Kelley came in. He had lost a lot of his nonchalance and he eyed Asey warily.
“About this little trip of yours the other night,” Asey began, “I wonder, Kelley, ’f you realize just how much of a hole you’re in?”
“What do you mean, hole?”
“Hole or cav’ty,” Asey explained cheerfully. “Sort of thing you tumble into an’ don’t have much fun gettin’ out of. Hole.”
“Why am I in a hole, huh?”
“Kelley, that ole lady you went to see Tuesday night was killed on Wednesday. You’re goin’ to get mixed up in a murder if you don’t tell us about that plate.”
“What did that tin plate have to do with her bein’ killed?” Kelley asked.
Asey looked at me and smiled.
“Had a lot to do with it. Now, Kelley, I don’t blame you for lyin’ for Blake. Blake pays you to work for him an’ I s’pose that you got to do what he wants you to. But I’ll tell you this, feller, he’s puttin’ you in a tough place. I ain’t a one to go around tellin’ people it’s their duty to squeal about things, but I’m tellin’ you this much, Kelley. You can tell me the truth an’ save your skin, or you can lie some more an’ get jailed for somethin’ you prob’ly didn’t do.”
“You mean that Blake had something to do with this woman’s bein’ killed, an’ he’s goin’ to blame me?” Kelley’s eyes narrowed.
“I ain’t makin’ no ac’usations about Blake. Maybe he’ll blame you an’ maybe he won’t. You know him better than I do. You know if he’d let you down or not. If you think he’ll get you out of this, why, prob’ly he will.”
Kelley ran his finger around the inside of his collar.
“You know best. Up to you, that’s what it is.” Asey picked up a book-end and tossed it from one hand to the other. “ ’Course, if you’ll tell me about that tin plate, an’ why Blake told you not to talk about it, why it’s a dif’rent matter.”
“Look here,” Kelley said suddenly, “look here, I don’t want to get mixed up in anything. I went to Blake Tuesday an’ told him I needed some money for oil an’ gas. He gave it to me an’ asked me if I’d do an errand. I said sure. He told me to go up to the pool-room an’ ask where I could get a drink. Then he told me to go up to that place I went, an’ if any one was there, I was to say I was huntin’ a drink. If there wasn’t any one around, I was to get that little tin plate I got for him.”
“Did he give you any money to give her?”
“Nope. I asked him if there wasn’t money due on it an’ he said that everything was paid for.”
“Get anything else besides that plate?”
Asey put the book-end back on the table. He seemed to be paying no attention to Kelley, but I noticed that he was watching his every movement in the mirror over the mantel.
Kelley’s reply was prompt. “No. Not a thing. I told the old lady what I come for after I see that she was alone, an’ she give me the plate an’ I put it up in Blake’s room when I come home.”
“What’d you tell me about them candles for, first of all?”
‘‘Because that’s what she asked me.”
“Did Blake tell you just why he didn’t want you to talk about the plate?”
Kelley shook his head.
“You didn’t ask?”
“No. You see, I been on errands like that before for him. He’s always gettin’ those tin things.”
“An’ what d’you s’pose he told you to ask in the pool-room about a drink, first, for?”
“So’s I’d have an excuse, I guess, for bein’ where I was. Mr. Blake sort of plans things out.”
“Did he ever have a fight with Stires?”
“Not that I’d know about. No. No, he never fought with Stires. He had a couple of run-ins with James.”
“What over?”
“Well, Blake collects pictures, an’ so does James. An’ they both go after this tin stuff. Once or twice they run up against the same things an’ then they have a grand squabble as to which one gets it.”
Asey nodded. “I b’gin to see. Uh-huh. That’s all, Kelley. If Blake says anything to you about this plate, let me know. If he has any more plans, you kind of might let me know, too. An’ you needn’t tell him what you told us.”
“Yes, sir.” Kelley went out.
“An’,” Asey went on, “if Blake’s such an all-fired planner, he knows that if we wormed out about the plate, he’s got a reason for keepin’ it quiet b’cause of Denny James. Miss Prue, this beats me. I seen a lot of high an’ mighty people when I went around with Bill Porter’s father, but by gorry, I never saw folks like these. No, sir. I’m beginnin’ to b’lieve that if they wanted to go from Boston to Los Ang’les, they’d take a boat an’ get there by way of Greenland an’ South Africa. Nope, they ain’t what you’d call simple folks.”
He went out and returned with Blake.
“I hope,” Blake said quietly, “that you are convinced that Kelley is not involved in all this.”
“I guess,” Asey returned, “that we’ll leave Kelley out of this. You wanted d’rect action, Mr. Blake. You’re goin’ to get it.”
Blake looked faintly hurt. “Why, really, Asey——”
“Yup. Really. Now you sent Kelley up to Mary Gross’s for a pewter plate. You told him to say he was after a drink, if there was any one around. You didn’t want Denny James to know about the plate, an’ so you go to all this meanderin’.”
Blake shook his head. “Asey, what has Kelley been saying?”
“Don’t,” said Asey wearily, “don’t go an’ tell me that he’s lyin’, b’cause I know he ain’t an’ you know it too. D’rect action, Mr. Blake. It’s what you ordered.”
“All right.” Blake took out a handkerchief and began to polish his glasses. “I did as you say. Continue.”
“You’re a great planner, Mr. Blake. I ain’t told any one official, but Stires an’ Mary Gross was both killed by the fumes of pois’nous candles that Mary made for some one.”
Flake let his glasses fall.
“An’,” Asey went on coolly, “I’m tryin’ to find out who had Mary make ’em. If you used Kelley’s gettin’ a drink to cover up that plate business, I think that it’s more’n likely that you used this plate business to cover up gettin’ them candles that you had Mary make.” Not a muscle of Blake’s face moved. Suddenly he leaned over and picked up his glasses and put them away in a case.
“There’s no reason,” he said at last, “why you shouldn’t think that way. You’re perfectly justified. I’ve brought it on myself. But it’s not true, Asey. You asked me if I had ever bought any candles from Mary Gross and I told you that I hadn’t. You asked me if I knew her, and I told you the truth when I said that I’d heard of her but that I didn’t know her.”
“You was tellin’ the truth,” Asey commented, “with inward res’vations, like the feller that ate all the apples he stole.”
“Yes.” Blake smiled wryly. “I didn’t tell about the plate. You see, I had a set of eleven plates all made by a particular man. They ranged in size, and I had only to get the smallest plate to finish my set. I had asked Bert often if he knew of any pewter down here, but he said that people had pretty well scoured the Cape. Then last fall he told me that Mary Gross had a few plates. She let him see them, and from what he told me, I had a feeling that the smallest one was the one I wanted. So I wrote her, and we had a lot of dickering back and forth. I offered her an exorbitant price, but only a few weeks ago did she accept.”
“Where does Denny James come in?”
“About a month ago Denny wrote me and told me that he had come across a find. Ten plates of the same sort I had. He wanted a very small one and a very large one to complete his set. He found the large one in New York. He and I have had several run-ins, and he did me very neatly the last time, so I thought I was perfectly justified in getting ahead of him in this. I wrote Bert and asked him not to tell Denny about Mary Gross’s plates. Denny was coming to visit me after we left here, and I was going
to spring the set on him— and tell him where I got the smallest. That’s the whole story, Asey. I’d sent Mary the money and told her that I’d get the plate when I was down here. I wanted to see it, so I sent Kelley after it Tuesday night.”
“Why all the cock-an’-bull story of Kelley an’ the drink?”
“Because I didn’t want it to leak out about the plate if Denny went there for candles while he was here. I’d told Mary not to tell, you see, and I didn’t want it to circulate any other way. If Kelley had gone there and some other native saw him take away a pewter plate, the story would go around that some one at Stires’s was buying pewter, and any loose pewter would promptly be brought over here. At least, that is what has happened in other towns.”
Asey nodded.
“I—well it sounds absurd,” Blake said rather nervously. “I know it sounds absurd. But that’s the truth, Asey, without any inward reservations.”
“I hope,” Asey said, “that it is.”
“Is that all?”
Asey drew a long breath. “Yes.”
William came in. “Mr. Mayo, did you forget about Mr. Stires’s bags? I’ve put them up in my wife’s room, and she’s seen to it that no one disturbed them.”
“We’ll go take a look,” Asey said.
I picked up the black kitten and took him down to the game-room. To my relief, Ginger seemed to approve of it, and the kitten promptly started to chew Ginger’s tail. Rowena was annoyed.
“After I’ve worked for hours to make that cat sit so that he’d be quiet and picturesque at the same time, you have to do this I”
“Make it a Laocoon group,” I suggested, and went up the stairs with Asey.
Mrs. Boles was sitting in a rocker reading a confession magazine, and Stires’s three bags were piled directly in front of her. She jumped when we came in.
“I’ve been nervous,” she said, “just as nervous as I could be. I’m glad you come. Do you want me to go?”
“No need,” Asey said, “you may be able to help us.” He took Stires’s key ring from his pocket and unlocked the bags.
Mrs. Boles helped him remove the piles of underclothes.
“See here,” she held up a pair of heavy silk pajamas, “these have been slept in. I packed all his things myself, because William was so busy, and everything in these bags was spandy clean. See, here’s a dirty shirt, too.”
“Seems,” Asey said, “that he spent the night somewhere an’ put on a clean shirt Wednesday mornin’. That’s about all that means. Nothin’ else been touched attall ’cept his shavin’ things. Huh.”
“Did you ever find out, Mr. Mayo,” Mrs. Boles wanted to know, “where Mr. Stires was Tuesday night?”
Asey thumped his fist down on the table. “By golly, I knew there was somethin’ I meant to do an’ didn’t, but so many things’s been happenin’ lately that it plumb slipped out of my mind. Say, didn’t he give you any idea at all where he was goin’?”
“No.” Mrs. Boles shook her head energetically and the great coils of black hair on the back of her head fairly bounced. I wondered, inadvertently enough, how any woman with such masses of hair could ever find hats to fit. I was forced to have my own hair cut long ago because, as I told my niece, it was all very well for queens to tee their hats high on their heads, but I was not a queen.
“No,” Mrs. Boles continued, “he didn’t tell us. As far as we knew when we left Tuesday morning, he was coming right straight down here.”
“Who came to see him Tuesday mornin’?” Asey asked.
“I wouldn’t know. That girl came just as William and Lewis and I were leaving. Will went back to see if there was anything he could do, but Mr. Stires told him to go right ahead, and to get a room ready for her and for a chaperon.”
“Then there was only Stires an’ Tom there when the girl come?”
“Yes. I’d left everything for Mr. Stires’s breakfast, even to the toast in the toaster and the egg ready for the electric boiler. Tom said he could manage to get things, because I’d left a time table of how long everything was to stay in. All he had to do was plug in a switch and watch the stop watch.”
Asey laughed. “Mrs. Boles, do you know of any hard feelin’s, as you might say, between Mr. Stires an’ the rest of the men here?”
“Well, I wouldn’t be the sort to get any one into trouble, Mr. Mayo, but he and Mr. Hobart had two fights I know of about business. Not that I blame Mr. Stires one bit. Mr. Hobart is a very hard person to satisfy, Mr. Mayo. It’s not my place to make any comments about the guests Mr. Stires saw fit to bring into the house, but like I told him the last time Mr. Hobart was here, Will and I do the best we can, and if Mr. Hobart finds fault, it’s not because we haven’t tried to do our best for him.”
“What was the matter? Was he fussy?”
“Fussy?” Mrs. Boles pursed her lips. “You can’t suit him. He must have his bed so’s the upper sheet is just twelve inches from the top of the bed. He sends his boots to Tom to polish, and if Tom doesn’t spend an hour on ’em, he sends them back. Too high polish, or too little. Always fussing. Always wanting something different from what it is. Mr. Stires had Will stop at the greenhouse in Yarmouth on the way down to get flowers. I put two nice red roses in Mr. Hobart’s room, and what do you suppose? The minute he sees them he calls Will to take them away. He doesn’t like the smell of that kind of rose, if you please!”
“What about him an’ Mr. Stires an’ the business?”
“That was last year. Mr. Hobart, Will says, got very mad and said dreadful things.”
“I can imagine,” Asey murmured.
“I don’t like Mr. Hobart,” Mrs. Boles concluded, “and I won’t make any bones about saying as much. I will say, too, that if it isn’t that girl that killed Mr.
Stires, it was Mr. Hobart. All the others are very nice gentlemen.”
“Any of them ever fight with Stires?”
“No, indeed. The Blakes and Mr. James and Mr. Kent always was on the the best of terms with him. The Blakes wasn’t around as much as the other two. But Mr. Kent and Mr. James and Mr. Stires, why, they used to have a great time. I don’t think that Mr. Stires would of ever got over that flu he had three years ago if those two hadn’t come and joked with him and laughed him out of it. They had a lot of private jokes.”
“What about?”
“Oh, like Mr. Kent used to laugh about the electric, and Mr. James about Mr. Stires’s being afraid of women, and all.”
“I see. Well, Mrs. Boles, I wish you’d pack those things up an’ lock them cases for me. Put ’em in Mr. Stires’s room.”
“Yes, Mr. Mayo. How are you going to find where he spent Tuesday night, sir?”
“How do you s’ggest?”
“There’s a lady, Madame Irene, on Tremont Street,” Mrs. Boles offered helpfully, “that found my ring with the two pearls when I lost it. She found a boy that got lost, too. He was the son of a woman I know a friend of and he——”
“Thanks,” Asey said hastily, as Mrs. Boles showed some signs of telling us the whole story. “Thanks.”
And we departed hastily.
“Asey, how are you going to find where he was?” I asked. “Don’t you think it might have some connection with his murder? I mean, a strange disappearance, or delay, or whatever you want to call it, and then his being killed on top of it—it seems to me that if you found out why he went away so suddenly and why he was so mysterious about it, you might get some clue to who killed him.”
“True.”
“Well,” I said impatiently, “what are you going to do?”
“Broadcast. ’Lectrics is scarce enough so that he prob’ly got seen an’ remembered. I’m goin’ to call up Barnstable an’ tell ’em to ’range it for about seven to-night, if they can. Seems,” he grinned, “as good an’ likely a time as any.”
And at seven o’clock, four Boston stations requested information about Stires and his electric. The car was described, the license number given, and the time during which
we had no idea of Stires’s whereabouts was roughly estimated.
Not five minutes elapsed after the announcement before the first call came in.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
TWO WHITE BOXES
CALL succeeded call in alarming confusion. Asey sat at the library phone and took notes on a pad until half past eight, when the calls began to drop off.
“What have you found out?” I asked as he rose from the chair. “Where are you going?”
“Goin’ to git Phrone an’ del’gate her to handle the rest of this mess. She can set out by the hall phone an’ save me a lot of trouble.”
“But have you found out anything?”
“Learned a lot about human nature,” he said, grinning. “You wait till I git Phrone an’ I’ll tell you everythin’.”
He came back in a few minutes and stretched out his lank frame in one of the big chairs before the fire. He leaned back his head and laughed until I thought he would never stop.
“Tell me,” I insisted.
“Okay. Here goes for what I got told. Lissen. A man in New Brunswick, New Jersey, he seen an ’lectric on Monday. A woman in Alb’ny seen a black Ford roadster with a s’picious-lookin’ man two weeks ago last Sat’dy. A girl in Woonsocket seen a truck with a Missouri license plate that she thinks was the same number as Stires’s, somewhere in Rehoboth yesterday. She ain’t sure, as it was dark. There was a ’lectric in Vermont Wednesday, only it was a woman drivin’; there was one in Chicago yesterday. A man with a beard stole a Packard in Wheelin’, West V’ginia, an’ they want to know if Stires was the same man.”
“But, Asey I How perfectly silly! Didn’t any one see Stires Tuesday or Wednesday? All that’s no help.”
“I know it ain’t. Honest, Miss Prue, I didn’t know there was as many ’lectrics left in the United States. A couple of jokers from New York say that ’lectrics is called street-cars there, an’ they don’t have number plates. Another feller wants to know how old the ’lectric is. He used to be a dealer an’ he wonders if this wasn’t one of his ole cars. Sentimental chap, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Then all that broadcasting did no good?”
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