“Bert still sleeping?” Denny asked. “That’s good. He deserves a rest after that hike of his. Hasn’t got cold or anything, has he, Doctor?”
Walker shook his head and changed the subject. “Snow’s letting up,” he said shortly. “But that doesn’t mean that I’ll be able to get to town.”
“We’re snowed in,” Rowena explained proudly for the benefit of the rest. They commented on it and June was particularly enthusiastic. Asey stoically drank four cups of coffee. Blake swallowed a glass of milk, made some pretense of eating, gave it up and took to swinging his glasses monotonously. He was pale and it seemed to me that he had added lines to his face in the last half-hour.
At last we were through. Asey spoke to William, glanced at the doctor and got up from the table.
“What’ll we do for excitement?” June asked, and I saw his father wince.
“Guess we’ll manage,” Asey said dryly as William came back, followed by his wife and Lewis, who had put a coat on over his pajamas. Two chauffeurs, both in uniform, brought up in the rear.
“What’s the matter?” John asked. “Why the—er— the parade?”
Asey cleared his throat. “I’ve waited until after breakfast to tell you what’s happened. Mr. Stires is dead. He was poisoned after he got here last night, with arsenic, the doc says.”
He hesitated and I followed his eyes around the group. Not a muscle of Hobart’s face moved, but he was white underneath his tan. John looked as stunned as I had felt earlier in the day. June had been yawning, and the yawn was frozen in mid-air.
Rowena looked down at her plate, gulped and pushed the plate away. Her hand went out for her glass of water; she touched the glass, withdrew her hand. The twinkle had gone from Denny James’s eyes. He leaned back in his chair’ and lighted a cigarette. I noticed that he made no attempt to smoke it.
Mrs. Boles was frankly crying, and Lewis’s eyes glistened suspiciously. His face was too swathed in bandages for me to see more. I had not known which of the two chauffeurs was Tom, but now I knew, for the small man in gray walked over to Mrs. Boles and tried to comfort her. Blake’s man, tall and hard-looking, with a scar on his left cheek, looked only faintly interested.
Desire Allerton was, however, the most unmoved and unconcerned of all. I marveled at it, then remembered that she had not set eyes on her guardian until two days before, and that there was no particular reason for her to feel any great grief over his death.
“It wasn’t suicide,” Asey went on slowly, as though he were picking his words, “we don’t think ’twas any accident or anything like that. He was killed.” He looked at the doctor.
“I’ve nothing to add,” Walker said, “except that Asey is in charge. As I’ve already told Mr. Blake, we’re going to be here for some time. How long, I don’t know. But it will be a lot more pleasant for every one concerned if you’ll try to help Asey and understand that he’s trying only to do his duty.”
“And I shouldn’t ask for a better man,” John said promptly. “Asey, you go ahead. If we can help, we will, and you can bank on it.”
Asey smiled wryly. “Thank you very kindly. Now——”
“Mr. Mayo.” Tom had left his sister. “Did you say that Mr. Stires had been killed by arsenic?”
“Yup.”
“Is arsenic a powder?”
“Usually,” Walker said. “Why?”
“Would it be a white powder?”
“Yes.”
“Then please can I talk to you, Mr. Mayo?”
Asey nodded. “Sure thing. Mrs. Boles, you’d better see that Lewis gets back into bed. The rest of you’ll find the game-room warmest. We’ll go into the library, Tom. Doc, you looked Lewis over? N’en that’s all right. Miss Prue, will you come ’long?”
I followed them into the library, painfully conscious of Rowena’s hurt look. It was obvious that she understood that I had known about Bert and not told her.
I still had Ginger on his leash. He made for the fireplace and Asey smiled. “Take the c’mfortable chair an’ I’ll put on another log an’ try an’ warm you an’ your animule.” He removed a cushion from the window-seat and placed it in front of the fire. “Here, Ginge, have a seat. Guess he don’t need his leash in here, does he?”
“Thank you, Asey.” I noticed, inconsequentially enough, that he had picked out a bright orange pillow which matched the ribbon bow on the cat’s collar.
Tom stood and watched. He was, I thought, a perfectly nondescript person. He reminded me of the faces you see in news-reel crowds. There wasn’t a single thing about him which impressed me unless it was his utter lack of any outstanding quality at all.
“Well, Tom,” Asey said, “come over to the fire. What’s on your mind?”
“I drove the young lady down Tuesday in the Cadillac, Mr. Mayo. I wouldn’t of taken up your time if I hadn’t thought of something I thought you might not know about. At Plymouth she rapped on the window and told me to stop at the next drug-store. I drew up at that one by the traffic lights on the main street and got out and asked her if there was anything I could get for her. She said that she’d get what she wanted herself. I needed cigarettes so I went in after her and the druggist was putting up some white powders for her. And then when you said Mr. Stires was poisoned by arsenic, it come to my mind. That’s all.”
Walker swung around in his chair and looked at him.
“What did you think the powders were then?”
“I didn’t know. I never gave it a thought until Mr. Mayo spoke about arsenic and I’d read somewhere that it was a white powder. The left rear was shaky and I was too busy wondering if we was going to have a blowout after that construction and crushed stone above Plymouth to worry about the girl and her powders. I just thought of it now.”
“What you think of the girl?” Asey asked.
“I haven’t thought about her. My sister—Mrs. Boles, that is—she doesn’t like her.”
“Why not?”
“She covered the best towels with lipstick, and Clemmie says it won’t come off. Then there was the tea leaves.”
“What tea leaves?”
“Well, Clemmie reads tea leaves. I didn’t give it much thought, but four or five times these last couple of weeks, she’s seen trouble in the tea leaves. Trouble and a girl and a light. She’s been real worried about it. I didn’t pay much attention, but there’s been trouble, and, well, the girl’s here, and I guess that’s all.”
A smile hovered about Asey’s lips. “I see, Tom. Thank you for tellin’ us.”
“Not going to ask me anything else?” Tom sounded disappointed.
“Got anything else you want to say?”
“No, sir, but I sort of thought that you’d be wanting to know a lot of things.”
“I do,” Asey said. “They’s a lot of things I’d give all my ole collars an’ cuffs to know about, but I’m learnin’ enough, little by little, t’ keep me busy for one good while. We’ll call you in later if we want to ask you anythin’ more.”
As he closed the door, Asey laughed. “I was hopin’ against hope that we wouldn’t have to do any fiddlin’ around with that girl attall. She’s too good-lookin’ an’ besides, she’s sort of the obvious one to bother about. Ever notice how it’s all the time the best-lookin’ an’ the ugliest that causes the most trouble? Give me a medium good-looker any day. They don’t go around confusin’ things. Anyways, from what I seen of that Allerton girl, she’s a slippery cust’mer.”
“What are you going to do about her?” I asked.
“Call her in an’ ask her questions. I bet you she’ll lie like blazes if she ain’t too bored to talk anyhow. What about Blake’s room, Doc? I ain’t had a chance t’ ask you, what with scramblin’ three dozen eggs an’ little odds an’ ends like that.”
“I couldn’t find anything,” Walker answered. “If he had slipped poison into Stires’s food it’s pretty unlikely that he’d have been foolish enough to leave it around, anyway. He had a small bottle of medicine that he p
resented me with very seriously. Arsenic and strychnine that his doctor had given him: a drop in a glass of water before meals as a tonic. But it wasn’t that compound that killed Stires. There wasn’t enough in the bottle when it was full to hurt any one, even if it was taken in a single dose. It’s a bitter-tasting mess, anyway. Stires couldn’t have taken it without knowing it,—and I didn’t find any traces of strychnine. So that’s that.”
“Well,” Asey got up. “I’ll go get little Sunshine an’ see what she’s got to say about her powders.”
“Don’t let her bring that dog,” I added.
Asey laughed. “I won’t.”
Walker paced up and down the floor. It was the first time that I’d really seen him in anything that resembled daylight and I looked at him more closely than I had heretofore.
His clothes, now a little mussed, were good in a quietly professional way. He had put on a pair of thick tortoise-shell rimmed glasses that gave him a studious expression. He was young, about thirty-five, I decided, and I wondered why he had chosen to bury himself in a small town. I asked him.
“Wanted a chance to rest and write a book,” he said. “So far I’ve got along famously. No one ever really gets sick down here. Once in a while some one cuts a finger or gets indigestion from too much fried food and I have a few regulars with rheumatism. I guess it’s true that Cape Codders don’t die. They just dry up and blow away. Why, even with this hot-and-cold weather, there’ve been only two colds. Which reminds me that I should have gone to see one of them, Mary Gross, yesterday and didn’t.”
“Is she the old lady that makes candles up on the Truro road?”
“Yes. But she was all right Tuesday, when I saw her last, and if she hasn’t taken to doctoring herself with what she calls ‘yarbs,’ she’ll be all right,” the doctor answered.
Asey entered with Desire Allerton in tow. She wore to-day an orange corduroy suit and her finger-nails were a beautiful tangerine. I couldn’t help wondering if she bought her dresses to match her nail polish, or the other way around.
“What kind of powders did you buy Tuesday in Plymouth?” Asey asked.
“Powders? Oh I Yes. Headache powders.”
“Take ’em reg’lar, or what?”
“The doctor on the boat prescribed them for me. I was sick coming over and he gave me the prescription so that I could have them if I needed them. I felt sick coming down in the car—I still hadn’t got over that crossing—and so I bought them.”
“Mind if we have a look at ’em?”
“If you want to; go get them. They’re on the shelf in my bathroom. In a pink box with a label.”
Asey promptly left. The girl lighted a cigarette and looked out over the bay. We were silent until Asey came back with the pink box and gave it to Walker. I watched interestedly as the latter opened up a small kit which he took from his large black bag, and set to work. He fiddled around with test tubes and burners. Then he turned to the girl.
“This is the prescription that the doctor on shipboard gave you? How many powders have you taken?”
“Yes. It’s the same one. I’ve taken four.”
“There are only six powders here. The label says there were a dozen.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“And you’re sure you took four?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Then,” Walker smiled, “I congratulate you on your resistance. The powder I’ve just tested is pure arsenic.”
CHAPTER FIVE
ARSENIC
“PROBLEM:” Asey remarked pensively, “if A’s got twelve powders an’ takes four, why should six be left behind? What happens to the other two? An’ why should they be arsenic?”
“I don’t know where the other two went,” Desire said shortly. “Probably they only gave me ten.”
“Why arsenic?” Asey repeated.
“Those powders aren’t arsenic. You can’t get arsenic wholesale at drug-stores without something more than a prescription for headache powders. You’re trying to be funny.”
“I’m not,” Walker informed her. “I’ve seldom been more serious. If I had a guinea-pig here, I could soon prove to you that I’m not fooling. This powder is arsenic. Pure arsenic. When did you take the last one?”
“Before dinner last evening.”
“See here, are you sure that this is the same box? Are you positive it’s the one you bought?”
She glanced at it casually. “It’s the same as far as I can see.”
“Possibly you’re telling the truth,” Walker said, “but how you could have taken four of those powders and not died an unhappy death before now, I can’t understand.”
“Listen.” She stood up. “I took four of those powders. They’re not arsenic. No more than you are.”
And even though I wanted to believe otherwise, it seemed to me that she was telling the truth.
“Miss Allerton, come here. Look.”
He opened one of the white slips, showed her the contents. “Here. Take this magnifying-glass. Were your powders like that?”
She looked at him disgustedly. “I didn’t examine the others through any microscope. What makes you think I’d know if they were different?”
“Well, you can look, anyway.” He forced the glass on her.
“They seem the same to me,” she said after a few seconds. “These look more like crystals and the others were more grainy, if you know what I mean. But I may be wrong. I couldn’t tell for sure. If you’d not said that they were different, I’d probably not noticed a thing about them. But are these arsenic? Really?”
“Yes.”
She shrugged. “I don’t understand it at all. It’s lucky for me that you found out about them. I was planning to take another right now. I’d probably have taken it by this time.”
“How d’you ’count for all this?” Asey asked curiously.
“I don’t know. I suppose that some one thought I’d have a hard time explaining them if Uncle was found poisoned by arsenic.”
“You think some one planted it on you?”
“How else?”
“Who you think did it?”
“Should I know?”
“Where was you sittin’ last night while Stires was eatin’ supper? You remember?”
“Yes. I was sitting next to Denny James. He was next to Uncle.”
Asey nodded. “You can go back. Only I’d ’vise you to go easy on what you eat an’ what you take in the line of med’cine.”
“What are you letting her get off so easily for?” I asked after she had gone.
Asey grinned. “I got an idea an’ I don’t want her around for a little while. Miss Prue, which one of them men d’you s’pose would know about her? If any of ’em does?”
“John Kent. He’s the only one who lives in Boston and he’d probably know more of the details than the others. But why?”
“I’ll tell you later. I guess we’ll get Kent.”
John’s face was very long when he came in. “How are you progressing?” he asked perfunctorily.
“As well,” Walker said, “as can be expected in the circumstances.”
John smiled dutifully.
“Have you found out anything? Wasn’t there any clue in his clothes? A letter or anything like that?”
I shook my head. “Only some checks made out to cash,” I said. “There don’t seem to be any clues at all.”
“I wonder,” Asey asked him, “if you could tell us more about this red-headed niece?”
“Desire?”
“Uh-huh. What was Mr. Stires exactly? I mean, was he her guardian? Or what? Did he have c’ntrol of her money? D’you know anything about her? Miss Prue says she turned up all of a sudden like. D’you know why?”
“Well,” John laced his fingers together, “well, Bert was her guardian. He told me all about the situation after he got word of Cass Allerton’s will. You see, Desire’s mother was Bert’s half-sister. There’d always been more or less of a feud between the Allertons and the
Stireses—it was because of Old Amariah Allerton’s comment about Amanda Stires—no! It wasn’t Amanda. It was Amelia. Amariah told some one that Amelia was a tippler——”
Asey coughed discreetly. “So the Stireses an’ the Allertons wasn’t on the best of terms——”
“Yes. And when Cass Allerton eloped with Lucia Hammond, Bert was very upset. He’d never cared for Cass Allerton anyway, and Cass never was fond of him. I’m sure I don’t know why he had provisions made for Bert to look after the girl. Perhaps he felt that Bert was the only one he could trust with her, but on the other hand I have a definite suspicion that he wanted to annoy Bert. Probably he thought she would be a burden. That was rather in keeping with Cass’s sense of humor.”
“What about money an’ all that?”
“Allerton, from what Bert told me, had gone through the greater part of his fortune, but there was still enough left for Desire to live on very comfortably, providing, of course, that she was not too extravagant. Bert was to look out for her money, and for her, too, until she became of age. That’s not far off, only seven or eight months. Some of the money was to be kept in trust until she was twenty-five. At that time she was to have complete control of it.”
“An’ if Stires was to die?”
“That’s the peculiar part of the situation. If Bert died, she was to have complete control of it anyway. Evidently there was no one else Cass wanted to supervise the girl’s money.”
“So that now the girl comes into p’session of everything?”
“Just so.”
“Now, how about her cornin’ when she did?”
“I haven’t asked her about it and Bert didn’t tell me the reason, but he did say that he’d not expected her until much later. As I understood it, he had wired for her to come over at once after her father died and he got no answer at all. Then, after much cabling back and forth, it came out that she didn’t want to come to America at all. She wanted to stay in France. Bert told her he thought it was best for her to come and that she more or less had no choice in the matter at all. I think he had some idea of putting her into a good school until she came of age, then letting her go to France or do whatever she wanted. He’d never seen her, never knew anything about her, so possibly you can imagine how he felt when she descended upon him. He’d expected a meek schoolgirl with pigtails down her back——”
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