MRS3 The Velvet Hand

by Hulbert Footner

  "Single, 'm."

  "Age?"

  "Fifty-one."

  "I shouldn't have thought it," said Mme Storey politely. "How long have you lived in Stanfield?"

  "Eight months, 'm."

  "Then you're not well known here?"

  "No, 'm. I keeps myself to myself."

  "What is your occupation?"

  "Sort of odd jobs, 'm. In the winter I tends furnaces. Summers I gardens and mows lawn.... Can I make a statement?" he asked.

  "I'd be glad to hear it," said Mme Storey.

  "Well? 'm," he began with an aggrieved air, "when this guy here"—a jerk of the dirty thumb in Crider's direction—"come to my room and says, 'Come with me,' I says, 'What t' hell,' I says, 'a man's got his rights. A man's house is his castle,' I says, 'who are you to come buttin' in here?' He says: 'I'm Madame Storey's man,' or some such name. Well, I don't know who Madame Storey is, and I tell him so. 'Show me your badge,' I says. And he ain't got no badge. 'Nothin' doin',' I says, 'get the hell out of here.' Then he tried to drag me, and I pasted him one and we mixed it up, sort of, till the cop come. The guy tells the cop the Public Prosecutor wants me. He didn't tell me that. Soon as he says Public Prosecutor, I goes with him like a lamb. I just want you to get me right, lady: I don't set up to resist no lawful authority."

  "That's all right," said Mme Storey; "your resistance to my agent will not be counted against you. Let us get on. I understand that you attend to the furnace in this house?"

  "Yes, 'm."

  "How long have you been working here?"

  "Since the fire was lighted last fall."

  "Who got you the job?"

  "I got it by astin' at t' kitchen door."

  "What time do you come here every day?"

  "A little before seven in the morning, and again between nine and ten at night. At this house they won't give no key, so I has to wait for the cook to let me in mornings."

  "Then you enter by the kitchen?"

  "Yes, 'm."

  "Why don't you use the door direct from the yard into the cellar?"

  "Is there a door from the yard?" he said with a cunning look. "Oh, sure, I mind seein' that door on the cellar stairs. But that there door has been bolted up since before my time. I suppose the missus wants the kitchen help to keep tab on all who comes and goes in the cellar."

  "You came back a second time this morning, didn't you?" said Mme Storey carelessly.

  The little eyes darted an uneasy look in her face; but he answered readily: "Yes, 'm."

  "What for?"

  "Well, you see, 'm, the first time I come the fire was so near out I couldn't fill her up. I just had to put a little on and wait for it to catch good. So I told Mis' Morris, that's the cook here, that I'd be back."

  "What time did you come back?"

  "Some'eres about nine."

  "Where had you been in the meantime?"

  He named three houses that he had visited.

  "But it wouldn't take you two hours to fix three furnaces."

  "No, 'm, I was waitin' round to give the fire time to burn up good."

  "It wouldn't take two hours for the fire to come up."

  "Not if the dampers was opened right, 'm. But they won't let me do that here. Burn too much coal. They buy it every month, and I gotta make two ton last out. They ought to burn four."

  "I want to fix the exact time of your return, if I can," said Mme Storey. "Did you meet the letter carrier making his first round?"

  "Not that I rec'lect."

  "Are you sure?"

  It evidently occurred to Hafner that the letter carrier might have been questioned. "Sure, that's right, I met him," he said. "I just forgot for the moment. Fella name of Smitty. Me and him's well acquainted."

  "Had he been to this house, or was he on the way here?"

  "He'd been."

  "Had you been waiting for him?" asked Mme Storey slyly.

  But she didn't catch him. "Why should I?" he asked with an innocent air.

  "I don't know," said Mme Storey, just as innocent. "What did you do when you came back?"

  From this point on he weighed every word of his answers. As you have perceived, he was by no means as stupid as he looked. That debased exterior concealed a world of low cunning. He made a good witness for himself.

  "I went down cellar."

  "Did you find anything out of the way there?"

  "No, 'm, nothin' out of the way. The fire was still sulkin'. I opened all the drafts and went up to the kitchen while she burned up."

  "Right away?"

  "No, 'm. I can't say as it was right away. I fooled around a bit, watching her—drawing out a clinker or two. Then I went up."

  "What did you do in the kitchen?"

  "I sat down and talked to cook and the girl."

  "Oh, you sat down and talked. What about?"

  "'Deed, I can't tell you that, 'm. Nothin' particular. Just talkin' like." Then, reflecting, no doubt, that the cook was at hand to corroborate this part, he added: "But I remember one thing."

  "What was that?"

  "While I was sittin' there cook wanted to send the girl down cellar for potatoes and I stopped her."

  "Why?"

  "Because of the coal gas. The furnace was givin' out gas somepin' fierce. I had opened everything up to drawr it off, and I opened the cellar window, too. I told the girl she better wait awhile."

  "But you just told me you'd been fooling around down there."

  "Oh, I'm used to the gas. Don't notice it a-tall."

  "Did the furnace often give off gas?"

  "Yes'm. Plumb wore out that furnace was. Weren't no use to complain. Wild horses wouldn't have drug the price of a new furnace out of the old missus."

  "Then you went down cellar again?"

  "Yes, 'm, I went down again."

  "Closing the cellar door after you."

  "That was along of the gas."

  "Oh, I see. Did the girl go down with you?"

  "No, 'm. She didn't come down till I hollered up that the gas was out."

  "How was the fire then?"

  "Not so good. I fooled around awhile yet, waitin' for it, then I couldn't wait no longer, so I fixed it up the best I could and left."

  "Did the girl get her potatoes?"

  "Oh, yes, 'm, she got her potatoes all right."

  At this point the questioning was interrupted by the entrance of Stephens, the second operative, who had come out from town with Crider. He stood just within the door, waiting to catch his mistress's eye.

  "Well, that's fine!" Mme Storey said to Hafner; "just excuse me a minute while I speak to this gentleman."

  Stephens handed her a slip of paper on which was a written memorandum. After reading it Mme Storey folded it and kept it in her palm during what followed. I guessed by that that it was something of first-rate importance. Hafner's little eyes watched her with an agonized curiosity. He would have given something to know what was written on that paper. Mme Storey then whispered further instructions close in Stephens's ear, and he left the room again.

  XI

  Up to this moment Mme Storey had shepherded Hafner along so gently that he thought he was picking his own way. He was cunning, but not cunning enough. He thought he was getting along fine; but I, who knew Mme Storey so well, could see that by the apparently plausible answers she was drawing out of him she was making him weave the rope that would later hang him.

  I say hang him, but of course I could see by this time that he could not be the principal in this affair. He had no access to the upper part of the house; and he had nothing to gain directly by the death of Mrs. Brager. He was a tool in the hands of one of the three interested persons. I glanced at that precious trio where they sat in a row on the couch near the door: La France, Oneto, Chew. Each face showed the same wary mask, each was awaiting Hafner's answers with the same secret tenseness. Were they all in it? I wondered.

  Mme Storey now changed her tactics. With an unexpectedness that caused the witness visibly t
o jump she said: "Hafner, for what reason did you follow my car back to New York night before last?"

  He made his eyes as big as possible with astonishment. "I never followed you, lady," he said in an aggrieved voice. "I never seen you before I come into this room."

  "I saw you." (This was not so, of course.)

  "Maybe you did, but I wasn't follerin' you.... What kind of a car was I in?"

  My mistress bit her lips to control a smile. Brute though the man was, his readiness of wit pleased her. "Never mind that," she said. "You followed me and my secretary to the Restaurant Lafitte on Park Avenue. You then went to a pay station near by and called me up."

  "You're mistaken, lady. If somebody called you up, it wasn't me."

  "You should butter your voice before you call up folks on the 'phone," remarked Mme Storey dryly. "... Who pointed me out to you and told you to follow me?"

  "Nobody, 'm, because I didn't foller you. I ain't been to New York since Christmas."

  "Well, let's get back to the cellar," said Mme Storey. "You say the second time you went down you didn't see anything out of the way."

  "No, 'm. Nothin' out of the way."

  "Well, that's funny," said Mme Storey carelessly, "because when I went down I immediately noticed that the tops of all the hot-air pipes leading out of the furnace had been dusted off."

  Hafner's eyes flickered with fear; but he answered without hesitating: "You don't say. Must 'a' been done after I come up, for that would be a thing I'd notice. Everything down cellar was covered with dust."

  "Yes. Seems funny anybody would go to the trouble of dusting off all those old pipes."

  "You're right, lady." She had him sweating now; but his answers still came out pat. He started to pull a handkerchief out of his back pocket and then shoved it back again.

  Mme Storey's voice rang out: "Give me that handkerchief!"

  Jumping to his feet with a snarl, he clapped his hand over the spot. But resistance was useless, of course, in that crowd. The handkerchief was taken from him and handed to my mistress. It showed the unmistakable dark brown stains of thick dust. Mme Storey gave it a flirt, and a little cloud of fresh dust flew out of it.

  "How did it get so dusty, Hafner?" she asked softly.

  His tongue failed him then. "I—I—I—" he stammered—"I used it to dust my room with this morning. I hadn't nothin' else to use."

  "Your room must have needed it," remarked Mme Storey, looking at the thick brown accumulations on the handkerchief. "Mr. Dockra," she said, brusquely raising her voice, "I would like to have this man searched."

  Hafner crouched; showed his teeth like a trapped animal; glanced desirously toward the door. Useless to think of escape. Mr. Dockra called two of his men in.

  Mme Storey said carelessly: "I expect to find on him a pair of pliers, a pair of gloves of some sort, a knife—of course, the knife won't prove anything, because every workman carries a knife. If you can also find some scraps of rubber and wire, it will help prove my case."

  While the man was being frisked, she turned indifferently away. One after another the objects she had named were thrown on the table: the pliers; a pair of coarse cotton gloves, new, but stained on the palms with the same brown dust; a penknife; two pieces of rubber which looked as if they might have been cut from an old inner tube. Only the wire was missing.

  Mme Storey glanced over these things. "We can do without the wire," she said.

  Everybody else in the room looked on open mouthed, like a crowd of yokels at a side show.

  "These gloves I think were worn for the first time this morning," said Mme Storey, calling attention to their clean backs. "What did you want gloves for, Hafner?"

  "To protect my hands," he muttered.

  If you could have seen those dirty, calloused hands! A laugh travelled around the room.

  Hafner sat down again, breathing hard; but he was not yet beaten; for when Mme Storey said: "Has there been anything wrong with the heating flue leading to Mrs. Brager's bedroom?" he answered readily:

  "Not as I knows of."

  "Because the next thing I noticed in the cellar," she went on, "was that that flue had been disconnected and joined up again. There was an edge of bright tin showing at the joining of the old pipe. It was at the point where the horizontal flue from the heating chamber joins the vertical flue which runs up through the walls. There is a sort of square tin box there, which receives the round pipe from the furnace."

  My mistress's quiet, matter-of-fact voice was too much for Hafner's nerves. "What's all this about?" he suddenly burst out. "What you gettin' at, anyway? A man's got the right to know what he's suspected of!"

  Mme Storey stepped to the door into Mrs. Brager's room. We all held our breath. The key had been left in the lock; she opened the door. "Come here and see," she said quietly to Hafner.

  His face turned greenish. Showing all his teeth, he strained away, like an animal on a leash. "I won't!" he cried hoarsely. "None of your tricks! I asked you a plain question—can't you give me a plain answer?"

  Mr. Dockra looked at his man. "Make him look in there," he said.

  But Mme Storey held up her hand. "It's not necessary," she said. "He knows what's in there." She closed the door.

  Hafner dropped into his chair again. You could not help but pity the wretch.

  "I disconnected the pipe again," Mme Storey resumed, "and looked inside that square box. That had not been dusted out—a fatal oversight! In the bottom of it was collected the dust of thirty years which had sifted down through the register in Mrs. Brager's room. It was, I suppose, a quarter of an inch thick. And in the dust I found three fresh marks in the shape of a triangle, three marks which correspond to the three legs of the standard which supports this kettle. I was careful not to disturb these marks; they are still there."

  She paused to flick the ash off her cigarette, and one could hear a little sigh travel around the room as the pent-up breath was released.

  "Hafner," asked Mme Storey, "how do you suppose those marks came there?"

  "How do I know?" he said. "I couldn't have come up here to get that kettle."

  "How did you know that kettle belonged in this room?" she asked quickly.

  "I didn't know it," he retorted. "That was just in the way of speaking."

  There was an interruption here. The servant Maud pushed through the crowd at the door to say that Miss Rose Schmalz was wanted on the telephone. Mme Storey looked inquiringly at Mrs. Marlin.

  "Never heard of such a person," said the housekeeper.

  The maid was instructed to say that there was nobody of that name in the house, and she returned downstairs. At the moment I saw nothing in this incident but what appeared on the surface; but it was to have an important bearing on the result, as you will see.

  Mme Storey resumed: "I'll tell you how I have figured out what happened, Hafner. Set me right if I go wrong.... The same person who instructed you to follow me into town two days ago told you to watch this house this morning for the first call of the letter carrier and to come back after he'd gone...."

  "It's not so," muttered Hafner. He kept interrupting Mme Storey throughout with denials, but I need not set them all down.

  "On your way down cellar, you opened the door into the yard—I could see where the old film of paint on the outside had been freshly broken. You then disconnected the flue leading to Mrs. Brager's room. You wore the gloves to avoid leaving finger prints on the pipes. In working over the pipe you disturbed the dust, therefore you were obliged to dust all the pipes alike. Your companion joined you, entering from the yard, and bringing the little brass kettle and the tin box containing the powder."

  Mme Storey held up the two pieces of rubber. One piece, a rough ring, had obviously been cut out of the other. "The ring was for a washer to make the lid of the kettle fit snugly. In this manner." She showed how the rubber ring had been snapped around the lid of the kettle. "After the powder had been emptied into the kettle," she resumed, "the lid was wired down. H
ere are the marks of the wires on the kettle. The wire itself came from one of the supports of the flues. All this business of making the lid tight was perfectly unnecessary, by the way; for the gas would have puffed right up the flue even if the lid had been off; but you and your friend were not chemists enough to know that.

  "You were in momentary fear of being surprised by one of the servants in the kitchen," she went on; "therefore you left your companion to light the flame under the kettle and to blow it out before the bottom of the kettle burned through. You went up into the kitchen and stood guard over the cellar door. When you heard your companion pass out into the yard by the door on the cellar stairs, you returned. You bolted up the door into the yard. You connected up the heating flue again. Your companion had taken the kettle, and you concealed the other evidences of your activities. You then called up to the kitchen that the gas was out.... The gas was out," she gravely concluded, "and so was the spark of life in the old woman who lies in the next room."

  Hafner was breaking fast now. "It's not true!" he panted. "I know nothing about it!"

  "Then how came you in possession of the tin cigarette box in which the poison was mailed?" asked Mme Storey. "You tossed it into Stanfield River when you crossed the bridge this morning." She held out her hand, and Mr. Dockra passed the box back.

  Hafner's nerve went completely. A strangled cry broke from him. He held out his hands toward Mr. Dockra as if inviting the handcuffs. "Take me away!" he bellowed. "Take me away from that woman! Lock me up! Send me to the chair! I don't care what you do to me! ... Take me away from her! She's not a natural woman. Nothing can be hid from her!"

  It was a horrible and grotesque sight. The sweat was pouring down his face in drops as big as tears; his eyes were devoid of all sense; his brutal mouth was working like an idiot's. I turned away my head from that sight. "Take me away from her!" he kept shrieking.

  "One moment," said the prosecutor coldly; "you have not yet told us the name of your companion in the cellar."

  "I'll never tell you that!" cried Hafner. "I don't care what you do to me. Send me to the chair! Won't that satisfy you?"

  "Oh, I guess we know how to make you tell," said Mr. Dockra grimly.