The Classic Mystery Novel

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  “I foun’ Lucy Thomas, Mistuh Bristow,” she said, breathless and indignant. “She is sho’ one sorry lady. She wuz drunk—layin’ out in de parluh uv dat little house uv her’n. Dead drunk.”

  “Did you wake her up, Mattie?”

  “Yas, suh; but she ain’ fit to come do no wuk. Dis ole rotten blockade whisky dese blacks drink jes’ knocked her out—knocked her out fuh fair.”

  “Did she say when she got drunk?”

  “Las’ night, suh, late, wid dat Perry. You know, Mistuh Bristow; he been doin’ some wuk fuh you.”

  “Was Perry drunk last night? Did she tell you?”

  “He wuz a little lit up, she says, but he warn’t drunk. She didn’t have no idea whar he wuz jes’ now.”

  Bristow made no comment on this, and Mattie, turning slowly away from him, began to mumble something.

  “What’s that, Mattie?” he asked, only half curious.

  “I wuz jes’ sayin’, Mistuh Bristow, it ’pears to me marveelyus how some uv dese blacks behave. Dey don’ look arter de white folks dey wuk fuh. Seems to me marveelyus how a lot uv dem keeps out uv jail.”

  He was curious enough now.

  “What do you mean?” he asked sharply. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s jes’ dis, suh: when I gits ovuh to Lucy’s house, de fus’ thing I sees is a key layin’ on de flo’. When I ast her ’bout it, she says it mus’ be de key to Number Five—she mus’ uv drapped it.”

  “I see,” said Bristow thoughtfully. “Yes, you’re right, Mattie. There are a lot of careless people in the world.”

  When she had gone back to the kitchen, the full force of what she had said struck him. How simple it would have been for Perry to have taken the key from the drunken Lucy and gone to No. 5! After the commission of the crime, what would have been easier than for him to throw the key on the floor in Lucy’s house, thus apparently proving that he had had no way of gaining entrance to the bungalow?

  “I didn’t foresee this,” he meditated. “There’s only one thing more needed to hang that darky. That is the discovery that he has in his possession, or has hidden, the jewelry.”

  He seemed suddenly reminded of something else by this thought. He went to the telephone and called up the Brevord Hotel.

  “A Mr. Morley, Mr. Henry Morley, registered there last night, didn’t he?” he inquired of the clerk.

  “Yes,” the clerk replied.

  “I wonder,” continued Bristow suavely, “if you’d mind looking at the register and telling me exactly at what time he did register. This is Chief Greenleaf’s office talking.”

  “I see. Yes, sir; very glad to. Just hold the wire a moment while I look.”

  Bristow waited. The Brevord was scarcely four minutes’ walk from the railroad station. Morley, having missed the midnight train by two minutes, should have registered at the hotel certainly not later than ten minutes past midnight.

  “I have it,” came the clerk’s voice. “Mr. Henry Morley, of Washington, D.C., registered here at five minutes past two this morning.”

  Bristow was astonished, but his voice was uncoloured by surprise when he inquired:

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “Quite,” said the clerk laconically. “We always put down opposite each guest’s name the time of arrival and registering.”

  “Thanks ever so much.” Bristow hung up the receiver slowly.

  It was now after one o’clock, and, following the routine prescribed by his doctor, he made his way to the sleeping porch to lie down for half an hour before dinner, his midday meal.

  “From midnight until two o’clock this morning,” he reflected, revolving a dozen different facts in his mind. “Mr. Morley failed to mention how he amused himself during all that time. If he’s not a criminal, he’s criminally stupid.”

  CHAPTER V

  THE HUSBAND’S STORY

  Mr. Bristow, however, was not allowed to rest half an hour. Instead, he was called upon to consider a phase of the Withers murder more amazing than any of those so far uncovered. Barely ten minutes after his conversation with the clerk of the Brevord, Mattie announced that two gentlemen were waiting to see him, one of them being the chief of police.

  When Bristow stepped into the living room, Greenleaf introduced the stranger. He was Mr. Withers—Mr. George S. Withers, husband of the murdered woman. He was of the extreme brunette type, his hair blue-black, his black eyes keen and piercing and always on the move. Bristow got the impression in looking at him that all his features, the aquiline nose, the firm, compressed mouth, the large ears, were remarkably sharp-cut.

  The man’s excitement was almost beyond his control. He apparently made no attempt to hide the fact that his hands trembled like leaves in the wind and that, every now and then, his legs quivered perceptibly. As soon as he had shaken hands, he sank into a chair.

  “Mr. Withers,” the chief explained, “caught me at Number Five before I had started down town. I have explained how you are helping me in this—er distressing matter. So we came up here.”

  “I see,” said Bristow, betraying no surprise that Withers had appeared so suddenly.

  In fact, he had not thought of the husband previously, except to calculate that, in answer to the telegram Dr. Braley had undoubtedly sent, he could not reach Furmville from Atlanta before far into the night.

  “He only heard of the tragedy half an hour ago,” Greenleaf added.

  “I didn’t know you were in town or even expected,” Bristow said casually. “I thought you were in Atlanta.”

  “I—I wasn’t expected.” Withers hurried his words.

  “You mean nobody expected you?”

  “That’s it, I wasn’t expected. But I’ve been in—in town here since yesterday morning.”

  “And Mrs. Withers didn’t know of it?”

  “Nobody knew of it. I didn’t want anybody to know of it.”

  Bristow purposely remained silent, awaiting some explanation. He looked down, studying the pattern of the scratches he made by rubbing his right shoe against the side of the built-up sole, two inches thick, of his left shoe. The shortness of his crippled leg made this heavy sole necessary; and the awkwardness of it worried him. He seemed always conscious of it.

  Greenleaf, taking his cue from Bristow, said nothing.

  “I came in without notifying anybody,” Withers felt himself obliged to continue, “and I registered under an assumed name.”

  “Where?” the lame man asked swiftly.

  “At the Brevord.”

  “What name—under what name?”

  “Waring, Charles B. Waring.”

  “And you’ve been in Furmville since yesterday morning? Got here on the eight o’clock train yesterday morning?”

  “Yes.”

  Bristow gave him the benefit of another long pause and studied him more closely. He saw that this bereaved husband was of the high-strung, Southern-gentleman type, hot-tempered, impulsive, one of those apt to believe that “shooting” is the remedy for one’s personal ills or injuries. The lines of his mouth betrayed selfishness and peevishness.

  The interrogator broke the silence at last:

  “Of course, Mr. Withers, there’s some good explanation for your secret trip to Furmville?”

  “Well—er—yes.”

  “What is it?”

  Withers hesitated.

  “I—I don’t know that I care to say now—to discuss it yet.”

  Bristow shot Greenleaf a prompting glance.

  “You see, it’s this way,” the chief acted on the silent suggestion; “I’m in charge of this matter, the capture of the murderer, and Mr. Bristow is helping me. In fact, he’s the man in command. His abilities fit him for the work. If the man who killed your wife is caught, it will be through the work of Mr. Bristow. I’m confident of that. Moreov
er, every minute we lose now may be disastrous to us. Consequently, we want to hear your story. You appreciate our position, I know.”

  Withers licked his dry lips with the tip of his dry tongue.

  “How about the newspapers?” he asked.

  “You’ll be talking only for our information,” cut in Bristow crisply. “We won’t give it to the papers. We want to use it for our own benefit.”

  “Ah, I see. Well, then—”

  Withers got up and paced the length of the floor several times in silence while they watched him. He gave the impression of framing up in advance in his mind what he would say. He seemed to want to talk without talking too much—to tell a part of a story, not all.

  “I tell you, gentlemen,” he said, going back to his chair, his voice trembling, “this is a hard thing to get to. I mean I don’t like to say what I must say. But I see there’s no way out but this. The truth of the matter is, I came up here to satisfy myself as to what my wife was doing in regard to a certain matter.”

  “You mean you were suspicious of her—jealous of her?” Bristow interpolated.

  “No, not that,” returned the husband.

  “He’s lying!” was the thought of both Greenleaf and Bristow.

  “No. Let me make that very clear. I never doubted her in that way.”

  “Well, how did you doubt her?”

  Withers winced.

  “I don’t mean I doubted her at all. I mean I thought she was being imposed upon financially. In fact, I was sure of it. I’m sure of it now.”

  “You mean blackmail?” Bristow narrowed down the inquiry.

  “Just that. And I’ll tell you about it.” He rasped his dry lips again. “This sort of thing, this blackmail, had happened to her twice before this. Once it was when she was at Atlantic City for a month with her sister, Miss Maria Fulton.

  “That was a year after our marriage. Then, two years later—just about a year ago now—when she was in Washington visiting her father and sister. Both those times things happened as they had begun to happen here, in fact as they’ve been happening here for the past two months.”

  “Well,” Bristow urged him on, “what happened?”

  “She got away with too much money, more money than she could possibly have used for herself in any legitimate way. First, she got her father to give her all she could get out of him. Her second step would be to write to me for all I could spare, making flimsy excuses for her need of it.

  “Her third resource was to pawn all her jewels. She pawned them on these first two occasions I’ve described. I say she pawned them, but I never had definite proof of it. However, I was sure of it. I don’t know that she had come to this in Furmville. If she hadn’t she would have.”

  “What were Mrs. Withers’ jewels worth?”

  “Originally, I should say, they cost about fifteen thousand dollars. She had no difficulty, I suppose, in raising six or seven thousand dollars on them—even more than that.”

  “They were worth so much as all that?”

  “Yes. Her father had given her most of them before his business failure. He failed last fall, I forgot to mention.”

  “Now,” Bristow said persuasively, “about this blackmailing proposition. What was—what is your idea about that?”

  Withers produced and lit a cigarette, handling it with quivering fingers.

  “Somebody, some man, had a hold of some sort on her. Whenever he needed money, had to have money, he got it from her. That is, he did this whenever he could find her away from home. So far as I know, he never tried to operate in Atlanta.”

  “What do you think this hold was?”

  “Well,” Withers began, and paused.

  “Your theories are perfectly safe with us,” Bristow reassured him.

  “I thought, naturally, that it had something to do with her life previous to the time I met her.”

  “How?”

  “I didn’t know. That’s what worried me.” All of a sudden, his hearers got a clear idea of what the man had suffered. It was plainly to be detected in his voice. “It might have been a harmless love affair, a flirtation, with letters involved, letters which she thought would distress me if I ever saw them.”

  “Nothing more than that?”

  “I never thought she had been guilty of anything—well, immoral, heinous.”

  “You say,” Bristow changed the course of questioning, “she pawned her jewels twice. How did she do that? Where did she get the money to redeem them after the first pawning?”

  “I don’t know. I never could find out.”

  “You had no six or seven thousand dollars to give her for that purpose, as I understand it?”

  “No.”

  “Where did she get it, then?” Bristow’s questions, despite their directness, were free from offense.

  “I—I thought,” Withers began again and paused. “I thought that, perhaps, her father helped her out, got the jewels out of pawn both times for her.”

  “Did you ever ask him?”

  “Yes; and he denied having done so. But, you see, my theory is borne out. Before, when she pawned them, her father was wealthy; and she was his favourite child. She knew he would help her. But now his money is gone. He’s failed. Consequently, she has not pawned them this time. She knew there would be no chance to redeem them.”

  Bristow leaned forward in his chair.

  “Mr. Withers,” he asked, “as a matter of fact, did you ever know that your wife had pawned her jewels?”

  “Well,” he said, as if making an admission, “she would never confess it to me. I assumed it from the fact that on both occasions the jewels were missing for a good while. They were certainly not in her possession. She couldn’t produce them when called upon to do so.”

  “I see. Now, Mr. Withers, what did you do yesterday, all day yesterday, after reaching here?”

  “I went to the Brevord and registered under the name of Waring. After I had had breakfast, I went straight to Abrahamson’s pawnshop. It’s the only pawnshop in town. I told him I was looking for some stolen jewelry and I expected that an attempt might be made to pawn it with him. He agreed to let me wait there, well concealed by the heavy hangings at the back of his shop. I spent the day there except for a few minutes in the afternoon when I went out for a quick lunch.”

  “Yes? Did you find out anything?”

  Once more Withers found it hard to speak.

  “Yes”; he said finally. “A man came in and pawned one of my wife’s rings. It had a setting of three diamonds. It was worth about seven hundred and fifty dollars, I should say. Abrahamson let him have only a hundred on it.”

  “Why only a hundred?”

  “I had asked him to do that, so as to prove that the man was a thief—you know, willing to take anything offered to him.”

  “And he did take the hundred?”

  “He did.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “I followed him from the shop—for half a block. When he had gone that distance, I lost him. He stepped into a store, and I waited for him to come out. He never did. It was the old dodge. The store extended the width of a block. He made his escape through the other entrance.”

  Greenleaf was more excited even than Withers.

  “This man,” the chief put in; “what did he look like?”

  “He was of average weight, medium height. He had a gold tooth, the upper left bicuspid gold. His nose was aquiline. He wore a long, dark gray raincoat, and he had a cap with its long visor pulled well over his face. Then, too, he wore a beard, chestnut-brown in colour. That’s about the best description I can give you of him. You see, this happened late in the afternoon.”

  “All right,” Bristow kept to the main thread of the story. “Now, about last night. What then?”

  Withers threw away his cigarette and
sighed.

  “I came up here and watched Number Five. I had an idea that this fellow might show up.”

  “Did he?”

  “No.”

  “Where did you watch from?”

  “Most of the time I sat on the steps of Number Four, almost directly across the road from Number Five. You know how it is on this street. Nearly everybody is in the back of the house after dark. The invalids are on the sleeping porches behind the houses. Besides, it was in deep shadow where I was. I was not observed when my—when Mrs. Withers left the house with an escort, a man, early in the evening.”

  “And you waited until she returned?”

  “Yes; I waited.”

  “Very well.” There was for the first time a hint of sharpness in Bristow’s voice. “You waited. What did you see?”

  For the past few minutes a change had been taking place in the bearing of Withers. It was as if, having recovered slightly from the terrific shock of his wife’s death, he was gradually stiffening, gaining the strength necessary to withstand the swift volley of Bristow’s questions.

  The questioner, sensing this alteration in the other, made his queries all the quicker and more peremptory. He wanted to profit as much as possible from the other’s lack of control.

  “I saw her return with her escort,” Withers answered. “She shook hands with him and went into the house and closed the door. He got into his machine, turned it and went back toward town.”

  “Was his machine noisy?”

  “No.”

  “Did you try to enter Number Five?”

  “No. I wasn’t ready to disclose my presence. I wanted more time.”

  He put his hand to his watch pocket and was surprised to find that no watch was there; he had been making nervous little movements like that throughout the interview; but he kept his keen glance on his questioner.

  “Then, tell us this, please,” Bristow demanded, the sharpness in his tone pronounced: “have you and your wife been on the best of terms lately? And another thing: have you ever had any lasting, distressing disagreements with her?”

  The effect of this upon Withers was entirely surprising. He sprang from his chair, his features suddenly working with rage.

  “Dammit!” he exclaimed in a tense, vibrant voice, as his glance rested first on Bristow and then on Greenleaf. “What does all this amount to anyway? Here you are, asking me questions as if you thought I had killed my own wife! What I want is results, not a lot of hot air and bluff!”