I turned off my lights in silence, and glanced undecidedly from the bed to the rocker by the window. The cool night breeze beckoned me to the latter, and I drew the chair back a pace and cuddled down among the cushions. The lawn was almost silver under the flood of the moonlight, recalling vaguely the sweep of the ocean on a midsummer night. Back and forth along the edge of the gate the figure of a man was pacing like a tired sentinel. It was the plain-clothes officer from headquarters. His figure suggested a state of siege. We might have been surrounded by a skulking enemy. Or was the enemy within, and the sentinel stationed to prevent his escape? I stumbled across to the bed and to sleep, with the question echoing oddly through my brain.
When I opened my eyes, the sun was throwing a yellow shaft of light across my bed, but it wasn’t the sun that had wakened me. Madelyn was standing in the doorway, dressed, with an expression on her face which brought me to my elbow.
‘What has happened now?’
‘Burglars!’
‘Burglars?’ I repeated dully.
‘I am going down to the library. Someone is making news for us fast, Nora. When will it be our turn?’
I dressed in record-breaking time, with my curiosity whetted by sounds of supressed excitement which forced their way into the upper hall. The Duffield home not only was early astir, but was rudely jarred out of its customary routine.
When I descended, I found a nervous group of servants clustered about the door of the library. They stood aside to let me pass, with attitudes of uneasiness which I surmised would mean a wholesale series of ‘notices’ if the strange events in the usually well-regulated household continued.
Behind the closed door of the library were Senator Duffield, his son Fletcher, and Madelyn Mack. It was easy to appreciate at a glance the unusual condition of the room. At the right, one of the long windows, partly raised, showed the small round hole of a diamond cutter just over the latch. It was obvious where the clandestine entrance and exit had been obtained. The most noticeable feature of the apartment, however, was a small square safe in the corner, with its heavy lid swinging awkwardly ajar, and the rug below littered with a heap of papers, that had evidently been torn from its neatly tabulated series of drawers. The burglarious hands either had been very angry or very much in a hurry. Even a number of unsealed envelopes had been ripped across, as though the pillager had been too impatient to extract their contents in the ordinary manner. To a man of Senator Duffield’s methodical habits, it was easy to imagine that the scene had been a severe wrench.
Madelyn was speaking in her quick, incisive tones as I entered.
‘Are you quite sure of that fact, Senator?’ she asked sharply, as I closed the door and joined the trio.
‘Quite sure, Miss Mack!’
‘Then nothing is missing, absolutely nothing?’
‘Not a single article, valuable or otherwise.’
‘I presume then there were articles of more or less value in the safe?’
‘There was perhaps four hundred dollars in loose bills in my private cash drawer, and, so far as I know, there is not a dollar gone.’
‘How about your papers and memoranda?’
The Senator shook his head ‘There was nothing of the slightest use to a stranger. As a matter of fact, just two days ago, I took pains to destroy the only portfolio of valuable documents in the safe.’
Madelyn stooped thoughtfully over the litter of papers on the rug. ‘You mean three evenings ago, don’t you?’
‘How on earth, Miss Mack –’
‘You refer to the memoranda that you and Mr Rennick were working on the night before his death, do you not?’
‘Of course!’ And then I saw Senator Duffield was staring at his curt questioner as though he had said something he hadn’t meant to.
‘I think you told me once before that the combination of your safe was known only to yourself and Mr Rennick?’
‘You are correct.’
‘Then, to your knowledge, you are the only living person, who possesses this information at the present time?’
‘That is the case. It was a rather intricate combination, and we changed hardly a month ago.’
Madelyn rose from the safe, glancing reflectively at a huge leather chair, and sank into its depths with a sigh.
‘You say nothing has been stolen, Senator, that the burglar’s visit yielded him nothing. For your peace of mind I would like to agree with you, but I am sorry to inform you that you are mistaken.’
‘Surely, Miss Mack, you are hasty! I am confident that I have searched my possessions with the utmost care.’
‘Nevertheless, you have been robbed!’
Senator Duffield glanced down at the small lithe figure impatiently. ‘Then, perhaps, you will be good enough to tell me of what my loss consists?’
‘I refer to the article for which your secretary was murdered! It was stolen from this room last night.’
Had the point of a dagger pressed against Senator Duffield’s shoulders, he could not have bounded forward in greater consternation. His composure was shattered like a pane of glass crumbling.
He sprang toward the safe with a cry like a man in sudden fear or agony. Jerking back its door, he plunged his hand into its lower left compartment. When he straightened, he held a long, wax phonograph record.
His dismay had vanished in a quick blending of relief and anger, as his eyes swept from the cylinder to the grave figure of Madelyn Mack.
‘I fail to appreciate your joke, Miss Mack – if you call it a joke to frighten a man without cause as you have me!’
‘Have you examined the record in your hand, Senator?’
Fletcher Duffield and I stared at the two. There was a suggestion of tragedy in the scene as the impatience and irritation gradually faded from the Senator’s
‘It is a substitute!’ he groaned. ‘A substitute! I have been tricked, victimized, robbed!’
He stood staring at the wax record as though it were a heated iron burning into his flesh. Suddenly it slipped from his fingers and was shattered on the floor.
But he did not appear to notice the fact as he burst out, ‘Do you realize that you are standing here inactive while the thief is escaping? I don’t know how your wit surprised my secret, and don’t care now, but you are throwing away your chances of stopping the burglar while he may be putting miles between himself and us! Are you made of ice, woman? Can’t you appreciate what this means? In the name of heaven, Miss Mack –’
‘The thief will not escape, Mr Duffield!’
‘It seems to me that he has already escaped.’
‘Let me assure you, Senator, that your missing property is as secure as though it were locked in your safe at this moment!’
‘But do you realize that, once a hint of its nature is known, it will be almost worthless to me?’
‘Better perhaps than you do – so well that I pledge myself to return it to your hands within the next half hour!’
Senator Duffield took three steps forward until he stood so close to Madelyn that he could have reached over and touched her on the shoulder.
‘I am an old man, Miss Mack, and the last two days have brought me almost to a collapse. If I have appeared unduly sharp, I tender you my apologies – but do not give me false hopes! Tell me frankly that you cannot encourage me. It will be a kindness. You will realize that I cannot blame you.’
Senator Duffield’s imperious attitude was so broken that I could hardly believe it possible that the same man who ruled a great political party, almost by the sway of his finger, was speaking. Madelyn caught his hand with a grasp of assurance.
‘I will promise even more.’ She snapped open her watch. ‘If you will return to this room at nine o’clock, not only will I restore your stolen property – but I will deliver the murderer of Raymond Rennick!’
‘Rennick’s murderer?
’ the Senator gasped.
Madelyn bowed. ‘In this room at nine o’clock.’
I think I was the first to move toward the door. Fletcher Duffield hesitated a moment, staring at Madelyn, then he turned and hurried past me down the hall.
His father followed more slowly. As he closed the door, I saw Madelyn standing where we had left her, leaning back against her chair, and staring at a woman’s black slipper. It was the one which had been found by Raymond Rennick’s dead body.
I made my way mechanically toward the dining room, and was surprised to find that the members of the Duffield family were already at the table. With the exception of Madelyn, it was the same breakfast group as the morning before. In another house, this attempt to maintain the conventions in the face of tragedy might have seemed incongruous; but it was so thoroughly in keeping with the self-contained Duffield character that, after the first shock, I realized it was not at all surprising. I fancy that we all breathed a sigh of relief, however, when the meal was over.
We were rising from the table, when a folded note addressed to the Senator, was handed to the butler from the hall. He glanced through it hurriedly, and held up his hand for us to wait.
‘This is from Miss Mack. She requests me to have all of the members of the family, and those servants who have furnished any evidence in connection with the, er – murder’ – the Senator winced as he spoke the word – ‘to assemble in the library at nine o’clock. I think that we owe it both to ourselves and to her to obey her instructions to the letter. Perkins, will you kindly notify the servants?’
As it happened, Madelyn’s audience in the library was increased by two spectators she had not named. The tooting of a motor sounded without, and the tall figure of Senator Burroughs met us as we were leaving the dining room. Senator Duffield took his arm with a glance of relief, and explained the situation as he forced him to accompany us.
VI
In the library, we found for the first time that Madelyn was not alone. Engaged in a low conversation with her, which ceased as we entered, was Inspector Taylor. He had evidently been designated as the spokesman of the occasion. ‘Is everybody here?’ he asked.
‘I think so,’ Senator Duffield replied. ‘There are really only five of the servants who count in the case.’
Madelyn’s eyes flashed over the circle.
‘Close the door, please, Mr Taylor. I think you had better lock it also.’
‘There are fourteen persons in this room,’ she continued, ‘counting, of course, Inspector Taylor, Miss Noraker and myself. We may safely be said to be outside the case. There are then eleven persons here connected in some degree with the tragedy. It is in this list of eleven that I have searched for the murderer. I am happy to tell you that my search has been successful!’
Senator Duffield was the first to speak. ‘You mean to say, Miss Mack, that the murderer is in this room at the present time?’
‘Correct.’
‘Then you accuse one of this group –’
‘Of dealing the blow which killed your secretary, and, later, of plundering your safe.’
Inspector Taylor moved quietly to a post between the two windows. Escape from the room was barred. I darted a stealthy glance around the circle in an effort to surprise a trace of guilt in the faces before me, and was startled to find my neighbours engaged in the same furtive occupation. Of the women of the family, the Senator’s wife had compressed her lips as though, as mistress of the house, she felt the need of maintaining her composure in any situation. Maria was toying with her bracelet, while Beth made no effort to conceal her agitation.
Senator Burroughs was studying the pattern of the carpet with a face as inscrutable as a mask. Fletcher Duffield was sitting back in his chair, his hands in his pockets. His father was leaning against the locked door, his eyes flashing from face to face. With the exception of Dorrence, the valet, and Perkins, the butler, who I do not think would have stirred out of their stolidness had the ceiling fallen, the servants were in an utter panic. Two of the maids were plainly bordering on hysterics.
Such was the group that faced Madelyn in the Duffield library. One of the number was a murderer, whom the next ten minutes were to brand as such. Which was it? Instinctively my eyes turned again toward the three women of the Duffield family, as Madelyn walked across to a portiere which screened a corner of the apartment.
Jerking it aside, she showed, suspended from a hook in the ceiling, a quarter of fresh veal.
On an adjoining stand was a long, thin-bladed knife, which might have been a dagger, ground to a razor-edge. Madelyn held it before her as she turned to us.
‘This is the weapon which killed Mr Rennick.’ I fancied I heard a gasp as she spoke. Although I whirled almost on the instant, however, I could detect no signs of it in the faces behind me.
‘I propose to conduct a short experiment, which I assure you is absolutely necessary to my chain of reasoning,’ Madelyn continued. ‘You may or may not know that the body of a calf practically offers the same degree of resistance to a knife as the body of a man. Dead flesh, of course, is harder and firmer than living flesh, but I think that, adding the thickness of clothes, we may take it for granted that in the quarter of veal before us, we have a fair substitute for the body of Raymond Rennick. Now watch me closely, please!’
Drawing back her arm, she plunged her knife into the meat with a force which sent it spinning on its hook. She drew the knife out, and examined it reflectively.
‘I have made a cut of only a little more than three and a half inches. The blow which killed Mr Rennick penetrated at least five inches.
‘Here we encounter a singularly striking feature of our case, involving a stratagem which I think I can safely say is the most unique in my experience. To all intents, it was a woman who killed Mr Rennick. In fact, it has been taken for granted that he met his death at the hand of a female assassin. We must dispose of this conclusion at the outset, for the simple reason that it was physically impossible for a woman to have dealt the death blow!’
I chanced to be gazing directly at Fletcher Duffield as Madelyn made the statement. An expression of such relief flashed into his face that instinctively I turned about and followed the direction of his glance. His eyes were fixed on his sister, Beth.
Madelyn deposited the knife on the stand.
‘Indeed, I may say there are few men – perhaps not one in ten – with a wrist strong enough to have dealt Mr Rennick’s death blow,’ she went on. ‘There is only one such person among the fourteen in this room at the present time.
‘Again you will recall that the wound was delivered from the rear just as Mr Rennick faced about in his own defence. Had he been attacked by a woman, he would have heard the rustle of her dress several feet before she possibly could have reached him. I think you will recall my demonstration of that fact yesterday morning, Mr Duffield.
‘Obviously then, it is a man whom we must seek if we would find the murderer of your secretary, and a man of certain peculiar characteristics. Two of these I can name now. He possessed a wrist developed to an extraordinary degree, and he owned feet as small and shapely as a woman’s. Otherwise, the stratagem of wearing a woman’s slippers and leaving one of them near the scene of the crime to divert suspicion from himself, would never have occurred to him!’
Again I thought I heard a gasp behind me, but its owner escaped me a second time.
‘There was a third marked feature among the physical characteristics of the murderer. He was near-sighted – so much so that it was necessary for him to wear glasses of the kind known technically as a “double lens”. Unfortunately for the assassin, when his victim fell, the latter caught the glasses in his hand, and they were broken under his body. The murderer may have been thrown into a panic, and feared to take the time to recover his spectacles; but it was a fatal blunder. Fortune, however, might have helped him even then in spite of th
is fact, for those who found the body fell into the natural error of considering the glasses to be the property of the murdered man. Had it not been for two minor details, this impression might never have been contradicted.’
Madelyn held up a packet of newspaper illustrations. Several of them I recognized as the pictures of the murdered secretary that she had shown me at the ‘Roanoke’. The others were also photographs of the same man.
‘If Mr Rennick hadn’t been fond of having his picture taken, the fact that he never wore glasses on the street might not have been noticed. None of his pictures, not even the snap-shots, showed a man in spectacles. It is true that he did possess a pair, and it is here where those who discovered the crime went astray. But they were for reading purposes only, the kind termed a .125 lens, while those of his assailant were a .210 lens. To clinch the matter, I later found Mr Rennick’s own spectacles in his room where he had left them the evening before.’
Madelyn held up the red leather case she had found on the mantelpiece, and tapped it musingly as she gave a slight nod to Inspector Taylor.
‘We have now the following description of the murderer – a slenderly built man, with an unusual wrist, possibly an athlete at one time, who possesses a foot capable of squeezing into a woman’s shoe, and who is handicapped by near-sightedness. Is there an individual in this room to whom this description applies?’
There was a new glitter in Madelyn’s eyes as she continued.
‘Through the co-operation of Inspector Taylor, I am enabled to answer this question. Mr Taylor has traced the glasses of the assassin to the optician who gave the prescription for them. I am not surprised to find that the owner of the spectacles tallies with the owner of these other interesting articles.’
With the words, she whisked from the stand at her elbow, the long, narrow-bladed dagger, and a pair of soiled, black suede slippers.
American Sherlocks Page 28