The Window at the White Cat

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER XV

  FIND THE WOMAN

  Mrs. Butler came down to dinner that night. She was more cheerful than Ihad yet seen her, and she had changed her mournful garments to somethinga trifle less depressing. With her masses of fair hair dressed high, andher face slightly animated, I realized what I had not done before--thatshe was the wreck of a very beautiful woman. Frail as she was, almostshrinkingly timid in her manner, there were times when she drew up hertall figure in something like its former stateliness. She had beautifuleyebrows, nearly black and perfectly penciled; they were almostincongruous in her colorless face.

  She was very weak; she used a cane when she walked, and after dinner, inthe library, she was content to sit impassive, detached, propped withcushions, while Margery read to the boys in their night nursery andEdith embroidered.

  Fred had been fussing over a play for some time, and he had gone to readit to some manager or other. Edith was already spending the royalties.

  "We could go a little ways out of town," she was saying, "and we couldhave an automobile; Margery says theirs will be sold, and it willcertainly be a bargain. Jack, are you laughing at me?"

  "Certainly _not_," I replied gravely. "Dream on, Edith. Shall we trainthe boys as chauffeurs, or shall we buy in the Fleming man, also cheap."

  "I am sure," Edith said aggrieved, "that it costs more for horse feedthis minute for your gray, Jack, than it would for gasolene."

  "But Lady Gray won't eat gasolene," I protested. "She doesn't like it."

  Edith turned her back on me and sewed. Near me, Mrs. Butler hadlanguidly taken up the paper; suddenly she dropped it, and when Istooped and picked it up I noticed she was trembling.

  "Is it true?" she demanded. "Is Robert Clarkson dead?"

  "Yes," I assented. "He has been dead since Sunday morning--a suicide."

  Edith had risen and come over to her. But Mrs. Butler was not fainting.

  "I'm glad, glad," she said. Then she grew weak and semi-hysterical,laughing and crying in the same breath. When she had been helpedup-stairs, for in her weakened state it had been more of a shock than werealized, Margery came down and we tried to forget the scene we had justgone through.

  "I am glad Fred was not here," Edith confided to me. "Ellen is a lovelywoman, and as kind as she is mild; but in one of her--attacks, she is alittle bit trying."

  It was strange to contrast the way in which the two women took theirsimilar bereavements. Margery represented the best type of normalAmerican womanhood; Ellen Butler the neurasthenic; she demandedeverything by her very helplessness and timidity. She was a constantdrain on Edith's ready sympathy. That night, while I closed thehouse--Fred had not come in--I advised her to let Mrs. Butler go back toher sanatorium.

  At twelve-thirty I was still down-stairs; Fred was out, and I waitedfor him, being curious to know the verdict on the play. The bell rang afew minutes before one, and I went to the door; some one in thevestibule was tapping the floor impatiently with his foot. When I openedthe door, I was surprised to find that the late visitor was Wardrop.

  He came in quietly, and I had a chance to see him well, under the halllight; the change three days had made was shocking. His eyes were sunkdeep in his head, his reddened lids and twitching mouth told of littlesleep, of nerves ready to snap. He was untidy, too, and a three days'beard hardly improved him.

  "I'm glad it's you," he said, by way of greeting. "I was afraid you'dhave gone to bed."

  "It's the top of the evening yet," I replied perfunctorily, as I led theway into the library. Once inside, Wardrop closed the door and lookedaround him like an animal at bay.

  "I came here," he said nervously, looking at the windows, "because I hadan idea you'd keep your head. Mine's gone; I'm either crazy, or I'm onmy way there."

  "Sit down, man," I pushed a chair to him. "You don't look as if you havebeen in bed for a couple of nights."

  He went to each of the windows and examined the closed shutters beforehe answered me.

  "I haven't. You wouldn't go to bed either, if you thought you wouldnever wake up."

  "Nonsense."

  "Well, it's true enough. Knox, there are people following me wherever Igo; they eat where I eat; if I doze in my chair they come into mydreams!" He stopped there, then he laughed a little wildly. "That lastisn't sane, but it's true. There's a man across the street now, eatingan apple under a lamppost."

  "Suppose you _are_ under surveillance," I said. "It's annoying to have adetective following you around, but it's hardly serious. The police saynow that Mr. Fleming killed himself; that was your own contention."

  He leaned forward in his chair and, resting his hands on his knees,gazed at me somberly.

  "Suppose I say he didn't kill himself?" slowly. "Suppose I say he wasmurdered? Suppose--good God--suppose I killed him myself?"

  I drew back in stupefaction, but he hurried on.

  "For the last two days I've been wondering--if I did it! He hadn't anyweapon; I had one, his. I hated him that day; I had tried to save him,and couldn't. My God, Knox, I might have gone off my head and doneit--and not remember it. There have been cases like that."

  His condition was pitiable. I looked around for some whisky, but thebest I could do was a little port on the sideboard. When I came back hewas sitting with bent head, his forehead on his palms.

  "I've thought it all out," he said painfully. "My mother had spells ofemotional insanity. Perhaps I went there, without knowing it, and killedhim. I can see him, in the night, when I daren't sleep, toppling over onto that table, with a bullet wound in his head, and I am in the room,and I have his revolver in my pocket!"

  "You give me your word you have no conscious recollection of hearing ashot fired."

  "My word before Heaven," he said fervently. "But I tell you, Knox, hehad no weapon. No one came out of that room as I went in and yet he wasonly swaying forward, as if I had shot him one moment, and caught him ashe fell, the next. I was dazed; I don't remember yet what I told thepolice."

  The expression of fear in his eyes was terrible to see. A gust of windshook the shutters, and he jumped almost out of his chair.

  "You will have to be careful," I said. "There have been cases where menconfessed murders they never committed, driven by Heaven knows whatmethod of undermining their mental resistance. Yon expose yourimagination to 'third degree' torture of your own invention, and in twodays more you will be able to add full details of the crime."

  "I knew you would think me crazy," he put in, a little less somberly,"but just try it once: sit in a room by yourself all day and all night,with detectives watching you; sit there and puzzle over a murder of aman you are suspected of killing; you know you felt like killing him,and you have a revolver, and he is shot. Wouldn't you begin to think asI do?"

  "Wardrop," I asked, trying to fix his wavering eyes with mine, "do youown a thirty-two caliber revolver?"

  "Yes."

  I was startled beyond any necessity, under the circumstances. Manypeople have thirty-twos.

  "That is, I had," he corrected himself. "It was in the leather bag thatwas stolen at Bellwood."

  "I can relieve your mind of one thing," I said. "If your revolver wasstolen with the leather bag, you had nothing to do with the murder.Fleming was shot with a thirty-two." He looked first incredulous, thenrelieved.

  "Now, then," I pursued, "suppose Mr. Fleming had an enemy, a relentlessone who would stoop to anything to compass his ruin. In his position hewould be likely to have enemies. This person, let us say, knows what youcarry in your grip, and steals it, taking away the funds that would havehelped to keep the lid on Fleming's mismanagement for a time. In thegrip is your revolver; would you know it again?"

  He nodded affirmatively.

  "This person--this enemy finds the revolver, pockets it and at the firstopportunity, having ruined Fleming, proceeds humanely to put him out ofhis suffering. Is it far-fetched?"

  "There were a dozen--a hundred--people who would have been glad to ruinhim." His gaze wavered again s
uddenly. It was evident that I had renewedan old train of thought.

  "For instance?" I suggested, but he was on guard again.

  "You forget one thing, Knox," he said, after a moment. "There was nobodyelse who could have shot him: the room was empty."

  "Nonsense," I replied. "Don't forget the warehouse."

  "The warehouse!"

  "There is no doubt in my mind that he was shot from there. He was facingthe open window, sitting directly under the light, writing. A shot firedthrough a broken pane of one of the warehouse windows would meet everyrequirement of the case: the empty room, the absence of powdermarks--even the fact that no shot was heard. There was a report, ofcourse, but the noise in the club-house and the thunder-storm outsidecovered it."

  "By George!" he exclaimed. "The warehouse, of course. I never thought ofit." He was relieved, for some reason.

  "It's a question now of how many people knew he was at the club, andwhich of them hated him enough to kill him."

  "Clarkson knew it," Wardrop said, "but he didn't do it."

  "Why?"

  "Because it was he who came to the door of the room while the detectiveand you and I were inside, and called Fleming."

  I pulled out my pocket-book and took out the scrap of paper whichMargery had found pinned to the pillow in her father's bedroom. "Do youknow what that means?" I asked, watching Wardrop's face. "That was foundin Mr. Fleming's room two days after he left home. A similar scrap wasfound in Miss Jane Maitland's room when she disappeared. When Flemingwas murdered, he was writing a letter; he said: 'The figures havefollowed me here.' When we know what those figures mean, Wardrop, weknow why he was killed and who did it."

  He shook his head hopelessly.

  "I do not know," he said, and I believed him. He had got up and takenhis hat, but I stopped him inside the door.

  "You can help this thing in two ways," I told him. "I am going to giveyou something to do: you will have less time to be morbid. Find out, ifyou can, all about Fleming's private life in the last dozen years,especially the last three. See if there are any women mixed up in it,and try to find out something about this eleven twenty-two."

  "Eleven twenty-two," he repeated, but I had not missed his change ofexpression when I said women.

  "Also," I went on, "I want you to tell me who was with you the night youtried to break into the house at Bellwood."

  He was taken completely by surprise: when he had gathered himselftogether his perplexity was overdone.

  "With me!" he repeated. "I was alone, of course."

  "I mean--the woman at the gate."

  He lost his composure altogether then. I put my back against the doorand waited for him to get himself in hand.

  "There was a woman," I persisted, "and what is more, Wardrop, at thisminute you believe she took your Russia leather bag and left asubstitute."

  He fell into the trap.

  "But she couldn't," he quavered. "I've thought until my brain is going,and I don't see how she could have done it."

  He became sullen when he saw what he had done, refused any moreinformation, and left almost immediately.

  Fred came soon after, and in the meantime I had made some notes likethis:

  1. Examine warehouse and yard.

  2. Attempt to trace Carter.

  3. See station agent at Bellwood.

  4. Inquire Wardrop's immediate past.

  5. Take Wardrop to Doctor Anderson, the specialist.

  6. Send Margery violets.