‘May I speak to Mr Rogers?’ Colton asked the question quietly, simply, but under his voice was a subtle note that was dominantly compelling; a note that had made bigger and stronger men than the chief of the New York detective bureau bow to his wishes.
‘That’s all very interesting stuff,’ began the chief pompously, ‘but Rogers is the man who shot Cartwright, and we know that Cartwright held a dozen thousand dollars’ worth of his paper.’
The door opened to admit an attaché, and Sydney hid a grin with his hand. He had seen the chief press the call button even before he began to speak.
‘Bring Rogers here,’ grunted the head of the detective bureau.
The lawyer came in a moment later, and the two men who accompanied him were curtly ordered out.
The strong face of the prisoner was marred by lines indicating loss of sleep; his lips were shut grimly, a scowl creased his forehead, his eyes, sharp and piercing, were fixed on the chief.
‘This is Mr Colton, Rogers,’ introduced the detective shortly. ‘He’s got a sort of a theory on the Cartwright murder.’
‘If it’s the right one he’ll save you a lot of trouble,’ snapped the lawyer ungraciously. He turned to Colton. ‘I’ve heard of your work on the Villers case.’ His tone was almost amiable; then into it came dull wonder. ‘But that was simplicity itself beside this. I saw that revolver before the shot was fired, unsupported by human hands, against Jim Cartwright’s shirt front. It must have flown there on invisible wings!’
The chief grunted sarcastically, as he had grunted at each repetition of that unvarying statement.
Thornley Colton, tapping his foot lightly with his thin stick, looked up. ‘That is just what it did do!’ he said. The three men stared blankly. The blind man continued: ‘According to the newspapers, Mr Rogers, you said that something caused you to jerk up your head in time to see that picture. Do you know what it was?’
‘I do not.’ Rogers shook his head. ‘I can only describe it as some inner impulse.’
‘Wasn’t it’ – Thornley Colton’s tone was impressive – ‘wasn’t it a shadow, a swift-passing shadow, your eyes saw on the floor?’
Rogers leaped to his feet. ‘By Heaven, it was!’ he shouted. ‘I remember now!’ His voice trembled with excitement. ‘I had lowered my head, and across the streak of light between the seat edge and table flew a shadow – like a bird passing overhead.’ He stopped suddenly, the bewildered look on his face telling the sudden realization of his words. ‘How could you know that?’ he burst out.
‘The human brain is a curious thing,’ explained the blind man slowly. ‘It unconsciously records impressions the eyes give, but they are instantly forgotten – because the giving is so automatic – until something recalls them. Without sight I have been compelled to figure all things in my brain. Even the steps that you take without seeing must be mentally visualized by me. I knew it must have been a shadow that caused you to look up. To you it was merely one of the thousand unconscious-conscious things your eyes see during the day which are locked up in the brain until some outside influence brings them back.’
‘You can solve this thing!’ Rogers shot out the words as if he had just made a wonderful discovery. The blind man’s conscious power in himself had won the confidence of the lawyer; made him realize that there was some logical explanation for the thing which his eyes had seen, and which his reason refused to accept. He forgot that he was a prisoner formally charged with murder, he paced the room nervously. And the chief, scowling down at his desk, was silent. ‘If you can find the man who killed Jim Cartwright!’ The excitement died from Roger’s voice, a new tone came. ‘I knew him for thirty years, yet I never knew him until last night!’
‘I want to bring to justice the man that could kill a girl whose soul held the music of Miss Reynolds’s.’ There was unconscious rebuke in the problemist’s voice. All his powers he had brought to avenge the innocent girl; but he knew his efforts must be concentrated on the Cartwright murder because that was the key, the only key that would lead to the murderer.
‘The love-crazed kid did that! He –’ Rogers stopped, his eyes saw the two pistols side by side on the commissioner’s desk. Instantly his keen brain recognised the significance. ‘They’re the same!’ he exclaimed.
‘What were Cartwright’s relations with Miss Reynolds?’ It was a command, as Colton put it.
Rogers lifted his eyes from the two pistols.
‘You wrong Jim Cartwright,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ve accepted the general opinion of him; the opinion he never cared enough about to refute. He wasn’t an angel, but he wasn’t the devil a thousand jealousies have painted him. I’m going to tell you the story he told me last night.’ And he did, with all the deep feeling of his friendship, splendidly, simply.
As the men listened they understood the tragedy of Cartwright’s love for the woman who had been killed in the first moments of her new-found happiness – and his; of the little girl he had taken from her dead mother’s arms to work for, to protect, to give the happiness the mother had been denied – only to see her foully murdered when her cup of joy had but just been filled. The fiendishness of it held them spell-bound. The two beings that Cartwright had loved had been snatched from him, and he had been killed, knowing in the last instant of his life that the real murderer of the girl was not even suspected, could not be suspected, because of the devilish ingenuity of his crime.
‘Kelly, the drunken magician, is the man who killed Cartwright!’ ejaculated the chief.
Rogers was startled for a moment, but Colton, with an inscrutable smile on his thin lips, put a question:
‘The father of the girl is dead, isn’t he?’
Rogers glanced at the blind man in surprise.
‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘He died in the alcoholic ward of a Chicago hospital three months after his wife was killed. He was buried in the potters’ field.’
‘Where did you find that out?’ scowlingly demanded the chief.
‘That I didn’t proves the fact,’ answered the blind man crisply. ‘If Cartwright hadn’t known he was dead you’d have heard of him before. Do you want me to go on?’ he asked.
‘Might as well,’ granted the chief. ‘Maybe this is your lucky day.’
‘Then I’d like to ask a few questions of the boy who was arrested as Miss Reynolds’s murderer.’
The chief gave the order, but there was a light of triumphant anticipation in his eyes as he waited. Unlike the murderer of Cartwright, there was nothing mysterious in the killing of the girl, despite the clever efforts of the blind man to prove differently. A score of persons had seen the flash of the pistol from the rear of the box. His men had examined the velvet-hung wall toward which the girl’s back had been, and there was not a break in it, not a crack.
When the boy – he was little more – was led in by two detectives there came a look of pity to the faces of Sydney and Rogers. He staggered to a chair when the men released his arms. His lips were purple and torn where Cartwright had beaten him to the floor the night before. A haunting look of terror was in his eyes; his face was pasty white.
‘I didn’t do it! I didn’t! I didn’t!’ he whispered hoarsely, when he had wet his dry lips to make even the whisper possible.
Colton put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘I know you didn’t,’ he said, and there was a world of sympathy in his voice. A new look came to the boy’s eyes, a trembling hand sought that of the blind man.
‘I loved her and she loved me,’ he said chokingly. ‘We were going to be married – but that Cartwright –’ Shrill vehemence came to the tone, and he stopped.
Colton’s hand quieted him. ‘Listen closely now, Mr Nelson, and tell me if this is what happened: You groped your way to the box with your right hand on the wall. You felt the black velvet hangings, stopped, and the pistol went off while your right hand was stretched above you, on the hangings
, and you were facing the door that led back off the stage.’
‘I remember that!’ interjected Sydney. ‘His left side was towards Cartwright and the girl!’
‘Yet you said that the pistol flash crossed his body.’
‘It did!’ broke in the boy. ‘It was not twelve inches ahead of me! My right foot was extended to take another step, and the pistol fell on my toe!’
Colton turned to the three listening men. ‘To have fired that shot he would have had to double his left arm behind him and have shot around his body – a physical impossibility, even with a long-barrelled pistol.’ He placed his hand gently on the boy’s shoulder once more. ‘Go outside to the men who brought you in,’ he said. ‘You will be free in a few hours.’
Silently the boy obeyed. When Colton faced them again there was a curious expression on his face; the expression of a man who has seen a thoughtless boy destroy a priceless work of art by his clumsiness.
‘He killed that girl as surely as if he had placed the pistol at her back,’ he said sadly. ‘Yet he is as innocent of her murder as a child unborn!’
Eager questions, demands for an explanation of that cryptic remark, were fairly hurled at the blind man by the excited Rogers. What did he mean? How could the boy have killed Miss Reynolds and not be guilty of her murder? How had she been killed? By whom? Sydney Thames forbore the questions he knew would not be answered. The chief scowled down at the two pistols, silent, thoughtful. Colton’s statement regarding the firing of the pistol across the boy’s body had struck him like a dash of cold water. It was true! The boy could not have fired the shot that killed the girl! Once more the blind man’s unerring instinct for truth had torn down the case he and his men had been building for hours. In less than five minutes the sightless problemist had proved a fact that twenty pairs of eyes had failed to see.
‘Where are the two men who were arrested in the rathskeller?’ asked Colton curtly, utterly ignoring the questions.
‘Bailed by their boss,’ answered the chief. ‘They can only establish details anyway.’
‘I want to interview at least one of them,’ declared Colton. ‘I also want to visit the rathskeller. Can Mr Rogers go, in your company, of course? ‘
‘Yes.’ The chief took the responsibility unhesitatingly. He realized that he must see the thing through now.
‘Is your machine down here? I want to send my boy on an errand with mine.’
‘Outside, waiting.’ The chief took his hat and coat from the tree. ‘I’ll go with Rogers while he gets his,’ he added, as he opened the door.
The blind man hurried out, feet unerringly retracing the steps his brain had registered when they entered. The red-haired boy ran from the group of detectives he had been entertaining.
‘Shrimp!’ The blind man used the name he always called the boy, and took him aside. He whispered instructions, thrust two or three bills into the other’s hand. The youngster darted for the machine, and jumped up beside the driver as the chief and Rogers came from the front door.
In silence the quartet climbed into the car; in silence they made the journey to the rathskeller, where James Cartwright had been shot a few hours before. The waiter who had been on duty early in the morning was again on hand, heavy-eyed. The barman was at his home.
‘Where’s the booth you occupied?’ asked Colton of Rogers, when the chief had established their identity with the nervous proprietor.
The lawyer went to it, stopped at the table, and stared down at the dark stain that could not be removed.
‘This is where we were,’ he said huskily.
Colton stepped in between the table and the seat edge, and sat down, facing the rear of the rathskeller. ‘Cartwright was seated at the end of the seat, like this?’ He illustrated.
Rogers nodded. ‘He was on the extreme end, so he could assure himself that no one would hear.’
Colton rose, and with only the slim stick to guide him, made his way to a booth that faced the front of the rathskeller, at right angles to the one where the watching men still stood.
‘Who was in this booth when Cartwright was shot?’ It was snapped out like the crack of a whip to the waiter.
‘Nobody,’ faltered the serving man, wincing under the battery of eyes.
‘There was!’ The voice held accusation. ‘A man was in this booth, and he entered a moment or so before Mr Rogers and Mr Cartwright!’
The waiter brushed his dry lips with the back of his hand. ‘He couldn’t have had nothin’ to do with it,’ he mumbled, fingers twisting and untwisting the napkin in his hands.
‘No one said he did!’ said the blind man sharply. ‘You’ve been a witness in a murder case before, haven’t you?’
The watching men saw a look of alarm come to the man’s eyes. The chief stepped toward him menacingly. ‘Yes, sir,’ muttered the waiter, shrinking. ‘I saw a man shot while I was at the Royal. The police kept me in the detention for three months, and I lost my job.’
There was a grim smile on Colton’s lips as he nodded understandingly. ‘You weren’t going to take a chance on that again, were you?’ His tone was less brusque. ‘I’ll assure you that you won’t be held a minute if you give me a description of the man.’
The chief opened his mouth, then closed it with a snap.
‘Then I’ll tell you,’ consented the waiter eagerly. ‘He was a good-sized guy, with a yellow, old-lookin’ face, bald-headed, with a scar on the top, and he had eyes that was like slits. He came in that door.’ He pointed to one that opened at the rear corner of the rathskeller, apparently on a side street. ‘He was so drunk he couldn’t hardly walk, and he almost fell into the seat. I was goin’ to put him out, we closed in half an hour, an’ I didn’t want to have to throw no drunks in the street. But he wanted a whisky and –’ The waiter flushed and stopped.
‘Go on,’ prodded Colton.
The waiter looked at the proprietor and gulped nervously. ‘He gave me a five-spot, an’ told me to keep the change. I was bringin’ the drink when the other two came in. I got theirs, and went up front to figger my checks. Then I heard the shot. When I thought of the drunk again he was gone. But he couldn’t ’a’ done nothin’. He had a horrible bun, an’ we seen the gun layin’ in front of this guy.’ He indicated Rogers. ‘Me an’ the bartender figgered we wouldn’t say nothin’ about him. If we did the police’d put us in the detention till they found him. His gettin’ out like that would ’a’ looked suspicious to them if it didn’t to nobody else. He was scared sober an’ beat it quick. That’s my idear.’
‘Probably he’d had an experience in the house of detention, too,’ declared the blind man dryly; then: ‘You never saw him before?’
‘No, sir.’
‘That’s all. Let’s go, chief. There’s a detail I want to clear up at the theatre. I’ve got to prove that girl’s murder.’ Again there was the ominous ring in the problemist’s voice.
The chief glowered at the waiter. ‘You stay right here till I want you,’ he warned. ‘If you try to beat it you go up the river.’ He turned to Colton. ‘Wait a minute, until I call up headquarters. I’ll give ’em the description of that drunk, and have every man in the city on his trail.’
‘And spend a week following up clues,’ snapped the blind man impatiently. ‘I’ll show you where he is in less than an hour!’
He paid no further attention to the gaping chief of detectives, but made his way out of the place, the silent Sydney Thames at his elbow, the latter’s coat sleeve lightly touching that of Thornley Colton. And the chief followed meekly.
The blind man climbed into the front seat with the driver, and Sydney realized that he wanted to avoid interrogation; to figure out the last steps alone. But in the tonneau the men could not resist voicing the questions that filled their minds. Who had killed Miss Reynolds, and what could have been the object of the murder? What connection could a drunken man h
ave with the murder of Cartwright; with a pistol that had been fired without the aid of human hands?
They were at the theatre. The box-office had just been opened for the day, and the manager took them into the darkened house. The big interior, dim and tomblike, sent a shudder through Sydney Thames. Last night there had been brilliant lights, happy men, laughing women – and the girl of the violin. Today the great stage gaped before them, huge, untenanted; the seats were covered with their white dust cloths; voices sounded eerie in the barnlike emptiness. The velvet hangings at the rear of the box, which had looked so striking with their sleek blackness the night before, now appeared worn and dusty. The overturned chairs had been righted, the blood-stained carpet had been replaced.
Thornley Colton’s thin stick located the chairs. His right hand groped along the wall, so that the velvet moved under it. He thrust his slim cane under his arm, and the wonderful fingers went over the velvet inch by inch, sometimes so strongly that the thick stuff moved under them, then the pressure was so light that not a quiver of the loose velvet betrayed their presence. Inch by inch the feeling fingers made their way, as the men watched breathlessly.
Rogers could stand it no longer.
‘Was the murderer concealed behind those hangings?’ he asked excitedly.
‘No,’ Colton answered him, without moving. ‘The pistol flash came from this side of the velvet.’
Silence came again. The slow-moving fingers stopped. The blind man looked up; then his doubly keen ears caught the sound of hurrying footsteps coming toward them down the aisle.
‘A telephone message for me?’ he asked, as the attaché stopped.
‘Mr Colton?’
‘Yes.’ He turned to the others. ‘Come! I think this is the last detail.’
They were at his heels as he entered the boxlike office. Tense, expectant, though they knew not for what, they listened to the one-sided conversation.
‘Yes. Good. Did you see him? No, that’s all right. Stay there until we come.’ He spoke an aside to the ticket-seller: ‘Will you please take this address for me?’ The man picked up his pencil and drew a small pad toward him. ‘Nine hundred and ninety-seven West Forty-fourth.’ The blind man hung up the receiver.
American Sherlocks Page 13