"'The baby is nine months old, weight eighteen pounds, blue eyes, fine, soft hair just beginning to come in. A sturdy child. Is at the age where he likes to pull himself to his feet. Will soon be walking. Wore an oyster-white beret, pleated coat and leggings, all of a soft material resembling velours. As his motherleft his gocart behind, she will have to carry him until such time as she can procure another. A small, pretty, expensively dressed girl carrying a child that is really too heavy for her, ought to be a conspicuous object wherever seen. The nearest policeman should be notified.'"
The speaker passed to another subject and Agnes switched off the radio. Unable to bear Lee's bland, steady gaze, she turned away from him. After a moment she murmured hoarsely:
"You have known this from the first?"
Lee said: "I have known it for a few days past."
"Why didn't you warn me?"
"I was forbidden by the police."
"Surely I had a right to know!"
"They gave me no latitude."
After a silence she said in an uncertain voice: "You had better leave me."
Lee sat still. He could imagine the hell of bitterness that filled the woman, supposing that she had had a man murdered for nothing--possibly two men, but he was unable to feel much pity for her. He kept his mouth shut, knowing that a passionate woman cannot endure a silence.
Her voice scaled up hysterically. "Did you just come here to gloat over me?"
"No," said Lee.
"You lie! You're enjoying this!"
"Far from it," said Lee soberly.
She whirled around. Her beautiful face seemed to have disintegrated. She looked awful. Her voice rose almost to a scream. "Then what did you come nosing here for? What are you after? What are you after?"
"The truth," said Lee.
She laughed in an ugly fashion. "The truth: A fat lot you care for the truth! You came here to see me suffer! You're just an idler, a sadist! It gives you pleasure to humiliate people and watch them suffer!"
Lee took a pinch of snuff.
Her voice rose higher. "Well, I'll tell you the truth! Nothing can be hidden now! I'll pay him off, at any rate. I don't care if it destroys me, too. The truth is I have ruined myself for a liar and a murderer! It was Al Yohe who shot my husband! He hadn't left the house when Jules came home. He was sitting here in this room while I dressed. I lied and I forced my maid to lie in order to save him! Al was sitting here; the door into the corridor was open; he could hear the elevator door slide back; he ran out into the foyer and shot Jules. He had threatened to do it!"
"Why?" asked Lee mildly.
The little question pulled her up short. "Why? Why?" she repeated, staring wildly.
"He couldn't have planned to marry you if he had a wife to whom he was devoted."
She sneered. "How do you know he was 'devoted' to her?"
"He arranged to have her join him today, though it would double the risk for both of them. Apparently he can't do without her."
A spasm of pain passed over Agnes' face. With a frantic gesture, she tore part of the lace at the bosom of her negligee and let it hang. Even in her abandon, there was something theatrical in her aspect. "Oh, God!" she cried, "and this is the man I lied to save!"
"You haven't answered my question," Lee reminded her.
"I don't have to answer your questions!"
Lee faced her down. "What reason could Al have had for shooting your husband ?"
With an effort she obtained control over herself. "I'll tell you...I'll tell you. Al owed Jules two hundred thousand dollars for the decorations in La Sourabaya, and he couldn't pay it! Two hundred thousand dollars! That's what he killed him for!"
"He'll have to pay his estate," suggested Lee.
"He'll gain time."
"Did you see Al shoot Gartrey?" asked Lee.
"I almost did. I almost did. When I heard the shot I ran into this room. Al was gone. I ran into the music room. Through the opening I could see Jules lying on the floor in the foyer and Al standing over him with the gun in his hand, staring down with an expression of fiendish rage. The gun was smoking! Al didn't see me. He dropped the gun, snatched his coat and hat out of the closet and ran back into the service corridor. And I...I went to my poor husband."
She put a hand to her eyes in a heartbroken gesture. Lee was not impressed. "Where was Eliza?" he asked dryly.
"She joined me in the foyer."
"Let us have Eliza in here," said Lee.
Agnes dropped the sorrow-stricken pretense. "I'll do nothing of the sort!" she said furiously.
Lee was standing near the fireplace. He put out his hand and pushed the bell button. Agnes ran to intercept him but was too late. She was panting like a runner, almost speechless with rage.
"How dare you...how dare you presume to give orders in my house!"
"This is hardly the time for good manners," said Lee. "I want to see the woman before you have time to rehearse her in a new story."
Denman entered. His black eyes were as bright and soulless as shoe buttons. Agnes, walking quickly away to a window, kept her back turned to them.
"Is Miss Eliza about?" asked Lee mildly.
"Why...why, I believe so, sir."
"Please ask her to step here for a moment."
Agnes, without turning around, spoke from the window. "Do no such thing! I forbid it!"
The man looked sharply from one to the other. Lee, when it suited him, had a powerful eye. He said quietly: "You heard me. Fetch Miss Eliza here."
The man went out like an automaton, closing the door after him.
As it turned out, Eliza was in the adjoining room, the dressing room. Lee heard a rush of feet in the corridor. Hastening to the door, he flung it open, but was only in time to see Eliza disappearing through the door into the foyer. She slammed it after her.
The manservant was standing openmouthed in the corridor. His expression of innocent confusion was overdone. "I...I told her, sir," he stammered, "but she ran away."
Lee could not very well chase the lady's maid through the apartment. He turned back into the boudoir, closing the door and helping himself to another pinch of snuff as an aid in recovering his poise.
"Now you get out!" snarled Agnes.
Lee's eyebrows ran up. "Shouldn't we have a little further talk?" he mildly suggested.
"Get out! Get out!" she screamed. "I want no further talk with you! Oh, how I hate you, nasty, sneering little man! Making believe to be my friend! Pretending that you knew nothing and all the time leading me on! I see now what your game is. That was just a cock-and-bull story you told the police about Al Yohe forcing his way into your place. You know where he is! Al is your favorite, isn't he, and you are bent on getting him off at my expense! Not if I know it! Not if I know it! I'll tell all now. I don't care who is hurt by it. Eliza and I together will convict him! I'll see him burn!"
"You had better sleep on it first," said Lee.
"Get out!" she screamed. "I know what I've got to do! You're a liar and a cheat! You're a traitor to your own class..."
Lee thought: She has seen George Coler.
Agnes flung at him what was to her the final insult: "Communist!"
Lee couldn't help himself; he laughed. "Good afternoon," he said bowing. On his way out he had a sense that somebody was keeping out of sight in the music room, but he did not investigate.
Chapter 16
When Lee let himself into his own apartment, Jermyn was in the gallery. He said: "Mrs. Gartrey just called you up, sir."
Lee smiled grimly. "Already?"
"Wanted you to call her up the moment you came in, sir. Said it was vitally important."
Lee went to a telephone. Agnes had changed her tune. "Oh, Mr. Mappin, what must you be thinking of me!" she wailed. "I lost control of myself. Will you believe me when I say I didn't mean a word of what I said! It was due to the shock of what I learned over the radio."
"I quite understand," said Lee soothingly. "And can you ever forgive me?"
>
"Certainly!" said Lee. "I am not at all a sensitive person. You are freely forgiven."
"Oh, how good of you!"
She went on protesting her remorse, while Lee waited, smiling, for the real object of her call. Finally it came.
"I hardly dare ask it after what has happened, but will you please, please, come back to me right away? We must, as you said, talk things over. You are the only one who is in my confidence, the only one who can help me to do what is right."
Lee's smile became broader. "Surely, I'll come right back."
"Don't take action of any sort until you have seen me!"
"Certainly not, Mrs. Gartrey."
"Oh, thank you!"
In the magnificent entrance hall of the Gartrey apartment house, Lee found George Coler pacing up and down, biting his lip. His face still had a mottled look. He slipped his hand under Lee's arm as if they had been intimate friends and led him away out of hearing of the hall attendants.
"Mappin, I am so thankful I was able to intercept you," he said. "Don't go up to Mrs. Gartrey now."
"But why not?" said Lee. "She sent for me."
"I know, I know, I have just left her. She is beside herself."
"I understand that. I was here earlier."
"She told me you were...Mappin, this story given out by the police today has administered a frightful shock to her. She is half out of her mind. Doesn't know what she is doing."
Lee wondered what the man's game was. Perhaps he was actually telling the truth. It's the last thing one suspects of a prominent man nowadays.
"It will be a good thing in the end," Coler continued. "It will cure her of this insane infatuation for Al Yohe. I had hoped to see her get over it gradually. I knew I could trust her good sense in the long run. But to get it like this has completely bowled her over...Just give her a little time to find herself, Map-pin. It is cruel to press a woman in her condition."
"I'm not going to press her," said Lee. "Just what is it that you are afraid of?"
"She appears to be determined to tell her story to the newspapers, to the police, to publish it to the world! It would ruin her whole life. In mercy, Mappin..."
"I'm not going to allow her to do anything like that," said Lee, "not if I can prevent it."
Coler stared. "You mean that?"
"Surely. I am no believer in the sensationalism of the press. It not only feeds the public's worst appetites, but sometimes obstructs justice as well."
"And the police?" asked Coler anxiously.
"I have no intention of passing on her story to the police at this juncture."
Coler picked up Lee's hand and pumped it up and down. "Thank God!" he exclaimed. "I knew you were a good fellow, Mappin! We had some hasty words in my office that I am sorry for; I knew you were sound at heart!"
"Well, thanks!" said Lee.
"I couldn't do a thing with Agnes!"
"It may not be as bad as you think. I have often noticed that a woman is most obstinate when she is at the point of giving in."
Coler laughed heartily. "That's good!" he said. "I must remember it. You don't mind if I bring it out as my own, do you? We can't all be as witty as you are."
"Not at all," said Lee.
"Call me up after you have talked to her," said Coler with a glint of ugly eagerness in his eyes.
"I can't promise to do that," said Lee coolly. "Not if she talks to me in confidence, you know."
Coler gave him a hard look and strode on out of the building.
Upstairs Lee was once more shown into the pink boudoir by young Denman. The servant's face was as smooth and waxen as ever. Agnes received Lee with an air of deprecating wistfulness. She had changed the torn negligee for a sober black and white robe, and her face had been made up anew. When the servant left the room, she reassumed her heartbroken air and made play with a lace handkerchief.
Lee cut short her self-reproaches. "Please," he said, "I have forgotten what happened here earlier. I made all allowances for the shock you received. Let's begin over."
"You are so good," she murmured, touching the handkerchief to her eyes. "Have you telephoned what I told you to the police?"
"No!" said Lee.
"To the newspapers?"
"Certainly not!"
Agnes lowered her head to hide the look of satisfaction in her face. "I am suffering cruelly," she murmured in a piteous voice. "No man could ever understand what I am going through!...Long practice has made Al Yohe expert in deceiving women. I didn't realize that. His air of frankness and honesty was perfect! Day after day he came here to pour out his pretended passion for me. I laughed at him, then I listened, then I weakened. I led such a loveless life, you see. And all the time he had murder in his heart! He was just using me as a means of reaching my husband! Could a woman suffer a more awful humiliation!"
Lee thought: Your story does not hang together very well, my lady.
"I am only a woman," she continued, "with all a woman's faults and weaknesses. The only way I can heal the frightful wound he has given me is by helping the law to punish him. I want to see him suffer. Do you blame me for that?"
"Not in the least," said Lee briskly.
"He no doubt still believes that he can do anything he likes with me and I don't want him to be warned that I have turned against him. The only dangerous witness against him, as he thinks, has been removed by death and he may give himself up now, thinking that he can brazen out his crime with my help. I want my pitiful story to remain a secret until after Al Yohe is lodged in jail. I will then tell the whole truth as a warning to other women."
"That is exactly what I would advise," said Lee. "Then I can depend on you to say nothing?"
"Absolutely!" Lee, delicately probing like a surgeon, asked casually: "Why didn't you say this to George Coler just now and put him out of his anxiety?"
Agnes looked at him sharply. "What about George Coler?"
"I met him downstairs. He was half sick with anxiety because you had told him you were going to publish the whole story. He begged me to reason with you."
She shrugged pettishly. "George irritates me so that I say things to him I don't mean. I suppose he's the best friend I've got, but he's in love with me."
"So I gathered," said Lee.
"It's horrible to me to be reminded of that now. I'm done with men forever! I hate love!"
Lee thought: I wonder!
"However," she went on, "I promise you I will make it up to him. George is really a good fellow."
"Quite," said Lee. "Can we depend on Eliza to keep her mouth shut?"
"Absolutely...You wanted to talk to Eliza, didn't you? I'll call her." She went to the door of the dressing room and opened it. "Eliza, come in, please. Mr. Mappin wants to talk to you."
Lee thought: Not much use now since they've had their heads together.
Eliza entered self-consciously. Her large, pale face wore an expression of lugubriousness fashioned after that of her mistress. She, too, had a handkerchief. She was perspiring and the pince-nez kept slipping down.
"Sit down," said Lee. "I don't like to see you standing when you're in such distress."
"Oh, sir!" moaned the lady's maid, seating herself on the extreme edge of a chair.
"Tell me precisely what happened on that tragic Monday afternoon."
Eliza wiped her eyes. "Sir, I said what wasn't true when I told you that I had let Mr. Yohe out of the apartment before the shot was fired. He was still here. He was sitting in this room while I dressed Mrs. Gar-trey. At first, the door was open and they talked back and forth, but before I disrobed her I closed the door."
Lee thought: So far, this is true. He asked with a casual air: "Was the door from the dressing room into the corridor open?"
The question took Eliza off her guard. "Yes...no...I don't remember, sir."
"It was closed," put in Agnes sharply. "All the doors are closed while I am dressing."
"Naturally," said Lee. "Please go on, Miss Eliza."
"I ha
d almost finished dressing Mrs. Gartrey when we heard the shot. Mrs. Gartrey jumped up and ran in here."
"What did you do?"
"Me? I was paralyzed with fright, sir. For a moment or two I couldn't move. Then I thought of my mistress. My mistress came first with me. I ran in here after her. The room was empty. I ran on into the music room and she was there. I was in time to see Mr. Yohe disappearing through the rear door in the foyer. He didn't see us. After a little, Mr. Hawkins, the butler, came into the foyer and kneeled down beside Mr. Gartrey's body."
Lee looked questioningly at Agnes.
"I must make a correction in my statement there," she said quickly. "Eliza is right. Eliza and I remained clinging to each other in the music room until after Hawkins came out into the foyer."
"I see," said Lee. He turned to the maid. "In your former statement you said you ran through the corridor into the foyer."
Eliza hung her head. "I was not telling the truth, sir."
"But what reason did you have for saying that?"
"No particular reason, sir."
"Hawkins stated that you came out of the corridor door."
"Hawkins was a liar," said Agnes sharply. "What difference does it make, anyhow?"
"You are right," said Lee soothingly. "It makes no difference. But this is important. Miss Eliza stated to me that you had left the dressing room before the shot was fired; that she was alone in there when she heard the shot."
Agnes looked daggers at the maid. Eliza was terrified. Her nose glasses fell off. "No, sir! No, sir! You have that wrong, sir. We was together!"
"I made a note of it at the time."
"No, sir! I never said such a thing, sir. I couldn't have said it, it's not true! We was together!"
"Think what you are saying, Eliza," put in Agnes acidly. "Mr. Mappin mustn't get the impression that we have anything to hide."
The maid adjusted her glasses with shaking fingers. "No, Madam, I know that. You and me was together. Please believe me, sir."
Agnes said harshly: "Sooner or later you will have to go on the witness stand, Eliza. Will you be able to swear to what you say?"
"I will swear it before any judge in the land!" cried Eliza. "We was together in the dressing room when we heard the shot. And you said: 'What's that?'"
ALM06 Who Killed the Husband? Page 14