by Otto Penzler
V
An hour after Mrs. Poor had departed I heard a timid tap on my door, and upon opening it beheld a round little body in a stiff black dress and a funny little hat with ostrich tips. She carried her gloved hands folded primly on the most protuberant part of her person, and from one arm hung a black satin reticule. She had cheeks like withered rosy apples, and short-sighted eyes peering through thick glasses. There was a wistful, childlike quality in her glance that immediately appealed to one. At present the little lady was scared and breathless.
“Does Madame Storey live here?” she gasped.
“This is her office,” I said. “Come in.”
“I am Mrs. Batten.”
I looked at her with strong interest. “Madame Storey will be glad to see you,” I said.
“I told her I’d come,” she faltered; “but I’m so upset—so upset, I’m sure if she asks me the simplest questions my wits will fly away completely.”
“You needn’t be afraid of her,” I said soothingly.
I knew whereof I spoke. The instant Madame Storey laid eyes on the trembling little body, she smiled and softened. She put away her worldly airs and was just simple like folks. I remained in the room. Madame Storey talked of indifferent matters until Mrs. Batten got her breath somewhat, and brought the matter very gradually around to the Poor case. At the first reference to Philippa Dean the tears started out of the old eyes and rolled down the withered cheeks.
“My poor, poor girl!” she mourned. “My poor girl!”
“You were very fond of her, then?” put in Madame Storey gently.
“Like a daughter she was to me, madame.”
“Well, let’s put our heads together and see what we can do. You can help me a lot. First of all, where were you all evening while Mrs. Poor was at the entertainment?”
With a great effort Mrs. Batten collected her forces and called in her tears. Her hands gripped the arms of her chair. “I was in my room,” she said, “my sitting-room downstairs.”
“All alone?”
“Why, of course!”
“Please tell me just where your room is.”
“Well, the way to it from the front hall is through a door between the reception-room and the dining-room and along a passage. Half-way down this passage is my door on the right and the pantry door opposite. At the end of the passage another passage runs crosswise. That we call the back hall. It has a door on the drive——”
“That is the door by which the servants entered when they returned with Mrs. Poor?”
“Yes, madame. And at the other end of the back hall there’s a door to the garden. The back stairs are in this hall. The kitchen and the servants’ dining-room are beyond.”
“I get the hang of it. Wasn’t it unusual for you to remain up so late?”
“Yes, it was.”
“How did it happen?”
“Well—I got interested in a book.”
“What book?”
Mrs. Batten put a distracted hand to her brow. “Let me see—my poor wits! Oh, yes, it was called The Light That Failed.”
No muscle of Madame Storey’s face changed. “Ah! An admirable story! I know it well. What I particularly admire is the opening chapter, where the young man steps out of the clock case and confronts the thief in the act of rifling the safe.”
“I thought that a little overdrawn,” said Mrs. Batten.
I gasped inwardly. I could scarcely believe my ears. Our dear, gentle little old lady was lying like a trooper, and Madame Storey had trapped her. For, of course, as everybody knows, there is no such scene in The Light That Failed.
Madame Storey went right on: “Please tell me exactly what happened when Mrs. Poor returned that night.”
Mrs. Batten complied. Up to a certain point her story tallied exactly with that of her mistress, and there is no need for repeating it. Mrs. Batten corroborated Mrs. Poor’s statement that Philippa Dean had appeared as soon as Mrs. Poor cried out.
Then Madame Storey said: “But Miss Dean testified that she had to run all the way around the upstairs gallery and downstairs.”
Mrs. Batten gave her a frightened look. “Oh, well, I may be mistaken,” she said quickly. “It was all so dreadful. Maybe it was a minute before she got there.”
“What did Miss Dean say to Mrs. Poor when she got there?”
“She didn’t say anything—that is, not anything regular. She put her arm around her and said: ‘Be calm’—or ‘Don’t give way,’ or something like that.”
“Didn’t Miss Dean say: ‘Don’t go to him. It’s all over’?”
Mrs. Batten sat bolt upright in her chair, and the near-sighted eyes positively shot sparks. “She did not say that.”
“Can you be sure?”
“I’ll swear it.”
“She might have said it without your hearing.”
“I was there all the time. I had hold of Mrs. Poor, too.”
“But Mrs. Poor has testified that Miss Dean said that.”
The old woman obstinately primmed her lips. “I don’t care.”
“Wouldn’t you believe your mistress?”
“Not if she said that. She was mistaken. She was half wild, anyway. She didn’t know what anybody said to her. Why, nobody knew that Mr. Poor was dead then. Not till the butler came.”
Mrs. Batten’s anxiety on the girl’s behalf was so obvious that her testimony in the girl’s favour did not carry much weight.
Madame Storey continued: “Did you notice anything strange about Miss Dean’s manner when she came?”
Mrs. Batten sparred for time. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“Was she unduly agitated?”
“Why, of course, we all were.”
“I said unduly. Did she behave any differently from the others?”
The little old lady began to tremble.
“What are you trying to get me to say?” she stammered. “She didn’t do it. She couldn’t have done it. That sweet young girl, so gentle, so fastidious!” The old voice scaled up hysterically. “Nothing could ever make me believe she did it. Like a daughter to me, a daughter. She didn’t do it. I will say it to my dying day.”
Madame Storey smiled kindly. “Your feelings do you credit, Mrs. Batten; “still I hope you won’t show them so plainly before the jury.”
“The jury!” whispered Mrs. Batten, scared and sobered.
“Because if you let them see how fond you are of Miss Dean they won’t believe a word you say in her favour.”
“The jury!” Mrs. Batten reiterated, staring before her as if she visualised the dreadful ordeal that awaited her. “I will have to sit up there in the witness chair and take my oath before them all—and everybody looking at me—thousands—and lawyers asking me this and that a-purpose to mix me up——” She suddenly cried out: “Oh, I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I know I couldn’t. I’m too nervous. I’d kill myself sooner than face that.”
The little woman’s terror was so disproportionate to the thing she feared that the strange thought went through my mind, perhaps it was she who killed Ashcomb Poor, or maybe she and the girl had done it together. I attended to what followed with a breathless interest.
Meanwhile Madame Storey was trying to quiet her. “There now! There now! Mrs. Batten, don’t distress yourself so. This is just an imaginary terror. It may never be necessary for you to go on the stand. Let’s take a breathing spell to allow our nerves to quiet down. Have a cigarette?”
I stared at my employer, for at the moment this seemed like a very poor attempt at a joke. I ought to have known that Madame Storey never did anything at such moments without a purpose.
Mrs. Batten drew the remains of her dignity around her. “Thank you, I don’t indulge,” she said stiffly. She was pure mid-Victorian then.
Madame Storey said teasingly: “Come now, Mrs. Batten! Not even in the privacy of your room?”
“Never. I’m not saying that I blame them that do if they like it; but in my day it wasn’t considered nice.”
“Does Miss Dean smoke?” asked Madame Storey with an idle air.
“I’m sure she does not,” answered Mrs. Batten earnestly. “I’ve been with her at all times and seasons, and I never saw her take one between her lips. There was no reason she should hide it from me. Besides, the maids never picked up any cigarette ends in her room. They’re keen on such things.”
“You have the reputation of being a very tidy person, haven’t you, Mrs. Batten?” asked Madame Storey. “They tell me you are a regular New England housekeeper.”
By this time I had guessed from Madame Storey’s elaborately careless air that this apparently meaningless questioning was tending to a well-defined point. The old lady glanced at her in a bewildered way but she could see nothing behind this harmless remark.
“Why, yes,” she said, “I suppose I do like to see things clean—real clean. And everything in its proper place.”
“Who does up your room?” went on Madame Storey in the purring voice that always means danger—for somebody. My heart began to beat.
“I do it myself, always,” answered the little woman unsuspectingly. “I don’t like the maids messing among my things. I like my room just so. I always sweep and dust and put things in order myself, and I mean to do so until I take to my bed for the last time.”
“Every day?” asked Madame Storey, flicking the ash off her cigarette.
“Every day, most certainly.”
Madame Storey drawled in a voice as sweet as honey: “Well, then, Mrs. Batten, who was it that was smoking cigarettes in your room the night that Ashcomb Poor was killed?”
The little old woman’s jaw dropped, the rosy cheeks grayed, her eyes were like a sick woman’s. Presently the hanging lip began to tremble piteously. I could not bear to look at her.
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she stuttered.
“You have not answered my question,” Madame Storey said mildly.
“Nobody—nobody was smoking in my room.”
Madame Storey turned to me. “Miss Brickley, please get me the exhibits in the Poor case that I asked you to put away.”
Hastening into the next room I procured the things from the safe. When I returned neither of the two had changed position. From the envelope that I handed her Madame Storey shook the cigarette butts.
“These were found in your room early the next morning,” she said to Mrs. Batten. “In the little brass bowl on the window-sill.”
“All kinds of people were in the house that morning,” stammered the little woman with a desperate air; “police, detectives, goodness knows who! How do I know who passed through my room?”
“It was scarcely one who passed through,” said Madame Storey. “He or she must have lingered some time—long enough, that is, to smoke seven cigarettes. See!” She counted them before the old woman’s fascinated eyes.
“I don’t know how they came there. I don’t know how they came there,” wailed the latter.
Madame Storey spread the cigarette ends in a row. “They are plain tip cigarettes,” she said, “so I assume they are a man’s. Women prefer cork tips or straw tips, because lip rouge sticks and comes off on the paper. What gentleman visited you, Mrs. Batten?”
“There was nobody, nobody!” was the faint answer. “Why do you torment me?”
“There’s no harm in having a visitor, surely. Your son, perhaps, a nephew, a brother—even a husband. Women do have them, Mrs. Batten.”
“Everybody knows I have no family.”
“A friend, then. Where’s the harm?”
“There was nobody there.”
Madame Storey examined the cigarette ends anew. “One of them is long enough to show the name of the brand,” she said, “—Army and Navy. One might guess that they were smoked by a man in the service.”
The harried little woman gave her a glance of fresh terror.
Delicately picking up one of the butts, Madame Storey smelled of the unburned end. “The tobacco is of a superior and expensive grade,” she remarked. “Evidently an officer’s cigarette. But of what branch of the service? That is the question.” She fixed the trembling little soul with her compelling gaze and asked abruptly: “Was he an aviator, Mrs. Batten?”
A terrified cry escaped Mrs. Batten.
“I see he was,” said Madame Storey.
Mrs. Batten was gazing at Madame Storey as if the evil one himself confronted her.
Answering that look of awed terror, my employer said quietly: “No, there is no magic in it, Mrs. Batten. As a matter of fact, later that morning I found, in the field across the brook at the foot of the garden, marks in the earth showing where an airplane had alighted and had later arisen again. I was only putting two and two together, you see.”
The little woman, seemingly incapable of speech, sat there with her hands clasped as if imploring for mercy. It was very affecting.
Madame Storey went on: “Upon consulting an expert in aviation I learned that such tracks could have been made by none other than one of the new Bentley-Critchard machines, of which there are as yet only half-a-dozen in service, and those all at Camp Tasker, which is only fifteen miles from Grimstead—a few minutes’ flight. All I lack is the name of the aviator who visited you. Who was he, Mrs. Batten?”
The little woman moistened her lips and whispered in a kind of dry cackle: “I don’t know. No one came.”
“You might as well tell me,” Madame Storey said patiently. “It would not be difficult to find out at Camp Tasker, you know. There cannot be many officers accustomed to driving that new type.”
A groan broke from the little old woman. She covered her face with her hands. “You are too much for me,” she murmured. “It was Lieutenant George Grantland.”
I got out of my chair and sat down again, staring at the woman like a zany. Grantland! Eddie’s hero! The popular idol of the day!
Madame Storey was no less astonished than I. “Quick, Bella! The morning paper!”
I hastened and got it for her. There was his name on the front page, of course, as it had been in every edition during the past two days. Madame Storey read out the headlines:
GRANTLAND AT CHICAGO LAST NIGHT
Flew from New Orleans Yesterday
Expected to land at Camp Tasker this morning. Has circumnavigated the entire country east of the Mississippi in little more than three days. The bold young flier’s endurance test a success in every particular. Great ovations tendered him at every landing.
Meanwhile the wretched little old lady was weeping bitterly and wailing over and over: “I promised not to tell. I promised not to tell.”
“Promised whom?” asked Madame Storey.
“Philippa.”
“Well, you needn’t distress yourself so, Mrs. Batten. If you love this girl, bringing the man’s name into the case isn’t going to hurt her chances any.”
Mrs. Batten had forgotten all caution now. “But if you convict him,” she sobbed, “it will kill Philippa just the same.”
“Aha!” murmured Madame Storey to herself; “so that’s the way the wind lies.” She looked at the old woman oddly. “So Grantland did it?”
Mrs. Batten flung up her arms. “I don’t know,” she burst out, and at least that cry rang true. “I haven’t eaten. I haven’t slept since it happened. I’m nearly out of my mind with thinking about it.”
Madame Storey whispered privately to me to call up Camp Tasker. If I could succeed in getting a message to Lieutenant Grantland I was to ask him to come to her office on a matter of the greatest importance concerning Miss Philippa Dean.
Through the open door I could hear her asking Mrs. Batten to forgive her for tormenting her.
“But you know you came here determined not to tell me the truth,” she said.
In a few minutes I was able to report that I had got a message to Lieutenant Grantland, who had but just landed from his plane, and that he had promised to be in Madame Storey’s office within an hour.
Mrs. Batten was q
uiet again—quiet and wary. Poor little soul, now that one understood better, one couldn’t but admire her gallantry in lying to save her friends.
“Tell us about Lieutenant Grantland’s visit,” Madame Storey said coaxingly.
“There’s nothing much to tell,” was the cautious answer.
“He came to see Miss Philippa?”
“Yes.”
“He had been before?”
“Oh, yes; a number of times.”
“Did Miss Philippa know he was coming that night?”
“Yes. He had telephoned just before dinner. It was to say good-bye before starting on the big flight.”
“What time did he come?”
“About nine.”
“Tell me about it in your own way.”
Mrs. Batten shook her head. “You must question me,” she said warily. “I don’t know what it is you want to know.”
Madame Storey and I smiled, the old soul’s equivocation was so transparent.
“Did Lieutenant Grantland always come in his plane?” my employer asked.
“No, that was the first time by plane.”
“Didn’t the noise of his engine attract attention at the house?”
“No; he shut it off and came down without a sound.”
“How could he see to land in the dark?”
“He came just before it got too dark to see.”
“But couldn’t you see him land from the house?”
“No. He came down at the top of the field which is hidden from the house by the trees along the brook.”
“Then how could he get away in the dark?”
“He had the whole length of the field to rise from.”
“But in starting his engine didn’t it make a great noise?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t notice it.”
“Did you go to meet him?”
“I—no.”
“Miss Philippa went?”
“Yes.”
“And brought him back to the house?”
“Yes.”
“Right away?”
Mrs. Batten bridled. “I don’t see what that——”
“Well, what time did they get to the house?”
“About half-past nine.”
“How did they get in?”
“I turned off the burglar-alarm and let them in the garden door.”