The Classic Mystery Novel

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

“But it does affect only him and me, after all!” she continued fiercely, as much to strengthen herself in what she wanted to believe as to force him to that belief. “Let me tell you the whole affair, from beginning to end.”

  She proceeded in a low tone, the words slower, as if she laboured for precision and clarity.

  “I must go back to Friday—the night before last—it seems months ago! I had heard that Berne had become involved in some sort of relationship with his stenographer—that she had been dismissed from his office and refused to accept the dismissal as final. I mean, of course, I heard she was in love with him, and he’d been in love with her—or should have been.

  “It was told me by a friend of mine in Washington, Lucy Carnly. It seems another stenographer overheard the conversation between Berne and Miss—Miss Brace. It got out that way. It was very circumstantial; I couldn’t help believing it, some of it; Lucy wouldn’t have brought me idle gossip—I thought.”

  She drew in her under lip, to hide its momentary tremour, and shook her head from side to side once.

  “All that, Mr. Hastings, came up, as a matter of course, when Berne reached here evening before last for the week-end. I’d just heard it that day. He denied it, said there had been nothing remotely resembling a love affair.—He was indignant, and very hurt!—He said she’d misconstrued some of his kindnesses to her. He couldn’t explain how she had misconstrued them. At any rate, the result was that I broke our engagement. I—”

  “Friday night!” Hastings exclaimed involuntarily.

  He grasped on the instant how grossly Webster, by withholding all this, had deceived him, left him in the dark.

  “Yes; and I told father about it,” she hurried her words here, the effect of her manner being the impression that she hoped this fact would not bulk too large in the detective’s thoughts. “The three of us had a talk about it Friday night. Father’s wonderfully fond of Berne and tried to persuade me I was foolishly ruining my life. I refused to change my mind. When I went upstairs, they stayed a long time in the library, talking.

  “I think they decided the best thing for Berne was to stay on here, through yesterday and today, in the hope that he and father might change my mind. Father tried to, yesterday morning. He was awfully upset. That’s one reason he’s so worn out and sick today.—I love my father so, Mr. Hastings!” She held her lips tight-shut a moment, a sob struggling in her throat. “But my distress, my own hurt pride—”

  “What did your father say about Mildred Brace?” Hastings asked, when she did not finish that sentence.

  She looked at him, again with widened eyes, a startled air, putting both her hands to her throat.

  “There!” she said, voice falling to a whisper.

  Then, turning her face half from him, she whispered so low that he heard her with difficulty: “I wish I were dead!”

  Her words frightened him, they had so clearly the ring of truth, as if she would in sober fact have preferred death to the thought which was breaking her heart—suspicion of her father.

  “That was why Berne stopped the judge’s outcry,” she said at last, turning her white face to him; “he had the sudden wild idea that I’m afraid you have—that father might have killed her. And Berne did not want that awful fact screamed through the night at me. Oh, can’t you see—can’t you see that, Mr. Hastings?”

  “It’s entirely possible; Mr. Webster may have thought that.—But let’s keep the story straight. What had your father said about Mildred Brace—to arouse any such suspicion?”

  “He was angry, terribly indignant. You know I made no secret to you of his high temper. His rages are fierce.—Once, when he was that way, I saw him kill a dog. If it had—but I think all men who’re unstrung nervously, as he is, have high tempers. He felt so indignant because she had come between Berne and myself. He blamed neither Berne nor me. He seemed to concentrate all his anger upon her.

  “He said—you see, Mr. Hastings, I tell you everything!—he threatened to go to her and— He had, of course, no definite idea what he would do. Finally, he did say he would buy her off, pay her to leave this part of the country. After that, he said, he knew I would ‘see things clearly,’ and Berne and I would be reconciled.”

  Hastings remembered Russell’s assertion that Mildred had her ticket to Chicago.

  “Did he buy her off?” he asked quickly.

  “Oh, no; he was merely wishing that he could, I think.”

  “But he made no attempt to get in touch with her yesterday? You’re sure?”

  “Quite,” she said. “But don’t you see. Mr. Hastings? Father was so intense in his hatred of her that Berne thought of him the moment he found that body—out there. He thought father must have encountered her on the lawn in some way, or she must have come after him, and he, in a fit of rage, struck her down.”

  “Has Webster told you this?”

  “No—but it’s true; it is!”

  “But, if your supposition is to hold good, how did your father happen to be in possession of that dagger, which evidently was made with malice aforethought, as the lawyers say?”

  “Exactly,” she said, her lips quivering, hands gripping spasmodically at her knees. “He didn’t do it! He didn’t do it! Berne’s idea was a mistake!”

  “Who, then?” he pressed her, realizing now that she was so unstrung she would give him her thoughts unguarded.

  “Why, that man Russell,” she said, her voice so low and the words so slow that he thought her at the limit of her endurance. “But I’ve said all this to show you why Berne put his hand over the judge’s mouth. I want to make it very clear that he feared father—think of it, Mr. Hastings!—had killed her! At first, I thought—”

  She bowed her face in both her hands and wept unrestrainedly, without sobs, the tears streaming between her fingers and down her wrists.

  The old man put one hand on her hair, and with the other brought forth his handkerchief, being bothered by the sudden mistiness of his spectacles.

  “A brave girl,” he said, his own voice insecure. “What a woman! I know what you mean. At first, you feared your father might have been concerned in the murder. I saw it in your eyes last night. You had the same thought that young Webster had—rather, that you say he had.”

  Her weeping ceased as suddenly as it had begun. She looked at him through tears.

  “And I’ve only injured Berne in your eyes; I think, irreparably! This morning I thought you heard me when I asked him not to let it be known that our engagement was broken? Don’t you remember? You were on the porch as we came around the corner.”

  For the first time since its utterance, he recalled her statement then, “We’ll have to leave it as it was,” and Webster’s significant rejoinder. He despised his own stupidity. Had he magnified Webster’s desire to keep that promise into guilty knowledge of the crime itself? And had not the mistake driven him into false and valueless interpretations of his entire interview with Webster?

  “He promised,” Lucille pursued, “for the same reason I had in asking it—to prevent discovery of the fact that father might have had a motive for wishing her dead! It was a mistake, I see now, a terrible mistake!”

  “Can you tell me why you didn’t have the same thoughts about Berne?” He was sorry he had to make that inquiry. If he could, he would have spared her further distress. “Why wouldn’t he have had the same motive, hatred of Mildred Brace, a thousand times stronger?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I simply never thought of it—not once.”

  Fine psychologist that he was, Hastings knew why that view had not occurred to her. Her love for Webster was an idealizing sentiment, putting him beyond even the possibility of wrong-doing. Her love for her father, unusual in its devotion as it was, recognized his weaknesses nevertheless.

  And, while seeking to protect the two, she had told a story which, so far as bald facts went, i
ncriminated the lover far more than the father. She had attributed to Sloane, in her uneasiness, the motive which would have been most natural to the discarded Webster. Even now, she could not suspect Berne; her only fear was that others, not understanding him as she did, might suspect him! Although she had broken with him, she still loved him. More than that: his illness and consequent helplessness increased her devotion for him, brought to the surface the maternal phase of it.

  “If she had to choose between the two,” Hastings thought, “she’d save Webster—every time!”

  “I know—I tell you, Mr. Hastings, I know neither Berne nor father is at all responsible for this crime. I tell you,” she repeated, rising to her feet, as if by mere physical height she hoped to impress her knowledge upon him, “I know they’re innocent.—Don’t you know it?”

  She stood looking down at him, her whole body tense, arms held close against her sides, the knuckles of her fingers white as ivory. Her eyes now were dry, and brilliant.

  He evaded the flat statement to which she pressed him.

  “But your knowledge, Miss Sloane, and what we must prove,” he said, also standing, “are two different things just now. The authorities will demand proofs.”

  “I know. That’s why I’ve told you these things.” Somehow, her manner reproached him. “You said you had to have them in order to handle this—this situation properly. Now that you know them, I’m sure you’ll feel safe in devoting all your time to proving Russell’s guilt.” She moved her head forward, to study him more closely. “You know he’s guilty, don’t you?”

  “I’m certain Mrs. Brace figured in her daughter’s murder,” he said. “She was concerned in it somehow. If that’s true, and if your father approached neither her nor her daughter yesterday, it does seem highly possible that Russell’s guilty.”

  He turned from her and stood at the window, his back to her a few long moments. When he faced her again, he looked old.

  “But the facts—if we could only break down Russell’s alibi!”

  “Oh!” she whispered, in new alarm. “I’d forgotten that!”

  All the tenseness went out of her limbs. She sank into her chair, and sat there, looking up to him, her eyes frankly confessing a panic fear.

  “I think I’m sorry I told you,” she said, desperately. “I can’t make you understand!” Another consideration forced itself upon her. “You won’t have to tell anybody—anybody at all—about this, will you—now?”

  He was prepared for that.

  “I’ll have to ask Judge Wilton why he acted on Mr. Webster’s advice—and what that advice was, what they whispered to each other when you saw them.”

  “Why, that’s perfectly fair,” she assented, relieved. “That will stop all the secrecy between them and me. It’s the very thing I want. If that’s assured, everything else will work itself out.”

  Her faith surprised him. He had not realized how unqualified it was.

  “Did you ask the judge about it?” he inquired.

  “Yes; just before I came in here—after Berne’s collapse. I felt so helpless! But he tried to persuade me my imagination had deceived me; he said they had had no such scene. You know how gruff and hard Judge Wilton can be at times. I shouldn’t choose him for a confidant.”

  “No; I reckon not. But we’ll ask him now—if you don’t mind.”

  Willis, the butler, answered the bell, and gave information: Judge Wilton had left Sloanehurst half an hour ago and had gone to the Randalls’. He had asked for Miss Sloane, but, learning that she was engaged, had left his regrets, saying he would come in tomorrow, after the adjournment of court.

  “He’s on the bench tomorrow at the county-seat,” Lucille explained the message. “He always divides his time between us and the Randalls when he comes down from Fairfax for his court terms. He told me this morning he’d come back to us later in the week.”

  “On second thought,” Hastings said, “that’s better. I’ll talk to him alone tomorrow—about this thing, this inexplicable thing: a judge taking it upon himself to deceive the sheriff even! But,” he softened the sternness of his tone, “he must have a reason, a better one than I can think of now.” He smiled. “And I’ll report to you, when he’s told me.”

  “I’m glad it’s tomorrow,” she said wearily. “I—I’m tired out.”

  On his way back to Washington, the old man reflected: “Now, she’ll persuade Sloane to do the sensible thing—talk.” Then, to bolster that hope, he added a stern truth: “He’s got to. He can’t gag himself with a pretended illness forever!”

  At the same time the girl he had left in the music room wept again, saying over and over to herself, in a despair of doubt: “Not that! Not that! I couldn’t tell him that. I told him enough. I know I did. He wouldn’t have understood!”

  XII

  HENDRICKS REPORTS

  In his book-lined, “loosely furnished” apartment Sunday afternoon Hastings whittled prodigiously, staring frequently at the flap of the grey envelope with the intensity of a crystal-gazer. Once or twice he pronounced aloud possible meanings of the symbols imprinted on the scrap of paper.

  “‘—edly de—,’” he worried. “That might stand for ‘repeatedly demanded’ or ‘repeatedly denied’ or ‘undoubtedly denoted’ or a hundred— But that ‘Pursuit!’ is the core of the trouble. They put the pursuit on him, sure as you’re knee-high to a hope of heaven!”

  The belief grew in him that out of those pieces of words would come solution of his problem. The idea was born of his remarkable instinct. Its positiveness partook of superstition—almost. He could not shake it off. Once he chuckled, appreciating the apparent absurdity of trying to guess the criminal meaning, the criminal intent, back of that writing. But he kept to his conjecturing.

  He had many interruptions. Newspaper reporters, instantly impressed by the dramatic possibilities, the inherent sensationalism, of the murder, flocked to him. Referred to him by the people at Sloanehurst, they asked for not only his narration of what had occurred but also for his opinion as to the probability of running down the guilty man.

  He would make no predictions, he told them, confining himself to a simple statement of facts. When one young sleuth suggested that both Sloane and Webster feared arrest on the charge of murder and had relied on his reputation to prevent prompt action against them by the sheriff, the old man laughed. He knew the futility of trying to prevent publication of intimations of that sort.

  But he took advantage of the opportunity to put a different interpretation on his employment by the Sloanes.

  “Seems to me,” he contributed, “it’s more logical to say that their calling in a detective goes a long way to show their innocence of all connection with the crime. They wouldn’t pay out real money to have themselves hunted, if they were guilty, would they?”

  Afterwards, he was glad he had emphasized this point. In the light of subsequent events, it looked like actual foresight of Mrs. Brace’s tactics.

  Soon after five Hendricks came in, to report. He was a young man, stockily built, with eyes that were always on the verge of laughter and lips that sloped inward as if biting down on the threatened mirth. The shape of his lips was symbolical of his habit of discourse; he was of few words.

  “Webster,” he said, standing across the table from his employer and shooting out his words like a memorized speech, “been overplaying his hand financially. That’s the rumour; nothing tangible yet. Gone into real estate and building projects; associated with a crowd that has the name of operating on a shoestring. Nobody’d be surprised if they all blew up.”

  “As a real-estate man, I take it,” Hastings commented, slowly shaving off thin slivers of chips from his piece of pine, “he’s a brilliant young lawyer. That’s it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Hendricks agreed, the slope of his lips accentuated.

  “Keep after that, tomorrow.—What about Mrs.
Brace?”

  “Destitute, practically; in debt; threatened with eviction; no resources.”

  “So money, lack of it, is bothering her as well as Webster!—How much is she in debt?”

  “Enough to be denied all credit by the stores; between five and seven hundred, I should say. That’s about the top mark for that class of trade.”

  “All right, Hendricks; thanks,” the old man commended warmly. “That’s great work, for Sunday.—Now, Russell’s room?”

  “Yes, sir; I went over it.”

  “Find any steel on the floor?”

  Hendricks took from his pocket a little paper parcel about the size of a man’s thumb.

  “Not sure, sir. Here’s what I got.”

  He unfolded the paper and put it down on the table, displaying a small mass of what looked like dust and lint.

  “Wonderful what a magnet will pick up, ain’t it?” mused his employer: “I got the same sort of stuff at Sloanehurst this morning.—I’ll go over this, look for the steel particles, right away.”

  “Anything else, sir—special?”

  The assistant was already half-way to the door. He knew that a floor an inch deep in chips from his employer’s whittling indicated laborious mental gropings by the old man. It was no time for superfluous words.

  “After dinner,” Hastings instructed, “relieve Gore—at the Walman. Thanks.”

  As Hendricks went out, there was another telephone call, this time from Crown, to make amends for coolness he had shown Hastings at Sloanehurst.

  “I was wrong, and you were right,” he conceded, handsomely; “I mean about that Brace woman. Better keep your man on her trail.”

  “What’s up?” Hastings asked amicably.

  “That’s what I want to know! I’ve seen her again. I couldn’t get anything more from her except threats. She’s going on the warpath. She told me: ‘Tomorrow I’ll look into things for myself. I’ll not sit here idle and leave everything to a sheriff who wants campaign contributions and a detective who’s paid to hush things up!’ You can see her saying that, can’t you? Wow!”