There was a Crooked Man

by George Worthing Yates

  “In that case,” said Bennett, “you’ll have the only defense of Ann Crofts at your mercy, before her trial in court. And we shall be disastrously confounded out of my own mouth.”

  “I’ll see if I can bring one of the D. A.’s men along. Wait till I get my clothes on.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  NO MAN COULD SAY what was going on in Bennett’s head, what doubts afflicted him or what assurances gave him courage. He was, as always, serene and austere. He and Raymonds arrived at the hospital in a cab, and asked to be directed to the room where Miss Crofts lay waiting for her ultimate removal to the Tombs. They were taken to a small white cubicle, very crowded.

  It was, in a way, the old gentleman’s final betrayal. Raymonds had kept his hope alive, feeding it on the greatness of Bennett, but as they stood in the doorway, he saw Bennett taken into custody like any mere man in the street; and he felt an official hand take hold of his own arm. A belligerent and impersonal voice said quietly, “I arrest you in the name of the law.”

  The face of Ann Crofts turned towards the door for an instant, then was hidden at once by the movement of someone beside the bed. The last of his confidence deserted him, and Raymonds felt cold, sick, and empty.

  Bennett looked across the room at Tussard, and merely said, “Well?”

  The room was grim, curiously hostile. When Tussard spoke, his voice broke out far too loud. He indicated with a jerk of his head the heavy, shrewd, gray-haired man who leaned with a thigh cocked on the telephone stand beside him. There was gruff deference in the gesture, and Tussard said, “This is the District Attorney,” and he dropped his eyes as if surrendering all responsibility.

  Bennett turned his gaze towards the District Attorney then, and once again, a little more sharply, said, “Well?”

  The District Attorney considered, and at last nodded his head. The two policemen in the doorway released Bennett and Raymonds. Bennett shrugged his shoulders to put right an imaginary disorder in the set of his coat, and with the most remarkable nonchalance, stepped to the center of the little room. The door to the corridor was shut. Bennett stared round him at the faces of the strange gathering. Beside the District Attorney, a policeman-stenographer possessed the only chair in the room. Two policemen flanked the door. A self-conscious nurse, preventing herself from wringing her fingers by an effort of control, sat next to Ann Crofts on the edge of her bed. No meeting of the Inquisition in a gloomy castle in Toledo could have appeared more unrelenting or severe.

  Bennett said, “Where is Mr. Hackmann?”

  The District Attorney, warily watching Bennett, made a brusque gesture with his arm, as if brushing all nonsense aside. He announced flatly, “That’s out. We’re not going to have any newspaper men in here.”

  “Really? Then I shall telephone your State Department in Washington.”

  Bennett in two paces of his long legs reached the telephone. He put it to his mouth. In the momentary pause while he waited for a response from the operator, the District Attorney put out a restraining hand and barked, “Wait a minute!”

  Bennett waited. He reluctantly put the earpiece of the instrument on its hook, and stared at the District Attorney with bland inquiry. The District Attorney glanced at Tussard, who shrugged; glanced at the two policemen at the door; glanced out the window at the midnight darkness; and decided, almost visibly, that his trap had caught too large a specimen. This Mr. Bennett had become the great Lord Broghville, invoking the powers of Washington and various international considerations. The District Attorney withdrew from his awkward position with all the grace available.

  “I think we ought to talk it over first, Mr. Bennett. Let’s just find out where we stand, shall we?”

  “If Hackmann is present, yes.”

  “But Hackmann’s the City Editor of the Mail, and that’s impossible. If you want to call up your lawyer, I won’t object. You see, it’s particularly important, Mr. Bennett, that the newspapers shouldn’t get hold of this yet.”

  Breathing the faintest of sighs, Bennett said, “I’m afraid that’s my point. I want the newspapers to get hold of it. Sorry,” and he addressed himself to the telephone again.

  “Wait a minute,” said the District Attorney. He turned his face towards the two policemen at the door, and told them, “Hackmann’s waiting downstairs. Get him in here.”

  2.

  Mr. William Hackmann, City Editor of the Mail, made himself as comfortable as he could on the narrow window sill. Hobey Raymonds had joined the nurse at the side of Ann’s bed, and Geoffrey Bennett occupied the center of the floor, where he confronted the District Attorney.

  “I think,” said Bennett suavely, “that it must be obvious by now to each of us that Miss Crofts is quite innocent of the murder of the man who died last Tuesday evening on—”

  The District Attorney snorted, and cried, “Wait a minute! If you’re going to start off by assuming that she’s not guilty, I can’t—”

  Bennett said, icily, “Please don’t interrupt me!”

  The District Attorney lamely remembered his manners, and continued with less spirit, “Well, I don’t mean to—”

  “Please!”

  “All right,” said the District Attorney, almost meekly. “Go ahead.”

  As suave as custard again, Bennett resumed:

  “It must be obvious that the murderer of the poor creature on the terrace saw him coming through the windows of one of the three executive offices. Miss Crofts could not have seen him coming. Simply because there’s no window in the passage where she sat. The murderer, then, ought logically to be one of the men in those three offices—I mean, Christien, Levison, Boxworth, or Suttro. I dare say that interpretation popped into your head almost at once, Tussard.”

  The District Attorney permitted himself a sidelong questioning glance at Tussard, and Tussard replied to the room at large, “She could have gone out through the hospital. We figured that as soon as we got there.”

  “Oh, quite true. If she knew the precise moment when she could find her victim ready to her hand, she might have done. The possibility will always remain, and I shall never contradict it. However, the possibility—think of it; could she speak to Boxworth as he came to the offices that evening, then run to the terrace and find the poor wretch on the very tick of arriving, accomplish her murder, then avoid Christien and return to the passage in time to be found there by Holcomb?—is as remote as our chances of dealing four perfect bridge hands, in the rather improbable case of our sitting down together now for a game.”

  “She might have done it just the same,” said Tussard.

  “Rubbish,” said Bennett. “Remember the watchman.”

  “What has the watchman got to do with it?” said Tussard.

  “You will pardon my saying so,” said the District Attorney, “but this doesn’t seem to be getting us anywhere. “We’ve been over these things a dozen times.”

  “Ah, but how blindly!”

  The District Attorney sighed and murmured, “It’s getting late. Let’s get along with it, if we’re ever going to finish.”

  “I shall ask you to be very patient, if possible. The murdered man has not yet been identified, I assume. I shall identify him for you. Meanwhile, I shall call him—let us say X, for the unknown.”

  Though Bennett uttered this as calmly as you please, he might have been announcing for the response he got, that they all had snakes in their pockets. It was the first effective shock against the official case. Tussard’s eyes bulged. He muttered, and took a step towards Bennett. Even the District Attorney’s reserve cracked. A kind of rustle and murmur filled the room, and it was the District Attorney, leaning tensely forward, who cut through the thick whispering with a question:

  “You can identify the body?”

  “Quite so.”

  “Who was he?”

  Bennett smiled placidly and extended a hand, like the conductor of an orchestra reproving undue exuberance among the wood-winds. When the room had again grown quiet a
nd expectant, he said, “May I again ask you to be patient? As I say, I shall identify this X for you. No, please! The identification will be final and irrefutable, I assure you. The District Attorney feels that the hour is late, and that we should get on with it, and I agree. Let us be orderly about it. I go back again to Tuesday night, and the watchman, who was also murdered. We all admit, I think, that the murderer throttled X. Having accomplished this, he looked about, and saw this watchman, Lutz, approaching him; perhaps standing over him, with the beam of his electric torch on the murderer’s face; in short, recognizing the murderer. The watchman, of course, was armed. I asked myself long ago why the watchman didn’t use his weapon to hold the murderer for the police, or at the very least to defend himself from attack. There is an obvious answer. Tussard, no doubt, thought of it at once. Eh?”

  The District Attorney looked at Tussard. Tussard floundered slightly, ill at ease, and said, “Well, we figure that it was dark, and that she—the murderer, I mean-kind of caught old Lutz before he could draw.”

  “Come, come, please!” said Bennett.

  The District Attorney breathed through his nose at Tussard, then turned impatiently to Bennett. Bennett said:

  “Isn’t it most probable that the watchman recognized in the murderer a person of great authority and prominence? Isn’t it strikingly clear that Lutz could not believe his eyes? My dear Tussard, when you suspected Christien, you were far nearer the mark than you are when you suspect Miss Crofts. For the watchman would have dealt without hesitation with a woman, but with a man as eminent as Christien, he would hesitate, think twice, ask respectfully for some explanation. Don’t you think? However, we know the watchman did not use his gun. We know he did not defend himself, and I shall infer that surprise prevented him. Before he could recover, he was attacked, and thrown to the ground, and throttled. The murderer then found himself on the dark terrace with two corpses. He was, I dare say, in a panic of fear, for he might be discovered there in a moment. His strongest impulse must have been to avoid the offices, where there were lights and people, and to dispose of the results of his sudden passionate crimes. The watchman, I think, lay nearest the empty infirmary, and the murderer lifted this body first and carried it through to the lifts—elevators, that is—beyond. Hiding Lutz on the roof of a lift cage may have been a clever trick; but I prefer to believe the man sought any dark hiding place to be rid of his gruesome burden at once, and he opened the door of the shaft with the watchman’s key, and bundled the dead man within, and only then discovered that luck had helped him. The lift stood at the floor below. The roof of the cage made the most convenient hiding place one could fancy. Beginning to see an escape from his horrid predicament, the murderer shut the door to the lift shaft, and returned for the cadaver of Mr. X. To his consternation, however, as he approached the lighted windows of the offices, he saw Frederick Christien emerge. Christien discovered the body of X under the murderer’s very eyes. But Christien was stricken with a heart seizure, and staggered back to his office for assistance. No time remained for concealing X. The murderer slipped into another office, where he had been waiting when X first appeared. Comparatively safe there, he protested his entire ignorance of the affair. Reasonable? I think so. But my point is this: Miss Crofts had neither time nor opportunity to do these things, particularly to conceal the watchman, and return to the passage where Holcomb saw her at the very moment Christien raised the alarm. On that point, with the proper use of witnesses, I’m confident I can shake your present case. Believe me, if it is necessary, I shall do so. But I pray that it may never be necessary.”

  The District Attorney sat in a brown study and fingered a Phi Beta Kappa key on the end of his watch chain. Bennett looked at him, as if waiting for an answer. The District Attorney roused himself, cleared his throat, and said in a surprisingly mild voice, “Why not?”

  “A court acquittal,” said Bennett gravely, “is not a public conviction of innocence.”

  The District Attorney smiled, and rubbed his chin, and allowed his cautious eyes to twinkle. As if he were thinking out loud, he confessed, “I guess there’s a lot of truth in that.”

  3.

  “I shan’t ask you to accept these questionable matters as evidence,” resumed Bennett, “but you may well think of them, as I have done. Would Miss Crofts have sent the letter which supposedly came from Suttro, for any reason—other than insanity? I believe not; definitely, no. Could Miss Crofts—”

  Tussard, whose plain face had screwed itself up into a disapproving frown, interrupted with, “First, how do you know she didn’t send it?”

  “It would serve no possible purpose, give her whatever motive you will.”

  “That’s not proof, but anyway. Second, who did send it, if she didn’t?”

  “Anthony Suttro sent it,” said Bennett.

  “And why?”

  “He meant precisely what he said in it, and he wished Christien to know. It was, in fact, a warning of what he feared would happen—and indeed, of what actually happened, somewhat sooner than he believed possible.”

  “And where does that fit in?”

  “In good time,” said Bennett, “I shall make it clear. It is very difficult, you know, to hop about so. Shall I get on with it?”

  “Drop it,” growled the District Attorney into Tussard’s ear. The ear reddened perceptibly, and Tussard contracted, like a tortoise into its shell.

  With a sigh, Bennett continued:

  “Could Miss Crofts have expected this fellow X—as she must, if she met him at all, since she had no windows through which to see him coming—yet failed to provide herself with a weapon for the murder?”

  “She might not have expected to murder him at all,” said the District Attorney skeptically.

  “Ah? Then you will ask a jury to believe that she met X, argued with him, advanced from argument to force, killed him, and killed the watchman, and disposed of—”

  “I get your point,” said the District Attorney, mollified.

  “Thank you,” said Bennett. “Would Miss Crofts improve her position by sending the box—that is to say, the trunk—full of X’s clothes to the Christien house? Indeed, could she have come by that box? Fantastic. Could she, a woman, be permitted by Boxworth to enter his flat while he was bathing? No, please don’t interrupt. Our murderer is a man, and most definitely one of the men who sat waiting in the executive offices last Tuesday night. You, Tussard, are on the point of asking me for my explanation of the sending of the box. I shall anticipate. The box contained all that remained of the effects of poor X. They could be burned, but with difficulty, for your police have means of interpreting ashes of cloth. It was safer to send the box away, and safest, at a time when the police suspected Christien, to send it to Christien’s house. I dare say the murderer took pains to cover his tracks. He may well have taken cab after cab from hotel to hotel, until he believed the trail completely confused. Very sound. As you know, the fire destroyed a great deal, but not everything. I fancy there is quite enough evidence left in the ruins, if Tussard takes pains to search for it, to hang the man.”

  “By that,” observed the District Attorney, “I suppose you mean the fire in Suttro’s house?”

  “Quite so,” said Bennett “Can you assure me you haven’t been in touch with this girl, Miss Crofts, since her arrest?”

  “I assure you, definitely.”

  The District Attorney shrugged, and exchanged a significant glance with Tussard, whose answering glance was a delicate and grudging admission of defeat. The District Attorney drew himself up, cleared his throat, and said, “You can identify this X?”

  “Indeed,” said Bennett.

  “Motive, too?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Good,” said the District Attorney. “I’m listening.”

  “Will you agree to withdraw the case against Miss Crofts?”

  Raymonds lifted his head, Hackmann leaned forward from the window sill, and the police stenographer poised his pencil in the air
, and the District Attorney, who enjoyed a theatrical moment when it came his way, drawled judiciously, “That very much depends, but, tell you the truth, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had your way. I’ve given a little attention to that angle before, and I don’t mind admitting it.”

  Bennett bowed slightly, took a deep breath, and said, “My word! There is a fug in here, isn’t there? Frightful. Can you open the window for us, Mr. Hackmann? Ah, much better. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  4.

  Bennett said:

  “The story, which is in part definite evidence in your possession, and in part simple inference drawn from that evidence, begins a long time ago. Anthony Suttro was an intelligent young man, whose promise of a successful future had almost been fulfilled when he became a soldier during the last war. In the Canadian army, wasn’t it, Tussard? No great matter, of course, except that records of his injuries would not be kept in Washington. Anthony Suttro, however, was hideously wounded. Indeed, it’s most remarkable that he lived after such damage. He had no face, as we know, and hardly more than half a body. A revolting creature in appearance, but a courageous one, and, moreover, noble. He returned, I presume, to his home in Brooklyn, and lived in seclusion and wrote, and through his writings became quite famous. This consists, Tussard, of those facts you gave me yourself, even to the wounding of the man. Of course, the extent of his wounds was not included in the record, since Suttro himself, naturally concealing his frightful tragedy, would have kept it out of his biography.

  “When Suttro became more successful, and his company of Suttro and Faunce expanded to the extent that he could no longer administer its affairs by letter, he was perplexed by the necessity of appearing in public. How repugnant to him! Pitying glances, half-concealed expressions of revulsion, all the rest of it! Anthony Suttro, not incomprehensibly, fell back on the help of a young secretary, a handsome, vivid and attractive fellow, who appeared in public in his place. The result is a situation most tempting for the secretary. As years passed, the world knew Suttro as a great man, a bit of a genius, and they accepted the young secretary in his place. With the crooked and crippled Mr. Suttro out of the way, the secretary could with almost no difficulty at all, assume a position of great prominence and wealth. With Anthony Suttro remaining his master, the ambitious young fellow was a mere paid secretary, a clerk, serving for a few pounds a week. As we know, the temptation was too strong, and the clerk succumbed. What is it, Tussard?”