The Classic Mystery Novel

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  He waited, thinking she might have more to tell. Construing his silence as reproof, she said, without changing either her expression or her voice:

  “I know—it’s awful. I should have told you. Perhaps, I’ve done great harm.”

  “You’ve been very brave,” he consoled her, with infinite tenderness. “But it happens that I’d already satisfied myself on that point. I knew he’d been out there.”

  She was dumb, incapable of reacting to his words. Even the fact that he was smiling, with genuine amusement, did not affect her.

  “Here comes the grotesque element, the comical, that’s involved in so many tragedies,” he explained. “Your father’s weakness for ‘cure’ of nervousness, and his shrinking from the ridicule he’s suffered because of it—there’s the explanation of why he was out there that night.”

  She could not see significance in that, but neither could she summon energy to say so. She wondered vaguely why he thought it funny.

  “That night—rather, the early morning hours following—while the rest of you were in the library, I looked through his room, and I found a pair of straw sandals in the closet—such as a man could slip on and off without having to bend down to adjust them. And they were wet, inside and out.

  “Sunday morning, when Judge Wilton and I were at his bedside, I saw on the table a ‘quack’ pamphlet on the ‘dew’ treatment for nervousness, the benefit of the ‘wet, cooling grass’ upon the feet at night. You know the kind of thing. So—”

  “Oh-h-h!” she breathed, tremulous and weak. “So that’s why he was out there! Why didn’t I think? Oh, how I’ve suspected him of—”

  “But remember,” he warned; “that’s why he went out. We still don’t know what he—what happened after he got out there—or why he’s refused to say that he ever was out there. When we think of this, and other things, and, too, his call tonight on Mrs. Brace, for bribery—leaving what we thought was a sickbed—”

  “But he’s been up all day!” she corrected.

  “And yet,” he said, and stopped, reflecting.

  “Tell me,” she implored; “tell me, Mr. Hastings, do you suspect my father—or not—of the—?”

  He answered her unfinished question with a solemn, painstaking care:

  “Miss Sloane, you’re not one who would want to be misled. You can bear the truth. I’d be foolish to say that he’s not under suspicion. He is. Any one of the men there that night may have committed the murder. Webster, your father, Wilton—only there, suspicion seems totally gratuitous—Eugene Russell, Jarvis—I’ve heard things about him—any one of them may have struck that blow—may have.”

  “And father,” she said, in a grieved bewilderment, “has paid Mrs. Brace to stop saying she suspects Berne,” she shuddered, facing the alternative, “or himself!”

  “You see,” he framed the conclusion for her, “how hard he makes it for us to keep him out of trouble—if that gets out. He’s put his hand on the live wire of circumstantial evidence, a wire that too often thrashes about, striking the wrong man.”

  “And Berne?” she cried out. “I think I could stand anything if only I knew—”

  But this time the mutinous sobs came crowding past her lips. She could not finish the inquiry she had begun.

  XVIII

  THE MAN WHO RODE AWAY

  It was early in the afternoon of Wednesday when Mr. Hastings, responding to the prolonged ringing of his telephone, took the receiver off the hook and found himself in communication with the sheriff of Alexandria county. This was not the vacillating, veering sheriff who had spent nearly four days accepting the hints of a detective or sitting, chameleon-minded, at the feet of a designing woman. Here was an impressive and self-appreciative gentleman, one who delighted in his own deductive powers and relished their results.

  He said so. His confidence fairly rattled the wire. His words annihilated space grandly and leaped into the old man’s receptive ear with sizzling and electric effect. Mr. Crown, triumphant, was glad to inform others that he was making a hit with himself.

  “Hello! That you, Hastings? Well, old fellow, I don’t like to annoy you with an up-to-date rendition of ‘I told you so!’—but it’s come out, to the last syllable, exactly as I said it would—from the very first!”

  Ensued a pause, for dramatic effect. The detective did not break it.

  “Waiting, are you? Well, here she goes; Russell’s alibi’s been knocked into a thousand pieces! It’s blown up! It’s gone glimmering!—What do you think of that?”

  Hastings refrained from replying that he had regarded such an event as highly probable. Instead, he inquired:

  “And that simplifies things?”

  “Does it!” exploded Mr. Crown. “I’m getting to you a few minutes ahead of the afternoon papers. You’ll see it all there.” An apologetic laugh came over the wire. “You’ll excuse me, I know; I had to do this thing up right, put on the finishing touches before you even guessed what was going on. I’ve wound up the whole business. The Washington police nabbed Russell an hour ago, on my orders.

  “‘Simplifies things?’ I should say so! I guess you can call ’em ‘simplified’ when a murder’s been committed and the murderer’s waiting to step into my little ring-tum-fi-diddle-dee of a country jail! ‘No clue to this mystery,’ the papers have been saying! What’s the use of a clue when you know a guy’s guilty? That’s what I’ve been whistling all along!”

  “But the alibi?” Hastings prompted. “You say it’s blown up?”

  “Blown! Gone! Result of my sending out those circulars asking if any automobile parties passed along the Sloanehurst road the murder night. Remember?”

  “Yes.” The old man recalled having made that suggestion, but did not say so.

  “This morning the chief of police of York—York, Pennsylvania—wired me. I got him by long-distance right away. He gave me the story, details absolutely right and straight, all verified—and everything. A York man, named Stevens, saw a newspaper account, for the first time this morning, of the murder. He and four other fellows were in a car that went up Hub Hill that night a little after eleven—a few minutes after.—Hear that?”

  “Yes. Go on.”

  “Stevens was on the back seat. They went up the hill on low—terrible piece of road, he calls it—they were no more than crawling. He says he was the only sober man in the crowd—been out on a jollification tour of ten days. He saw a man slide on to the running board on his side of the car as they were creeping up the hill. The rest of the party was singing, having a high old time.

  “Stevens said he never said a word, just watched the guy on the running board, and planned to crack him on the head with an empty beer bottle when they got on the straight road and were hitting up a good clip—just playing, you understand.

  “After he’d watched the guy a while and was trying to fish up a beer bottle from the bottom of the car, the chauffeur slowed down and hollered back to him on the back seat that he wanted to stop and look at his radiator—it was about to blow up, too hot. He’d been burning the dust on that stretch of good road.

  “When he slowed down, the guy on the running board slipped off. Stevens says he rolled down a bank.”

  The jubilant Mr. Crown stopped, for breath.

  “That’s all right, far as it goes,” Hastings said; “but does he identify that man as Russell?”

  “To the last hair on his head!” replied the sheriff. “Stevens’ description of the fellow is Russell all over—all over! Just to show you how good it is, take this: Stevens describe the clothes Russell wore, and says what Otis said: he’d lost his hat.”

  “Stevens got a good look at him?”

  “Says the headlights were full on him as he stood on one side of the road, there on Hub Hill, waiting to slide on the running board.—And this Stevens is a shrewd guy, the York chief says. I guess his story plugs Russell’s
lies, shoots that alibi so full of holes it makes a sifter look like a piece of sheet-iron!

  “That car went up Hub Hill at seven minutes past eleven—that means Russell had plenty of time to kill the girl after the rain stopped and to get out on the road and slip on to that running board. And the car slowed up, where he rolled off the running board, at eighteen minutes past eleven.

  “Time’s right, location’s right, identification’s right!—Pretty sweet, ain’t it, old fellow? Congratulate me, don’t you? Congratulate me, even if it does step on all those mysterious theories of yours—that right?”

  Hastings bestowed the desired felicitations upon the exuberant conqueror of crime.

  Turning from the telephone, he gazed a long time at the piece of grey envelope on the table before him. He had clung to his belief that, in those fragments of words, was to be found a clue to the solution of the mystery. He picked up his knife and fell to whittling.

  Outside in the street a newsboy set up an abrupt, blaring din, shouting sensational headlines:

  “SLOANEHURST MYSTERY SOLVED!—RUSSELL THE MURDERER!—ALIBI A FAKE!”

  The old man considered grimly, the various effects of this development in the case—Lucille Sloane’s unbounded relief mingled with censure of him for having added to her fears, and especially for having subjected her to the ordeal of last night’s experience with Mrs. Brace—the adverse criticism from both press and public because of his refusal to join in the first attacks upon Russell, Arthur Sloane’s complacency at never having treated him with common courtesy.

  His thoughts went to Mrs. Brace and her blackmail schemes, as he had interpreted or suspected them.

  “If I’d had a little more time,” he reflected, “I might have put my hand on—”

  His eyes rested on the envelope flap. His mind flashed to another and new idea. His muscles stiffened; he put his hands on the arms of his chair and slowly lifted himself up, the knife dropping from his fingers and clattering on the floor. He stood erect and held both hands aloft, a gesture of wide and growing wonder.

  “Cripes!” he said aloud.

  He picked up the grey paper with a hand that trembled. His pendent cheeks puffed out like those of a man blowing a horn. He stared at the paper again, before restoring it to its envelope, which he put back into one of his pockets.

  “Cripes!” he said again. “It’s a place! Pursuit! That’s where the—”

  He became a whirlwind of action, covered the floor with springy step. Taking a book of colossal size from a shelf, he whirled the pages, running his finger down a column while he murmured, “Pursuit—P-u-r—P-u—P-u—”

  But there was no such name in the postal directory. He went back to older directories. He began to worry. Was there no such postoffice as Pursuit? He went to other books, whirling the pages, running down column after column. And at last he got the information he sought.

  Consulting a railroad folder, he found a train schedule that caused him to look at his watch.

  “Twenty-five minutes,” he figured. “I’m going!”

  He telephoned for a cab.

  Then, seating himself at the table, he tore a sheet from a scratch-pad and wrote:

  “Don’t lose sight of Mrs. Brace. Disregard Russell’s arrest.

  “Hendricks: the Sloanehurst people are members of the Arlington Golf Club. Get a look at golf bags there. Did one, or two, contain piece or pieces of a bed-slat?

  “Gore: check up on Mrs. B.’s use of money.

  “I’ll be back Sunday.”

  He sealed the envelope into which he put that, and, addressing it to Hendricks, left it lying on the table.

  At the station he bought the afternoon newspapers and turned to Eugene Russell’s statement, made to the reporters immediately after his arrest. It ran:

  “I repeat that I’m innocent of the murder. Of course, I made a mistake in omitting all mention of my having ridden the first four miles from Sloanehurst. But, being innocent and knowing the weight of the circumstantial evidence against me, I could not resist the temptation to make my alibi good. I neither committed that murder nor witnessed it. The story I told at the inquest of what happened to me and what I did at Sloanehurst stands. It is the truth.”

  XIX

  “PURSUIT!”

  Returning from his trip Sunday morning, the detective, after a brief conference with Hendricks, had gone immediately to Mrs. Brace’s apartment. She sat now, still and watchful, on the armless rocker by the window, waiting for him to disclose the object of his visit. Except the lifted, faintly interrogating eyebrows, there was nothing in her face indicative of what she thought.

  He caught himself comparing her to a statue, forever seated on the low-backed, uncomfortable chair, awaiting without emotion or alteration of feature the outcome of her evil scheming. Her hardness gave him the impression of something hammered on, beaten into an ugly pattern.

  Having that imperturbability to overcome, he struck his first blow with surprising directness.

  “I’m just back from Pursuit,” he said.

  That was the first speech by either of them since the monosyllabic greeting at the door. He saw that she had prepared herself for such an announcement; but the way she took it reminded him of a door shaken by the impact of a terrific blow. A little shiver, for all her force of repression, moved her from head to foot.

  “You are?” she responded, her voice controlled, the hard face untouched by the shock to which her body had responded.

  “Yes; I got back half an hour ago, and, except for one of my assistants, you’re the first person I’ve seen.” When that drew no comment from her, he added: “I want you to remember that—later on.”

  He began to whittle.

  “Why?” she asked with genuine curiosity, after a pause.

  “Because it may be well for you to know that I’m dealing with you alone, and fairly.—I got all the facts concerning you.”

  “Concerning me?” Her tone intimated doubt.

  “Now, Mrs. Brace!” he exclaimed, disapproving her apparent intention. “You’re surely not going to pretend ignorance—or innocence!”

  She crossed her knees, and, putting her left forearm across her body, rested her right elbow in that hand. She began to rock very gently, her posture causing her to lean forward and giving her a look of continual but polite questioning.

  “If you want to talk to me,” she said, her voice free of all feeling, “you’ll have to tell me what it’s about.”

  “All right; I will,” he returned. “You’ll remember, I take it, my asking you to tell me the meaning of the marks on the flap of the grey envelope. I’ll admit I was slow, criminally slow, in coming to the conclusion that ‘Pursuit!’ referred to a place rather than an act. But I got it finally—and I found Pursuit—not much left of it now; it’s not even a postoffice.

  “But it’s discoverable,” he continued on a sterner note, and began to shave long, slender chips from his block of wood. “I’ll give you the high lights: young Dalton was killed—his murderer made a run for it—but you, a young widow then, in whose presence the thing was done, smoothed matters out. You swore it was a matter of self-defence. The result was that, after a few half-hearted attempts to locate the fugitive, the pursuit was given up.”

  “Very well. But why bring that story here—now? What’s its significance?”

  He stared at her in amazement. Her thin, sensitive lips were drawn back at the corners, enough to make her mouth look a trifle wider—and enough to suggest dimly that their motion was the start of a vindictive grimace. Otherwise, she was unmoved, unresponsive to the open threat of what he had said.

  “Let me finish,” he retorted. “An unfortunate feature, for you, was that you seemed to have made money out of the tragedy. In straitened circumstances previously, you began to spend freely—comparatively speaking—a few days after the murderer’
s disappearance. In fact, bribery was hinted; you had to leave the village. See any significance in that?” he concluded, with irony.

  “Suppose you explain it,” she said, still cool.

  “The significance is in the strengthening of the theory I’ve had throughout the whole week that’s passed since your daughter was killed at Sloanehurst.”

  “What’s that?”

  She stopped rocking; her eyes played a fiery tattoo on every feature of his face.

  “Your daughter’s death was the unexpected result of your attempts to blackmail young Dalton’s murderer. You, being afraid of him, and not confessing that timidity to Mildred, persuaded her to approach him—in person.”

  “I! Afraid of him!” she objected, aroused at last.

  Her brows were lowered, a heavy line above her furtive, swift eyes; her nostrils fluttered nervously.

  “Granting your absurd theory,” she continued, “why should I have feared him? What had he done—except strike to save his own life?”

  “You forget, Mrs. Brace,” he corrected. “That body showed twenty-nine wounds, twenty-eight of them unnecessary—if the first was inflicted in mere self-defence. It was horrible mutilation.”

  “So!” she ridiculed, with obvious effort. “You picture him as a butcher.”

  “Precisely. And you, having seen to what lengths his murderous fury could take him, were afraid to face him—even after your long, long search had located him again. Let’s be sensible, Mrs. Brace. Let’s give the facts of this business a hearing.

  “You had come to Washington and located him at last. But, after receiving several demands from you, he’d stopped reading your letters—sent them back unopened. Consequently, in order for you to make an appointment with him, he had to be communicated with in a handwriting he didn’t know. Hence, your daughter had to write the letter making that appointment a week ago last night. Then, however—”