The Mystery & Suspense Novella

by Fletcher Flora

  “Now, in a case such as this, Senator—”

  “In a case such as this, Miss Mack, the trained legal mind would delve first for the motive in Mr. Rennick’s assassination.”

  “And your legal mind, Senator, I presume, has delved for the motive. Has it found it?”

  The Senator turned his unlighted cigar reflectively between his lips. “I have not found it! Eliminating the field of sordid passion and insanity, I divide the motives of the murderer under three heads—robbery, jealousy, and revenge. In the present case, I eliminate the first possibility at the outset. There remain then only the two latter.”

  “You are interesting. You forget, however, a fourth motive—the strongest spur to crime in the human mind!”

  Senator Burroughs took his cigar from his mouth.

  “I mean the motive of—fear!” Madelyn said abruptly, as she swept into the house. When I followed her, Senator Burroughs had walked over to the railing and stood staring down at the ground below. He had tossed his cigar away.

  In the rooms where we had breakfasted, one of the stable boys stood awkwardly awaiting Madelyn Mack’s orders, while John Dorrence, the valet, was just laying a city directory on the table.

  “Nora,” she said, as she turned to the boy, “will you kindly look up the list of packing houses?”

  “Pick out the largest and give me the address,” she continued, as I ran my finger through the closely typed pages. With a growing curiosity, I selected a firm whose prestige was advertised in heavy letters. Madelyn’s fountain pen scratched a dozen lines across a sheet of her notebook, and she thrust it into an envelope and extended it to the stable lad.

  As the youth backed from the room, Senator Duffield appeared at the window.

  “I presume it will be possible for me to see Mr. Rennick’s body, Senator?” Madelyn Mack asked.

  Our host bowed.

  “Also, I would like to look at his clothes—the suit he was wearing at the time of his death, I mean—and, when I am through, I want twenty or thirty minutes alone in his room. If Mr. Taylor should arrive before I am through, will you kindly let me know?”

  “I can assure you, Miss Mack, that the police have been through Mr. Rennick’s apartment with a microscope.”

  “Then there can be no objection to my going through it with mine! By the way, Mr. Rennick’s glasses—the pair that was found under his body—were packed with his clothes, were they not?”

  “Certainly,” the Senator responded.

  I did not accompany Madelyn into the darkened room where the corpse of the murdered man was reposing. To my surprise, she rejoined me in less than five minutes.

  “What did you find?” I queried as we ascended the stairs.

  “A five-inch cut just above the sixth rib.”

  “That is what the newspapers said.”

  “You are mistaken. They said a three-inch cut. Have you ever tried to plunge a dagger through five inches of human flesh?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “I have.”

  Accustomed as I was to Madelyn Mack’s eccentricities, I stood stock still and stared into her face.

  “Oh, I’m not a murderess! I refer to my dissecting room experiences.”

  We had reached the upper hall when there was a quick movement at my shoulder, and I saw my companion’s hand dart behind my waist. Before I could quite grasp the situation, she had caught my right arm in a grip of steel. For an instant I thought she was trying to force me back down the stairs. Then the force of her hold wrung a low cry of pain from my lips. She released me with a rueful apology.

  “Forgive me, Nora! For a woman, I pride myself that I have a strong wrist!”

  “Yes, I think you have!”

  “Perhaps now you can appreciate what I mean when I say that even I haven’t strength enough to inflict the wound that killed Raymond Rennick!

  “Then we must be dealing with an Amazon.”

  “Would Cinderella’s missing slipper fit an Amazon?” she answered drily.

  As she finished her sentence, we paused before a closed door which I rightly surmised led into the room of the murdered secretary. Madelyn’s hand was on the knob when there was a step behind us, and Senator Duffield joined us with a rough bundle in his hands.

  “Mr. Rennick’s clothes,” he explained. Madelyn nodded.

  “Inspector Taylor left them in my care to hold until the inquest.”

  Madelyn flung the door open without comment and led the way inside. Slipping the string from the bundle, she emptied the contents out on to the counterpane of the bed. They comprised the usual warm weather outfit of a well-dressed man, who evidently avoided the extremes of fashion, and she deftly sorted the articles into small, neat piles. She glanced up with an expression of impatience.

  “I thought you said they were here, Mr. Duffield!”

  “What?”

  “Mr. Rennick’s glasses! Where are they?”

  Senator Duffield fumbled in his pocket. “I beg your pardon, Miss Mack. I had overlooked them,” he apologised, as he produced a thin paper parcel.

  Madelyn carried it to the window and carefully unwrapped it.

  “You will find the spectacles rather badly damaged, I fear. One lens is completely ruined.”

  Madelyn placed the broken glasses on the sill, and raised the blind to its full height. Then she dropped to her knees and whipped out her microscope. When she arose, her small, black-clad figure was tense with suppressed excitement.

  A fat oak chiffonier stood in the corner nearest her. Crossing to its side, she rummaged among the articles that littered its surface, opened and closed the top drawer, and stepped back with an expression of annoyance. A writing table was the next point of her search, with results which I judged to be equally fruitless. She glanced uncertainly from the bed to the three chairs, the only other articles of furniture that the room contained. Then her eyes lighted again as they rested on the broad, carved mantel that spanned the empty fireplace.

  It held the usual collection of bric-a-brac of a bachelor’s room. At the end farthest from us, however, there was a narrow, red case, of which I caught only an indistinct view when Madelyn’s hand closed over it.

  She whirled toward us. “I must ask you to leave me alone now, please!”

  The Senator flushed at the peremptory command. I stepped into the hall and he followed me, with a shrug. He was closing the door when Madelyn raised her voice. “If Inspector Taylor is below, kindly send him up at once!”

  “And what about the inquest, Miss Mack?”

  “There will be no inquest—today!”

  Senator Duffield led the way downstairs without a word. In the hall below, a ruddy-faced man, with grey hair, a thin grey beard and moustache, and a grey suit—suggesting any army officer in civilian clothes—was awaiting us. I could readily imagine that Inspector Taylor was something of a disciplinarian in the Boston police department. Also, relying on Madelyn Mack’s estimate, he was one of the three shrewdest detectives on the American continent.

  Senator Duffield hurried toward him with a suggestion of relief. “Miss Mack is upstairs, Inspector, and requested me to send you to her the moment you arrived.”

  “Is she in Mr. Rennick’s room?”

  The Senator nodded. The Inspector hesitated as though about to ask another question and then, as though thinking better of it, bowed and turned to the stairs.

  Inspector Taylor was one of those few policemen who had the honour of being numbered among Madelyn Mack’s personal friends, and I fancied that he welcomed the news of her arrival.

  Fletcher Duffield was chatting somewhat aimlessly with Senator Burroughs as we sauntered out into the yard again. None of the ladies of the family were visible. The plain clothes man was still lounging disconsolately in the vicinity of the gate. There was a sense of unrest in the scene, a vague expe
ctancy. Although no one voiced the suggestion, we might all have been waiting to catch the first clap of distant thunder.

  As Senator Duffield joined the men, I wandered across to the dining-room window. I fancied the room was deserted, but I was mistaken. As I faced about toward the driveway, a low voice caught my ear from behind the curtains.

  “You are Miss Mack’s friend, are you not? No, don’t turn around, please!”

  But I had already faced toward the open door. At my elbow was a white-capped maid—with her face almost as white as her cap—whom I remembered to have seen at breakfast.

  “Yes, I am Miss Mack’s friend. What can I do for you?”

  “I have a message for her. Will you see that she gets it?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Tell her that I was at the door of Senator Duffield’s library the night before the murder.”

  My face must have expressed my bewilderment. For an instant I fancied the girl was about to run from the room. I stepped through the window and put my arm about her shoulders. She smiled faintly.

  “I don’t know much about the law, and evidence, and that sort of thing—and I am afraid! You will take care of me, won’t you?”

  “Of course, I will, Anna. You name is Anna, isn’t it?”

  The girl was rapidly recovering her self-possession. “I thought you ought to know what happened Tuesday night. I was passing the door of the library—it was fairly late, about ten o’clock, I think—when I heard a man’s voice inside the room. It was a loud, angry voice like that of a person in a quarrel. Then I heard a second voice, lower and much calmer.”

  “Did you recognize the speakers?”

  “They were Mr. Rennick and Senator Duffield!”

  I caught my breath. “You said one of them was angry. Which was it?”

  “Oh, it was the Senator! He was very much excited and worked up. Mr. Rennick seemed to be speaking very low.”

  “What were they saying, Anna?” I tried to make my tones careless and indifferent, but they trembled in spite of myself.

  “I couldn’t catch what Mr. Rennick said. The Senator was saying some dreadful things. I remember he cried, ‘You swindlers!’ And then a bit later ‘I have evidence that should put you and your thieving crew behind the bars!’ I think that is all. I was too bewildered to—”

  A stir on the lawn interrupted the sentence. Madelyn Mack and Inspector Taylor had appeared. At the sound of their voices, the girl broke from my arm and darted toward the door.

  Through the window, I heard the Inspector’s heavy tones, as he announced curtly, “I am telephoning the coroner, Senator, that we are not ready for the inquest today. We must postpone it until tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER V

  The balance of the day passed without incident. In fact, I found the subdued quiet of the Duffield home becoming irksome as evening fell. I saw little of Madelyn Mack. She disappeared shortly after luncheon behind the door of her room, and I did not see her again until the dressing bell rang for dinner. Senator Duffield left for the city with Mr. Burroughs at noon, and his car did not bring him back until dark. The women of the family remained in their apartments during the entire day, nor could I wonder at the fact. A morbid crowd of curious sightseers was massed about the gates almost constantly, and it was necessary to send a call for two additional policemen to keep them back. In spite of the vigilance, frequent groups of newspaper men managed to slip into the grounds, and, after half a dozen experiences in frantically dodging a battery of cameras, I decided to stick to the shelter of the house.

  It was with a feeling of distinct relief that I heard the door of Madelyn’s room open and her voice calling to me to enter. I found her stretched on a lounge before the window, with a mass of pillows under her head.

  “Been asleep?” I asked.

  “No—to tell the truth, I’ve been too busy.”

  “What? In this room!”

  “This is the first time I’ve been here since noon!”

  “Then where—”

  “Nora, don’t ask questions!”

  I turned away with a shrug that brought a laugh from the lounge. Madelyn rose and shook out her skirts. I sat watching her as she walked across to the mirror and stood patting the great golden masses of her hair.

  A low tap on the door interrupted her. Dorrence, the valet, stood outside as she opened it, extending an envelope. Madelyn fumbled it as she walked back. She let the envelope flutter to the floor and I saw that it contained only a blank sheet of paper. She thrust it into her pocket without explanation.

  “How would you like a long motor ride, Nora?”

  “For business or pleasure?”

  “Pleasure! The day’s work is finished! I don’t know whether you agree with me or not, but I am strongly of the opinion that a whirl out under the elms of Cambridge, and then on to Concord and Lexington would be delightful in the moonlight. What do you say?”

  The clock was hovering on the verge of midnight and the household had retired when we returned. Madelyn was in singularly cheery spirits. The low refrain which she was humming as the car swung into the grounds—“Schubert’s Serenade,” I think it was—ceased only when we stepped on to the veranda, and realized that we were entering the house of the dead.

  I turned off my lights in silence, and glanced undecidedly from the bed to the rocker by the window. The cool night breeze beckoned me to the latter, and I drew the chair back a pace and cuddled down among the cushions. The lawn was almost silver under the flood of the moonlight, recalling vaguely the sweep of the ocean on a mid-summer night. Back and forth along the edge of the gate the figure of a man was pacing like a tired sentinel. It was the plain-clothes officer from headquarters. His figure suggested a state of siege. We might have been surrounded by a skulking enemy. Or was the enemy within, and the sentinel stationed to prevent his escape? I stumbled across to the bed and to sleep, with the question echoing oddly through my brain.

  When I opened my eyes, the sun was throwing a yellow shaft of light across my bed, but it wasn’t the sun that had awakened me. Madelyn was standing in the doorway, dressed, with an expression on her face which brought me to my elbow.

  “What has happened now?”

  “Burglars!”

  “Burglars?” I repeated dully.

  “I am going down to the library. Some one is making news for us fast, Nora! When will it be our turn?”

  I dressed in record-breaking time, with my curiosity whetted by sounds of suppressed excitement which forced their way into the upper hall. The Duffield home not only was early astir, but was rudely jarred out of its customary routine.

  When I descended, I found a nervous group of servants clustered about the door of the library. They stood aside to let me pass, with attitudes of uneasiness which I surmised would mean a wholesale series of “notices” if the strange events in the usually well regulated household continued.

  Behind the closed door of the library were Senator Duffield, his son, Fletcher, and Madelyn Mack. It was easy to appreciate at a glance the unusual condition of the room. At the right, one of the long windows, partly raised, showed the small, round hole of a diamond cutter just over the latch. It was obvious where the clandestine entrance and exit had been obtained. The most noticeable feature of the apartment, however, was a small, square safe in the corner, with its heavy lid swinging awkwardly ajar, and the rug below littered with a heap of papers, that had evidently been torn from its neatly tabulated series of drawers. The burglarious hands either had been very angry or very much in a hurry. Even a number of unsealed envelopes had been ripped across, as though the pillager had been too impatient to extract their contents in the ordinary manner. To a man of Senator Duffield’s methodical habits, it was easy to imagine that the scene had been a severe wrench.

  Madelyn was speaking in her quick, incisive tones as I entered.

  “Ar
e you quite sure of that fact, Senator?” she asked sharply, as I closed the door and joined the trio.

  “Quite sure, Miss Mack!”

  “Then nothing is missing, absolutely nothing?”

  “Not a single article, valuable or otherwise!”

  “I presume then there were articles of more or less value in the safe?”

  “There was perhaps four hundred dollars in loose bills in my private cash drawer, and, so far as I know, there is not a dollar gone.”

  “How about your papers and memoranda?”

  The Senator shook his head.

  “There was nothing of the slightest use to a stranger. As a matter of fact, just two days ago, I took pains to destroy the only portfolio of valuable documents in the safe.”

  Madelyn stooped thoughtfully over the litter of papers on the rug. “You mean three evenings ago, don’t you?”

  “How on earth, Miss Mack—”

  “You refer to the memoranda that you and Mr. Rennick were working on the night before his death, do you not?”

  “Of course!” And then I saw Senator Duffield was staring at his curt questioner as though he had said something he hadn’t meant to.

  “I think you told me once before that the combination of your safe was known only to yourself and Mr. Rennick?”

  “You are correct.”

  “Then, to your knowledge, you are the only living person who possesses this information at the present time?”

  “That is the case. It was a rather intricate combination, and we changed it hardly a month ago.”

  Madelyn rose from the safe, glanced reflectively at a huge leather chair, and sank into its depths with a sigh.

  “You say nothing has been stolen, Senator, that the burglar’s visit yielded him nothing. For your peace of mind, I would like to agree with you, but I am sorry to inform you that you are mistaken.”

  “Surely, Miss Mack, you are hasty! I am confident that I have searched my possessions with the utmost care.”