The Classic Mystery Novel

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  “It ain’t a lie,” Hastings contradicted, holding his self-control. “And you watch yourself! Don’t you call me a liar again—not as long as you live! You can’t afford the insult.”

  “Then, don’t provoke it. Don’t—”

  “What did Webster whisper to you, across that corpse?” Hastings demanded, going nearer to Wilton.

  “What’s this?” Wilton’s tone was one of consternation; the words might have been spoken by a man stumbling on an unsuspected horror in a dark room.

  They stared at each other for several dragging seconds. The detective waved a hand toward the judge’s chair.

  “Sit down,” he said, resuming his own seat.

  There followed another pause, longer than the first. The judge’s breathing was laboured, audible. He lowered his eyes and passed his hand across their thick lids. When he looked up again, Hastings commanded him with unwavering, expectant gaze.

  “I’ve made a mistake,” Wilton began huskily, and stopped.

  “Yes?” Hastings said, unbending. “How?”

  “I see it now. It was a matter of no importance, in itself. I’ve exaggerated it, by my silence, into disproportionate significance.” His tone changed to curiosity. “Who told you about—the whispering?”

  The detective was implacable, emphasizing his dominance.

  “First, what was it?” When Wilton still hesitated, he repeated: “What did Webster say when he put his hand over your mouth—to prevent your outcry?”

  The judge threw up his head, as if in sudden resolve to be frank. He spoke more readily, with a clumsy semblance of amiability.

  “He said, ‘Don’t do that! You’ll frighten Lucille!’ I tried to nod my head, agreeing. But he misunderstood the movement, I think. He thought I meant to shout anyway; he tightened his grip. ‘Keep quiet! Will you keep quiet?’ he repeated two or three times. When I made my meaning clear, he took his hand away. He explained later what had occurred to him the moment Arthur’s light flashed on. He said it came to him before he clearly realized who I was. It—

  “I swear, Hastings, I hate to tell you this. It suggests unjust suspicions. Of what value are the wild ideas of a nervous man, all to pieces anyway, when he stumbles on a dead woman in the middle of the night?”

  “They were valuable enough,” Hastings flicked him, “for you to cover them up—for some reason. What were they?”

  Wilton was puzzled by the detective’s tone, its abstruse insinuation. But he answered the question.

  “He said his first idea, the one that made him think of Lucille, was that Arthur might have had something to do with the murder.”

  “Why? Why did he think Sloane had killed Mildred Brace?”

  “Because she had been the cause of Lucille’s breaking her engagement with Berne—and Arthur knew that. Arthur had been in a rage—”

  “All right!” Hastings checked him suddenly, and, getting to his feet, fell to pacing the room, his eyes, always on Wilton. “I’m acquainted with that part of it.”

  He paid no attention to Wilton’s evident surprise at that statement. He had a surprise of his own to deal with: the unexpected similarity of the judge’s story with Lucille Sloane’s theorizing as to what Webster had whispered across the body in the moment of its discovery. The two statements were identical—a coincidence that defied credulity.

  He caught himself doubting Lucille. Had she been theorizing, after all? Or had she relayed to him words that Wilton had put into her mouth? Then, remembering her grief, her desperate appeals to him for aid, he dismissed the suspicion.

  “I’d stake my life on her honesty,” he decided. “Her intuition gave her the correct solution—if Wilton’s not lying now!”

  He put the obvious question: “Judge, am I the first one to hear this—from you?” and received the obvious answer: “You are. I didn’t volunteer it to you, did I?”

  “All right. Now, did you believe Webster? Wait a minute! Did you believe his fear wasn’t for himself when he gagged you that way?”

  “Yes; I did,” replied Wilton, in a tone that lacked sincerity.

  “Do you believe it now?”

  “If I didn’t, do you think I’d have tried for a moment to conceal what he said to me?”

  “Why did you conceal it?”

  “Because Arthur Sloane was my friend, and his daughter’s happiness would have been ruined if I’d thrown further suspicion on him. Besides, what I did conceal could have been of no value to any detective or sheriff on earth. It meant nothing, so long as I knew the boy’s sincerity—and his innocence as well as Arthur’s.”

  “But,” Hastings persisted, “why all this concern for Webster, after his engagement had been broken?”

  “How’s that?” Wilton countered. “Oh, I see! The break wasn’t permanent. Arthur and I had decided on that. We knew they’d get together again.”

  Hastings halted in front of the judge’s chair.

  “Have you kept back anything else?” he demanded.

  “Nothing,” Wilton said, with a return of his former sullenness. “And,” he forced himself to the avowal, “I’m sorry I kept that back. It’s nothing.”

  Hastings’ manner changed on the instant. He was once more cordial.

  “All right, judge!” he said heartily, consulting his ponderous watch. “This is all between us. I take it, you wouldn’t want it known by the sheriff, even now?” Wilton shook his head in quick negation. “All right! He needn’t—if things go well. And the person I got it from won’t spread it around.—That satisfactory?”

  The judge’s smile, in spite of his best effort, was devoid of friendliness. The dark flush that persisted in his countenance told how hardly he kept down his anger.

  Hastings put on his hat and ambled toward the door.

  “By the way,” he proclaimed an afterthought, “I’ve got to ask one more favour, judge. If Mrs. Brace troubles you again, will you let me know about it, at the earliest possible moment?”

  He went out, chuckling.

  But the judge was as mystified as he was resentful. He had detected in Hastings’ manner, he thought, the same self-satisfaction, the same quiet elation, which he and Berne had observed at the close of the music-room interview. Going to the window, he addressed the summer sky:

  “Who the devil does the old fool suspect—Arthur or Berne?”

  XIV

  MR. CROWN FORMS AN ALLIANCE

  “If you’ve as much as five hundred dollars at your disposal—pin-money savings, perhaps—anything you can check on without the knowledge of others, you can do it,” Hastings urged, ending a long argument.

  “I! Take it to her myself?” Lucille still protested, although she could not refute his reasonings.

  “It’s the only way that would be effective—and it wouldn’t be so difficult. I had counted on your courage—your unusual courage.”

  “But what will it accomplish? If I could only see that, clearly!”

  She was beginning to yield to his insistence.

  They were in the rose garden, in the shade of a little arbor from whose roof the great red flowers drooped almost to the girl’s hair. He was acutely aware of the pathetic contrast between her white, ravaged face and the surrounding scene, the fragrance, the roses of every colour swaying to the slow breeze of late afternoon, the long, cool shadows. He found it hard to force her to the plan, and would have abandoned it but for the possibilities it presented to his mind.

  “I’ve already touched on that,” he applied himself to her doubts. “I want you to trust me there, to accept my solemn assurance that, if Mrs. Brace accepts this money from you on our terms, it will hasten my capture of the murderer. I’ll say more than that: you are my only possible help in the matter. Won’t you believe me?”

  She sat quite still, a long time, looking steadily at him with unseeing eyes.

 
“I shall have to go to that dreadful woman’s apartment, be alone with her, make a secret bargain,” she enumerated the various parts of her task, wonder and repugnance mingling in her voice. “That horrible woman! You say, yourself, Mr. Hastings, she’s horrible.”

  “Still,” he repeated, “you can do it.”

  A little while ago she had cried out, both hands clenched on the arm of the rustic bench, her eyes opening wide in the startled look he had come to know: “If I could do something, anything, for Berne! Dr. Welles said only an hour ago he had no more than an even chance for his life. Half the time he can’t speak! And I’m responsible. I am! I know it. I try to think I’m not. But I am!”

  He recurred to that.

  “Dr. Welles said the ending of Mr. Webster’s suspense would be the best medicine for him. And I think Webster would see that nobody but you could do this—in the very nature of things. The absolute secrecy required, the fact that you buy her silence, pay her to cease her accusations against Berne—don’t you see? He’d want you to do it.”

  That finished her resistance. She made him repeat all his directions, precautions for secrecy.

  “I wish I could tell you how important it is,” he said. “And keep this in mind always: I rely on your paying her the money without even a suspicion of it getting abroad. If accidents happen and you’re seen entering the Walman, what more natural than that you want to ask this woman the meaning of her vague threats against—against Sloanehurst?—But of money, your real object, not a word! Nobody’s to have a hint of it.”

  “Oh, yes; I see the necessity of that.” But she was distressed. “Suppose she refuses?”

  Her altered frame of mind, an eagerness now to succeed with the plan she had at first refused, brought him again his thought of yesterday: “If she were put to it—if she could save only one and had to choose between father and fiancé, her choice would be for the fiancé.”

  He answered her question. “She won’t refuse,” he declared, with a confidence she could not doubt. “If I thought she would, I’d almost be willing to say we’d never find the man who killed her daughter.”

  “When I think of Russell’s alibi—”

  “Have we mentioned Russell?” he protested, laughing away her fears. “Anyway, his old alibi’s no good—if that’s what’s troubling you. Wait and see!”

  He was in high good humour.

  In that same hour the woman for whom he had planned this trap was busy with a scheme of her own. Her object was to form an alliance with Sheriff Crown. That gentleman, to use his expressive phrase, had been “putting her over the jumps” for the past forty minutes, bringing to the work of cross-questioning her all the intelligence, craftiness and logic at his command. The net result of his fusillade of interrogatories, however, was exceedingly meagre.

  As he sat, caressing his chin and thrusting forward his bristly moustache, Mrs. Brace perceived in his eyes a confession of failure. Although he was far from suspecting it, he presented to her keen scrutiny an amusing figure. She observed that his shoulders drooped, and that, as he slowly produced a handkerchief and mopped his forehead, his movements were eloquent of gloom.

  In fact, Mr. Crown felt himself at a loss. He had come to the end of his resourcefulness in the art of probing for facts. He was about to take his departure, with the secret realization that he had learned nothing new—unless an increased admiration of Mrs. Brace’s sharpness of wit might be catalogued as knowledge.

  She put his thought into language.

  “You see, Mr. Crown, you’re wasting your time shouting at me, bullying me, accusing me of protecting the murderer of my own daughter.”

  There was a new note in her voice, a hint, ever so slight, of a willingness to be friendly. He was not insensible to it. Hearing it, he put himself on guard, wondering what it portended.

  “I didn’t say that,” he contradicted, far from graciousness. “I said you knew a whole lot more about the murder than you’d tell—tell me anyway.”

  “But why should I want to conceal anything that might bring the man to justice?”

  “Blessed if I know!” he conceded, not without signs of irritation.

  So far as he could see, not a feature of her face changed. The lifted eyebrows were still high upon her forehead, interrogative and mocking; the restless, gleaming eyes still drilled into various parts of his person and attire; the thin lips continued their moving pictures of contempt. And yet, he saw, too, that she presented to him now another countenance.

  The change was no more than a shadow; and the shadow was so light that he could not be sure of its meaning. He thought it was friendliness, but that opinion was dulled by recurrence of his admiration of her “smartness.” He feared some imposition.

  “You’ve adopted Mr. Hastings’ absurd theory,” she said, as if she wondered. “You’ve subscribed to it without question.”

  “What theory?”

  “That I know who the guilty man is.”

  “Well?” He was still on guard.

  “It surprises me—that’s all—a man of your intellect, your originality.”

  She sighed, marvelling at this addition to life’s conundrums.

  “Why?” he asked, bluntly.

  “I should never have thought you’d put yourself in that position before the public. I mean, letting him lead you around by the nose—figuratively.”

  Mr. Crown started forward in his chair, eyes popped. He was indignant and surprised.

  “Is that what they’re saying?” he demanded.

  “Naturally,” she said, and with the one word laid it down as an impossibility that “they” could have said anything else. “That’s what the reporters tell me.”

  “Well, I’ll be—dog-goned!” The knuckle-like chin dropped. “They’re saying that, are they?”

  Disturbed as he was, he noticed that she regarded him with apparently genuine interest—that, perhaps, she added to her interest a regret that he had displayed no originality in the investigation, a man of his intellect!

  “They couldn’t understand why you were playing Hastings’ game,” she proceeded, “playing it to his smallest instructions.”

  “Hastings’ game! What the thunder are they talking about? What do they mean, his game?”

  “His desire to keep suspicion away from the Sloanes and Mr. Webster. That’s what they hired him for—isn’t it?”

  “I guess it is—by gravy!” Mr. Crown’s long-drawn sigh was distinctly tremulous.

  “That old man pockets his fee when he throws Gene Russell into jail. Why, then, isn’t it his game to convince you of Gene’s guilt? Why isn’t it his game to persuade you of my secret knowledge of Gene’s guilt? Why—”

  “So, that’s—”

  “Let me say what I started,” she in turn interrupted him. “As one of the reporters pointed out, why isn’t it his game to try to make a fool of you?”

  The smile with which she recommended that rumour to his attention incensed him further. It patronized him. It said, as openly as if she had spoken the words: “I’m really very sorry for you.”

  He dropped his hands to his widespread knees, slid forward to the edge of his chair, thrust his face closer to hers, peered into her hard face for her meaning.

  “Making a fool of me, is he?” he said in the brutal key of unrepressed rage.

  A quick motion of her lifted brows, a curve of her lower lip—indubitably, a new significance of expression—stopped his outburst.

  “By George!” he said, taken aback. “By George!” he repeated, this time in a coarse exultation. He thrust himself still closer to her, certain now of her meaning.

  “What do you know?” He lowered his voice and asked again: “Mrs. Brace, what do you know?”

  She moved back, farther from him. She was not to be rushed into—anything. She made him appreciate the difficulty of “getting n
ext” to her. He no longer felt fear of her imposing on him—she had just exposed, for his benefit, how Hastings had played on his credulity! He felt grateful to her for that. His only anxiety now was that she might change her mind, might refuse him the assistance which that new and subtle expression had promised a moment ago.

  “If I thought you’d use—” she began, broke off, and looked past his shoulder at the opposite wall, the pupils of her eyes sharp points of light, lips drawn to a line almost invisible.

  Her evident prudence fired his eagerness.

  “If I’d do what?” he asked. “If you thought I’d—what?”

  “Let me think,” she requested.

  He changed his posture, with a great show of watching the sunset sky, and stole little glances at her smooth, untroubled face. He believed now that she could put him on the trail of the murderer. He confessed to himself, unreservedly, that Hastings had tricked him, held him up to ridicule—to the ridicule of a nation, for this crime held the interest of the entire country. But here was his chance for revenge! With this “smart” woman’s help, he would outwit Hastings!

  “If you’d use my ideas confidentially,” she said at last, eying him as if she speculated on his honesty; “if I were sure that—”

  “Why can’t you be sure of it?” he broke in. “My job is to catch the man who killed your daughter. I’ve got two jobs. The other is to show up old Hastings! Why wouldn’t I do as you ask—exactly as you ask?”

  She tantalized him.

  “And remember that what I say is ideas only, not knowledge?”

  “Sure! Certainly, Mrs. Brace.”

  “And, even when you arrest the right man, say nothing of what you owe me for my suggestions? You’re the kind of man to want to do that sort of thing—give me credit for helping you.”

  Even that pleased him.

  “If you specify silence, I give you my word on it,” he said, with a fragment of the pompous manner he had brought into the apartment more than an hour ago.

  “You’ll take my ideas, my theory, work on it and never bring me into it—in any way? If you make that promise, I’ll tell you what I think, what I’m certain is the answer to this puzzle.”