Profoundly moved as she was, there was nothing of the distracted or the inadequate about her. Hastings, who had admired her earlier in the evening, saw that her poise was far from overthrown. It seemed to him that she even had considered how to wear with extraordinary effect the brilliant, vari-coloured kimono draped about her. The only criticism of her possible was that, perhaps, she seemed a trifle too imperious—but, for his part, he liked that.
“A thoroughbred!” he catalogued her, mentally.
“You will excuse me, father,” she said from the doorway, “but I couldn’t help hearing.” She thrust forward her chin. “Oh, I had to hear!—And there’s something I have to tell.”
Her glance went at last from Sloane to Hastings as she advanced slowly into the room.
The detective pushed forward a chair for her.
“That’s fine, Miss Sloane,” he assured her. “I’m sure you’re going to help us.”
“It isn’t much,” she qualified, “but I think it’s important.”
Still she looked at neither Berne Webster nor Judge Wilton. And only a man trained as Hastings was to keenness of observation would have seen the slight but incessant tremour of her fingers and the constant, convulsive play of the muscles under the light covering of her black silk slippers.
Sloane, alone, had remained seated. She was looking up to Hastings, who stood several feet in front of Webster and the judge.
“I had gone to sleep,” she said, her voice low, but musical and clear. “I waked up when I heard father moving about—his room is directly under mine; and, now that Aunt Lucy is away, I’m always more or less anxious about him. And I knew he had got quiet earlier, gone to sleep. It wasn’t like him to be awake again so soon.
“I sprang out of bed, really very quickly. I listened for a few seconds, but there was no further sound in father’s room. The night was unusually quiet. There wasn’t a sound—at first. Then I heard something. It was like somebody running, running very fast, outside, on the grass.”
She paused. Hastings was struck by her air of alertness, or of prepared waiting, of readiness for questions.
“Which way did the footsteps go?” he asked.
“From the house—down the slope, toward the little gate that opens on the road.”
“Then what?”
“I wondered idly what it meant, but it made no serious impression on me. I listened again for sounds in father’s room. There was none. Struck again by the heavy silence—it was almost oppressive, coming after the rain—I went to the window. I stood there, I don’t know how long. I think I was day-dreaming, lazily running things over in my mind. I don’t think it was very long.
“And then father turned on the light in his room.” She made a quick gesture with her left hand, wonderfully expressive of shock. “I shall never forget that! The long, narrow panel of light reached out into the dark like an ugly, yellow arm—reached out just far enough to touch and lay hold of the picture there on the grass; a woman lying on the drenched ground, her face up, and bending over her Judge Wilton and Berne—Mr. Webster.
“I knew she’d been hurt dreadfully; her feet were drawn up, her knees high; and I could see the looks of horror on the men’s faces.”
She paused, giving all her strength to the effort to retain her self-control before the assailing memory of what she had seen.
“That was all, Miss Sloane?” the detective prompted, in a kindly tone.
“Yes, quite,” she said. “But I’d heard Berne’s—what he was saying to you—and the judge’s description of what they’d seen; and I thought you would like to know of the footsteps I’d heard—because they were the murderer’s; they must have been. I knew it was important, most important.”
“You were entirely right,” he agreed warmly. “Thank you, very much.”
He went the length of the room and halted by one of the bookcases, a weird, lumpy old figure among the shadows in the corner. He was scraping his cheek with his thumb, and looking at the ceiling, over the rims of his spectacles.
Arthur Sloane sighed his impatience.
“Those knees drawn up,” Hastings said at last; “I was just thinking. They weren’t drawn up when I saw the body. Were they?”
“We’d straightened the limbs,” Webster answered. “Thought I’d mentioned that.”
“No.—Then, there might have been a struggle? You think the woman had put up a fight—for her life?—and was overpowered?”
“Well,” deliberated Webster, “perhaps; even probably.”
“Strange,” commented the detective, equally deliberate. “I hadn’t thought so. I would have said she’d been struck down unawares—without the slightest warning.”
IV
HASTINGS IS RETAINED
Arrival of the officials, Sheriff Crown and the coroner, Dr. Garnet, brought the conference to an abrupt close. Hastings, seeing the look in the girl’s eyes, left the library in advance of the other men. Lucille followed him immediately.
“Mr. Hastings!”
“Yes, Miss Sloane?”
He turned and faced her.
“I must talk to you, alone. Won’t you come in here?”
She preceded him into the parlour across the hall. When he put his hand on the electric switch, she objected, saying she preferred to be without the lights. He obeyed her. The glow from the hall was strong enough to show him the play of her features—which was what he wanted.
They sat facing each other, directly under the chandelier in the middle of the spacious room. He thought she had chosen that place to avoid all danger of being overheard in any direction. He saw, too, that she was hesitant, half-regretting having brought him there. He read her doubts, saw how pain and anxiety mingled in her wide-open grey eyes.
“Yes, I know,” he said with a smile that was reassuring; “I don’t look like a particularly helpful old party, do I?”
He liked her more and more. In presence of mind, he reflected, she surpassed the men of the household. In spite of the agitation that still kept her hands trembling and gave her that odd look of fighting desperately to hold herself together, she had formed a plan which she was on the point of disclosing to him.
Her courage impressed him tremendously. And, divining what her request would be, he made up his mind to help her.
“It’s not that,” she said, her lips twisting to the pretence of a smile. “I know your reputation—how brilliant you are. I was thinking you might not understand what I wanted to say.”
“Try me,” he encouraged. “I’m not that old!”
It occurred to him that she referred to Berne Webster and herself, fearing, perhaps, his lack of sympathy for a love affair.
“It’s this,” she began a rush of words, putting away all reluctance: “I think I realize more keenly than father how disagreeable this awful thing is going to be—the publicity, the newspapers, the questions, the photographs. I know, too, that Mr. Webster’s in an unpleasant situation. I heard what he said to you in the library, every word of it.—But I don’t have to think about him so much as about my father. He’s a very sick man, Mr. Hastings. The shock of this, the resultant shocks lasting through days and weeks, may be fatal for him.
“Besides,” she explained, attaining greater composure, “he is so nervous, so impatient of discomfort and irritating things, that he may bring upon himself the enmity of the authorities, the investigators. He may easily provoke them so that they would do anything to annoy him.
“I see you don’t understand!” she lamented suddenly, turning her head away a little.
He could see how her lips trembled, as if she held them together only by immense resolution.
“I think I do,” he contradicted kindly. “You want my help; isn’t that it?”
“Yes.” She looked at him again, with a quick turn of her head, her eyes less wide-open while she searched his face. �
�I want to employ you. Can’t I—what do they call it?—retain you?”
“To do what, exactly?”
“Oh-h-h!” The exclamation had the hint of a sob in it; she was close to the end of her strength. “I’m a little uncertain about that. Can’t you help me there? I want the real criminal found soon, immediately, as soon as possible. I want you to work on that. And, in the meantime, I want you to protect us—father—do things so that we shan’t be overrun by reporters and detectives, all the dreadful results of the discovery of a murder at our very front door.”
He was thoughtful, looking into her eyes.
“The fee is of no matter, the amount of it,” she added impulsively.
“I wasn’t thinking of that—although, of course, I don’t despise fees. You see, the authorities, the sheriff, might not want my assistance, as you call it. Generally, they don’t. They look upon it as interference and meddling.”
“Still, you can work independently—retained by Mr. Arthur Sloane—can’t you?”
He studied her further. For her age—hardly more than twenty-two—she was strikingly mature of face, and self-reliant. She had, he concluded, unusual strength of purpose; she was capable of large emotionalism, but mere feeling would never cloud her mind.
“Yes,” he answered her; “I can do that. I will.”
“Ah,” she breathed, some of the tenseness going out of her, “you are very good!”
“And you will help me, of course.”
“Of course.”
“You can do so now,” he pressed this point. “Why is it that all of you—I noticed it in the men in the library, and when we were outside, on the lawn—why is it that all of you think this crime is going to hit you, one of you, so hard? You seem to acknowledge in advance the guilt of one of you.”
“Aren’t you mistaken about that?”
“No. It struck me forcibly. Didn’t you feel it? Don’t you, now?”
“Why, no!”
He was certain that she was not frank with him.
“You mean,” she added quickly, eyes narrowed, “I suspect—actually suspect some one in this house?”
In his turn, he was non-committal, retorting:
“Don’t you?”
She resented his insistence.
“There is only one idea possible, I think,” she declared, rising: “the footsteps that I heard fled from the house, not into it. The murderer is not here.”
He stood up, holding her gaze.
“I’m your representative now, Miss Sloane,” he said, his manner fatherly in its solicitude. “My duty is to save you, and yours, in every way I can—without breaking the law. You realize what my job is—do you?”
“Yes, Mr. Hastings.”
“And the advisability, the necessity, of utter frankness between us?”
“Yes.” She said that with obvious impatience.
“So,” he persisted, “you understand my motive in asking you now: is there nothing more you can tell me—of what you heard and saw, when you were at your window?”
“Nothing—absolutely,” she said, again obviously annoyed.
He was close to a refusal to have anything to do with the case. He was sure that she did not deal openly with him. He tried again:
“Nothing more, Miss Sloane? Think, please. Nothing to make you, us, more suspicious of Mr. Webster?”
“Suspect Berne!”
This time she was frank, he saw at once. The idea of the young lawyer’s guilt struck her as out of the question. Her confidence in that was genuine, unalloyed. It was so emphatic that it surprised him. Why, then, this anxiety which had driven her to him for help? What caused the fear which, at the beginning of their interview, had been so apparent?
He thought with great rapidity, turning the thing over in his mind as he stood confronting her. If she did not suspect Webster, whom did she suspect? Her father?
That was it!—her father!
The discovery astounded Hastings—and appealed to his sympathy, tremendously.
“My poor child!” he said, on the warm impulse of his compassion.
She chose to disregard the tone he had used. She took a step toward the door, and paused, to see that he followed her.
He went nearer to her, to conclude what he had wanted to say:
“I shall rely on this agreement between us: I can come to you on any point that occurs to me? You will give me anything, and all the things, that may come to your knowledge as the investigation proceeds? Is it a bargain, Miss Sloane?”
“A bargain, Mr. Hastings,” she assented. “I appreciate, as well as you do, the need of fair dealing between us. Anything else would be foolish.”
“Fine! That’s great, Miss Sloane!” He was still sorry for her. “Now, let me be sure, once for all: you’re concealing nothing from me, no little thing even, on the theory that it would be of no use to me and, therefore, not worth discussing? You told us all you knew—in the library?”
She moved toward the door to the hall again.
“Yes, Mr. Hastings—and I’m at your service altogether.”
He would have sworn that she was not telling the truth. This time, however, he had no thought of declining connection with the case. His compassion for her had grown.
Besides, her fear of her father’s implication in the affair—was there foundation for it, more foundation than the hasty thought of a daughter still labouring under the effects of a great shock? He thought of Sloane, effeminate, shrill of voice, a trembling wreck, long ago a self-confessed ineffective in the battle of life—he, a murderer; he, capable of forceful action of any kind? It seemed impossible.
But the old man kept that idea to himself, and instructed Lucille.
“Then,” he said, “you must leave things to me. Tell your father so. Tomorrow, for instance—rather this morning, for it’s already a new day—reporters will come out here, and detectives, and the sheriff. All of them will want to question you, your father, all the members of the household. Refer them to me, if you care to.
“If you discuss theories and possibilities, you will only make trouble. To the sheriff, and anybody representing him, state the facts, the bare facts—that’s all. May I count on you for that?”
“Certainly. That’s why I’ve em—why I want your help: to avoid all the unpleasantness possible.”
When she left him to go to her father’s room, Hastings joined the group on the front verandah. Sheriff Crown and Dr. Garnet had already viewed the body.
“I’ll hold the inquest at ten tomorrow morning, rather this morning,” the coroner said. “That’s hurrying things a little, but I’ll have a jury here by then. They have to see the body before it’s taken to Washington.”
“Besides,” observed the sheriff, “nearly all the necessary witnesses are here in this house party.”
Aware of the Hastings fame, he drew the old man to one side.
“I’m going into Washington,” he announced, “to see this Mrs. Brace, the girl’s mother. Webster says she has a flat, up on Fourteenth street there. Good idea, ain’t it?”
“Excellent,” assured Hastings, and put in a suggestion: “You’ve heard of the fleeting footsteps Miss Sloane reported?”
“Yes. I thought Mrs. Brace might tell me who that could have been—some fellow jealous of the girl, I’ll bet.”
The sheriff, who was a tall, lanky man with a high, hooked nose and a pointed chin that looked like a large knuckle, had a habit of thrusting forward his upper lip to emphasize his words. He thrust it forward now, making his bristly, close-cropped red moustache stand out from his face like the quills of a porcupine.
“I’d thought of that—all that,” he continued. “Looks like a simple case to me—very.”
“It may be,” said Hastings, sure now that Crown would not suggest their working together.
“Also,
” the sheriff told him, “I’ll take this.”
He held out the crude weapon with which, apparently, the murder had been committed. It was a dagger consisting of a sharpened nail file, about three inches long, driven into a roughly rounded piece of wood. This wooden handle was a little more than four inches in length and two inches thick. Hastings, giving it careful examination, commented:
“He shaped that handle with a pocket-knife. Then, he drove the butt-end of the nail file into it. Next, he sharpened the end of the file—put a razor edge on it.—Where did you get this, Mr. Crown?”
“A servant, one of the coloured women, picked it up as I came in. You were still in the library.”
“Where was it?”
“About fifteen or twenty feet from the body. She stumbled on it, in the grass. Ugly thing, sure!”
“Yes,” Hastings said, preoccupied, and added: “Let me have it again.”
He took off his spectacles and, screwing into his right eye a jeweller’s glass, studied it for several minutes. If he made an important discovery, he did not communicate it to Crown.
“It made an ugly hole,” was all he said.
“You see the blood on it?” Crown prompted.
“Oh, yes; lucky the rain stopped when it did.”
“When did it stop—out here?” Crown inquired.
“About eleven; a few minutes after I’d gone up to bed.”
“So she was killed between eleven and midnight?”
“No doubt about that. Her hat had fallen from her head and was bottom up beside her. The inside of the crown and all the lower brim was dry as a bone, while the outside, even where it did not touch the wet grass, was wet. That showed there wasn’t any rain after she was struck down.”
The sheriff was impressed by the other’s keenness of observation.
“That’s so,” he said. “I hadn’t noticed it.”
He sought the detective’s opinion.
“Mr. Hastings, you’ve just heard the stories of everybody here. Do me a favour, will you? Is it worth while for me to go into Washington? Tell me: do you think anybody here at Sloanehurst is responsible for this murder?”
The Classic Mystery Novel Page 56