“Then Lanagan took his leisurely turn, drawing up an easy chair.”

“If you can’t be first on the ground, be last,” was an axiom of the newspaper business that Lanagan often tried to impress upon me. He proceeded to act upon his theory now by rolling and lighting a cigarette to give all in the room ample time to finish their investigation. Finally the room was cleared of all save, Leslie, Lanagan, Brady, Wilson, and myself.

The room had one set of French windows giving out upon a wide porch and a heavily matted lawn. It would be next to impossible to say whether a person had escaped over the lawn by way of the veranda. The bedroom door was open when a maid, attracted by the shot, had overcome her terror and run to the room.

At the time of death the only persons in the house were the mother, daughter, and the maid, Marie. The maid was in a state bordering on collapse after the first siege with the detectives and newspaper men, and Leslie ordered her kept quiet for an hour. The occasional hysterical cries of the mother, prostrated in her own room, could be heard.

Leslie examined the body with minute care. The rest of us had completed our investigations. Then Lanagan took his leisurely turn, drawing up an easy chair. Leslie, Brady, and Wilson had stepped through the window and were examining the porch and the lawn carefully with their pocket lights. Lanagan had taken one of the girl’s hands up in his. He was examining an old-fashioned bracelet critically, very critically, it seemed to me. He flashed a sudden quick glance toward the window; the chief and the detectives were still busy outside.

“Stand at the door, Norrie!” he shot at me electrically.I sprang to put my back to it, to give him a moment’s delay in case any of the other newspaper men should drift back to the room. I had not the slightest idea what he was after, but I caught a glitter of fierce interest in his eyes, and I knew him better than to disobey. I did not see what he did then, save that he quickly placed something within his pocketbook, something that didn’t have much substance, for he had to rub his thumb and forefinger to drop it into a piece of paper. Some of the newspaper men trooped back into the room; Leslie entered again, frowning in perplexity.

“Singular, Jack,” he said. “What’s your idea?”

“I think,” drawled Lanagan, “I’ll save my ideas for the Enquirer, Chief. I’ve concluded to go back to work.”

Leslie stared. “You’ve got something,” he finally said testily. “What is it?”

“Something that may save me being driven from town like a beaten dog, Chief, that’s all. You didn’t want that, you said.”

“Confound you anyhow. You’re too infernally clever. Go in and win,” said the grizzled chief, but his tone was nettled and there was a natural trace, possibly, of professional jealousy that he could not conceal. It had never before happened that he and Lanagan had started off on an absolutely even break where it was a straight open-and-shut proposition of the best detective winning; and he felt that Lanagan had found a clue in that room that he had overlooked. He was a hard loser. He went over the room again; he examined the body; he used his magnifying glass and he scanned the walls, the carpet, the clothing, inch by inch.

He was still reluctant to give up when the coroner’s deputies finally arrived to discharge their melancholy functions. The mother was still in hysteria. The maid had calmed somewhat, and Leslie went to examine her with Wilson and Brady. Lanagan had drifted out and was sitting on the moonlit porch, to which the electroliers gave added brightness.

“When all those blunderbusses get through with their heavy work, Norrie, we’ll have a run in with the maid,” said he. “I seem to be the last man on the job. Meantime find out for me how many red-haired people there are about this house or among the immediate circle of the girl’s friends. It is a matter of some importance, because—” he carefully opened the pocketbook, extracted the folded piece of note paper, and, first assuring himself that no one was about, pointed—“because here are two broken, half-inch bits of red hair that I take it are going to play an important part in this case. Remember the Deveraux case? These were wedged back of the cameo on her bracelet, and they got there in her last struggle with whoever shot her. For the time being at least, then, we will eliminate all but red-haired people.”“Maybe it’s a dog’s hair,” I suggested hopefully.

Lanagan was on the point of retorting with his finished sarcasm when the Hemingway limousine, evidently bringing other members of the family or relations summoned by word of the mournful occurrence, rolled up to the brilliantly lighted porte-cochÈre. Lanagan’s eye had travelled swiftly and fixed upon some object of interest. I followed his intense gaze.

The chauffeur’s hair was as flaming as a firebrand.

Lanagan’s eyes seemed to be boring straight through the man as the machine came to a stop almost where we sat. The chauffeur’s face was pale, extraordinarily pale, it appeared to me; as he stopped his machine and shut down the gears, there was a perceptible evidence of nervousness in his manner that was possibly entirely natural in view of the shocking happening of a few hours before that had taken the life of his young mistress.

The first to leave the motor was a trim, well-groomed young man, whom we at once recognised, from the descriptions we had heard, as Macondray. As he held the door open for the other two persons to leave the machine, he removed his hat, holding it in his hand.

Simultaneously our eyes rested on his uncovered hair.

His hair, if anything, was a shade more auburn than that of the chauffeur! His swollen eyes and pale face were natural under the circumstances, with his marriage hopes thus painfully blasted. They walked within, and Lanagan said:

“Come on. We’ll get first crack at this fellow anyhow. Let’s meet him back at the garage in the rear.”

We had started to walk back to the garage as the chauffeur cranked his machine when from the same low window Leslie and Brady stepped alertly. Leslie held up his hand to the chauffeur. The two officers were beside him in a moment. I knew what was coming even before they laid a hand on him. I had seen too many arrests made not to know what was meant by that brusque, cool manner, that quick step, that wary eye even before there came that familiar terse, short snap of the professional thief-taker:

“We want you!”

“The maid has spilled!” was Lanagan’s ejaculation as we stepped up to the trio. Leslie could not forbear a pleased lighting of the eyes as he glanced at Lanagan.

“What have you got, Chief?” asked Lanagan easily.

“The maid, Marie, broke down and admitted that she let this man Martin into the house and into the girl’s room at the girl’s orders at 8.30 o’clock. Possibly ten minutes later, she says, she heard the shot. When she could summon courage to go to her mistress’s room she found her lying on the floor dead, the revolver in her hand. What have you to say, Martin?”

“Nothing, sir,” said Martin levelly. “I have nothing at all to say, sir.”

He was a man of about thirty. Lanagan’s subsequent investigations disclosed that he had been with the Hemingways for many years, formerly working as a stable boy. When automobiles came into vogue, he had taken a place as chauffeur. He was a probation court boy when the Hemingways took him into their employ and “made a man of him,” as he used to express it.

“Nothing?” snapped Leslie. “Well, we’ll see. I guess we’ll take him in, Brady, and give him the dark cell.”

Leslie swung on his heel, and Brady, giving the chauffeur only time enough to run his machine to the garage, took him to the city prison and locked him up. But first I had noticed Lanagan pick up Martin’s cap from the seat of the machine while the brief conference was going on and deftly extract something from it. The “something” proved later to be one or two of Martin’s red hairs.

Other newspaper men emerging from the house had been informed by Leslie of the arrest. It was 11.30 o’clock by that time, and, with the arrest of Martin as their sensation, the morning paper men of one accord shoaled back to their offices. Leslie turned whatever ends might come up over to Wilson, with instructions to keep an eye on the maid, Marie, and went back to headquarters satisfied that if Martin was not the murderer he at least could clear up the mystery. Lanagan started back with the rest, but dropped off the car unobserved and returned to the house. He was not yet satisfied that all that the inmates knew there had been told.

“You go in and write the story,” he had told me. “That chauffeur isn’t the type who is rendezvousing with the daughter of the house; and she isn’t the type to engage in an alliance with a chauffeur. There is a nigger in this woodpile some place—and a red-headed nigger at that. Go off with your story if you don’t hear from me by press time, but keep my red hairs out of your story unless you hear from me further.”

I had gathered in my camera man and artist and hurried back to the office to write a story that I knew would be exactly similar in its facts with those in the other morning papers, leading off naturally with the arrest of the chauffeur.

There were still quite a number of relatives and family friends at the house when Lanagan returned. The reception hall was brilliantly lighted, and he hung up his hat. As he did so he examined Macondray’s topcoat carefully and quickly. On the collar was one hair. It was tucked away, labeled, in a separate package in the pocketbook.

He went to the room of the murder to find Wilson there “sweating” Macondray. The broker was bent over a table, sobbing. The intermittent, hysterical cries of the mother, hoarser and fainter as exhaustion came upon her, still punctuated the air. Wilson was reading a letter. He passed it to Lanagan.

Lanagan read, then, a startling few lines written by Miss Hemingway the day before to Macondray, breaking their engagement with the single explanation: I love another. You surely could not want to marry a woman who had discovered she loved another.

Lanagan passed the letter back. He was anxious to make a microscopic examination of the hair, but he wanted also to put Macondray through a mill. He signalled Wilson to “jam,” and the detective touched Macondray on the shoulder.

“Get together,” he said brusquely. “We want you to answer a few questions.”

“We aren’t getting any place in this fashion,” added Lanagan curtly.

“Tell me, Macondray, when did you get that letter?”

Macondray straightened up, wiping his eyes.

“This afternoon at 5 o’clock,” he said.

“When did you see Miss Hemingway last?”

There was a long pause while Macondray gazed fixedly first at Lanagan and then at Wilson, as though trying to read their minds to learn what they knew.

“Because you did see her after the letter, you know,” said Lanagan quietly. It was entirely a random shot, but it went home. Macondray studied the matter over again for some moments.

“Well,” he said at last slowly, “I suppose it is best that I tell all I know. I saw her last—at half-past eight o’clock to-night.”

His head dropped to his breast and dry sobs shook him again for a minute.

“But as to her death I can offer no explanation. Only—you have Martin in custody, and I saw Martin in her room at that time. My God!” he burst out, “that Elvira could have sunk so low! A menial, a lackey—a chauffeur!”

“We don’t want a dissertation on caste,” said Lanagan with cold brutality. “What we want of you, Macondray, either here or at the city prison—” Macondray started, realising for the first time that suspicion was pointing his way—“is a simple statement of how you happened to see Miss Hemingway in this room with Martin and what happened after that?”

“I received her note by messenger at five o’clock. At half-past seven I called, but she was not in. I wanted a personal explanation. I called again in an hour. She was home, Marie said, and had gone to her room for the night and under no circumstances was to be disturbed. I determined to see her at any cost. I knew the position of her room here, fronting on the veranda. I went from the house by the front door and walked around here to the lawn. I intended only to attract her attention by throwing a pebble against the window and compelling her to speak with me. But while I stood there on the lawn, searching for a pebble, an automobile drove slowly down Buchanan Street and stopped just beyond the Hemingway drive behind the pepper tree. There were two men in it. One remained while the other, whom I recognised as Martin, came to the house, entering by the kitchen door. Of course, then I would not risk attracting Elvira’s attention.

“While I was just turning to go, Elvira’s curtain suddenly was raised, and I saw her peering out down Buchanan Street toward the place where the motor car was. Just when that tableau was being presented her chamber door opened quickly, and Martin entered. She seemed to be glad to see him, and extended both her hands to him.

“I could witness no more. It broke my heart. Sick and miserable that I had discovered so fine a girl, the girl whom I loved sincerely, in a meeting with her chauffeur, I turned and came away. That is all I know. Later I received a telephone message of the tragedy. They sent the car for me. I could not understand it then; I cannot now.”

He was sobbing again with his arms on the table.

Wilson stepped over to him.

“Brace up,” he said shortly, “I want you to come with me. The chief will want to keep you where he can see you for a day or two.” His heavy hand descended professionally upon Macondray’s shoulder. But Lanagan interrupted.

“Not a chance, Jim,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to interfere with your duty, but I believe that chap is telling the truth absolutely. What we want to do now is to clear up the mystery of the man in the automobile. Martin must be made to talk. And, by the way, have you come across any red-haired people in this case outside Martin and Macondray? It struck me as a good little feature story. Here’s a red-haired chauffeur and a red-haired fiancÉe. It’s a combination that don’t often occur.”

“Humph,” replied Wilson. “That’s curious. The chief and I only saw Mrs. Hemingway for a moment, she was so unstrung, but she most certainly has the finest head of red hair for a woman of forty-four or five you want to see. Seems to be her own, too. Funny proposition, the three of them at that.”

Lanagan was staring, for once taken completely by surprise, so pat did the circumstance fit his theories. He glanced at his watch. His eyes were dancing with excitement. “That will be all, Mr. Macondray, unless Wilson wants you for anything,” he said. Wilson said he was through, and Macondray left the room. “Now, Jim, let’s see Marie again. I’m collecting red hair; it’s a fad I have acquired, and I want one or two of Mrs. Hemingway’s.”“I was never more serious in my life,” said Wilson, summoning the maid. He sent her for a brush containing combings of her mistress’s hair. She asked no questions, but did as ordered. The maid acted like a person in a trance.

“Holding up to a certain point, and then she will drop like a plummet,” thought Lanagan, then aloud: “I guess we are all through here, Jim, except one last fling with the mother.”

But there was no “last fling” with the mother. She had been given a hypodermic, the nurse said, and was sleeping.

From a neighbourhood bar Wilson telephoned to Leslie, still waiting at police headquarters to get a last word from his men. The detective was still half decided to lock up both Marie and Macondray, but Leslie said no. Lanagan had borrowed Wilson’s magnifying glass and had spread out upon the bar the different pieces of red hair. He was so deeply engrossed in making comparisons that he failed to follow the startling one-sided conversation going on between Wilson and the chief. Wilson whirled around from the receiver as Lanagan, profoundly stirred, carefully tucked away his collection.

“A child could see it,” he muttered to himself as Wilson called out:

“Martin has spilled! Says he tricked the maid, who, by the way, is in love with him, into letting him into Elvira’s room. There he declared his love for her, demanded that she fly with him, and when she refused seized up the family revolver and shot her down, maddened by her command that he realise his place and return to the stables where he belonged. He escaped through the window after placing the revolver in her hand. They are going to book him now for murder.”

Lanagan took a long time to digest this bit of surprising information. He made no comment other than to say:

“You’re through for the night now, aren’t you, Jim? With Leslie vouching for Martin as the man?”

“Yes,” replied Jim, “and now I’m off.”

A moment after he had been left alone Lanagan had Leslie on the telephone.

“Chief? Lanagan. Hop into your car and meet me at Farrelly’s. Bring Martin along. It’s quarter to one. Make time. And this is something absolutely between you and me; me and the Enquirer. Scoot now, Chief. I’ve something to interest you.”

Since the incident in the room earlier in the evening Leslie had been restless about Lanagan. Within ten minutes the police automobile stopped at Farrelly’s. Leslie and Brady, with Martin walking between them, entered.

Lanagan quickly led the way to the side room.

One grimed incandescent lit the room pallidly. Around a beer-stained table the four men sat, Martin farthest from the door. Lanagan’s eyes were fairly snapping as he opened his pocketbook and spread it out upon the table. From it he extracted his little papers, each containing a piece or two of red hair. He laid each separate hair slowly, deliberately, before them all upon the table. Martin was watching the performance with eyes that glistened in the intensity of his interest. Equally absorbed were Leslie and Brady. Deliberately, precisely, Lanagan laid out the hairs—two from the brush of Mrs. Hemingway, one from the coat collar of Macondray, two from Martin’s cap, and the two short bits from the bracelet of Elvira.

Leslie had understood the pantomime the moment Lanagan opened his pocketbook and disclosed the collection of hair. He knew what it was now that he had overlooked; and, chagrined but alert, he watched each move that Lanagan made, for the solution had not yet come. Was it to be Martin? Leslie hoped professionally, for the sake of his reputation, that it would be.

“Martin,” said Lanagan, flashing the word out like a dirk might flash in the sun, “what did Mrs. Hemingway ever do to earn your loyalty—even to death?”

Martin paled, visibly, even beneath the sick light of the weak incandescent.

“She has been very good to me, sir. She took me out of the court’s custody and gave me a good home and a good salary. She made a man of me when I might have become a jailbird. She has been a good mistress, sir.”

“Yes, a good mistress,” came through Lanagan’s teeth. “You’re loyal. The type of loyal retainer. You’re not the type that falls in love with the daughter of the house. You never loved Elvira; you never murdered Elvira; and you are concealing now the name of the murderer, telling a poor weak lie that could not have stood at the outside for twenty-four hours! Who killed Elvira?”

Lanagan had arisen and glowered above the ashen Martin. Leslie was leaning forward, his eyes, gimletlike, boring into Martin’s. Brady swung around, too, to face him, caught as well under the spell of fierce magnetism of the newspaper man.

“Tell me,” Lanagan snarled, “who was in that automobile with you last night?”

Martin’s heavy lips dropped apart while he continued to stare affrightedly upon the newspaper man.

“The mother of that girl found you in Elvira’s room with her, making preparations for flight with whoever was in that machine!

“I will tell you,” continued Lanagan, hammering each word home; “I will tell you who killed Elvira Hemingway!” He leaned swiftly across the table, bending down and breathing a word into the ear of Martin. The effect was electrical.

“No! No! No—no—no! It was I, I tell you; I and no other! I shot her in my fit of madness!”He collapsed suddenly, his head sinking on his breast, still gasping huskily forth his protestations.

“Look here, then,” said Lanagan. He held Brady’s magnifying glass over the hair—over the two hairs from the bracelet and then over the other specimens. The difference in the texture of the hair and a difference in colour were apparent under the microscope even in the ill-lighted room. That one of the three specimens was similar hair to that from the bracelet was apparent almost to the naked eye. Leslie’s face grew grave. Brady had absolute unbelief written in his eyes. Martin took one peering look furtively.

“That hair,” said Lanagan, indicating, “came from Elvira Hemingway’s bracelet. It lodged there in her last struggle with whoever killed her. This is your hair, Martin; compare it. This is Macondray’s; compare it. This is from the mother’s head; compare it. A red-haired person killed Elvira. It was not you—it was not—”

But Martin had sunk his head into his arms on the table with a groan. Lanagan waited; Leslie waited; Brady waited—experts all at the third degree. Mind was mauling matter—and mind was winning.

“It was not you,” continued Lanagan pitilessly as Martin lifted his haggard face with the look of pleading of an animal in his eyes. “It was not you—”

“But it was not she—not my mistress! It was me! Me!” The last words were a shriek; but the tax on his self-control had been too great. He fainted.

They threw water on Martin then and forced whiskey down his throat. He came to, staring in confusion from one face to the other.

“You have admitted the mother shot her own child,” said Lanagan rapidly, giving Martin no opportunity to recover his composure. “Now tell us the circumstances of this unnatural crime.”

Martin’s breakdown was complete.

Elvira Hemingway, practically forced into an engagement with Macondray largely through propinquity—he was her brother’s partner and a regular family guest—and through the wishes of her mother, inordinately ambitious socially to ally her daughter with the Macondrays, had finally jilted Macondray for a struggling young doctor, Stanton, a classmate at college. They were to have eloped, so greatly did the girl dread the scene that she knew would follow when her mother learned of her dismissal of Macondray. Martin, loyal, as he had said, to his mistress, but still more so to the daughter of the house, was party to the elopement. He had come to her room by prearrangement to help her out with a grip or two in order that no suspicion would attach should she be discovered in the room, on the porch, or crossing the lawn. The machine—the same that Macondray saw—was waiting at the pepper tree. But while Martin was in the room the mother, on some slight errand, had unexpectedly gone to her daughter’s room.

There she found her daughter fully attired, the French window wide open, and caught a flashing glimpse of a figure disappearing through the French window, that she recognised as Martin. At first flush she accepted the incident as an interrupted rendezvous of some sort between her daughter and her chauffeur, and one hot word of charge had brought a swift retort from the daughter, and a quarrel had arisen.

Martin, sneaking back to report progress in the room to Stanton, heard the rising voices in anger, and learned enough to know that the girl, under stress of her excitement, had revealed the plan for the elopement. He counselled with Stanton, and both agreed that Stanton had best retire and await developments, Martin to keep Stanton posted by telephone. In the grief and excitement of the final tragedy he did not do so, and the lover, worn by a sleepless night, received his great blow when he opened his morning paper. But this is not a tale of love or lovers, except insofar as they concern the solution of a crime, and Stanton therefore, with his blighted life, passes out of the story.

Martin, determined to intercede in hope of softening the lot of the daughter, taking all blame to himself as the messenger of the secret lovers, hurried then, back to the house.

Some primal strain of vulgarity, some poignant pang of disappointed motherly ambitions, or possibly some pang of personal ambitions thwarted, led to the utterance of one malediction sharper than all the others by the mother. In a moment of sudden hysteria the old-fashioned revolver that had been on her mantelpiece for years had been seized by the daughter in a wild threat of suicide.

The mother seized her wrist. A violent physical struggle for the weapon followed. This was occurring just as Martin was making his way back through the house to the room, taking along with him the maid, Marie, huddled, frightened, against the hall wall at sound of the unseemly family quarrel.

There was a flash and a report in his very eyes as Martin opened the door. The revolver, he said, was unmistakably in the mother’s hands; but whether the discharge was accidental or intentional in heat of passion, Martin could not say.

And that angle of the story never was cleared up.

The mother had swooned. When it was clear to the frightened servants that the girl was dead, they had carried the mother to her room.

The plan of the two was quickly formed. In their clumsy way they concluded it would be best for all concerned if the revolver should be placed in the girl’s hand to indicate suicide. Martin placed it there, while Marie laboured with the hysterical mother, trying to instil in her mind, in which the entire terrible scene was a whirl, the idea that Elvira had, in fact, committed suicide.

As for the confession:

“I feel I was to blame in a way, sir,” concluded Martin, wiping his eyes. “After all I would have been a jailbird anyway if she hadn’t saved me, most like. I thought I could protect her, too, sir, by confessing. I supposed if I said I committed the murder that would settle it.”

Lanagan glanced at his watch. It was half-past one.

“There’s one more move yet, Chief,” he said, “and I go to press in thirty minutes.”

In a moment or two they had all reached the Hemingway home again, surprised to find it brilliantly lighted. Servants were running about frantically. An excited voice was at the telephone as the quartet walked through the door. It was the butler.

“Hurry! Hurry!” he was crying. “Hemingway’s! Pacific Avenue! For God’s sake hurry!”

“What is it?” demanded Lanagan.

“Carbolic, I think,” replied the butler. “She escaped from the nurse and got to the bathroom. She had been raving for an hour entirely out of her head crying to Elvira to forgive her—that she—” he stopped suddenly, his lips coming together in a taut line. “Another loyal family retainer,” thought Lanagan as he and the chief exchanged quick glances. “Only this one can keep his secret for all of me.”

They hurried to render first aid, but one look convinced the reporter and the policeman, used to deaths in violent form, that the troubled and frightfully burdened mother’s soul had gone to a higher court for judgment.

Lanagan raced back downstairs for the telephone. It was five minutes to two. By the accident of being on the ground he would have at least that tremendous exclusive of the mother’s suicide.

And that—good story as it was—was all the Enquirer printed, for it was all that I finally got from Lanagan just before the clock struck two.

Leslie, standing by the telephone, said, tentatively and curiously, when the receiver was hung up:

“What about the real story? Saving that for to-morrow?”

“No, Chief,” drawled Lanagan, full brother in the Fourth Estate. “No, Chief, that’s all the story. She’s dead, isn’t she? They have had about enough trouble, this family.”

V
THE AMBASSADOR’S STICK-PIN