The Window at the White Cat

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER XVII

  HIS SECOND WIFE

  When the cabman had gone, I sat down and tried to think things out. As Ihave said many times in the course of this narrative, I lackimagination: moreover, a long experience of witnesses in court hadtaught me the unreliability of average observation. The very fact thattwo men swore to having taken solitary women away from Bellwood thatnight, made me doubt if either one had really seen the missing woman.

  Of the two stories, the taxicab driver's was the more probable, as faras Miss Jane was concerned. Knowing her child-like nature, her timidity,her shrinking and shamefaced fear of the dark, it was almost incrediblethat she would walk the three miles to Wynton, voluntarily, and fromthere lose herself in the city. Besides, such an explanation would notfit the blood-stains, or the fact that she had gone, as far as we couldfind out, in her night-clothes.

  Still--she had left the village that night, either by cab or on foot. Ifthe driver had been correct in his time, however, the taxicab was almosteliminated; he said the woman got into the cab at one-thirty. It wasbetween one-thirty and one-forty-five when Margery heard the footstepsin the attic.

  I think for the first time it came to me, that day, that there was atleast a possibility that Miss Jane had not been attacked, robbed orinjured: that she had left home voluntarily, under stress of greatexcitement. But if she had, why? The mystery was hardly less for beingstripped of its gruesome details. Nothing in my knowledge of the missingwoman gave me a clue. I had a vague hope that, if she had gonevoluntarily, she would see the newspapers and let us know where she was.

  To my list of exhibits I added the purse with its inclosure. The secretdrawer of my desk now contained, besides the purse, the slip markedeleven twenty-two that had been pinned to Fleming's pillow; the similarscrap found over Miss Jane's mantel; the pearl I had found on the floorof the closet, and the cyanide, which, as well as the bullet, Burtonhad given me. Add to these the still tender place on my head whereWardrop had almost brained me with a chair, and a blue ankle, nowbecoming spotted with yellow, where I had fallen down the dumb-waiter,and my list of visible reminders of the double mystery grew to eight.

  I was not proud of the part I had played. So far, I had blundered, itseemed to me, at every point where a blunder was possible. I had fallenover folding chairs and down a shaft; I had been a half-hour too late tosave Allan Fleming; I had been up and awake, and Miss Jane had got outof the house under my very nose. Last, and by no means least, I hadwaited thirty-five years to find the right woman, and when I found her,some one else had won her. I was in the depths that day when Burton camein.

  He walked into the office jauntily and presented Miss Grant with a clubsandwich neatly done up in waxed paper. Then he came into my privateroom and closed the door behind him.

  "Avaunt, dull care!" he exclaimed, taking in my dejected attitude andexhibits on the desk at a glance. "Look up and grin, my friend." He hadhis hands behind him.

  "Don't be a fool," I snapped. "I'll not grin unless I feel like it."

  "Grin, darn you," he said, and put something on the desk in front of me.It was a Russia leather bag.

  "_The_ leather bag!" he pointed proudly.

  "Where did you get it?" I exclaimed, incredulous. Burton fumbled withthe lock while he explained.

  "It was found in Boston," he said. "How do you open the thing, anyhow?"

  It was not locked, and I got it open in a minute. As I had expected, itwas empty.

  "Then--perhaps Wardrop was telling the truth," I exclaimed. "By Jove,Burton, he was robbed by the woman in the cab, and he can't tell abouther on account of Miss Fleming! She made a haul, for certain."

  I told him then of the two women who had left Bellwood on the night ofMiss Jane's disappearance, and showed him the purse and its inclosure.The C puzzled him as it had me. "It might be anything," he said as hegave it back, "from a book, chapter and verse in the Bible to aprescription for rheumatism at a drug-store. As to the lady in the cab,I think perhaps you are right," he said, examining the interior of thebag, where Wardrop's name in ink told its story. "Of course, we haveonly Wardrop's word that he brought the bag to Bellwood; if we grantthat we can grant the rest--that he was robbed, that the thief emptiedthe bag, and either took it or shipped it to Boston."

  "How on earth did you get it?"

  "It was a coincidence. There have been a shrewd lot of baggage thievesin two or three eastern cities lately, mostly Boston. The method, thepolice say, was something like this--one of them, the chief of the gang,would get a wagon, dress like an expressman and go round the depotslooking at baggage. He would make a mental note of the numbers, go awayand forge a check to match, and secure the pieces he had taken a fancyto. Then he merely drove around to headquarters, and the trunk wasrifled. The police got on, raided the place, and found, among others,our Russia leather bag. It was shipped back, empty, to the addressinside, at Bellwood."

  "At Bellwood? Then how--"

  "It came while I was lunching with Miss Letitia," he said easily. "We'revery chummy--thick as thieves. What I want to know is"--disregarding myastonishment--"where is the hundred thousand?"

  "Find the woman."

  "Did you ever hear of Anderson, the nerve specialist?" he asked, withoutapparent relevancy.

  "I have been thinking of him," I answered. "If we could get Wardropthere, on some plausible excuse, it would take Anderson about tenminutes with his instruments and experimental psychology, to knoweverything Wardrop ever forgot."

  "I'll go on one condition," Burton said, preparing to leave. "I'llpromise to get Wardrop and have him on the spot at two o'clockto-morrow, if you'll promise me one thing: if Anderson fixes me with hiseye, and I begin to look dotty and tell about my past life, I want youto take me by the flap of my ear and lead me gently home."

  "I promise," I said, and Burton left.

  The recovery of the bag was only one of the many astonishing things thathappened that day and the following night. Hawes, who knew little ofwhat it all meant, and disapproved a great deal, ended that afternoon bylocking himself, blinking furiously, in his private office. To Hawes anypractice that was not lucrative was bad practice. About four o'clock,when I had shut myself away from the crowd in the outer office, and wasletting Miss Grant take their depositions as to when and where they hadseen a little old lady, probably demented, wandering around the streets,a woman came who refused to be turned away.

  "Young woman," I heard her say, speaking to Miss Grant, "he may haveimportant business, but I guess mine's just a little more so."

  I interfered then, and let her come in. She was a woman of mediumheight, quietly dressed, and fairly handsome. My first impression wasfavorable; she moved with a certain dignity, and she was not laced,crimped or made up. I am more sophisticated now; The Lady Who Tells MeThings says that the respectable women nowadays, out-rouge, out-crimpand out-lace the unrespectable.

  However, the illusion was gone the moment she began to speak. Her voicewas heavy, throaty, expressionless. She threw it like a weapon: I amperfectly honest in saying that for a moment the surprise of her voiceoutweighed the remarkable thing she was saying.

  "I am Mrs. Allan Fleming," she said, with a certain husky defiance.

  "I beg your pardon," I said, after a minute. "You mean--the AllanFleming who has just died?"

  She nodded. I could see she was unable, just then, to speak. She hadnerved herself to the interview, but it was evident that there was areal grief. She fumbled for a black-bordered handkerchief, and herthroat worked convulsively. I saw now that she was in mourning.

  "Do you mean," I asked incredulously, "that Mr. Fleming married a secondtime?"

  "He married me three years ago, in Plattsburg. I came from there lastnight. I--couldn't leave before."

  "Does Miss Fleming know about this second marriage?"

  "No. Nobody knew about it. I have had to put up with a great deal, Mr.Knox. It's a hard thing for a woman to know that people are talkingabout her, and all the time she's married as tight as ri
ng and book cando it."

  "I suppose," I hazarded, "if that is the case, you have come about theestate."

  "Estate!" Her tone was scornful. "I guess I'll take what's coming to me,as far as that goes--and it won't be much. No, I came to ask what theymean by saying Allan Fleming killed himself."

  "Don't you think he did?"

  "I know he did not," she said tensely. "Not only that: I know who didit. It was Schwartz--Henry Schwartz."

  "Schwartz! But what on earth--"

  "You don't know Schwartz," she said grimly. "I was married to him forfifteen years. I took him when he had a saloon in the Fifth Ward, atPlattsburg. The next year he was alderman: I didn't expect in those daysto see him riding around in an automobile--not but what he was makingmoney--Henry Schwartz is a money-maker. That's why he's boss of thestate now."

  "And you divorced him?"

  "He was a brute," she said vindictively. "He wanted me to go back tohim, and I told him I would rather die. I took a big house, and keptbachelor suites for gentlemen. Mr. Fleming lived there, and--he marriedme three years ago. He and Schwartz had to stand together, but theyhated each other."

  "Schwartz?" I meditated. "Do you happen to know if Senator Schwartz wasin Plattsburg at the time of the mur--of Mr. Fleming's death?"

  "He was here in Manchester."

  "He had threatened Mr. Fleming's life?"

  "He had already tried to kill him, the day we were married. He stabbedhim twice, but not deep enough."

  I looked at her in wonder. For this woman, not extraordinarily handsome,two men had fought and one had died--according to her story.

  "I can prove everything I say," she went on rapidly. "I have lettersfrom Mr. Fleming telling me what to do in case he was shot down;I have papers--canceled notes--that would put Schwartz in thepenitentiary--that is," she said cunningly, "I did have them. Mr.Fleming took them away."

  "Aren't you afraid for yourself?" I asked.

  "Yes, I'm afraid--afraid he'll get me back yet. It would please him tosee me crawl back on my knees."

  "But--he can not force you to go back to him."

  "Yes, he can," she shivered. From which I knew she had told me only apart of her story.

  After all she had nothing more to tell. Fleming had been shot; Schwartzhad been in the city about the Borough Bank; he had threatened Flemingbefore, but a political peace had been patched; Schwartz knew the WhiteCat. That was all.

  Before she left she told me something I had not known.

  "I know a lot about inside politics," she said, as she got up. "I haveseen the state divided up with the roast at my table, and served aroundwith the dessert, and I can tell you something you don't know aboutyour White Cat. A back staircase leads to one of the up-stairs rooms,and shuts off with a locked door. It opens below, out a side entrance,not supposed to be used. Only a few know of it. Henry Butler was founddead at the foot of that staircase."

  "He shot himself, didn't he?"

  "The police said so," she replied, with her grim smile. "There is such athing as murdering a man by driving him to suicide."

  She wrote an address on a card and gave it to me.

  "Just a minute," I said, as she was about to go. "Have you ever heardMr. Fleming speak of the Misses Maitland?"

  "They were--his first wife's sisters. No, he never talked of them, butI believe, just before he left Plattsburg, he tried to borrow some moneyfrom them."

  "And failed?"

  "The oldest one telegraphed the refusal, collect," she said, smilingfaintly.

  "There is something else," I said. "Did you ever hear of the numbereleven twenty-two?"

  "No--or--why, yes--" she said. "It is the number of my house."

  It seemed rather ridiculous, when she had gone, and I sat down to thinkit over. It was anticlimax, to say the least. If the mysterious numbermeant only the address of this very ordinary woman, then--it wasprobable her story of Schwartz was true enough. But I could notreconcile myself to it, nor could I imagine Schwartz, with his greatbulk, skulking around pinning scraps of paper to pillows.

  It would have been more like the fearlessness and passion of the man tohave shot Fleming down in the state house corridor, or on the street,and to have trusted to his influence to set him free. For the first timeit occurred to me that there was something essentially feminine in therevenge of the figures that had haunted the dead man.

  I wondered if Mrs. Fleming had told me all, or only half the truth.

  That night, at the most peaceful spot I had ever known, Fred's home,occurred another inexplicable affair, one that left us all with rackednerves and listening, fearful ears.