by Ron Goulart
He was little more than out of sight when I returned to my books, for I was briefing an important case for the next term of the appellate court, and I was soon wrapped up in the contemplation of a very fine legal point. It must have been fully an hour later when the telephone rang.
“Hello,” I grunted.
“That you, Carter?” rasped the irritable voice of none other than Thaddeus Taylor. “Can you come down to the factory right away?”
“Surely, Thaddeus,” I replied. “I’ll be there in an hour.”
“All right, Carter,” grunted my client, “and bring some foolscap with you. I want you to draw up a new will. I want—wait a minute—”
I knew better than to start any sort of abrupt protest; he had to be handled very carefully, but I preferred to have him alone at his home. I was just planning to suggest a later hour when his pause was broken by the thin, file-like edge of Thaddeus Taylor’s voice raised to a screeching scream of wild terror which made my blood run cold.
“What’s the matter, Thaddeus?” I cried into the transmitter. There was no response.
“Thaddeus!” I shouted, jiggling the receiver hook up and down. “Operator! Operator!” The echo of my own voice, sounding through my office, was the only answer.
The first thought that came to my mind was—Worth Taylor! The boy, faced with loss of his property, had struck down his uncle, and I prayed for the best and feared for the worst. Only for a moment did I hesitate. The telephone would tell me nothing; I must get there as soon as I could. Fortunately my car was beside the curb at the foot of my office steps and, jamming my hat onto my head, I took the stairway three steps at a time. I forgot that I was an old man with rheumatism.
For the first time in my life I knowingly and willfully, as the legal phrase has it, broke the law; I shattered the town’s speed ordinance into fragments as I tore along Blucker Street toward the Taylorville Tile Works. I was only a block away when I jammed on the brakes. Limping slowly toward town, dragging his withered limb after him, I saw Lester Henry.
“Get in here with me, Henry,” I cried, flinging open the door. “I—I am afraid that something has happened at the tile plant.”
In short, terse sentences I told him what I knew; as much as I might have liked, there was no use in withholding anything from Lester Henry—Constable Henry now, if you please. He knew as much about the strained relations between Worth Taylor and his uncle as I did.
“I just came from the factory myself,” remarked Henry, “I was there buying a load of tile to drain the lower forty acres of my farm.”
“Did—did you see Worth?” I demanded anxiously.
“I didn’t go inside the office,” he replied. “I gave my order to Charley Wade, the foreman. I never go near old Thaddeus if I can help it; I—I always feel like I want to choke him. Good thing I didn’t, eh? I had a motive, too. But dispel your fears, if anything has happened to old Taylor, that Worth did it; I’ll bet money on that.”
“I hope so,” I groaned; “I love that boy.”
“So do I,” agreed Henry, “as much as hate his uncle. You understand why?”
Racing the car through the factory yard, between the row of flame-belching tile-baking furnaces, I paused at the modest office of the prosperous industry. I fairly leaped from the machine and burst into the office.
One glance told me that my worst fears were confirmed; Thaddeus Taylor was dead.
CHAPTER IV
Crouched against the wall as if to get as far as possible from the huddled-up body in the swivel chair at the battered roll-top desk, his face convulsive with terror, was Jasper Boddington, Thaddeus Taylor’s aged bookkeeper and cashier.
“He’s dead—dead!” he whispered, “I—I didn’t kill him; I swear I didn’t kill him!”
Lester Henry had limped in behind me. He gave a searching glance in Boddington’s direction and turned to the body. Henry had his wish; he had met crime face to face. I was a little surprised at his calmness.
“Stabbed,” he said tersely. “Stabbed through the heart—with this.” He pointed to a crimson-stained paper knife which lay on the floor beside the desk. Carefully he picked it up by the blade—a murderous-looking thing to open letters with.
“No finger prints,” he added. “It would be a poor dub these days who wouldn’t wipe off his finger prints.”
I stared helplessly at the form of Thaddeus Taylor. Even death had failed to remove the harsh, almost sneering expression of his face—what a miserable soul had been released from its mortal prison, I thought.
“Boddington,” said Henry, “I suppose you know that I am a constable? I will take charge of things.”
“Where—where is Worth, Boddington?” I demanded.
“He—he was here when—when I left,” whispered the aged bookkeeper.
“Please, Carter,” requested Henry, “let me ask the questions—for the present come on now, Boddington; pull yourself together and tell us how this thing happened.”
“I—I don’t know,” stammered Boddington, “I—I just came in—just as you drove up; that—that is what I found.”
“You mean that you weren’t here when Taylor was killed?”
A look of wild terror came into old Boddington’s face.
“You—you don’t think I was here?” he begged, “You don’t think, that—that I killed him?”
“Did you kill him?” demanded Henry.
“No! I swear it!”
“Then why do you fear that we will suspect you?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“You’re not telling the truth, Boddington,” charged Henry. “Out with it; you and Taylor quarreled—isn’t that it?”
Old Boddington’s teeth fairly chattered.
“But I didn’t kill him,” he insisted desperately. “I wasn’t even in the office.”
“What did you quarrel about?”
“We—that is he—was always quarreling,” Boddington almost sobbed. “Oh, if you only knew what I’ve been through in the last fifteen years I’ve worked here. He was always abusing me, swearing at me, calling me names. He—he said that he liked people to be afraid of him and—and to hate him.”
“And you hated him,” persisted Henry. “Enough to kill him?”
“Maybe I hated him enough, but—I was too afraid of him,” whimpered Boddington. “I didn’t kill him; I wouldn’t have dared.”
It was possible to believe that simply by looking at the bookkeeper’s palsied body and terror-stricken eyes; and yet, I told myself, worms had been known to turn before.
“Go ahead with your story,” commanded Henry, “Get a grip on yourself and tell us. If you’re innocent you’ve nothing to fear.”
“I—I haven’t any story,” pleaded Boddington. “I went out into the brick yards to take some orders out. I was gone about ten minutes; when I got back he—he was like that—dead.”
“Any one in the office when you left?”
Boddington hesitated.
“N-o-o,” he said, with averted eyes.
“You’ll be putting the noose about your own neck if you try to shield anyone else,” reminded Henry. “You are under suspicion yourself, you know.”
Boddington’s panic returned.
“I’ll tell,” he said hastily. “I—I didn’t want—I—I—”
“You hoped that the man who killed him would escape, eh?” Henry guessed shrewdly. And Boddington nodded slowly.
“Yes,” he whispered, “that was it. Worth was in the office when I left.”
“They quarreled about the will, didn’t they?”
The bookkeeper’s faded blue eyes widened at Henry’s seemingly uncanny knowledge.
“They quarreled—about the will,” he agreed; “but—but I know that Worth didn’t mean those threats; he—he was just talking.”
“Then Worth did threaten to kill his uncle?” went on Henry calmly.
“But he didn’t mean it,” protested Boddington eagerly. “Worth wouldn’t do that. He didn�
�t mean it any more than George Archer did.”
I started in surprise, and Lester Henry’s brows went up in surprise.
“You mean some one else threatened Thaddeus Taylor’s life—today?” he demanded.
“Yes,” replied Boddington. “You know George Archer; he works out in the yards. He was all het up because Mr. Taylor was going to foreclose the mortgage on his house.”
I understood what he meant. Thaddeus Taylor owned a number of tenant cottages which he sometimes sold on the time-payment plan. He insisted that purchasers live strictly up to their payments and never took excuses; it was “meet your payments or get out” with him.
“What did Archer say?” pursued Henry.
“He said, ‘You foreclose that mortgage of mine, and it’ll be the last mortgage you’ll ever foreclose this side of hell. You turn me out in the street, Thaddeus Taylor, and I’ll put you off watch.’ That’s what he said, word for word.”
Lester Henry knitted his brows thoughtfully.
“Let us be getting a little more coherent account of the time,” he said. “When you left the office Worth was still here? Is that it?”
“He had started to the door like he was going out; he was standing out in front when I passed him. I don’t know if he came back in or not.”
“Archer had been in about half an hour before, and—I’m going to tell you everything—as I went out to the yard I met Archer, walking toward the office. I don’t know if he came to the office or not, but he was coming in this direction, and then, a little farther on I saw you—and you were coming toward the office, too, Mr. Henry.”
“Yes,” nodded Henry, “that is so. I had forgotten to include myself among the—er—suspects. But I didn’t come to the office. I merely passed in front of it on my way to the street.”
Henry’s eyes were like burning coals, and it was now evident to me that his calm exterior was but a cloak for a well-mastered excitement. A sudden suspicion seized me, I knew a little something about the queer twists that were often to be found within the brains of men afflicted such as he was. He had admitted that he hated Thaddeus Taylor, that he held him to account for the lameness which he had carried for so many years; he had even admitted that he had felt the impulse to do violence to the man who had maimed him.
He had passed the office, as he said, on the way to the street after placing his order with the foreman for a load of tile. A man passing the office, had he looked up, could easily see through the window within. What if he had seen the man who had blighted has me, sitting there alone? Suppose he had been seized with the desire to avenge his wrong? Knowing that suspicion naturally would be diverted to Worth Taylor, what could be more logical than an impulsive dash into the room, a quick lunge at Thaddeus Taylor as he sat talking to me on the telephone—and a speedy flight? And then to hide the whole business by his own investigation of the crime? I will admit that I suddenly found myself more inclined to this theory than to the one that Worth had let his anger go to such lengths—for I didn’t want to think the boy guilty.
Something of my thoughts must have showed in my face as I stared at Henry intently, for he laughed shortly.
“I see that I am indeed a suspect,” he said. “I’ll have a double motive now in solving the crime—I’ve got to clear myself, too.”
Feeling a bit ashamed of myself, I turned my eyes away from his and looked out the window. At that moment Worth Taylor was walking briskly toward the office.
CHAPTER V
One look at Worth Taylor’s face, and I knew that he was either as innocent as myself or the cleverest actor in Christendom. His face blanched as he stared past us at the inert form of his uncle; he saw the telltale crimson stain on Thaddeus Taylor’s shirt and the now-clotted weapon which, had struck the blow.
“He—he has been murdered!” he cried hoarsely. “Who—who did it; who killed my uncle?”
“You didn’t do it, did you, Worth?” Henry demanded bluntly.
“I—I kill him!” exclaimed Worth. “I kill Uncle Thad? Man, are you crazy?”
“You threatened to, you know,” reminded Henry.
“That’s a lie!”
“Mr. Carter and I both heard you—two nights ago in my room at the hotel; and Boddington says he heard you here, too.”
“Great heavens! You don’t think for a minute that I meant that? That—why, I didn’t mean it. I wouldn’t have killed him for all the tile factories in North America.” He stared at me appealingly. “Surely, Mr. Carter,” he begged, “you—you don’t think I even thought of killing Uncle Thad?”
A great lump came into my throat.
“Of course I don’t believe it,” I told him.
“But you did quarrel with your uncle again this afternoon,” insisted Henry. “It is certain that you defied him, for he called Carter, here, up on the telephone and said that he was going to change his will Boddington says you were in front of the office when he left—after the quarrel; when he returned, your uncle was dead.”
“Yes,” agreed Worth miserably, “that is true. I think I did use some hot words, but—well, I was under tremendous excitement It isn’t any calm matter to lose a factory like this—when it is really yours. You see—I didn’t tell you this the other night—Ethel and I were married ten days ago in St. Louis, Uncle Thad found it out; I think he suspected it, and that’s why he went to the city. That—that is why he wanted to change the will today.”
“And,” suggested Henry, “the only thing that would stop him was—death!”
“Don’t—don’t you dare suggest that I killed him!” cried Worth.
Henry smiled a little.
“Don’t worry, Worthy,” he said; “I know you didn’t do it.”
Even to me, Worth’s friend, this decision seemed a little premature, but Lester Henry was so positive that I began to wonder if he really did know more about the business than he pretended. I could not, for the life of me, see but that the visible evidence was all against Worth.
Lester Henry had been walking slowly back and forth, and I noted that he moved his feet across the linoleum with a shuffling sort of movement that produced a scraping sound, not unlike that of two sheets of sandpaper being rubbed across. I noted that he moved toward the big, old-fashioned safe, the door of which was standing open.
“Boddington,” said Henry, “you look after the cash, don’t you?”
The old bookkeeper, who, still trembling, had slipped into a chair, hands across his face that he might not have to look upon the body of Thaddeus Taylor, nodded.
“Know how much money is in that safe?”
“To the last penny,” replied Boddington.
“Count it,” commanded Henry. “I think you’ll find some of it missing.”
The old man almost tottered across the room and knelt before the iron box. A cry burst from his lips.
“You’re right!” he said. “There’s seven hundred dollars gone—and it was there an hour ago!”
“Exactly.” Henry nodded, with the suspicion of an exultant smile about his lips. “Hear my foot scrape across the floor—that’s sand, a trail of it leads from the door to Thaddeus Taylor’s desk and to the safe. You can scarcely see it, for it’s white—white sand! Do you use much white sand in the factory here?”
It was Worth who answered.
“Yes,” he replied. “We’ve got a whole car of it in today. It’s from the Cuiver River; I discovered it and worked out a process for manufacturing a particular grade of fine tile. It’s being unloaded on the spur track right now.”
“How many men are unloading it?”
“Only one; Fred Willis, I think his name is,” answered Worth.
“Send for Fred Willis, and you’ve got the man who killed your uncle,” declared Lester Henry. “We’ve got the complete evidence against him—absolutely conclusive. I’ll show you in a minute,” Worthy as puzzled as the rest—Boddington was too bewildered to be further puzzled about anything—stepped to the yard phone to call the foreman.
“Willis seems to have skipped out,” he told us. “Wade says one of the men saw him running off down the railroad tracks. I—I guess you’ve got the right dope, Henry, but—but how—”
“Yes,” I chimed in; “how did you do it?”
“Let me picture the thing out for you,” said Lester Henry, moving his withered leg to an easier position, “Thaddeus Taylor had been out of town and only returned this afternoon. Boddington was alone in the office. Willis saw Boddington go out into the yard and surmised that Boddington might have left the office empty—and the safe open.”
“I never did such a careless thing in my life!” quavered Boddington indignantly; he was one of those methodical souls who resented the imputation of such gross carelessness.
“Willis did not know that Mr. Taylor had returned. He knew that Worth was also out in the yards. He slipped up to the office. If he looked through the second window there he could have seen the safe door open, but could not have seen that Mr. Taylor was at his desk in the corner. He came in with the idea of robbing the safe—nothing more.
“When he got inside he found Taylor here. Probably he is a thick-witted fellow and so, instead of making some sort of excuse for his presence, he considered himself trapped in the act of robbery. A man of what I judge his mental processes to be thought only of escape, and he knew that a call from Mr. Taylor would cut off retreat. Possibly, even, he got over to the safe before he discovered Taylor’s presence. We will not know that until he has confessed—they’ll catch him before he gets very far. At any rate, he grabbed the first weapon, which happened to be the paper knife—and struck.
“Thaddeus Taylor reached out his hands to ward off the thrust, catching Willis by the sleeve.”
“That’s just your imagination,” I charged skeptically.
“Indeed it is not, Carter,” retorted Henry triumphantly. “I know he caught Willis by the sleeve, for—sticking to the skin of Thaddeus Taylor’s palm I found—ten grains of white sand!”