Afternoon Tea Mysteries, Volume Two: A Collection of Cozy Mysteries (Four thrilling novels in one volume!)

by Marion Bryce

  Fleming Stone’s own kindly face took on a slight expression of hauteur, as he noticed his reception, but he said, pleasantly enough,

  “I am here in an effort to aid in establishing your innocence, Mr. Hall.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Hall listlessly.

  I wondered whether this asking to have a remark repeated was merely a foolish habit of Hall’s, or whether, as I had heretofore guessed, it was a ruse to gain time.

  Fleming Stone looked at him a little more sharply as he repeated his remark in clear, even tones.

  “Thank you,” said Hall, pleasantly enough. “I shall be glad to be free from this unjust suspicion.”

  “And as a bit of friendly advice,” went on Stone, “I strongly urge that you, reveal to us, confidentially, where you were on Tuesday night.”

  Hall looked the speaker straight in the eye.

  “That,” he said, “I must still refuse to do.”

  Fleming Stone rose and walked toward the window.

  “I think,” he said, “the proof of your innocence may depend upon this point.”

  Gregory Hall turned his head, and followed Stone with his eyes.

  “What did you say, Mr. Stone?” he asked quietly.

  The detective returned to his seat.

  “I said,” he replied, “that the proof of your innocence might depend on your telling this secret of yours. But I begin to think now you will be freed from suspicion whether you tell it or not.”

  Instead of looking glad at this assurance, Gregory Hall gave a start, and an expression of fear came into his eyes.

  “What do you mean?” he said,

  “Have you any letters in your pocket, Mr. Hall?” went on Fleming Stone in a suave voice.

  “Yes; several. Why?”

  “I do not ask to read them. Merely show me the lot.”

  With what seemed to be an unwilling but enforced movement, Mr. Hall drew four or five letters from his breast pocket and handed them to Fleming Stone.

  “They’ve all been looked over, Mr. Stone,” said the district attorney; “and they have no bearing on the matter of the crime.”

  “Oh, I don’t want to read them,” said the detective.

  He ran over the lot carelessly, not taking the sheets from the envelopes, and returned them to their owner.

  Gregory Hall looked at him as if fascinated. What revelation was this man about to make?

  “Mr. Hall,” Fleming Stone began, “I’ve no intention of forcing your secret from you. But I shall ask you some questions, and you may do as you like about answering them. First, you refuse to tell where you were during the night last Tuesday. I take it, you mean you refuse to tell how or where you spent the evening. Now, will you tell us where you lodged that night?”

  “I fail to see any reason for telling you,” answered Hall, after a moment’s thought. “I have said I was in New York City, that is enough.”

  “The reason you may as well tell us,” went on Mr. Stone, “is because it is a very simple matter for us to find out. You doubtless were at some hotel, and you went there because you could not get a room at your club. In fact, this was stated when the coroner telephoned for you, the morning after the murder. I mean, it was stated that the club bed-rooms were all occupied. I assume, therefore, that you lodged at some hotel, and, as a canvass of the city hotels would be a simple matter, you may as well save us that trouble.”

  “Oh, very well,” said Gregory Hall sullenly; “then I did spend the night at a hotel. It was the Metropolis Hotel, and you will find my name duly on the register.”

  “I have no doubt of it,” said Stone pleasantly. “Now that you have told us this, have you any objection to telling us at what time you returned to the hotel, after your evening’s occupation, whatever it may have been?”

  “Eh?” said Hall abstractedly. He turned his head as he spoke, and Fleming Stone threw me a quizzical smile which I didn’t in the least understand.

  “You may as well tell us,” said Stone, after he had repeated his question, “for if you withhold it, the night clerk can give us this information.”

  “Well,” said Hall, who now looked distinctly sulky, “I don’t remember exactly, but I think I turned in somewhere between twelve and one o’clock.”

  “And as it was a late hour, you slept rather late next morning,” suggested Stone.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I was at Mr. Crawford’s New York office by half-past ten.”

  “A strange coincidence, Burroughs,” said Fleming Stone, turning to me.

  “Eh? Beg pardon?” said Hall, turning his head also.

  “Mr. Hall,” said Stone, suddenly facing him again, “are you deaf? Why do you ask to have remarks repeated?”

  Hall looked slightly apologetic. “I am a little deaf,” he said; “but only in one ear. And only at times—or, rather, it’s worse at times. If I have a cold, for instance.”

  “Or in damp weather?” said Stone. “Mr. Hall, I have questioned you enough. I will now tell these gentlemen, since you refuse to do so, where you were on the night of Mr. Crawford’s murder. You were not in West Sedgwick, or near it. You are absolutely innocent of the crime or any part in it.”

  Gregory Hall straightened up perceptibly, like a man exonerated from all blame. But he quailed again, as Fleming Stone, looking straight at him, continued: “You left West Sedgwick at six that evening, as you have said. You registered at the Metropolis Hotel, after learning that you could not get a room at your club. And then—you went over to Brooklyn to meet, or to call on, a young woman living in that borough. You took her back to New York to the theatre or some such entertainment, and afterward escorted her back to her home. The young woman wore a street costume, by which I mean a cloth gown without a train. You did not have a cab, but, after leaving the car, you walked for a rather long distance in Brooklyn. It was raining, and you were both under one umbrella. Am I correct, so far?”

  At last Gregory Hall’s calm was disturbed. He looked at Fleming Stone as at a supernatural being. And small wonder. For the truth of Stone’s statements was evident from Hall’s amazement at them.

  “You—you saw us!” he gasped.

  “No, I didn’t see you; it is merely a matter of observation, deduction, and memory. You recollect the muddy shoes?” he added, turning to me.

  Did I recollect! Well, rather! And it certainly was a coincidence that we had chanced to examine those shoes that morning at the hotel.

  As for Mr. Randolph and the district attorney, they were quite as much surprised as Hall.

  “Can you prove this astonishing story, Mr. Stone?” asked Mr. Goodrich, with an incredulous look.

  “Oh, yes, in lots of ways,” returned Stone. “For one thing, Mr. Hall has in his pocket now a letter from the young lady. The whole matter is of no great importance except as it proves Mr. Hall was not in West Sedgwick that night, and so is not the murderer.”

  “But why conceal so simple a matter? Why refuse to tell of the episode?” asked Mr. Randolph.

  “Because,” and now Fleming Stone looked at Hall with accusation in his glance—“because Mr. Hall is very anxious that his fiancée shall not know of his attentions to the young lady in Brooklyn.”

  “O-ho!” said Mr. Goodrich, with sudden enlightenment. “I see it all now. Is it the truth, Mr. Hall? Did you go to Brooklyn and back that night, as Mr. Stone has described?”

  Gregory Hall fidgeted in an embarrassed way. But, unable to escape the piercing gaze of Stone’s eyes, he admitted grudgingly that the detective had told the truth, adding, “But it’s wizardry, that’s what it is! How could he know?”

  “I had reason for suspicion,” said Stone; “and when I found you were deaf in your right ear, and that you had in your pocket a letter addressed in a feminine hand, and postmarked ‘Brooklyn,’ I was sure.”

  “It’s all true,” said Hall slowly. “You have the facts all right. But, unless you have had me shadowed, will you tell me how you knew it all?”

  And then F
leming Stone told of his observations and deductions when we noticed the muddied shoes at the Metropolis Hotel that morning.

  “But,” he said, as he concluded, “when I hastily adjudged the young lady to be deaf in the left ear, I see now I was mistaken. As soon as I realized Mr. Hall himself is deaf in the right ear, especially so in damp or wet weather, I saw that it fitted the case as well as if the lady had been deaf in her left ear. Then a note in his pocket from a lady in Brooklyn made me quite sure I was right.”

  “But, Mr. Stone,” said Lawyer Randolph, “it is very astonishing that you should make those deductions from those shoes, and then come out here and meet the owner of the shoes.”

  “It seems more remarkable than it really is, Mr. Randolph,” was the response; “for I am continually observing whatever comes to my notice. Hundreds of my deductions are never verified, or even thought of again; so it is not so strange that now and then one should prove of use in my work.”

  “Well,” said the district attorney, “it seems wonderful to me. But now that Mr. Hall has proved his alibi, or, rather, Mr. Stone has proved it for him, we must begin anew our search for the real criminal.”

  “One moment,” said Gregory Hall. “As you know, gentlemen, I endeavored to keep this little matter of my going to Brooklyn a secret. As it has no possible bearing on the case of Mr. Crawford, may I ask of you to respect my desire that you say nothing about it?”

  “For my part,” said the district attorney, “I am quite willing to grant Mr. Hall’s request. I have put him to unnecessary trouble and embarrassment by having him arrested, and I shall be glad to do him this favor that he asks, by way of amends.”

  But Mr. Randolph seemed reluctant to make the required promise, and Fleming Stone looked at Hall, and said nothing.

  Then I spoke out, and, perhaps with scant courtesy, I said:

  “I, for one, refuse to keep this revelation a secret. It was discovered by the detective engaged by Miss Lloyd. Therefore, I think Miss Lloyd is entitled to the knowledge we have thus gained.”

  Mr. Randolph looked at me with approval. He was a good friend of Florence Lloyd, and he was of no mind to hide from her something which it might be better for her to know.

  Gregory Hall set his lips together in a way which argued no pleasant feelings toward me, but he said nothing then. He was forthwith released from custody, and the rest of us separated; having arranged to meet that evening at Miss Lloyd’s home to discuss matters.

  XXI. THE DISCLOSURE

  Except the half-hour required for a hasty dinner, Fleming Stone devoted the intervening time to looking over the reports of the coroner’s inquest, and in asking me questions about all the people who were connected with the affair.

  “Burroughs,” he said at last, “every one who is interested in Joseph Crawford’s death has suspected Gregory Hall, except one person. Not everybody said they suspected him, but they did, all the same. Even Miss Lloyd wasn’t sure that Hall wasn’t the criminal. Now, there’s just one person who declares that Hall did not do it, and that he is not implicated. Why should this person feel so sure of Hall’s innocence? And, furthermore, my boy, here are a few more important questions. In which drawer of the desk was the revolver kept?”

  “The upper right-hand drawer,” I replied.

  “I mean, what else was in that drawer?”

  “Oh, important, valuable memoranda of Mr. Crawford’s stocks and bonds.”

  “Do you mean stock certificates and actual bonds?”

  “No; merely lists and certain data referring to them. The certificates themselves were in the bank.”

  “And the will—where had that been kept?”

  “In a drawer on the other side of the desk. I know all these things, because with the lawyer and Mr. Philip Crawford, I have been through all the papers of the estate.”

  “Well, then, Burroughs, let us build up the scene. Mr. Joseph Crawford, after returning from his lawyer’s that night, goes to his office. Naturally, he takes out his will, that he thinks of changing, and—we’ll say—it is lying on his desk when Mr. Lemuel Porter calls. He talks of other matters, and the will still lies there unheeded. It is there when Miss Lloyd comes down later. She has said so. It remains there until much later—when Philip Crawford comes, and, after discovering that his brother is dead, sees the will still on the desk and takes it away with him, and also sees the pistol on the desk, and takes that, too. Now, granting that the murderer came between the time Miss Lloyd left the office and the time Philip Crawford came there, then it was while the murderer was present that the drawer which held the pistol was opened, the pistol taken out, and the murder committed, Since Mr. Joseph Crawford showed no sign of fear of violence, the murderer must have been, not a burglar or an unwelcome intruder, but a friend, or an acquaintance, at least. His visit must have been the reason for opening that drawer, and that not to get the pistol, but to look at or discuss the papers contained in that drawer. The pistol, thus disclosed, was temptingly near the hand of the visitor, and, for some reason connected with the papers in that drawer, the pistol was used by the visitor—suddenly, unpremeditatedly, but with deadly intent at the moment.”

  “But who—” I began.

  “Hush,” he said, “I see it all now—or almost all. Let us go to Philip Crawford’s at once—before it is time to go to Miss Lloyd’s.”

  We did so, and Fleming Stone, in a short business talk with Mr. Crawford, learned all that he wanted to know. Then we three went over to Florence Lloyd’s home.

  Awaiting us were several people. The district attorney, of course, and Lawyer Randolph. Also Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Porter, who had been asked to be present. Gregory Hall was there, too, and from his crestfallen expression, I couldn’t help thinking that he had had an unsatisfactory interview with Florence.

  As we all sat round the library, Fleming Stone was the principal speaker.

  He said: “I have come here at Miss Lloyd’s request, to discover, if possible, the murderer of her uncle, Mr. Joseph Crawford. I have learned the identity of the assassin, and, if you all wish me to, I will now divulge it.”

  “We do wish you to, Mr. Stone,” said Mr. Goodrich, and his voice trembled a little, for he knew not where the blow might fall. But after Fleming Stone’s wonderful detective work in the case of Gregory Hall, the district attorney felt full confidence in his powers.

  Sitting quietly by the library table, with the eyes of all the company upon him, Fleming Stone said, in effect, to them just what he had said to me. He told of the revolver in the drawer with the financial papers. He told how the midnight visitor must have been some friend or neighbor, whose coming would in no way startle or alarm Mr. Crawford, and whose interest in the question of stocks was desperate.

  And then Fleming Stone turned suddenly to Lemuel Porter, and said: “Shall I go on, Mr. Porter, or will you confess here and now?”

  It was as if a thunderbolt had fallen. Hitherto unsuspected, the guilt of Lemuel Porter was now apparent beyond all doubt. White-faced and shaking, his burning eyes glared at Fleming Stone.

  “What are you?” he whispered, in hoarse, hissing tones. “I feared you, and I was right to fear you. I have heard of you before. I tried to prevent your coming here, but I could not. And I knew, when you came, that I was doomed—doomed!

  “Yes,” he went on, looking around at the startled faces. “Yes, I killed Joseph Crawford. If I had not, he would have ruined me financially. Randolph knows that—and Philip Crawford, too. I had no thought of murder in my heart. I came here late that night to renew the request I had made in my earlier visit that evening—that Joseph Crawford would unload his X.Y. stock gradually, and in that way save me. I had overtraded; I had pyramided my paper profits until my affairs were in such a state that a sudden drop of ten points would wipe me out entirely. But Joseph Crawford was adamant to my entreaties. He said he would see to it that at the opening of the market the next morning X.Y. stock should be hammered down out of sight. Details are unnecessary. You law
yers and financial men understand. It was in his power to ruin or to save me and he chose to ruin me. I know, why, but that concerns no one here. Then, as by chance, he moved a paper in the drawer, and I saw the pistol. In a moment of blind rage I grasped it and shot him. Death was instantaneous. Like one in a dream, I laid down the pistol, and came away. I was saved, but at what a cost! No one, I think, saw me come or go. I was afterward puzzled to know what became of the pistol, and of the will which lay on the desk when I was there. These matters have since been explained. Philip Crawford is as much a criminal as I. I shot a man, but he robbed the dead. He has confessed and made restitution, so he merits no punishment. In the nature of things, I cannot do that, but I can at least cheat the gallows.”

  With these words, Mr. Porter put something into his mouth and swallowed it.

  Several people started toward him in dismay, but he waved them back, saying:

  “Too late. Good-by, all. If possible, do not let my wife know the truth. Can’t you tell her—I died of heart failure—or—something like that?”

  The poison he had taken was of quick effect. Though a doctor was telephoned for at once, Mr. Porter was dead before he came.

  Everything was now made clear, and Fleming Stone’s work in West Sedgwick was done.

  I was chagrined, for I felt that all he had discovered, I ought to have found out for myself.

  But as I glanced at Florence, and saw her lovely eyes fixed on me, I knew that one reason I had failed in my work was because of her distracting influence on it.

  “Take me away from here,” she said, and I gently led her from the library.

  We went into the small drawing-room, and, unable to restrain my eagerness, I said,

  “Tell me, dear, have you broken with Hall?”

  “Yes,” she said, looking up shyly into my face. “I learned from his own lips the story of the Brooklyn girl. Then I knew that he really loves her, but wanted to marry me for my fortune. This knowledge was enough for me. I realize now that I never loved Gregory, and I have told him so.”

  “And you do love somebody else?” I whispered ecstatically. “Oh, Florence! I know this is not the time or the place, but just tell me, dear, if you ever love any one, it will be—”