“Win or lose, right or wrong idea, you have my oath on it.”
“Very well!” She said that with the air of one embarking on a tremendous venture and scorning all its possibilities of harm. “I shall trust you fully.—First, let me sketch all the known facts, everything connected with the tragedy, and everything I know concerning the conduct of the affected individuals since.”
He was leaning far toward her once more, a child-like impatience stamped on his face. As she proceeded, his admiration grew.
For this, there was ample ground. The newspaper paragraph Hastings had read that morning commenting on her mastery of all the details of the crime had scarcely done her justice. Before she concluded, Crown had heard from her lips little incidents that had gone over his head. She put new and accurate meaning into facts time and time again, speaking with the particularity and vividness of an eye-witness.
“Now,” she said, having reconstructed the crime and described the subsequent behaviour of the tragedy’s principal actors; “now who’s guilty?”
“Exactly,” echoed Crown, with a click in his throat. “Who’s guilty? What’s your theory?”
She was silent, eyes downcast, her hands smoothing the black, much-worn skirt over her lean knees. Recital of the gruesome story, the death of her only child, had left her unmoved, had not quickened her breathing.
“In telling you that,” she resumed, her restless eyes striking his at rapid intervals, “I think I’ll put you in a position to get the right man—if you’ll act.”
“Oh, I’ll act!” he declared, largely. “Don’t bother your head about that!”
“Of course, it’s only a theory—”
“Yes; I know! And I’ll keep it to myself.”
“Very well. Arthur Sloane is prostrated, can’t be interviewed. He can’t be interviewed, for the simple reason that he’s afraid he’ll tell what he knows. Why is he afraid of that? Because he knows too much, for his own comfort, and too much for his daughter’s comfort. How does he know it? Because he saw enough night before last to leave him sure of the murderer’s identity.
“He was the man who turned on the light, showing Webster and Judge Wilton bending over Mildred’s body. It occurred at a time when usually he is in his first sound sleep—from bromides. Something must have happened to awake him, an outcry, something. And yet, he says he didn’t see them—Wilton and Webster.”
“By gravy!” exclaimed the sheriff, awe-struck.
“Either,” she continued, “Arthur Sloane saw the murder done, or he looked out in time to see who the murderer was. The facts substantiate that. They are corroborated by his subsequent behaviour. Immediately after the murder he was in a condition that couldn’t be explained by the mere fact that he’s a sufferer from chronic nervousness. When Hastings asked him to take a handkerchief, he would have fallen to the ground but for the judge’s help. He couldn’t hold an electric torch. And, ever since, he’s been in bed, afraid to talk. Why, he even refused to talk to Hastings, the man he’s retained for the family’s protection!”
“He did, did he! How do you know that, Mrs. Brace?”
“Isn’t it enough that I know it—or advance it as a theory?”
“Did—I thought, possibly, Jarvis, the valet, told you.”
She ignored that.
“Now, as to the daughter of the house. There was only one possible reason for Lucille Sloane’s hiring Hastings: she was afraid somebody in the house, Webster, of course, would be arrested. Being in love with him, she never would have suspected him unless there had been concrete, undeniable evidence of his guilt. Do you grasp that reasoning?”
“Sure, I do!” Mr. Crown condemned himself. “What I’m wondering is why I didn’t see it long ago.”
“She, too, you recall, was looking out of a window—on that side of the house—scarcely fifteen yards from where the crime was done. It’s not hard to believe that she saw what her father saw: the murder or the murderer.
“Mr. Crown, if you can make her or her father talk, you’ll get the truth of this thing, the truth and the murderer.
“And look at Judge Wilton’s part. You asked me why I went to his office this morning. I went because I’m sure he knows the truth. Didn’t he stay right at Webster’s side when old Hastings interviewed Webster yesterday? Why? To keep Webster from letting out, in his panic, a secret which both of them knew.”
The sheriff’s admiration by this time was boundless. He felt driven to give it expression.
“Mrs. Brace, you’re a loo-loo! A loo-loo, by gravy! Sure, that was his reason. He couldn’t have had any other!”
“As for Webster himself,” she carried on her exposition, without emotion, without the slightest recognition of her pupil’s praise, “he proves the correctness of everything we’ve said, so far. That secret which the judge feared he would reveal, that secret which old Hastings was blundering after—that secret, Mr. Crown, was such a danger to him that, to escape the questioning of even stupid old Hastings, he could do nothing but crumple up on the floor and feign illness, prostration. Why, don’t you see, he was afraid to talk!”
“Everything you say hits the mark!” agreed Crown, smiling happily. “Centre-shots! Centre-shots! You’ve been right from the very beginning. You tried to tell me all this yesterday morning, and, fool that I was—fool that Hastings was!” He switched to a summary of what she had put into his mind: “It’s right! Webster killed her, and Sloane and his daughter saw him at it. Even Wilton knows it—and he a judge! It seems impossible. By gravy! he ought to be impeached.”
A new idea struck him. Mrs. Brace, imperturbable, exhibiting no elation, was watching him closely. She saw his sudden change of countenance. He had thought: “She didn’t reason this out. Russell saw the murder—the coward—and he’s told her. He ran away from—”
Another suspicion attacked him: “But that was Jarvis’ night off. Has she seen Jarvis?”
Impelled to put this fresh bewilderment into words, he was stayed by the restless, brilliant eyes with which she seemed to penetrate his lumbering mind. He was afraid of losing her cooperation. She was too valuable an ally to affront. He kept quiet.
She brought him back to her purpose.
“Then, you agree with me? You think Webster’s guilty?”
“Think!” He almost shouted his contempt of the inadequate word. “Think! I know! Guilty? The man’s black with guilt.”
“I’m sure of it,” she said, curiously skilful in surrendering to him all credit for that vital discovery. “What are you going to do—now that you know?”
“Make him talk, turn him inside out! Playing sick, is he! I’m going back to Sloanehurst this evening. I’m going to start something. You can take this from me: Webster’ll loosen that tongue of his before another sun rises!”
But that was not her design.
“You can’t do it,” she objected, her voice heavy with disappointment. “Dr. Garnet, your own coroner, says questioning will kill him. Dr. Garnet’s as thoroughly fooled as Hastings, and,” she prodded him with suddenly sharp tone, “you.”
“That’s right.” He was crestfallen, plucking at his chin. “That’s hard to get around. But I’ve got to get around it! I’ve got to show results, Mrs. Brace. People, some of the papers even, are already hinting that I’m too easy on a rich man and his friend.”
“Yes,” she said, evenly. “And you told—I understood you’d act, on our theory.”
“I’ve got to! I’ve got to act!”
His confusion was manifest. He did not know what to do, and he was silent, hoping for a suggestion from her. She let him wait. The pause added to his embarrassment.
“What would—that is,” he forced himself to the appeal, “I was wondering—anything occur to you? See any way out of it?”
“Of course, I know nothing about such procedure,” she replied to that, slowly, as if she gro
ped for a new idea. “But, if you got the proof from somewhere else, enough to warrant the arrest of Webster—” Her smile deprecated her probable ineptness. “If Arthur Sloane—”
He fairly fell upon the idea.
“Right!” he said, clapping his hands together. “Sloane’s no dying man, is he? And he knows the whole story. Right you are, Mrs. Brace! He can shake and tremble and whine all he pleases, but tonight he’s my meat—my meat, right! Talk? You bet he’ll talk!”
She considered, looking at the opposite wall. He was convinced that she examined the project, viewing it from the standpoint of his interest, seeking possible dangers of failure. Nevertheless, he hurried her decision.
“It’s the thing to do, isn’t it?”
“I should think so,” she said at last. “You, with your mental forcefulness, your ability as a questioner—why, I don’t see how you can fail to get at what he knows. Beside, you have the element of surprise on your side. That will go far toward sweeping him off his feet.”
He was again conscious of his debt of gratitude to this woman, and tried to voice it.
“This is the first time,” he declared, big with confidence, “I’ve felt that I had the right end of this case.”
When she had closed the door on him, she went back to the living room and set back in its customary place the chair he had occupied. Her own was where it always belonged. From there she went into the bathroom and, as Hastings had seen her do before, drew a glass of water which she drank slowly.
Then, examining her hard, smooth face in the bedroom mirror, she said aloud:
“Pretty soon, now, somebody will talk business—with me.”
There was no elation in her voice. But her lips were, for a moment, thick and wet, changing her countenance into a picture of inordinate greed.
XV
IN ARTHUR SLOANE’S ROOM
Hastings went back to Sloanehurst that evening for another and more forceful attempt to argue Arthur Sloane into frankness. Like Mrs. Brace, he could not get away from the definite conclusion that Lucille’s father was silent from fear of telling what he knew. Moreover, he realized that, without a closer connection with Sloane, his own handling of the case was seriously impeded.
Lucille was on the front porch, evidently waiting for him, although he had not notified her in advance of his visit. She went hurriedly down the steps and met him on the walk. When he began an apology for having to annoy her so frequently, she cut short his excuses.
“Oh, but I’m glad you’re here—so glad! We need your help. The sheriff’s here.”
She put her hand on his coat sleeve; he could feel the tremour of it as she pulled, unconsciously, on the cloth. She turned toward the verandah steps.
“What’s he doing?” he asked, detaining her.
“He’s in father’s room,” she said in feverish haste, “asking him all sorts of questions, saying ridiculous things. Really, I’m afraid—for father’s health! Can’t you go in now?”
“Couldn’t Judge Wilton manage him? Isn’t the judge here?”
“No. He came over at dinner time; but he went back to the Randalls’. Father didn’t feel up to talking to him.”
Crown, she explained, had literally forced his way into the bedroom, disregarding her protests and paying no attention to the pretence of physical resistance displayed by Jarvis.
“The man seems insane!” she said. “I want you to make him leave father’s room—please!”
She halted near the library door, leaving the matter in Hastings’ hands. Since entering the house he had heard Crown’s voice, raised to the key of altercation; and now, when he stepped into Sloane’s room, the rush of words continued.
The sheriff, unaware of the newcomer, stood near the bed, emphasizing his speech with restless arms and violent motions of his head, as if to galvanize into response the still and prostrate form before him. On the opposite side of the bed stood the sepulchral Jarvis, flashing malign looks at Crown, but chiefly busy, with unshaking hands, preparing a beverage of some sort for the sick man.
Sloane lay on his back, eyes closed, face under the full glare of the reading light. His expression indicated both boredom and physical suffering.
“—have to make an arrest!” Crown was saying. “You’re making me take that action—ain’t you? I come in here, considerate as I know how to be, and I ask you for a few facts. Do you give ’em to me? Not by a long shot! You lie there in that bed, and talk about leaping angels, and say I bore you! Well, Mr. Sloane, that won’t get you a thing! You’re where I said you were: it’s either Webster that will be arrested—or yourself! Now, I’m giving you another chance. I’m asking you what you saw; and you can tell me—or take the consequences!”
Hastings thought: “He’s up that gum stump of his again, and don’t know how to quit talking.”
Sloane made no answer.
“Well,” thundered Crown. “I’m asking you!”
“Moaning martyrs!” Sloane protested in a thin, querulous tone. “Jarvis, the bromide.”
“All right!” the sheriff delivered his ultimatum. “I’ll stick to what I said. Webster may be too sick to talk, but not too sick to have a warrant served on him. He’ll be arrested because you won’t tell me—”
Hastings spoke then.
“Gentlemen!” he greeted pleasantly. “Mr. Sloane, good evening. Mr. Sheriff—am I interrupting a private conference?”
“Fiery fiends!” wailed Sloane. “Another!”
Hastings gave his attention to Crown. He was certain that the man, balked by Sloane’s refusal to “talk,” would welcome an excuse for leaving the room.
“Let me see you a moment, will you?” He put a hand on the sheriff’s shoulder, persuading: “It’s important, right now.”
“But I want to know what Mr. Sloane’s going to say,” Crown blustered. “If he’ll tell—”
Hastings stopped him with a whisper: “That’s exactly what he’ll do—soon!”
He led the sheriff into the hall. They went into the parlour.
“Now,” Hastings began, in genial tone; “did you get anything from him?”
“Not a dad-blamed thing!” Crown was still blustery. “But he’ll talk before I’m through! You can put your little bets down on that!”
“All right. You’ve had your chance at him. Better let me see him.”
Crown looked his distrust. He was thinking of Mrs. Brace’s warning that this man had made a fool of him.
“I’m not trying to put anything over on you,” the detective assured him. “Fact is, I’m out here for the newspaper men. They’ve had nothing from him; they’ve asked me to get his story. I’ll give it to you before I see them. What do you say?”
Crown still hesitated.
“If, after you’ve heard it,” Hastings added, “you want to question him further, you can do it, of course. But this way we take two shots at it.”
To that, the other finally agreed.
Hastings found Sloane smoking a cigarette, his eyes still closed. Jarvis was behind a screen near the door, now and then clinking glass against glass as he worked.
The old man took a chair near the bed and waited for Sloane to speak. He waited a long time. Finally, the invalid looked at him from under lowered lids, slyly, like a child peeping. Hastings returned the look with a pleasant smile, his shrewd eyes sparkling over the rims of his spectacles.
“Well!” Sloane said at last, in a whiney tone. “What do you want?”
“First,” Hastings apologized, “I want to say how sorry I am I didn’t make myself clearly understood night before last when I told Miss Sloane I’d act as mouthpiece for this household. I didn’t mean I could invent a statement for each of you, or for any of you. What I did mean amounts to this: if you, for instance, would tell me what you know—all you know—about this murder, I could relay it to the reporters—an
d to the sheriff, who’s been annoying you so this evening. As—”
“Flat-headed fiends!” Sloane cut in, writhing under the light coverlet. “Another harangue!”
Hastings kept his temper.
“No harangue about it. But it’s to come to this, Mr. Sloane: you’re handicapping me, and the reporters and the sheriff don’t trust you.”
“Why? Why don’t they trust me?” shrilled Sloane, writhing again.
“Ill tell you in a very few words: because you refused to testify at the inquest yesterday, giving illness as an excuse. That’s one reason. The—”
“Howling helions! Wasn’t I ill? Didn’t I have enough to make me ill?—Jarvis, a little whiskey!”
“Dr. Garnet hasn’t told them so—the reporters. He won’t tell them so. In fact,” Hastings said, with less show of cordiality, “from all he said to me, I gather he doesn’t think you an ill man—that is, dangerously ill.”
“And because of that, they say what, these reporters, this sheriff? What?”
“They’re in ugly mood, Mr. Sloane. They’re saying you’re trying to protect—somebody—by keeping still about a thing which you should be the first to haul into daylight. That’s it—in a nutshell.”
Sloane had stopped trembling. He sat up in the bed and stared at the detective out of steady, hard eyes. He waved away the whiskey Jarvis held toward him.
“And you want what, Mr. Hastings?” he inquired, a curiously effective sarcasm in his voice.
“A statement covering every second from the time you waked up Saturday night until you saw the body.”
“A statement!—Reporters!” He was snarling on that. “What’s got into you, anyway? What are you trying to do—make people suspect me of the murder-make ’em suspect Berne?”
He threw away the cigarette and shook his fist at Hastings. He gulped twice before he could speak again; he seemed on the point of choking.
“In an ugly mood, are they? Well, they can stay in an ugly mood. You, too! And that hydrophobiac sheriff! Quivering and crucified saints! I’ve had enough of all of you—all of you, understand! Get out of here! Get out!”
The Classic Mystery Novel Page 66