The Big Book of Female Detectives

by The Big Book of Female Detectives (retail) (epub)

  “With a ten-thousand-dollar fee for six weeks’ work,” I laughed somewhat enviously, “you should worry!”

  Madelyn tossed her accumulated correspondence recklessly into a corner of her desk, and drew down its roll-top with a bang.

  “I feel like dissipating tonight, Nora. Are you up to a cabaret? A place with noise enough to drown out every echo of work!”

  At her elbow the telephone shrilled suddenly. Mechanically Madelyn took down the receiver. Almost with the first sentence over the wire, I could see her features contract.

  “Yes, Mr. Grayson, this is Miss Mack talking. What is that?” In a moment she clapped her hand over the transmitter, and turned a wry face to me. “Was I foolish enough to talk about a rest, Nora? Homer Hendricks has just been shot—murder or suicide!”

  Her next sentence was directed at the telephone. “Never mind what Lieutenant Perry says, Mr. Grayson! I’ll be over at once. Yes, I said at once!”

  She hung up the receiver, and sprang to her feet.

  “Come on, Nora! I’ll give you the details on the way!” Her weariness had vanished as though it had never existed.

  She slammed the door of the office, leaving her bag where she had tossed it, and jabbed the bell for the elevator. Not until we were in her car that had been waiting at the curb, and speeding up the Avenue, did she speak again.

  “You know of Hendricks, the lawyer, of course, and his niece, Hilda Wentworth——”

  “You don’t mean to say that he has been killed, and the girl is suspected——”

  Madelyn shrugged. “The police seem to think so!”

  She drew over to her end of the seat, and subsided into an abstracted silence, as we swerved across toward the Drive. I knew that it was hopeless to expect her to volunteer further information, and, indeed, doubted if she possessed it.

  When the car whirled up to our destination Madelyn was out on the walk before the last revolution of the wheels had ceased.

  We were not more than half-way up the steps of the Hendricks residence when the door flew open, and a young man, who had evidently been stationed in the hall awaiting our arrival, sprang forward to meet us.

  Madelyn smiled as she caught his impulsively extended hand.

  “Any new developments, Mr. Grayson?”

  “None, except that Coroner Smedley is here. He is up-stairs now with the police.”

  Madelyn led us to the farther end of the veranda.

  “Before we go in, it will be just as well if you give me a brief summary of what has happened.”

  Grayson walked back and forth, his hands clenched at his sides, talking rapidly. Madelyn heard him in silence, the darkness concealing her expression.

  “Is that all?” she queried at length. For a moment she stood peering out over the veranda railing. “Miss Wentworth lived with her uncle, I take it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And inherits his property?”

  Grayson growled an affirmative.

  “Suppose I change my angle, and ask if you are prepared to explain your own whereabouts at the time of the crime?”

  “I have done so!”

  Madelyn’s eyes hardened.

  “We won’t mince matters, Mr. Grayson. From the police standpoint, Miss Wentworth and yourself, as her probably favored suitor, are the two persons most likely to profit by Mr. Hendricks’s death. It may be awkward, perhaps exceedingly awkward, that you were the only two in the house not accounted for at the moment of the shot!”

  “I have told you the truth!” Grayson dug his hands into his pockets sullenly.

  Madelyn turned abruptly toward the door, and then paused. “Was Mr. Hendricks aware of your sentiments toward his niece?”

  Grayson hesitated. “Certainly.”

  “And was not enthusiastic on the subject?”

  “Well, perhaps not—er—enthusiastic.” Grayson’s stammer was obvious. “To be quite frank, he preferred——”

  “Yes?”

  “Monty Weston; but, of course——”

  “I think that is enough,” said Madelyn quietly. “Will you kindly lead the way in?”

  Grayson’s hand, fumbling in his pockets, was suddenly withdrawn.

  “By the way, here is something I almost forgot. I picked it up on the floor of Hendricks’s room as we were leaving.”

  He extended the curious green jade ball he had found in the music-room.

  Madelyn’s eyes narrowed. Then she said casually, “Quite an interesting little ornament,” and dropped it into her bag.

  The hall of the Hendricks house was empty. The members of the tragically disrupted theatre party had retreated to the library, and were endeavoring nervously to maintain the semblance of a conversation. The police were still busy upstairs.

  “You had better join your friends,” said Madelyn to Grayson. “We will be down presently.” And she ran lightly up the broad stairway, as I followed.

  The music-room of Homer Hendricks presented a scene of confusion shattering all the precedents of its peaceful history, and almost sufficient, one was tempted to think, to call back its late master to resent the intrusion on his cherished sanctum.

  The body of Mr. Hendricks was still stretched on the carpet where it had fallen. It, and the massive piano, were the only objects in the room that had been left unchanged.

  Madelyn gave a shrug of disgust as we paused in the doorway and surveyed the scene of ravage.

  “Are you expecting to find gold pieces concealed in the furniture, gentlemen?”

  Lieutenant Perry whirled sharply. “May I inquire, Miss Mack, since when have you been in charge of this case?”

  The officer essayed a wink toward his companions, who had been increased by two plain-clothes-men and the coroner since Grayson’s telephone call.

  Madelyn smiled. “Your powers of humor, Lieutenant, are exceeded only by your powers of deduction!”

  Her glance wandered over the torn-up room, with its chairs turned upside down, its rugs rolled up from the floor, and even its few objects of bric-a-brac removed from their places, and deposited in a corner. The search for the missing weapon that had done Homer Hendricks to death had been thorough—if nothing else.

  Madelyn’s eyes rested for a second time on the piano of the dead man. The instrument seemed to exert a peculiar fascination for her. With her glance fixed on the keyboard, which no one had seen fit to close, she bowed to the grinning lieutenant.

  “Will I be trespassing if I take a glance around?”

  “Oh, help yourself! I reckon we have found about all there is to find!”

  “Have you?” said Madelyn lightly.

  The police officer righted a chair and sat down heavily on its cushioned seat, watching Madelyn’s lithe figure as she walked across to Hendricks’s body. As a matter of fact when she dropped to her knees, and held a pocket magnifying lens close to the white, rigid face of the dead man, she had the unreserved attention of every occupant of the room.

  The lieutenant, realizing the fact, shrugged his shoulders. “Miss Sherlock Holmes at work!” he said in a tone loud enough to reach Madelyn’s ears.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Madelyn, without shifting the position of her lens, “have you any information as to when Mr. Hendricks visited this room last, that is, previous to this evening?”

  Lieutenant Perry hesitated.

  “Why, er——”

  “He had not been here for ten days, Miss Mack,” spoke up one of his subordinates, and then continuing, before he became aware of the scowl of his superior, “He and his niece were out of town on a visit, and only arrived home today.”

  “Thank you,” said Madelyn, rising, and leaning carelessly against the piano. “May I trouble you with another question, Lieutenant?”

  T
he lieutenant glared silently.

  “Did Mr. Hendricks use tobacco?”

  “He did not!”

  “Thank you!” The suspicion of a smile tinged Madelyn’s face.

  Lieutenant Perry crossed his left leg carelessly over his knee and thrust his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat. The farther plain-clothes-man nudged his companion. This attitude of the lieutenant’s was a characteristic prelude either to one of his favorite jokes or a verbal fusillade, designed to crush an opponent to the dust.

  “If you are quite through with your clue-searching, Miss Mack,” he said with mock humbleness, “I would like your expert opinion on a little bit of evidence we have picked up!”

  His right hand disengaged itself for a moment and produced the blood-stained glove of Hilda Wentworth. Mr. Perry held it up almost caressingly.

  “Would you care to take a squint at this with that high-power lens of yours?”

  “Oh, I hardly think so!” said Madelyn indifferently. “That belongs to Miss Wentworth, does it not?”

  “Righto!”

  “Then, if I might make a suggestion, I would return it to the young lady.”

  “Oh, you would, would you?” exploded the lieutenant. “What do you think of that, men? That is the richest joke I have heard for a month!”

  Madelyn sauntered to the door.

  “I may have the pleasure of seeing you below, Lieutenant,” she said as she joined me.

  The moment she had disappeared from the view of the men in the music-room her assumption of careless indifference vanished. Her lips closed in a tense line, as she paused at the head of the stairs.

  “If those imbeciles had only left that room as it was!” Her hands were clenched as though every nerve was a-quiver. “Nora, I have got to have ten minutes alone in there! I must manage it!” She turned abruptly. “Will you kindly give Lieutenant Perry Miss Wentworth’s compliments, and tell him she desires an immediate interview with him and the coroner in the library?”

  “But,” I stammered, “she doesn’t!”

  Madelyn glared, and then continued as though I had not interrupted her. “They will probably take two of the policemen down-stairs with them. That will leave only one behind. If you can inveigle him outside, Nora, the obligation won’t be forgotten!”

  “You speak as though I was a siren!” I snapped. “Promise him you will publish his picture in The Bugle in the morning,” said Madelyn impatiently.

  She opened the nearest door, and disappeared behind it, as I returned to the music-room in my role of assumed messenger. I managed to repeat Madelyn’s instructions without so much as a quiver at Lieutenant Perry’s sudden scowl. With a nod to the coroner, he brushed past me at once.

  Madelyn’s calculation proved uncannily correct. The two plain-clothes-men followed Coroner Smedley silently down the stairs in the lieutenant’s wake. Only a red-faced roundsman was left twirling his stick disconsolately in the littered room.

  “Good evening!” I smiled.

  He glanced up with obvious welcome at the prospect of companionship.

  I plunged directly to the point. “This is a big case, Mr. Dennis,” I began, noting with relief that he was a professional acquaintance of mine. “It ought to mean something to you, eh?”

  He grunted non-committally.

  “I say, have you a good picture of yourself at home?”

  Mr. Dennis looked interested.

  “That is, one which would be good enough for publication in The Bugle?”

  Mr. Dennis looked more interested.

  “Because if you have,” I continued enticingly, “and will do me a favor, I will see that it is given a good position in tomorrow’s story.”

  “What is the favor?”

  “Oh, merely that you let me talk to you for ten minutes in the hall! A friend of mine wants a chance to look over this room without disturbance.”

  “You mean Miss Mack?” asked Dennis, suspiciously.

  I smiled. “That picture of yours would look mighty nice, with a quarter of a column write-up under it. I expect Mrs. Dennis would be so tickled that she would appreciate a present from me of twenty-five copies of the paper to send to her friends!”

  Dennis walked abruptly into the hall. “Come on!” he snapped.

  As we reached the end of the corridor, I saw Madelyn step quietly into the room we had vacated.

  I wondered curiously if Hilda Wentworth would rise to the occasion sufficiently to hold the attention of the suspicious Mr. Perry, and speculated grimly what would be the result if the lieutenant should return unexpectedly to the upper floor. My fears, however, proved unfounded. Before the ten minutes were over, Madelyn reappeared, beckoned to me pleasantly, and slipped a crumpled bill into Dennis’s hand as she passed him.

  “I’ll look for that picture at the office, Mr. Dennis,” I said cordially. And then I turned anxiously to Madelyn. “Did you find anything?”

  “Is it fate, or Providence, or just naturally Devil’s luck that traps the transgressor?” returned Madelyn irrelevantly. She was tapping a slender blue envelope. “Exhibits A and B in the case of Homer Hendricks,” she continued. “A small jade ball, and a spoonful of tobacco ashes. They sound commonplace enough, don’t they?” And she thoughtfully descended the stairs.

  At the door of the library she faced the group inside with a slight bow. The hum of conversation ceased. From an adjoining alcove, Miss Wentworth, nervously facing a battery of questions from Lieutenant Perry and the coroner, noted our arrival with an expression of hastily concealed relief. It was evident that the task of keeping the gentlemen of the law occupied had taxed the girl’s nerves to the utmost.

  Grayson had taken a position as near the alcove as he could venture, and was glowering at her inquisitors, apparently not caring whether they saw his scowls or not.

  “I will be obliged for a few moments’ conversation, gentlemen!” said Madelyn pleasantly. “A very few moments, I assure you. I will talk to Mr. Wilkins first, if I may.”

  John Wilkins rose from his chair, as I found a vacant seat in the library, and joined Madelyn in the hall. In less than two minutes he returned, with his face wearing an expression of almost laughable bewilderment.

  “Evidently the famous Miss Mack does not believe in lengthy cross-examinations,” commented Miss Morrison as he resumed his chair.

  “She asked me just four questions,” said Wilkins dubiously, “and only two of them had to do with the affair up-stairs. She cut me short when I started the account of our finding the body.”

  Lieutenant Perry, as though to show his disdain, deepened the rasp in his examination of Miss Wentworth as he saw Weston take Wilkins’s place in the hall.

  Weston glanced at his watch as he returned. “It took me just one minute more than you to pass through the ordeal, old man,” he confided to Wilkins, with something like a grin.

  Lieutenant Perry stepped out of the alcove with a gesture of finality.

  “Have you a version of the case to give to The Bugle, Lieutenant?” I asked, as a ring at the doorbell and a shuffling of feet on the veranda announced the belated arrival of other members of the newspaper fraternity.

  The lieutenant darted a sullen glance in the direction of Hilda Wentworth. “You may say for me,” he said acidly, “that, whether suicide or murder, a certain near relative of the dead man is holding back the truth, and, and——” his eyes traveled slowly around the room, “the police expect to find measures very shortly to make that person speak!”

  A low cry broke from Hilda Wentworth. Darting across the room, she caught the lieutenant’s arm imploringly.

  “Oh, please, sir, don’t—don’t——”

  “I hardly think you need alarm yourself, Miss Wentworth!”

  Madelyn was smiling quietly from the doorway. “I t
rust, Miss Noraker,” she continued, addressing me, “that The Bugle will do Miss Wentworth the justice, and myself the favor, of announcing that I am prepared to prove that no relative of Mr. Hendricks had any connection with his death, or possesses any knowledge of how it was brought about! And furthermore, for Lieutenant Perry’s peace of mind, you may add that it is a case not of suicide—but of murder!”

  The lieutenant’s face went a sudden, pasty yellow. Madelyn slowly drew on her gloves.

  “By the way, Lieutenant, if you and the coroner have time to meet me here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning, I will take pleasure in corroborating my statements!”

  She bowed to the other occupants of the room. “I will also include in that invitation Miss Wentworth and the gentlemen who were present at the time of the murder.”

  She stepped back, and, adroitly skirting the group of newly arrived newspaper men, ran lightly across the pavement to her car.

  At the steps of the motor I caught her. “Madelyn, just one question, please! How in the name of Heaven could the murderer shoot, and then escape through a locked door?”

  Madelyn drew down her veil wearily.

  “He didn’t shoot!” she said shortly.

  IV

  Hilda Wentworth, haggard-faced after a feverishly tossing night, was toying with her breakfast grapefruit and tea, which the motherly housekeeper had insisted on bringing to her room, when the bell of the telephone tinkled sharply.

  Miss Wentworth took down the receiver wearily; but, at the sound of the voice at the other end of the wire, she brightened instantly.

  “Good morning! This is Miss Mack. I am not going to ask you if you had a restful night.”

  “Restful night!” the girl cried hysterically. “Two of those odious policemen have been patrolling the house constantly, and watching my room as though I would steal away with the family spoons if I had a ghost of a chance!”

  Miss Mack’s exclamation was only partly audible, but the girl smiled wanly.

  “I shall be detained perhaps a half an hour longer than I expected this morning, Miss Wentworth. If you will explain this to Lieutenant Perry, and the other gentlemen, I will appreciate it.”