The Classic Mystery Novel

by Dorothy Cameron Disney

  “I allowed him six hundred dollars on the bracelets,” explained Abrahamson; “they are handsome—exquisite; and three hundred and fifty on the ring.”

  Braceway passed the stuff back to him. It was a part of the Withers jewelry.

  “You see, Mr. Braceway,” added the Jew, “all this business, this murder and everything, will cost me money. This jewelry, it is stolen goods. Chief Greenleaf leaves it here for the present, as a decoy. Perhaps, somebody might try to reclaim it. That’s what he thinks. As for me, I don’t think so. It is a dead loss.”

  He sighed and rearranged the articles in their envelopes.

  “Yes,” agreed the detective; “it’s hard luck. You’ve got every reason to be interested in running down the truth in this mix-up. I wish you could tell me where you think you saw this man—the time he had neither the gold tooth nor the brown beard.”

  “Be patient, my friend—Mr. Braceway. By tomorrow I may remember. I shall work hard—the association of ideas! It is a great system.”

  Braceway thanked him and was about to leave the shop. He had already formed a new plan. He turned back to the pawn broker.

  “By the way,” he said, “I’m going to Washington tomorrow. If you should remember, if the association of ideas produces anything, I wonder if you’d wire me?”

  “Certainly. Certainly.”

  The detective wrote on a slip of paper: S. S. Braceway, Willard Hotel. He handed it to Abrahamson.

  “Wire me that address, collect,” he directed.

  Abrahamson promised, smiling. He was pleased with the idea of helping to solve the problem which convulsed Furmville.

  “Oh,” added Braceway, “another thing. How would you describe this fellow in addition to the fact that he wore the beard and the gold tooth?”

  “Very thin lips,” replied Abrahamson slowly, “and high, straight, aquiline nose, and blond hair, and—and, I should say, rather thin, high voice.”

  “Good!” Braceway exclaimed. “Good! Mr. Abrahamson, you’ve just described the man who, I believe, committed the murder. And I know where he is.”

  Morley had been pointed out to him in the hotel earlier in the day, and Abrahamson’s memory sketched a fairly good likeness of the young man as he remembered him. Why not make certain of it at once?

  “You’ve been very obliging,” he continued, “and, I suppose, that’s why I feel I can impose on you further. I confide in you, as you did in me. I’m going back to the Brevord now. Could you follow me and take a look at a man who’ll be with me there?”

  The Jew’s eyes sparkled.

  “Yes, Mr. Braceway,” he said and added: “It may cost me money, closing up the shop, you understand. But if I can help—”

  “Don’t misunderstand me,” the detective cautioned. “There’s no charge of murder. Nothing like that. This fellow may be the gold-tooth man, and still not be the guilty man.”

  “I see; I see,” Abrahamson’s tone was one of importance. “You go on, Mr. Braceway. I’ll follow in three minutes.”

  “If the man I’m with is the one who wore the disguise, if he looks more like it than Mr. Withers did, make no sign. If he’s not the fellow communicate with me later—as soon as you can.”

  Morley was the first person Braceway saw when he entered the lobby of the hotel. He lost no time, but crossed over to the leather settee on which the young man sat. Morley looked haggard and frightened, and, although he held a newspaper in front of him, was gazing into space.

  Braceway decided to “take a chance.” He had a great respect for his intuitions. These “hunches,” he had found, were sometimes of no value, but they had helped him often enough to make the ideas that came to him in this way worth trying. He introduced himself.

  “I was wondering,” he said, sitting down beside Morley, “if you couldn’t help me out in a little matter.”

  Morley sighed and put down his paper before he answered:

  “What is it?”

  “Something about make-ups—facial make-up.”

  Morley looked at him and felt that the detective’s eyes bored into him.

  “What about make-up?”

  “I had the idea—perhaps I got it from George Withers—that you used to be interested in a matter of theatricals.”

  Morley coloured.

  “Yes. That is,” he qualified, “I was a member of the dramatic club when I was in college, University of Pennsylvania. But I didn’t know Withers knew anything about it.”

  Braceway’s demeanour now was casual. His eyes were no longer on Morley. He was watching Abrahamson, who was at the news-stand near the main entrance.

  “I thought George had mentioned it to me, but I may be mistaken. Did you ever ‘make up’ with a beard?”

  The morning papers had got hold of the suspicion of some of the authorities that a man wearing a brown beard and a gold tooth was wanted because of the murder of Mrs. Withers. Although Chief Greenleaf had tried to keep it quiet, it had leaked out as a result of Jenkins’ search for traces of the man. Morley had read all this, and Braceway’s question upset him.

  “No,” he answered; “I never did. I played women’s parts.”

  Abrahamson was shaking his head in negation. He made it plain that he saw in Morley no resemblance to the man who had come disguised to the pawnshop.

  Braceway did not press Morley for further information.

  “Then you can’t help me,” he laughed lightly. “Women don’t wear beards.”

  He got up with a careless word about the hot weather and passed on to the clerk’s desk. He was thinking: “He was lying. Any college annual prints the cast of the important ‘show’ given by the dramatic club that year. I’ll wire Philadelphia.”

  He found the manager of the Brevord and inquired:

  “How about the bellboy who was on duty all Monday night, Mr. Keene?”

  “He’s in the house now,” Keene informed him. “Roddy is his name.”

  “Send him up to my room, will you?”

  Braceway stepped into the elevator. Five minutes after he had disappeared, Morley went into the writing room. His hand trembled a little as he picked up a pen. He put two or three lines on several sheets of paper, one after the other, and tore up all of them.

  The communication which he finally completed he put into an envelope and addressed to Braceway. It read:

  “Dear Mr. Braceway:

  “When you asked me about the make-up, I was thinking of something else and was not quite clear as to what you were saying or what you wanted to know. I remember now that, on one occasion, I did have a part as a man who wore a beard in a play given by my college dramatic club. However, I don’t remember enough about it to pass as an expert on such make-ups.

  “Yours truly,

  “Henry Morley.”

  Going to the desk, he left the note for the detective.

  “I’m a fool,” he reflected, as he went to the door and looked out at the traffic in the street. “I believe I’ll get a lawyer.”

  He considered this for a while.

  “Oh, what’s the use? He’ll ask me a lot of questions, and—”

  He shuddered and turned back into the lobby, hesitant and wretched.

  “My God!” he thought miserably. “I’ve got to get back to Washington! I’ve got to! After that, I can think—think!”

  But he believed he could not go until the chief of police gave him permission. If he had consulted a lawyer, he might have found out differently. As it was, he stayed on, thinking more and more disconnectedly, eating nothing, his nerves wearing to raw ends.

  Upstairs Braceway was strengthening the net he had already woven around Henry Morley.

  “I was right.” He reviewed what he had learned from Abrahamson. “It’s still up to Morley. That pawn broker’s off, ’way off. He thinks George Withers resembles the m
an with the beard, and, although he gave me the description that fitted Morley exactly, he takes a look at him and denies emphatically that Morley resembles at all the fellow with the disguise.”

  Abrahamson, however, was not satisfied with what he had seen. Back in front of his shop, he opened the door, took down the sign he had left hanging on the knob, “Back in ten minutes,” substituted another, “Closed for the day,” relocked the door, and started off in the direction of Casey’s department store.

  He had decided to devote the whole afternoon to detective work. Of course, it would cost him money, having the shop closed half a day. “But,” he consoled himself, “I’m worth seventy thousand dollars. I bet I am entitled to a little holiday.”

  CHAPTER XV

  BRACEWAY SEES A LIGHT

  Braceway had discovered long ago that the man who attempts good work as a detective must depend almost as much on his ability to make friends as he does on his capacity for sifting evidence.

  “I’m a good worker,” he was in the habit of saying, “but I’m not half as good working alone as I am when I have the help of all the men and women who are witnesses in a case or connected with it in some other way. I need all the cooperation I can get.”

  This was one reason why Roddy, when he entered Braceway’s room, felt sure immediately that he would receive only kindly treatment. He had shown signs of fear on entering the room, and in his extremely black face his singularly white eyeballs had rolled around grotesquely.

  But Braceway put him at ease with a smile.

  “What have you been trying to do, Roddy?” was his first good-humoured question. “Think you’ve got sense enough to fool all the white folks?”

  “Who, boss? Me, boss?” the boy returned, disavowing with a grin any pretense to intelligence. “Naw, suh, boss. You knows I ain’ got no sense. I ain’ nevuh tried to fool nobody.”

  “Didn’t you tell the chief of police you were awake all of Monday night when you were on duty in the lobby and didn’t you say the only thing you did was to carry up Mr. Morley’s bags?”

  “Yas, suh, boss; an’ dat was de truth—nothin’ but de truth, boss. Gawd knows—”

  Braceway took from his pocket a crisp, new one-dollar bill and smoothed it out on his knee.

  “Now, listen to me, Roddy,” he said, this time unsmiling. “Mr. Keene has just told me he wouldn’t fire you, even if you did go to sleep Monday night. There’s nothing for you to be afraid of; and this dollar note is yours as soon as you tell me the truth, the real truth, about what you saw and what you missed seeing Monday night. If you don’t tell me, I’ll have you arrested.”

  Roddy’s eyes, which had shone with a rather greasy glitter at the sight of the money, rolled rapidly and whitely in their sockets at the mention of arrest.

  “’Deed, boss, you ain’ gwine to have no cause to ’res’ me, no cause whatsomever. You knows how ’tis, boss. Us coloured folks, we got a gif, jes’ a natchel gif’, foh nappin’ an’ sleepin’. Boss, dar ain’ no black in dis town whut would have kep’ wide awake—wide—all dat Monday night nor any yuther night.”

  “Very well. Think now. Try to remember. Were you asleep at all before midnight?”

  “Naw, suh, boss. Naw, suh!”

  “Not at all?”

  Roddy began to wilt again.

  “Well, it might uv been dis way, boss, possibilly. ’Long ’bout ’leven I kinder remembuhs jes’ a sort uv nap, mo’ like a slip, boss.” He coughed and spoke desperately: “You see, boss, when it gits a little quiet at night, seems to me, why, right den, ev’y black I knows is got a hinge in his neck. ’Pears like he jes’ gotter let his haid drap furward. Dar ain’ no use talkin’, boss, dat hinge wuks ovuhtime. I ’spec’ mine done it, too, jes’ like you say, ’long ’bout ’leven. Yas, suh, I reckon dat’s right.”

  “How about the time between midnight and two in the morning? Was the hinge working then?”

  “Aw, boss,” replied Roddy with something like reproach, “you knows ’tain’ no queshun uv a hinge arftuh midnight. Arftuh midnight, boss, de screws drap right outen’ de hinge, an’ dar ain’ no mo’ hinge. You jes’ natchelly keeps your haid down an’ don’ lif’ it no mo’. Naw, suh, dar ain’ no hinge to he’p you dat late, onless—onless somebody hit you or stab you.”

  Braceway became stern. His eyes snapped.

  “Didn’t you carry Mr. Morley’s grips up to his room for him that night, room number four hundred and twenty-one?”

  “Yas, suh.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Dat wuz jes’ five minutes arftuh two, boss.”

  “Had you been asleep during the two hours before that?”

  “I hates to say it, boss, but I wuz, almos’ completely.”

  “Then, how did you wake yourself up thoroughly enough to know that it was exactly five minutes past two?”

  “Lemme see, suh. Possibilly, ’twuz bekase uv whut I seen ’long about ha’fpas’ one—possibilly, boss.”

  “So you hadn’t been asleep for two hours?”

  “Almos’, suh. It wuz dis way: you see, boss, de bellboys’ bench is right unduh de big clock in de lobby, off to de right uv de desk. I happen’ dat night to let my haid slide ovuh ’g’in de glass case uv de clock, an when it stahted out to hit de ha’fpas’ bell, it rattled an’ whizzed, an’ it jarred me. Golly, boss! I woke up an’, when I seed how it wuz rainin’ outside, I thought lightnin’ had hit me. It skeered me—an’ dat is one good way to wake up a black at night—skeer ’im, an’ you don’ have to stab him. I sorter hollered.

  “I got up an’ went to de main entrance, jes’ to make de night clerk think I wuz on de job in case he woke up. I looked down de street tow’rd de post-office, an’ I seed a man goin’ in dar.

  “‘Bless de Lawd!’ I says to myse’f. ’White people ain’ got much to do—goin’ to de post-office dis time uv night.’ An’ I went on back to de bellboys’ bench and stahted in blackin’ it once mo’e.”

  “Niggering it?”

  “Yas, boss; you know, dat means quick sleepin’. ’Peared to me I ain’ no mo’e got my eyes shut when I wakes up ag’in, an’ right dar in de lobby is dat same man what I seed gwine to de post-office.”

  “What waked you up?”

  “I don’ know, boss. I can’ no mo’e figger dat out den I kin fly. Dat wuz de fust time in my life dat I done wake up at night when onmolested.”

  “How did you know the man you saw in the lobby was the one you had seen going into the post-office?”

  “Dey wuz de same, boss; dat’s all. Had de same buil’, same long raincoat on, an’ same thick beard. He had done pass’ me by an’ wuz on his way up de stairs ’stead uv waitin’ foh me to run de elevatuh. I wouldn’ nevuh seed his beard dat time, but he turn’ ’roun’ when he wuz nigh to de top uv de stairs an’ look back at me. Den I seed foh a fac’ dat he wuz de same as de yuther man I jes’ done seed.”

  Braceway gave no sign of how highly he valued the negro’s words. Seated by the window, the dollar bill still on his knee, he kept his gaze on Roddy, holding him to his narrative.

  “You want me to believe that, when you saw this man two blocks away at half-past one in the morning, you noticed he wore a beard? Wasn’t it too dark?”

  “Naw, suh. Dem post-office lights is pow’ful, boss. I seed de beard all right, an’ I seed it once mo’e when he wuz on de stairs.”

  “What did he do after he had looked back at you while he was going upstairs?”

  “Nothin’, boss. He seed I wuz lookin’ at him, an’ he jes’ went on up an’ out uv sight, in a hurry, like.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Dat wuz twenty-six minutes uv two.”

  “How do you know that? You’d gone back to sleep, hadn’t you?”

  “Yas, suh, a little. But, when I woke up dat way widout no reason, I kinder jumped. I
wuz afeer’d dat clock might be goin’ to jar me ag’in, an’ I took a look at it. Dat wuz how I seed de time. It wuz twenty-six minutes uv two.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Nothin’, boss; I went on till de night clerk giv’ me a kick on de shins and tole me to take Mistuh Morley’s bags up to fo’-twenty-one. I done tole you dat was five minutes arftuh two. Den, when we got up to de room, I says to him: ’I thought you wuz in dis hotel half-hour ago, boss, when you had a beard.’

  “An’ right off de bat I wuz sorry I said dat. He look’ at me kinder mad an’ he said: ’Whut you talkin’ ’bout, boy? You mus’ be talkin’ in yore sleep!’

  “I come on back downstairs. He didn’ have to say no mo’e. I tell you, boss, when a white man tell me I been talkin’ in my sleep, I is been talkin’ in my sleep—dar ain’ no argufyin’ ’bout it—I is been doin’ dat ve’y thing.”

  “But you thought Mr. Morley, the man with the grips, was the one you had seen going up the stairs and, also, the one you had seen going into the post-office—and, when you saw him on the stairs and on the street, he wore a beard? Is that it?”

  “I ain’ thought nothin’ ’bout it, boss. I knowed it.”

  “What did you think about his shaving off the beard at that time in the morning?” Braceway urged, fingering the dollar bill. “Didn’t you think it was queer?”

  “I tryin’ to tell you, suh, I ain’ done no thinkin’ ’bout dat. He done said I wuz talkin’ in my sleep, an’ I is a prudent negro.”

  “Did he have a gold tooth, Roddy?”

  “Naw, suh,” said Roddy, “but he did look rich ’nough to have one. Leastways I ain’ seen he had one.”

  “Have you seen the man with the beard since?”

  “Naw, suh. I jes’ tole you, boss, he done shave it off.”

  “And Mr. Morley?”

  “Yas, suh, I done seen him. He’s in de hotel now. He’s de same man.”

  “Did he wear rubber overshoes when he had the beard, and when he didn’t have it?”

  “Yas, suh—bofe times.”

  “Has he said anything to you since Monday night?”

  “Naw, suh.”