, Constance followed the woman detective up in the elevator.
In the office, apart in a little room curiously furnished with a camera, innumerable photographs, cabinets, and filing cases, was a young woman, perhaps twenty-six or seven. On a table before her lay a pile of laces and small trinkets. There, too, was the beautiful diamond ring which she had hidden in her muff. Constance fairly gasped at the sight.
The girl was sitting limply in a chair crying bitterly. She was not a hardened looking creature. In fact, her face bore evident traces of refinement, and her long, slender fingers hinted at a nervous, artistic temperament. It was rather a shock to see such a girl under such distressing circumstances.
“We’ve lost so much lately,” a small ferret-eyed man was saying, “that we must make an example of some one. It’s serious for us detectives, too. We’ll lose our jobs unless we can stop you boosters.”
“Oh – I – I didn’t mean to do it. I – I just couldn’t help it,” sobbed the girl over and over again.
“Yes,” drawled the man, “that’s what they all say. But you’ve been caught with the goods, this time, young lady.”
A woman entered, and the man turned to her quickly.
“Carr – Kitty Carr. Did you find anything under that name?”
“No, sir,” replied the woman store detective. “We’ve looked all through the records and the photographs. We don’t find her. And yet I don’t think it is an alias – at least, if it is, not an alias for any one we have any record of. I’ve a good eye for faces, and there isn’t one we have on file as – as good looking,” she added, perhaps with a little touch of wistfulness at her own plainness and this beauty gone wrong.
“This is the woman who lost the ring,” put in the other woman detective, motioning to Constance, who had accompanied her and was standing, a silent spectator.
The man held up the ring, which Constance had already recognized.
“Is that yours?” he asked.
For a moment, strangely, she hesitated. If it had been any other ring in the world she felt sure that she would have said no. But, then, she reflected, there was that pile of stuff. There was no use in concealing her ownership of the ring. “Yes,” she murmured.
“One moment, please,” answered the man brusquely. “I must send down for the salesgirl who waited on you to identify you and your check – a mere formality, you know, but necessary to keep things straight.”
Constance sat down.
“I suppose you don’t realize it,” explained the man, turning to Constance, “but the shoplifters of the city get away with a couple of million dollars’ worth of stuff every year. It’s the price we have to pay for displaying our goods. But it’s too high. They are the department store’s greatest unsolved problem. Now most of the stores are working together for their common interests, seeing what they can do to root them out. We all keep a sort of private rogue’s gallery of them. But we don’t seem to have anything on this girl, nor have any of the other stores who exchange photographs and information with us anything on her.”
“Evidently, then, it is her first offence,” put in Constance, wondering at herself. Strangely, she felt more of sympathy than of anger for the girl.
“You mean the first time she has been caught at it,” corrected the head of the store detectives.
“It is my weakness,” sobbed the girl. “Sometimes an irresistible impulse to steal comes over me. I just can’t help it.”
She was sobbing convulsively. As she talked and listened there seemed to come a complete breakdown. She wept as though her heart would break.
“Oh,” exclaimed the man, “can it! Cut out the sob stuff!”
“And yet,” mused Constance half to herself, watching the girl closely, “when one walks through the shops and sees thousands of dollars’ worth of goods lying unprotected on the counters, is it any wonder that some poor woman or girl should be tempted and fall? There, before her eyes and within her grasp, lies the very article above all others which she so ardently craves. No one is looking. The salesgirl is busy with another customer. The rest is easy. And then the store detective steps in – and here she is – captured.”
The girl had been listening wildly through her tears. “Oh,” she sobbed, “you don’t understand – none of you. I don’t crave anything. I – I just – can’t help it – and then, afterwards – I – I HATE the stuff – and I am so – afraid. I hurry home – and I – oh, what shall I do – what shall I do?”
Constance pitied her deeply. She looked from the wild-eyed, tear – stained face to the miscellaneous pile of material on the table, and the unwinking gaze of the store detectives. True, the girl had taken a very valuable diamond ring, and from herself. But the laces, the trinkets, all were abominably cheap, not worth risking anything for.
Constance’s attention was recalled by the man who beckoned her aside to talk to the salesgirl who had waited on her.
“You remember seeing this lady at the counter?” he asked of the girl. She nodded. “And that woman in there?” he motioned. Again the salesgirl nodded.
“Do you remember anything else that happened?” he asked Constance as they faced Kitty Carr and he handed Constance the ring.
Constance looked the detective squarely in the face for a moment.
“I have my ring. You have the other stuff,” she murmured. “Besides, there is no record against her. She doesn’t even look like a professional bad character. No – I’ll not appear to press the charge – I’ll make it as hard as I can before I’ll do it,” she added positively.
The woman, who had overheard, looked her gratitude. The detectives were preparing to
argue. Constance hardly knew what she was saying, as she hurried on before any one else could speak.
“No,” she added, “but I’ll tell you what I will do. If you will let her go I will look after her. Parole her, unofficially, with me.”
Constance drew a card from her case and handed it to the detective. He read it carefully, and a puzzled look came over his face. “Charge account – good customer – pays promptly,” he muttered under his breath.
For a moment he hesitated. Then he sat down at a desk.
“Mrs. Dunlap,” he said, “I’ll do it.”
He pulled a piece of printed paper from the desk, filled in a few blanks, then turned to Kitty Carr, handing her a pen.
“Sign here,” he said brusquely.
Constance bent over and read. It was a form of release:
“I, Kitty Carr, residing at – East – Third Street, single, age twenty-seven years, in consideration of the sum of One Dollar, hereby admit taking the following property… without having paid therefore and with intent not to pay therefore, and by reason of the withdrawal of the complaint of larceny, OF WHICH I AM GUILTY, I hereby remise, release, and forever discharge the said Stacy Co. or its representatives from any claims, action, or causes of action which I may have against the Stacy Co. or its representatives or agents by reason of the withdrawal of said charge of larceny and failure to prosecute.”
“Signed, Kitty Carr.”
“Now, Kitty,” soothed Constance, as the trembling signature was blotted and added to a photograph which had quietly been taken, “they are going to let you go this time – with me. Come, straighten your hat, wipe your eyes. You must take me home with you – where we can have a nice long talk. Remember, I am your friend.”
On the way uptown and across the city the girl managed to tell most of her history. She came from a family of means in another city. Her father was dead, but her mother and a brother were living. She herself had a small annuity, sufficient to live on modestly, and had come to New York seeking a career as an artist. Her story, her ambitions appealed to Constance, who had been somewhat of an artist herself and recognized even in talking to the girl that she was not without some ability.
Legendary Women Detectives Page 5