by Mabel Seeley
I paused. Culpable as I felt the Wallers to be, I could hardly tell her the rest. I could feel her fear growing around me, pressing against me, but there was compulsion in it, too. Compulsion to tell. I went on.
“Mr. Grant saw the note after Lieutenant Strom had left. He fainted. He—his name wasn’t Grant. It was John Grant Liberry. He was her father.”
Mrs. Waller held her breath so long I was frightened into looking at her. Then she began sobbing horribly.
She wasn’t an imaginative woman. I think that was the first time she really understood what their withholding of the note had meant.
I couldn’t be sympathetic, but you have to do what you can for another human being. I went into my kitchen, reheated the second batch of coffee, and made her drink a cup. Mr. Buffingham came down while she was drinking it.
“What’s going on now?”
I explained shortly.
“Jeez!” he exclaimed excitedly. “You mean he’s murdered?”
“No. He left a note.”
“Cripes! Suicide!”
“It looked that way.”
He began pacing up and down the hall with long, fast steps. It was curious: Mrs. Garr’s death had left him imperturbable, as had, so far as I could see, the attacks on me. But Mr. Grant’s death excited him wildly. He ran upstairs after a bit; I heard his voice now and again talking to the men upstairs.
Lieutenant Strom came down to tell Mrs. Waller and me to go into my apartment and shut the door.
We did; there was a shuffling of feet on the stairs, then comparative quiet.
Lieutenant Strom knocked on my door; came in alone. He was genially elated.
“God, what a finale! This beats anything I ever had!”
I caught at one word with blank amazement.
“Finale? What do you mean, finale?”
“Well, everything’s answered now, isn’t it?”
I just stared at him, my lower jaw hanging. He laughed at me.
“Don’t tell me your supercolossal mind hasn’t tumbled, Mrs. Dacres. Do you mean you didn’t get it? Why, it’s as plain as the nose on Kistler’s face! John Grant Liberry! Gosh, what a melodrama! Girl’s father waits until the woman who brought about his daughter’s downfall is out of jail. He never believed the willing-victim business. He knew the girl. He considers Mrs. Garr her murderer. So when she gets out, he comes here to find her. Changes his name, breaks loose from his past. That alone shows he was out for her. We don’t know when he begins his hunt, but he finds her eventually, and luck’s with him—she’s running a rooming house. He takes a room with her. He probably has that suicide note on the brain; he hunts in the house for that or some other clue to Mrs. Garr’s guilt. He can afford to take his time. Maybe he finds something, maybe he doesn’t. I think he doesn’t. But she comes back from that Chicago trip too early, catches him hunting in the kitchen. There’s some kind of a scrap, and she hits the floor. Everything fits. Why, he even said he’d seen her that night! Golly, I should have caught on, right there. That slipped out, that did. So he tries to pass it off by saying he’d seen her out the window. And who was it raised the hue and cry about Mrs. Garr being gone in the first place? Mr. Grant! The girl’s father! Boy, here’s one place this story can hit the papers, anyway.” He stopped, insufferably satisfied.
“But the attacks on me,” I objected. “Do you think he did those, too?”
“Sure, why not? Why, I almost had him last night on one of them! He actually admitted he’d been in the cellar that night. Had to cook up a story to meet Buffingham’s evidence that he’d heard him prowling around. Admitted he’d heard you hooking your chairs under the doorknobs! Just you think about that. Standing with his ear to your kitchen door, that’s where he was. Why, I must have been off my feed, not hanging it on him last night. I knew it the first thing I woke up this morning. I was just going to start for here when Jones called. Oh, he knew I had him, all right. Well, he saved the city the expense of a trial.”
I stared at his cocksure face.
If he was as sure as that, he must be right. He had experience with solving murders; I hadn’t.
“What did he—?”
“Sleeping powders. Nice quiet way. I don’t blame him. He knew he was through. I don’t blame him for much of the rest of it, either, except that he was a little hard on you. Probably didn’t realize how hard he was being. The girl’s father! Golly, what a story!”
I looked away from his self-satisfaction to Mrs. Waller; hope was blazing in her face again; she was drinking hope.
I asked the question she trembled to ask.
“I suppose Mr. Waller will be home soon, now.”
“Oh, sure. Sure.” He paused, thought. “God, that was a dirty deal, but I don’t see what I can do about it after all these years. Mrs. Garr dead, too. As far as I can see the whole thing’s washed up.”
“If you make a Roman holiday for the newspapers out of this, I’ll be mad at you forever. Poor Mr. Grant,” I said.
His manner took on more reserve after that.
He went out into the hall where five or six men were still buzzing around. They turned out to be reporters; some of them, at least. Strom talked to them a long time. Mrs. Waller escaped through them with her apron over her head. I had men knocking on my door to ask me questions, too, but I was careful what I said. The lieutenant’s sins against Mr. Grant could all be on his own head.
All day, I never knew when a reporter would knock on my door. Mrs. Halloran arrived in midmorning; she took it on herself to answer questions, which was lovely, because she didn’t know of a thing that had happened since Wednesday.
One of the few half hours the hall was empty I called Hodge at the Buyers’ Guide to tell him. He was stunned, too. Not at the suicide—we both thought that natural enough under the circumstances. But that Mr. Grant should be a murderer.
“I can’t get it,” Hodge repeated, “but I guess you never can tell.”
“He had reason enough to hate her. I suppose it has to be true. I can imagine murdering Mrs. Garr with very little compunction if it had been my daughter.”
“So can I.”
“Now I’m furious at Lieutenant Strom. He’s a publicity grabber, that’s what he is. Wouldn’t you think the poor old man had had enough trouble in his life, without being branded for this when he died?”
Hodge agreed with me then, but he came bounding into the house at noon with a Comet extra he’d picked up downtown.
“Read that and eat your words about Strom.”
I did. Lieutenant Strom had been awfully, awfully decent. That was when I was glad I’d been careful about what I’d said to the reporters.
OLD MYSTERY CLEARS AS JOHN LIBERRY DIES
Long-Lost Suicide Note of Famous Rose Liberry Tragedy Found by Police
Two decades ago the Rose Liberry tragedy stirred Gilling City and the world; today, its last echo sounded in a small room of a house at 593 Trent Street, where lay John Grant Liberry, dead by his own hand, happy.
On the day before, police, while following the lucky clue of a $2,000 note which had turned up in the estate of the late Harriet Luella Garr, forced confession from the holder that the money was due him in payment for concealing the discovery of Rose Liberry’s suicide note.
Tragedy Recalled
Long-time residents of the city will recall the Rose Liberry tragedy clearly. The unfortunate girl, then only sixteen, left the home of her aunt, Miss Rachel Staines, then residing at 1128 Cleveland Avenue, on the afternoon of May 23, 1919. She was never again seen alive by relatives or friends.
The girl’s parents, Mr. & Mrs. John Grant Liberry, of Cincinnati, pushed the search to the utmost but were hampered by the notorious Hartigan political regime, then in power. The tragedy burst forth as world news when the body of a suicide in an infamous house on St. Simon Street, run by Harr
iet Luella Garr, was identified as the missing Rose Liberry.
Every effort was made to prove the unhappy girl had been led to and kept in the house by force, but no proof could be brought against the claim of Mrs. Garr that the girl had stayed at the house willingly. No suicide note was found, nor could evidence of one be obtained, although the Liberry attorneys expended every effort at this point. The case resulted in the political cleanup, pushed by David L. Lamson, then governor of the state, which resulted in our present clean political setup.
Strom Engineers Coup
The discovery of the missing suicide note is entirely due to the excellent work of Lieutenant Peter Strom, in charge of the homicide squad, Gilling City police.
In investigating the death of Mrs. Garr on May 28 of this year, a death found to be due to natural causes by a coroner’s jury on Monday, Lieutenant Strom found that a lodger in Mrs. Garr’s house had paid no rent for years. Under pressure, the lodger produced a note signed by Mrs. Garr and dated July 8, 1919, the day the dead body of Rose Liberry was found. Struck by the date, Lieutenant Strom began investigating old court records and the Comet files.
Comet Picture Is Clue
One investigator noted a resemblance between a picture of the young patrolman, who was the first one called to the scene of Rose Liberry’s suicide, and the lodger in question. Lieutenant Strom confirmed the likeness. Armed with the information, Lieutenant Strom faced the lodger with the inescapable deduction that the only thing for which Mrs. Garr would have paid $2,000 to the policeman first called to the suicide scene was the destruction of the suicide note.
Note Destroyer Confesses
The lodger then confessed. According to his own story, the note was worded as follows:
“Father, Mother, I’ve tried and tried to get out. I can’t, the house is locked. The things they make me do are horrible, horrible. Oh, Father and Mother, forgive me. I love you, and I know you would so much rather your Rose were dead.”
Note Clears Girl’s Character
The overwhelming importance of the note is obvious at a glance. It proves beyond question that the girl was a victim, and demonstrates the fearful tragedy of her position. With it, the Liberry attorneys could unquestionably have gained a much heavier penalty than the five-year sentence which was meted to Mrs. Garr.
Father Continues Search
It now appears that after the death of the girl’s mother and aunt, hastened by the family tragedy, the girl’s father, John Grant Liberry, did not abandon his fight to clear his daughter’s name . . . Appearing as John Grant, he traced Mrs. Garr’s movements after her release from Waterford, until he found her as the keeper of a now-respectable lodging house. Altered in appearance by his sufferings, he evidently was not recognized by Mrs. Garr. He took rooms in her house, and there it is probable that he kept up his search, hoping he might find some clue to his daughter’s death.
Father Sees Note
Lieutenant Strom, while questioning the lodgers in the house relative to the death of Mrs. Garr, accidently dropped a copy of the Rose Liberry suicide note, as reproduced by the former patrolman, on the floor. It was seen by Mr. Liberry. He fainted, but on revival manifested an interest in the note so normal that no great mark was taken of it.
At approximately nine o’clock this morning, however, a young woman lodging in the 593 Trent Street house, made anxious by his nonappearance, knocked at Mr. Liberry’s door. The door swung open. The ceiling light was on. Mr. Liberry, even to her inexperienced eyes, was dead. Lieutenant Strom, called immediately, found a note—the last words of an old news story that ranks as the most sensation Gilling City has ever given to the world. This was the note:
I am John Grant Liberry. I am very happy tonight; I cannot wait to go to her.
Down the middle of the page, the Comet ran the old pictures—the one of Rose Liberry I had seen in the Comet of May 26, 1919. John G. Liberry and the governor of the day. Miss Rachel Staines, now deceased, her death hastened by family tragedy. Mrs. John G. Liberry, too, plump and dark. A broken sentence Mr. Grant had once spoken sounded in my ears:
“Girls whose mothers died crying aloud—”
“I am very glad Mrs. Garr is dead,” I said, blowing my nose. “Lieutenant Strom was decent, wasn’t he?”
“I like to see you change your mind; you do it so seldom. Lady, lady, what a story. If they’d break like that often, I’d be willing to give up my beggar’s independence and go back to prowling streets for the Comet. But it doesn’t happen often, regretfully.”
“You’re hateful! You don’t care what awful things happen, just so there’s a good story!”
“Is that fair, when I’ve forsworn reporting? Ye gods! Me with two dumb repairmen working on my press! See you tonight!”
He hurtled out again.
* * *
—
MR. GRANT’S FUNERAL WAS on Monday. It was on Tuesday that Mrs. Halloran knocked to say the phone was for me.
The voice on the other end of the wire had me clutching the receiver with surprise. It had been so final that last time I’d heard it that I’d taken it for granted I’d never hear it again.
“Hello! Been reading the papers?” Genially.
“Yes, I have.”
“Mad at me?”
“No, I’m not. I think you were awfully decent.”
“I had that in mind. Nice not to be a suspect anymore?”
“That’s right! I’m not, am I? I feel almost forlorn.”
“I pay my debts. Would an ex-investigator like the best dinner in town tonight?”
“An ex-investigator and who else?”
“No one else.”
“You mean I should go out to dinner with a married man? Why, Lieutenant Strom!”
“What makes you think I’m married?”
“You look married.”
He swore fluently; the telephone rules say it’s not permitted, and he was an officer of the law, too.
“You’ll get your telephone taken away from you,” I said.
“Now I know what keeps Hodge Kistler where he is,” he said. “I know it isn’t your face. I’ll be around at seven o’clock.”
I put on my best bib and tucker, and spent all afternoon dressing. When I came downstairs from taking my bath, Mr. Waller was in the hall; he’d started upstairs but stepped back when he heard me coming; he stood half turned away with his head bent.
It’s sad to see a man as broken as that, even if he’s done an evil thing.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Waller.”
He mumbled something, dragged himself upstairs.
Lieutenant Strom came smack on the dot of seven; he was all shining and pressed, and set to do the town. He took me to the Athletic Club for dinner, which, he explained kindly, only big shots could afford to belong to; after that he took me to the Orchid Room at the Plaza, which has the best dance floor and the best bartender in town. I’d never been either place before, which shows how much money the men I know have. It was fun, but most of the fun was the fighting.
We fought over every detail of the case from beginning to end; on his solution with Mr. Grant as the murderer, we did a pitched battle that lasted well into dawn.
He had an awfully good case, of course, such a good one I was really beaten down. He began illustrating his logic with other cases he’d handled; by that time I was so contrary, I questioned the handling of those, too. The more he talked and drank, the more furious he was; we’d be dancing, and he’d push me off to roar in my face some new argument he’d thought up.
It was wonderful.
He drove me home in the good old police car.
“The Foreign Legion ought to import you,” he said. “Anytime they couldn’t scare up a war, you could always give ’em a little excitement.”
“Battles on request,” I said. “Or I cou
ld charge fifty cents a battle.”
“You couldn’t keep yourself from giving ’em away,” he said grumpily, but he laughed.
When we came into the hall at 593 Trent Street, Hodge Kistler was sprawled asleep in the black leather armchair. He woke up right away.
“Where the hell have you been?” he wanted to know crossly. “If Miss Sands hadn’t sworn up and down you’d gone out with Lieutenant Strom and weren’t home yet, I’d have busted in your new lock.”
“I was out,” I said. “With Lieutenant Strom. Celebrating the triumphal conclusion of a case.”
Hodge hauled his watch out of his pocket.
“Look at that.”
I focused on it.
“Four thirty.”
“Is that a nice time to come home, with a death in the house only a couple days ago?”
“Well, I came home with you at three once, and that was too early. Think of what happened to me after that.”
“That’s one thing you don’t have to worry about,” Lieutenant Strom pointed out largely. “You don’t have to keep tabs on the lady anymore, Kistler. She’s as safe as if she was locked up in a cell.”
“That’s what you think,” Mr. Kistler said shortly.
24
AT ANY RATE, I was safe that night. Nothing happened to me after four thirty except sleep.
It was after that night that Hodge Kistler began acting differently toward me. He still knocked at my door when he came in at night, still kidded me about my master mind. But he didn’t ask me out anymore. He often seemed to be thinking about something, but he wouldn’t let me in on it. I thought it was just silly. Why should he mind if the lieutenant took me out? When the lieutenant asked me again, I went. Hodge didn’t say anything.
Of the things that I had expected to happen then in Mrs. Garr’s house, some did, some didn’t. Mrs. Halloran moved over some of her belongings that week after Mr. Grant’s death. She was there all day every day, but she didn’t stay at night. And none of the rest of her family moved in.