 
Transcriber's Notes:
The Saintsbury Affair
frontispiece
THE SAINTSBURY AFFAIRByROMAN DOUBLEDAYAuthor of "The Hemlock Avenue Mystery," | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
CONTENTS | |
| CHAPTER | |
| I. | The Beginning of the Tangle. |
| II. | Two Lovely Ladies. |
| III. | The Unexpected Happens. |
| IV. | Crossed Wires. |
| V. | Bertillon Methods and Some Others. |
| VI. | The Frat Supper. |
| VII. | Chiefly Gossip. |
| VIII. | Some of Jean's Ways. |
| IX. | A Gleam of Light. |
| X. | Ways That Are Dark. |
| XI. | The Simmering Samovar. |
| XII. | On the Trail of Diavolo. |
| XIII. | The Samovar Explodes. |
| XIV. | Tangled Heart-Strings. |
| XV. | The Outlaw. |
| XVI. | The Gift-Bond. |
| XVII. | A Voice from the Past. |
| XVIII. | A Rescue. |
| XIX. | Cards on the Table. |
| XX. | The Ultimate Discovery. |
Illustrations | |
| As I came up, his listener emptied a chatelaine purse upon Barney's tray | Frontispiece |
| "He was Diavolo's partner," he said vehemently | Page 137 |
| "I believe it," said a voice that started us all | Page 186 |
| There lay a pathetic little heap on the daghestan rug on my floor | Page 290 |
The
Saintsbury Affair
CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNING OF THE TANGLE
Let me see where the story begins. Perhaps I can date it from the telephone invitation to dinner which I received one Monday from my dear and kind friend Mrs. Whyte.
"And see that you are just as clever and agreeable as your naturally morose nature will permit," she said saucily. "I have a charming young lady here as my guest, and I want you to make a good impression."
"Another?" I gasped. "So soon?"
"I don't wonder that your voice is choked with surprise and gratitude," she retorted, and I could see with my mind's eye how her eyebrows went up. "You don't deserve it,--I'll admit that freely. But I am of a forgiving nature."
"You are so near to being an angel," I interrupted, "that it gives me genuine pleasure to suffer martyrdom at your behest. I welcome the opportunity to show you how devotedly I am your slave. Who is the young lady this time?"
"Miss Katherine Thurston. Now if you would only talk in that way to her,--"
"I won't," I said hastily. "At least, not until her hair is as white as yours is,--it can never be as lovely. But for your sake I will undertake to be as witty and amiable and generally delightful as I think it safe to be, having due regard for the young lady's peace of mind,--." I rang off just in time to escape the "You conceited puppy!" which I knew was panting to get on the wire. Mrs. Whyte's speech was at times that of an older generation.
So that was how I came to go to Mrs. Whyte's dinner that memorable Monday evening, and to meet Katherine Thurston.
But now that I come to look at it in this historical way, I see that I shall have to begin a little farther back, or you won't understand the significance of what took place that night.
I already had another engagement for that evening, but I thought I could fit the two appointments in, by getting away from Mrs. Whyte's by ten o'clock. Under the circumstances she would forgive an early departure. My other engagement was of a peculiar and unescapable nature. It had come about in this way.
There was a man in our town who had always interested me to an unusual degree, though my personal acquaintance with him was of the slightest. He was an architect, Kenneth Clyde by name, and he had done some of the best public buildings in the State. He had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, and was related to half a dozen of the "Old families" of the town. (I am comparatively new myself. But I soon saw that Clyde belonged to the inner circle Of Saintsbury.) And yet, with all his professional success and his social privileges, there was something about the man that expressed an excessive humility. It was not diffidence or shyness,--he had all the self-possession that goes with good breeding. But he held himself back from claiming public credit or accepting any public place, though I knew that more than once it had been pressed upon him in a way that made it difficult for him to evade it. He persistently kept himself in the background, until his desire to remain inconspicuous almost became conspicuous in turn. He was the man, for instance, who did all the work connected with the organization of our Boat Club, but he refused to accept any Office. He was always ready to lend a hand with any public enterprise that needed pushing, but his name never figured on the committees that appeared in the newspapers. And yet, if physiognomy counts for anything, he was not born to take a back seat. He was approaching forty at this time, and in spite of his consistent modesty, he was one of the best known men in Saintsbury.
As I say, he had always interested me as a man out of the ordinary, and when he walked into my law office a few days before that telephone call from Mrs. Whyte, I was uncommonly pleased at the idea that he should have come to me for legal advice when he might have had anything he wanted from the older lawyers in town whom he had known all his life. I guessed at a glance that it was professional advice he wanted, from the curiously tense look that underlay his surface coolness.
"I have come to you, Mr. Hilton," he said directly, "partly because you are enough of a stranger here to regard me and my perplexities in an impersonal manner, and so make it easier for me to discuss them."
"Yes," I said encouragingly. He had hesitated after his last words as though he found it hard to really open up the subject matter.
"But that is only a part of my reason for asking you to consider my case," he went on with a certain repressed intensity. "I believe, from what I have seen of you, that you have both physical and moral courage, and that you will look at the matter as a man, as well as a lawyer."
I nodded, not caring to commit myself until I understood better what he meant.
"First, read this letter," he said, and laid before me a crumpled sheet which he had evidently been clutching in his hand inside of his coat pocket.
It was a half sheet of ruled legal cap, and in the center was written, in a bold, well-formed hand,----
"I need $500. You may bring it to my office Monday night at ten. No fooling on either side, you understand."
"Blackmail!" I said.
Clyde nodded. "What is the best way of dealing with a blackmailer?" he asked, looking at me steadily.
"That may depend on circumstances," I said evasively. I felt that, as he had suggested, he was trying to appeal to my sympathies as a man rather than to my judgment as a lawyer.
"I heard of one case," he said casually, "where a prominent man was approached by a blackmailer who had discovered some compromising secret, and he simply told the fellow that if he gave the story to the papers, as he threatened to do, he would shoot him and take the consequences, since life wouldn't be worth living in any event, if that story came out. I confess that course appeals to my common-sense. It is so conclusive."
"I infer, however, that you didn't take that tone with this fellow when he first approached you," I said, touching the paper on my desk. "This is not his first demand."
"No. The first time that it came, I was paralyzed, in a manner. I had been dreading something of that sort,--discovery, I mean,--for years. I had gone softly, to avoid notice, I had only half lived my life, I had felt each day to be a reprieve. Then he came,--and asked money for keeping my secret. It seemed a very easy way of escape. In a way, it made me feel safer than before. I knew now where the danger was, and how to keep it down. It was only a matter of money. I paid, and felt almost cheerful. But he came again, and again. He has grown insolent." He drew his brows together sternly as he looked at the written threat which lay before us. He did not look like a man afraid.
"Can you tell me the whole situation?" I asked. "If I know all the facts, I can judge better,--and you know that you speak in professional confidence."
"I want to tell you," he said. "I--he knew--the fact is, I was sentenced to be hanged for a murder some fifteen years ago in Texas. The sentence is still suspended over me. I escaped before it was executed."
A lawyer learns not to be surprised at any confession, for the depths of human nature which are opened to his professional eye are so amazing that he becomes accustomed to strange things, but I admit that I was staggered at my client's confidence. I picked up and folded and refolded the paper before I could speak quite casually.
"And no one knows that fact? Your name--?"
"I was known by another name at the time,--an assumed name. I'll tell you the whole story. But one word first,--I was and am innocent."
He looked at me squarely but appealingly as he spoke, and suddenly I saw what the burden was which he had been carrying for fifteen years,--nearly half his life.
"I believe you," I said, and unconsciously I held out my hand. He gripped it as a drowning man clutches a spar, and a dull flush swept over his face. His hand was trembling visibly as he finally drew it away, but he tried to speak lightly.
"That's what I couldn't induce the judge or jury to do," he said. "Let me tell you how it all came about. It was in August of 1895. I had graduated in June,--I was twenty-three,--and before settling down to my new profession I went off on a vacation trip with a fellow I had come to know pretty well at the University during my last year there. He was not the sort of a friend I cared to introduce to my family, but there are worse fellows than poor Henley was. He was merely rather wild and lawless, with an instinct for gambling which grew upon him. We went off avowedly for a lark,--to see life, Henley put it. I knew his tastes well enough to guess beforehand that the society to which he would introduce me would not be creditable. The Clydes are as well known in this State as Bunker Hill is in Boston, and I felt a responsibility toward the name. So I insisted that on our travels I should be Tom Johnson."
"I see. Then when the trouble came you were known by that name instead of your own?"
"Yes. That's how I was able to come back here and to go on living my natural life."
"That was fortunate. That situation was much easier to manage than if it had been the other way around."
Clyde had picked up a paper knife and was examining it with absent attention, and instead of answering my remark directly he looked up with a frank smile.
"You can't imagine what it means to me to be able to talk this over with you," he said. "All these years I have carried it--here. Why, it is like breathing after being half suffocated."
"I understand."
"You want to know the details, though," he went on more gravely. "We were together for several weeks, going from one city to another. Henley had a special faculty for striking up acquaintance with picturesque rascals, and for a time I found it very interesting as well as novel. It was a side of life I had never before come close to. But gradually I couldn't help seeing that Henley was helping out an uncommon knack with the cards by the tricks of a sharper. We quarrelled over it more than once, and things began to grow uncomfortable. The old irresponsible comradeship was chilled, though I didn't yet feel like cutting loose from him. One night we had been playing cards in a saloon in Houston, Texas,--Henley and I and two men we had picked up. They were rough and ready Westerners, and a sort to stand no fooling. We had all been drinking a little, but not enough to lose our heads. I saw Henley make a misdeal and I told him so. He was furious, and we all but came to blows in the quarrel that followed. I left him with the others and went off by myself. That evening had finally sickened me with the swine's husks I had been eating, and I suddenly determined to quit it then and there and get back to my own life, my own name, and my own people. I walked down to the station, found that a train for the north was just about to pull out, and jumped aboard. I was an hour away from Houston before I remembered something that made me change my hasty plan. I had left my bag in the room at the hotel, and though I didn't care about the clothes or the other things, there was-- Well, there is no reason why I should not tell you. There was a girl's picture in an inside compartment, and some letters, and I couldn't leave them to chance. I had simply forgotten all about that matter in my angry passion, but the thought now was like a dash of cold water, bringing me to my senses. I got out of the train at the next stop,--a place called Lester. It was just midnight. I found that the first train I could catch to take me back to Houston would go through at five in the morning, and I walked up and down that deserted platform,--for even the station agent went off to sleep after the midnight train went through,--for five mortal hours. I had time to think things over, and to realize that I had been playing with pitch as no Clyde had a right to."
He paused for an instant, as though he were living the moment over, but I did not speak. I wanted him to tell the story in his own way.
"I caught the five o'clock train back and was in Houston soon after six. I went at once to the hotel and to my room. Henley's room communicated with mine. The door between them was ajar, and I pushed it open to speak to him. He was leaning over the table, on which cards were scattered about, and he was quite dead, from a knife thrust between the shoulders."
Clyde had been speaking in a composed manner, like one telling an entirely impersonal tale, but at this point he paused and a look of embarrassment clouded his face.
"I find it hard to explain to you or to myself why I did so foolish a thing as I did next, but I was rather shaken up by weeks of dissipation, and the racketing of the night before and my excited, sleepless night had thrown me off my balance. When I saw Henley dead over the cards, I realized in a flash how bad it would look for me after my row with him in the saloon the night before. I jumped back into my own room and began stuffing my things into my bag pell-mell to make my escape."
"The worst thing you could have done."
"Of course. And it proved so. I had left my room-door ajar, a sweeper in the halls saw my mad haste, and it made him suspicious. When I stepped out of my room, the proprietor stopped me. Of course the whole thing was uncovered. I was arrested, tried for murder, and, as I told you, sentenced to be hanged." He finished grimly. His manner was studiedly unemotional.
"And yet you had a perfect alibi, if you could prove it."
"But I couldn't. No one knew I took that train. The train conductors were called, but neither of them remembered me. The station agent at Lester, with whom I had had some conversation about the first train back, was killed by an accident the next day. The fact that I was out of Houston from eleven until six was something I could not prove. And it was the one thing that would have saved me."
"But neither could they prove, I take it, that you were in the hotel that night."
"They tried to. The clerk testified that four men came in shortly after eleven and went up to Henley's room. One of them was Henley, two were strangers, and the fourth he had taken for granted to be me. My lawyer pressed him on that point, of course, and forced him to admit that he had not noticed particularly, but had assumed that it was I from the fact that he was with Henley, and because he was about my size and figure. Drinks had been sent up, and an hour later two of the men had quietly come down and gone out. Nothing further had been heard from our room until the sweeper reported in the morning that he had seen me acting like a man distracted, through the partly open door. Everything seemed to turn against me. I was bent on saving my name at any rate, so I could not be entirely open about my past history, and that prejudiced my case."
"What is your own theory of the affair and of the missing third man?" I asked.
"I suppose the men whom I had left with Henley in the saloon had picked up a fourth man for the game and gone to Henley's room. He probably tried to cheat again, and they were ready for him. One of them stabbed him. Then the other two waited quietly in the room while the actual slayer walked out, to make sure that he had a clear passage, and then they followed after he had had time to disappear. They were hard-bitted men, but not thugs."
"You were tried and sentenced. How did you get away?"
"After the sentence, and while I was on the way back to jail, I made my escape. I have always believed that the deputy sheriff who had me in charge gave me the opportunity intentionally. Certainly he fired over my head, and made a poor show at guessing my direction. I think he had doubts of the justice of the verdict and took that way of reversing the decision of the court, but of course I can never know."
"Then you came back here? This had been your home before?"
"Yes. It was the way to avoid comment. Kenneth Clyde was well known here, and nobody in Saintsbury even heard of the trial of one Tom Johnson in Houston. I have thought it best to go on living my life just as I should have done in any event. And I have done so, except that I have never-- But that doesn't matter." From the expression that swept over his face I guessed what the exception was. He had never dared to marry.
"Then this man--?" I prompted.
A fleeting smile passed over Clyde's face. He spoke with light cynicism.
"As you say, then this man. I had almost come to believe that the past was dead and buried and that I would be justified in forgetting it myself. Then this man came into my office one day, affected surprise at seeing me, called me Tom Johnson, and laughed in my face when I denied the name. I was panic-stricken. I bought his silence. Of course he came again. As I said at the beginning, I am tired of the situation." There was a tone in his voice that would have held a warning for the blackmailer if he had heard it.
"How much does the man know? Do you know whether he has anything to prove his charges?"
"It seems that he was in the court-house as a spectator during the trial. He didn't know me at the time, though he might, for he seems to have been in this neighborhood time and again,--at least in the State. He is a trouble man himself,--some ten years ago he shot and killed a State senator here in Saintsbury. He was acquitted, because he got some friends to swear that Senator Benbow had made a motion as though to draw a gun, though he was found afterwards to be unarmed. But popular anger was so aroused against him, he had to leave the State, and he has drifted down stream ever since,--pretty far down, I imagine; fairly subterranean at times. All this I have found out since he forced his acquaintance upon me. I knew nothing of him before."
"What is his name? Where is he to be found?"
"Alfred Barker. He has an office in the Phoenix Building at present. Whether he has any legitimate business I do not know. He hangs out under the shingle of the Western Land and Improvement Co., but I have a feeling that that is only a cover."
"A man who has lived that sort of a life is probably vulnerable," I said cheerfully. "I'll see what I can find out about him. In the meantime, I, as your attorney, will keep this appointment for you next Monday evening."
"I thought that would probably be your plan. But now that I have put it into your hands, I am more than half sorry I did not keep it to myself and meet him with a revolver."
I shook my head. "For a burnt child, you have curiously little respect for the fire of the law."
Clyde had risen, and he stood looking at me with an impersonal sternness that made his eyes hard.
"My life, and, what I value far more, my reputation, my name, are in that fellow's hands. And he is an unhung murderer,--his life is already forfeit."
"His time will come," I said hastily. My new client looked altogether too much as though he were disposed to hurry on the slow-paced law! I could not encourage such reflections.
Clyde nodded, but with an absent air, as though he were following his own thoughts rather than my words, and soon took his leave.
When I decided to take up the practice of the law, I had fancied, in my youthful ignorance, that it was a sort of glorified compound of a detective story and Gems of Oratory. I had now been at it for some years, and so far my detective instincts had been chiefly required in the search for missing authorities in the law books, and my oratorical gifts had been exercised almost exclusively on delinquent debtors who didn't want to pay their debts. You can therefore imagine that Clyde's interview left me pleasantly excited. This was the real thing! This was the case I long had sought and mourned because I found it not! Not for worlds would I have missed the opportunity of meeting his blackmailing correspondent. To face a rascal was no uncommon experience, unfortunately; but to face so complete and melodramatic a rascal, and to try to wrest from him some incriminating admission that would give me a controlling hold on him in my turn,--that was something that did not come often into the day's work.
Very much to my surprise, I found unexpected light upon the career of Alfred Barker not farther away than my own office. My first step was to set my clerk, Adam Fellows, to looking up the court and newspaper records of Barker's connection with the killing of Senator Benbow. When I mentioned his name to Fellows I saw by his sudden change of expression that I had touched some sore chord,--and if Fellows had an ambition it was to conceal his feelings, moreover.
"You know Barker, then?" I said abruptly.
"Yes," he said, in a very low voice,--and I guessed in what connection.
I may say here that Fellows was a souvenir of my first trial case and of an early enthusiasm for humanity. One day, not long after my admission to the bar, (this was before I came to Saintsbury,) the court assigned to me the defense of a young fellow who had no lawyer. He was a clerk in a city office, and was charged with embezzlement by his employers. The money had gone for race-track gambling, and he could not deny his guilt; but by bringing out the facts of his youth and his unfortunate associations, I was able to get a minimum sentence for him,--the best that could be expected under the circumstances. When his sentence expired, I was on the lookout for him, and took him into my own office as a clerk. I had nothing he could embezzle, for one thing, and the dogged stoicism with which he had met his fate interested me. Besides, I knew it would be difficult for him to get work, particularly as he did not have an engaging personality. I think that in a manner he was grateful, but he never could forget that he carried the stigma of a convict, and he imagined that everyone else was remembering it also. This moodiness had grown upon him instead of wearing off. It used to make me impatient,--but it is easy enough for one whose withers are unwrung to be impatient with the galled jade's tendency to wince.
"What do you know of him?" I asked.
"I know that where he is, there is deviltry, but no one ever catches him," he said bitterly. "Someone else will pay all right, but the law doesn't touch him."
"Did he get you into trouble?" I asked bluntly.
"He made me believe he could make a fortune for me. He kept me going with hopes that the next time, the next time, I would win enough to square things up. It was his doing, not mine, really. But he did nothing that the law takes note of." He spoke with unusual excitement and feeling, and I didn't think any good would come of a discussion of moral responsibility at that time.
"Well, look up everything possible about that affair when Benbow was killed," I said. "I want to see if there is anything in that which would give a hold on him."
"Oh, there won't be," he said, scornfully. "He plays safe. But if there is any justice in heaven, he will come a cropper some day. Only it won't be by process of law. No convict stripes for him."
"Let me know as soon as you find the record," I said, turning away. His bitterness only grew if you gave it opportunity.
I then took occasion to visit the Phoenix Building, in order to locate the office which I expected to visit the Monday evening following. I wanted to know my way without wasting time.
As I entered, I noticed a man standing before the building directory which hung opposite the elevators. He was a tall, athletic fellow, in clothes that suggested an engineer or fireman. His hat was pulled down over the upper part of his face, but his powerful, smooth-shaven jaw showed the peculiar blue tint of very dark men. All this I saw without consciously looking, but in a moment I had reason to notice him more closely. The elevator gate opened, and a man stepped out,--a rather shabby, untidy man, with a keen eye. He glanced at me carelessly, then his eye fell upon the tall young fellow before the bulletin board, and he smiled. He stepped up near him.
"Hello! You here?" he said, softly. Then, deliberately, "Are you married yet?"
The tall fellow turned and lunged toward him, but the other ducked and slipped adroitly out of his way and ran down to the open doorway and so into the street. The tall fellow made no attempt to follow. I think that lurch toward the other had been partly the result of surprise. But not wholly. He stood now, leaning against the wall, apparently waiting for the elevator, but I saw that his two fists had not yet unclenched themselves, and his blue-black jaw was squared in a way that told of locked teeth. He jerked his hat down farther over his face as he saw me looking at him, and turned away. He was breathing hard.
"Can you direct me to Mr. Barker's office?" I asked the elevator man.
"His office is in No. 23, second floor, but he ain't in. That was he that came down with me and went out."
"Oh, all right. I'll come again," I said, and turned away.
The tall young fellow had gone. Had he, too, come to look up Mr. Barker? At any rate, I should know Barker when we met again.
CHAPTER II
TWO LOVELY LADIES
I am trying to give you this story as it opened up step by step before me and around me, not merely as I came to see it afterwards, looking backward. But of course I shall have to select my scenes. The story ran sometimes, like a cryptogram, through other events that seemed at the time to mean something entirely different, and I also did some living and working and thinking along other lines through those days. But these matters I eliminate in telling the tale. They were equally important to me at the time but now they are forgotten, and the links of the story are the only things that stand out in my memory.
Mrs. Whyte's dinner was an important link, but before that there came another incident most significant, as I saw afterwards,--or, rather, two related incidents.
There was an old beggar on the street-corner right across from my office for whom I had an especial affection. Of course he made a show of being a merchant rather than a beggar, by having a tray of cut flowers in summer and hot peanuts in winter and newspapers at all seasons, on a tripod arrangement beside him; and the police knew better than to see if he sometimes held up a wayfarer for more than the price of his wares. I was fond of him because he was so imperturbably cheerful, rain or shine, and so picturesque and resourceful in flattery. He was an old soldier; and one leg that had danced in days agone, and that had most heedlessly carried him to the firing line in half a dozen battles of our own Civil War was buried at Gettysburg. Barney seemed to regard this as a peculiarly fortunate circumstance, since it had made it possible for him to use a crutch. That crutch was a rare and wonderful possession, according to Barney. Hearing him dilate on its convenience and comfortableness, you might almost come to believe that he meant it all.
Well, you'll understand from this that I not only liked but respected Barney, and I usually stopped to get a flower when I passed his stand on leaving my office. On that Monday,--that eventful and ever-to-be-remembered Monday,--I saw as I approached that Barney was holding forth in the spell-binding manner I knew, to another listener,--a young fellow, I thought at first. But as I came up, his listener emptied a chatelaine purse upon Barney's tray, and my surprised glance from the jingling shower of silver to the face of the impetuous donor showed me that it was a young girl,--a gallant, boyish-faced girl, whose eyes were shining into Barney's with the enthusiasm of a hero-worshipper.
"I'll never forget that,--never!" she cried, in a voice thrilled with emotion. "It was great." And on the instant she turned on her heel like a boy and marched off down the street.
I looked at Barney with suspended disapproval, and for once, to do him credit, he looked abashed.
"Faith, and who'd think the chit would have all that money about her and her that reckless in shcattering it about!" he exclaimed. Then, recovering himself, he thrust the coins carelessly in his pocket (perhaps to get them out of my accusing sight) and ran on, confidentially,--
"It's the Lord's own providince that she turned it over to me, instead of carrying it about to the shops where temptation besets a young girl on all sides. It's too full their pretty heads are of follolls and such, for it's light-headed they are at that age, and that's the Lord's truth."
"You worked on her sympathies," I said sternly. "You saw she was a warm-hearted young girl, and you played up to her. You made yourself out a hero, you rascal."
"You're the keen gentleman," said Barney admiringly. "Sure and you'd make a good priest, saving your good looks, for you'd see the confession in the heart before a poor lying penitent had time to think of a saving twist to give it that might look like the truth and save him a penance."
"Never mind me and my remarkable qualities," I said severely. "What were you telling that girl?"
Barney bent over his flowers to shift the shades which protected them from the sun, but after a moment's hesitation he answered, without looking up.
"She has the way with her, that bit! When she looked me in the eye and says 'Tell me what I ask,' I knew my commanding officer, and it's not Barney that risks a court-martial for disobedience! No, sir! If she didn't keep at me to tell her how I lost my leg, now! Your honor couldn't have held out agin her, not to be the man you are."
I knew the story of that lost leg, and how shy Barney was of retailing that heroic bit of his history, and I wondered less at the girl's emotion than at her success in drawing the hidden tale from him. He didn't tell it to many. While I marvelled he looked up with the twinkle I couldn't help liking.
"She didn't give me time to tell her that that bit story wasn't the kind you pay to hear, but it would maybe have chilled the warm heart of her to have me push her silver back, and I wouldn't do that even if I had to keep the money to save her feelin's, the darlin'."
"Awfully hard on you, I know," I said, letting us both down with the help of a little irony. "Where's my rosebud, you rascal?"
He lifted a slender vase from the covered box beneath his table and brought out the flower he had reserved for me. It was a creamy white bud, deepening into a richer shade that hinted at stores of gold at the sealed-up heart. As he held it out silently, something in his whimsical face told me his thought.
"Yes, you are right," I said casually, as I took the flower. "It does look like her."
Barney's eyes wrinkled appreciatively. "There was a mistake somewhere, sir, when you were born outside of Eire. But you got it straight this time."
I went home to dress for Mrs. Whyte's dinner, and when I was ready I slipped into my pocket, to show my hostess, a little locket which held a miniature of my mother. Mrs. Whyte and my mother had been schoolmates,--that was why she was so much kinder to me than I could ever have deserved on my own account,--and I knew she would like to see the picture. I opened the case to look at it myself (my mother is still living, thank Heaven, and unchangeably young) and I was struck with the youthful modernity of it. Perhaps it was because the old style of dressing the hair had come back that it looked so of the present generation rather than of the past. It had been painted for my father in the days of their courtship, and on his death I had begged for the portrait, though my mother had refused to let me have the old case he carried. I had therefore spent some time and care in selecting a new case and had decided finally on one embellished with emeralds set in the form of a heart. I thought it symbolical of my dear mother's young-heartedness, but I found out afterwards that she especially objected to emeralds! Such are the hazards run by a mere man when he tries to deal with the Greater Mysteries. I have dwelt on this locket because it played an important part in after affairs,--and a very different part from what I designed for it when I slipped it into my pocket to show it to Mrs. Whyte.
It is a good two miles from my lodgings to Mrs. Whyte's, but I was early and I wanted exercise, so I walked. It was within a few minutes of seven when I came to her highly respectable street. As I turned the corner of her block my attention was caught by the sight of a young girl in excited colloquy with the driver of a cab, which stood before the house adjoining Mrs. Whyte's. I think I should have looked for a chance to be of service in any case, but when I saw, as I did at once, that the girl with so gallant a bearing was the same girl who had impulsively emptied her purse among Barney's flowers, and that the driver seemed to be bullying her, I felt that it was very distinctly my affair.
"But I tell you that I have no money," she was saying with dramatic emphasis, "and there is nobody at home, and I can't get in, and if you will come to-morrow--"
"Gammon," the man interrupted roughly. (She had not chosen her jehu with discrimination.) "You can't work that game on me--"
"I can give you my watch as a pledge," she said eagerly.
By that time I was near enough to interfere. (I always was lucky. Here I was ready if necessary to go through fire and water--a certain amount of each, at any rate--to get a better knowledge of the frank-hearted girl whose enthusiasm had so touched me in the afternoon, and all that Fate asked was a cabman's fare and a few stern words delivered with an air! Fate is no bargainer worthy the name.)
"It was most awfully good of you to come to the rescue," said the girl, in the direct and gallant manner that I felt was a part of herself. "I was just beginning to wonder what under the sun I should do. You see, I--I spent all my money down town, and I took a cab up, thinking I'd get the money here to pay the man, and now I find the house locked up and not a soul at home,--and me on the doorstep like a charity child without a penny!"
"That, was unlucky, certainly," I said. "I am more than glad that I could be of service. But now that the cabman is disposed of, how are you going to get into the house?"
She turned and looked at the house dubiously.
"I--don't--know. Unless I find an open window,--just a teeny one would be big enough. But Gene is very particular about my not being undignified. I think," she added, with a delightfully confidential smile, "that Gene would rather have me be dignified and hungry than undignified and comfortable. Under those circumstances would you advise me to hunt for an open window?"
"It's a delicate point to decide. Who is Gene? That might have some bearing on the question."
She looked surprised at my ignorance.
"Oh, he's my brother,--my twin. He lives in that house. So does Mr. Ellison. He's my guardian. But it surely looks as though nobody were at home!"
"Don't you live there, too?" I demanded in surprise.
"Oh, no. I'm at Miss Elwood's school at Dunstan. I don't mean I am there this minute, because of course I am here; but I'm supposed to be there. I just came down to surprise Gene because it is our birthday--you see we have only one between us--and now I can't get in!" And she threw out her hands dramatically.
(The worst part of trying to reproduce Miss Benbow's language accurately is that it sounds silly in type, but it never sounded silly when she was looking at you with her big, ambiguous eyes, and you were waiting, always in affectionate amusement, for the next absurdity. I sometimes wondered whether that frank air of hers was nature's disguise for a maid's subtlety, or whether her subtle witchery lay really in the fact that she was so transparent that you could see her thoughts breathe.)
"I have always heard that it was wise," I said, with a grandfatherly air, "to save out at least a street-car fare before flinging all one's broad gold pieces to the beggar in the street."
She looked a little startled, then swiftly comprehending. I knew she must have bit her inner lip to keep from smiling, but she spoke sedately.
"A street-car fare wouldn't help me to get into the house, would it? And that's the trouble now. Though of course if I had had a street-car fare I shouldn't have had any trouble with the cabman and you wouldn't have had to come to the rescue, so another time I'll be careful and remember--"
"Heavens, and they say a woman isn't logical!" I cried. "I hadn't thought out the sequence. I'm mighty glad that you were not wise when you flung away your purse since I was going to so profit by it. But now the question is, what are you going to do? I can't go off and leave you, like a charity child on the doorstep without a penny, not to mention a dinner. Haven't you any friends in the neighborhood?"
"Not what you would call friends, exactly, though I suppose they wouldn't let me starve if they knew. There's a Mrs. Whyte,--"
"Of course! In that red brick house next door. What luck! I'm going there for dinner."
She glanced at my evening garb and drew down the corners of her lips comically. "She won't like having a charity child thrust upon her when she is having a dinner party."
"Oh, that won't make the slightest difference in the world," I protested eagerly. "Mrs. Whyte is the kindest woman,--and besides, it's your birthday,--"
She looked at me under her lashes. "You're just a man. You don't understand," she said, with large tolerance. "See how I am dressed,--shirt-waist and linen collar! I didn't prepare for a party. Oh, I believe Gene is having a birthday party somewhere,--that's why everybody is away! And me supperless! Isn't it a shame?" She looked at me with tragedy on her face,--and a delicious consciousness of its effectiveness in the corner of her eye.
"Why didn't you come home earlier?" I asked, wondering (though it really wasn't my business) what she had been doing since I saw her leave Barney.
"You mean after I left that perfectly beautiful old soldier? How did you know about him and me, by the way?"
"Oh, I'm a friend of his, too. I happened to be quite near. My name, by the way, is Robert Hilton. I'll be much obliged if you'll remember it."
"Why, of course I'll remember. My name is Jean Benbow, and it is so nearly the same as Gene's because we are twins, but really his name is Eugene, and when he does something to make himself famous I suppose they will call him that. Well, after the soldier, and I wish I had had fifty times as much to give him, though that makes a sum that I simply can't do in my head,--not that it matters, because he didn't get it,--I remembered that I was going to get a birthday present for Gene, but I didn't remember, you see, that I hadn't any money. I don't think money is a nice thing to have on your mind, anyway. So I went to a bookstore and looked at some books and the first thing I knew they were closing up, and I hadn't yet decided. Have you ever noticed how time just flies when you are doing something you are interested in, and then if it is lessons or the day before a holiday or anything like that, how it literally drags?"
"I have noticed that phenomenon,--and Time is giving an example of flying this very minute. Really, I think you'd better come over to Mrs. Whyte's--"
"Oh, there's Minnie coming back now! She'll let me in," Miss Benbow interrupted me. A bareheaded young woman, from her dress evidently a housemaid, was hurriedly crossing the service court toward the Ellison back door, and without further words Miss Benbow started toward her across the lawn.
"Wave your hand if it is all right. I'll wait," I called after her.
The maid halted when she saw that fleet figure crossing the grass, they conferred a moment, then Miss Benbow waved a decisive hand to me, and they disappeared together in the rear of the house. Something ran through my brain about the ceasing of exquisite music,--I wished I could remember the exact words, because they seemed so to fit the occasion. Miss Benbow certainly had a way of keeping your attention on the qui vive.
Even after I had made my bow before Mrs. Whyte and had been presented to the beautiful Miss Thurston, I had intervals of absent-mindedness during which I wondered what Miss Benbow could be doing all alone in that big house. This was all the more complimentary to her memory, because Miss Thurston was a young woman to occupy the whole of any man's attention under ordinary or even moderately extraordinary circumstances. I had to admit that this time Mrs. Whyte had played a masterstroke. And that does not spell overweening conceit on my part, either! It required no special astuteness to read the concealed cryptogram in Mrs. Whyte's plans. I had had experience! So, unless I made a wild guess, had Miss Thurston. There could be no other explanation, consistent with my self-respect, of the cold dignity, the pointed iciness, that marked her manner toward me. She was a stately young woman by nature, but mere stateliness does not lead a young woman to fling out signs of "Keep off the grass" when a young man is introduced. I guessed at once that she had experienced Mrs. Whyte's friendly interest in the same (occasionally embarrassing) way that I had, and that she wished me to understand from the beginning that she was not to be regarded as particeps criminis in any schemes which Mrs. Whyte might be entertaining regarding my life, liberty, and happiness. Her intent was so clear that it amused as well as piqued me, and I set myself to being as good company as my limited gifts made possible. I knew that it was good policy, in such a case, to give Mrs. Whyte no reason for shaking her lovely locks at me afterwards; but partly I exerted myself to do my prettiest because Miss Thurston attracted me to an extraordinary degree. That does not indicate any special susceptibility on my part, either. She was (and is, I am happy to say,) one of the most charming women I have ever met. No, that is not the word. She made no effort to charm. She merely was. She wrapped herself in a veil of aloofness, sweet and cool, and looked out at you with a wistful, absent air that made you long to go into that chill chamber where she dwelt and kiss some warmth and tenderness upon her lips and a flash into her dreamy eye. I'm afraid that, in spite of my disclaimer, you will think me susceptible. Well, you may, then. I admit that I determined, within five minutes after my first bow, that I was not going to lose the advantage of knowing Miss Thurston, or permit her to forget me. (I cemented this determination before the evening was over with an act which had consequences I could never have anticipated.)
I am not going to dwell in detail upon the incidents of that dinner, because I want to get to the extraordinary events that followed it; but there were one or two matters that I must mention, because of the bearing they had on after events.
"I hear," said Mr. Whyte at a pause in the chatter, "that they are talking of nominating Clyde for mayor."
I happened to be looking at Miss Thurston when he spoke, and I saw a sort of breathless look come over her, as though every nerve were listening.
"Do you think he would take it?" Mrs. Whyte asked.
"That's the rub, confound the man. I don't understand Clyde. If ever there was a man fitted for public life, it is he. His father was governor, his grandfather was a United States senator, and he has all the qualities and faculties that made them distinguished. Yet here he buries himself in a private office and barricades himself against all public honors and preferment. I don't understand it."
(I did. I had wondered myself, but now I understood.)
"Perhaps he doesn't care for the sort of thing that other men value," said Miss Thurston. I fancied a trace of bitterness under her sweet indifference.
"It isn't that," said Mr. Whyte, frowningly. "He is thoroughly alive. And he doesn't keep out of public matters so long as he can work behind a committee. Everybody knows what he has done for the city without letting his name get into the papers. I think it's a crank notion he's got."
"It probably goes back to some disappointing love affair," said Mrs. Whyte, impressively. "That sort of thing will take the ambition out of a man like--like poison."
"But wouldn't we have heard of it?" asked Miss Thurston, lifting her penciled eyebrows. "We have known Kenneth Clyde all his life, you and I, and there never has been anything talked of--"
"There wouldn't be," interrupted Mrs. Whyte. "He wouldn't talk. But what else, I ask you, could change the reckless, ambitious, arrogant boy that he was,--you know he was, Katherine,--into the abnormally modest man he has become,--"
"I don't think he is abnormally modest," Miss Thurston interrupted in her turn. "He merely doesn't care for newspaper fame,--and who does? He has grown into a finer man than his early promise. If Saintsbury can get him for mayor,--"
"He won't take it," Mr. Whyte said pessimistically. "You'd have to hypnotize him to make him accept."
"Do you believe in hypnotism, Mr. Hilton?" Mrs. Whyte turned to me, evidently fearing that I would feel "out" of this intimate conversation.
"Believe that it can be exercised? Why, yes, I suppose there is no doubt of that. But I don't believe I should care to let anyone experiment on me.
"Fake. That's what it is," said Mr. Whyte. "Superstition."
"Now, Carroll, I know you're terribly wise, but you don't know everything," said Mrs. Whyte. "I'm sure I sometimes know what you are thinking--"
"That's telepathy, my angel, not hypnotism. Only you don't. You think you do, but I'll bet I could fool you nine times out of--nineteen!"
"I once saw a girl who was hypnotized, and it was horrible," said Miss Thurston. "She was lying in a show window of a shop, home in Blankville. She had been put to sleep, I learned, by some hypnotist who was exhibiting on the vaudeville stage, and who invited people to come up from the audience. I could just imagine how the pretty, silly, ignorant girl had been dared to go up. Then he was to awaken her publicly on the stage after forty-eight hours, and in the meantime she was exhibited on a cot in the window of a shop as an advertisement. I can't make you understand how unspeakably horrible it seemed to me."
"Where do you suppose her soul was?" asked Mrs. Whyte curiously.
"I don't know. But I know that there is something wicked about separating the soul and body. It is a partial murder."
"Bet you she was shamming," said Mr. Whyte, cynically.
"Oh, no, it was real,--terribly real," she cried. I had no opinions on the subject, but I thought Miss Thurston's earnestness very becoming, it brought such a spark into her dark eyes and broke up her rather severe tranquillity by a touch of undeniable feeling. But Mr. Whyte was unmoved.
"My dear Katherine, if there were any secret means by which one person could control the will of another and make him do what the controlling will commanded, the trusts would have bought it up long ago. A knowledge of how to do that would be worth millions,--and the millions would be ready for the man who could teach the trick."
"There are some things that money cannot buy," said Miss Thurston quietly.
"I never happened to run across them," said the cynical Whyte.
"I have happened to run across things enough that money wouldn't buy," said Mrs. Whyte, significantly.
But Miss Thurston took up his challenge (which I guessed was flung out for that purpose) with a fervor that transformed her.
"Money cannot buy knowledge," she cried. "To know how to control another's soul may be wicked knowledge,--I believe it is,--but it is knowledge nevertheless, and it is not at the command of your millionaires. Money cannot buy any of the best things in the world. It cannot buy love or loyalty or faith--or knowledge."
"You talk like Ellison," said Whyte, with good-humored contempt. "He goes on about knowledge of hidden forces, and I believe he is ready to believe in every charlatan that comes along and claims to know about the mysteries of nature or how to extract gold from sea-water, or to use the sun's rays to run his automobile."
"I'm glad he cares about something," said Mrs. Whyte, impatiently. "Certainly he doesn't care about anything human. He is a cold-blooded machine."
"Well," said Whyte, judicially, "he has done pretty well by the Benbow children."
"How has he done well by them? Eugene has grown up in his house, to be sure, but he has grown up without much help from his uncle, I can tell you that. And Jean has been poked off at school when she ought to have been coming out in society."
"Miss Benbow is at home this evening," I contributed. "I happened to meet her on my way here. She said she had come down from school to celebrate her birthday with her brother."
"Oh, is that so? Well, I'll warrant her uncle didn't know she was coming, nor will he know that she has been here when she is gone."
"She strikes me as a young lady who would make her presence noticed," I suggested.
"She is a dear child," said Miss Thurston, warmly. "I must look her up to-morrow. I haven't seen much of her, but I know Gene, and I am devoted to him."
Now do you wonder that I liked Miss Thurston? I liked her so much that I renewed my vow that she should not slip off into the outer circle of bowing acquaintanceship; and if she was afraid to be nice to me because she regarded me as in sympathy with Mrs. Whyte's matchmaking schemes, I would clear her mind of that apprehension without delay. I seized the opportunity immediately we were alone together.
"It is more than kind of Mrs. Whyte to give me such a chance to know her friends," I said. We were supposed to be looking at Mr. Whyte's books,--which were worth seeing. "Just because a man is engaged is no sign that he doesn't enjoy pleasant society."
"Oh!" she breathed.
"Mrs. Whyte doesn't know," I said, looking at her steadily.
She laughed softly, and a color and kindness came into her face that made her deliciously human.
"I see! But there is someone--?"
"There certainly is," I said, and drew the little miniature of my mother from my pocket. "Don't let Mrs. Whyte see it." (She would have recognized it!)
"How sweet she is!" she exclaimed. "I don't wonder!"
"The sweetest woman I ever knew," I said, and took the locket back jealously. My jest somewhat irked me now, with those candid eyes looking surprise at me from the picture. "And now will you be friends with me, instead of treating me as though I probably needed a snubbing to keep me on my good behavior?"
"The very best of friends," she cried, and laughed so merrily that Mr. Whyte, from the other side of the room, called out with interest,--
"You young people seem to be having a very good time. What's the joke?"
"Carroll!" Mrs. Whyte checked him in a warning undertone,--at which Miss Thurston and I looked at each other and laughed silently. I have no doubt the poor dear lady thought her plot was brewing beautifully. It was a shame to plot against her, but then it made her happy for the time. And it did most completely break down the icy barrier thrown out by Miss Thurston, so I tried to stifle the protests of my conscience. My judgment came later,--judgment, sentence, and execution. But I had a very good time that evening.
I had ordered a taxicab at a quarter before ten, so that I might waste no time getting down to the Phoenix building for the appointment with Alfred Barker. As I went down the walk to the street, I glanced at the silent house in the next lot. There was no light in any window. I indulged in a moment's conjecture as to where Miss Benbow could be, but even as the thought went through my mind, I saw a light flare up in the corner room downstairs. Miss Benbow was exploring, then. Or the rest of the family had come home. Certainly I must manage somehow to see her again.
But I confess I completely forgot both Miss Benbow and Miss Thurston as my cab whirled me down to the business part of town. I concentrated my mind on the question of how to deal with the blackmailer, and tried to prepare myself beforehand for his probable lines of attack or defense. At the same time I told myself judicially that the situation might develop in some unexpected way.
It did. Most completely unexpected. I shall have to tell it in detail.
CHAPTER III
THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS
I went directly to the Phoenix Building, on the second floor of which Barker had his office under cover of the name of the Western Land and Improvement Company. The door was ajar, and the gas was burning inside, so I went in. The room was empty. I tried the door of an inner office, but found it locked, and by the curtained glass of the door I could see that there was no light in that room. I inferred that Barker had been called away, and had left the door open for Clyde.
I closed the door, not wishing to have Barker see me from the hall and turn back, and sat down by the desk under the gaslight to await his return. On the desk were a few circulars of the Western Land and Improvement Company which looked as though they had served the purpose of giving verisimilitude to Mr. Barker's office for a long time. I guessed the same theatrical and decorative mission in the display baskets of apples, sheaves of heavy-headed wheat, and samples of other grains and fruits which adorned the room--though somewhat dustily. I had soon exhausted the visible means of supporting meditation, and my thoughts went back to the evening at the Whytes'. I took my mother's miniature from my pocket, and looked at it with a rueful consciousness that she would most sweetly and conclusively disapprove of the use which I had made of her counterfeit. She would ask if my legal training had so perverted my instinct for simple truth that I could justify sophistries like that!
I had been lecturing myself in her name for some minutes, holding the miniature up before me to give point to the lesson, when I suddenly had that queer feeling--you know it--of being watched. I felt I was not alone. I jumped to my feet and looked about me. The room was quite empty except for the desk, a chair or two besides mine, and the baskets of fruit and grain which stood on a low table by the window. If there was any person on the premises, he must be in the unlighted inner room with the locked door. Instantly it flashed upon me that Barker was probably in there, waiting for Clyde. He had so arranged things that, hidden himself, he could survey the outer room, and when I entered instead of Clyde, he simply lay perdu. In that case, there was no use waiting for his return by way of the hall! I returned the locket to my pocket, looked ostentatiously at my watch, picked up my cane, and left the room. He would suppose my patience exhausted.
But I did not go down the stairs. Instead I walked to the end of a short diverging hall which commanded a view of the door. If Barker was inside, he would have to come out sometime, unless he took the fire escape, and I could wait as late as he could. I wanted to meet him, also I wanted to see if my queer sensation of being watched had any foundation in fact.
I had waited perhaps fifteen minutes when the rattle of the elevator broke the silence. It stopped at the second floor, and a man came rapidly down the main hall and turned toward the office of the W.L.&I. Co. It was Barker himself! I recognized him perfectly. So my intuitions had been merely a feminine case of nerves! I was not a little disgusted with myself.
I lingered a few moments, (so as to give Barker a chance to see that he had not kept me waiting), then I sauntered slowly in the direction of the office. I was opposite the elevator when I was startled by a shot. For a moment I did not realize that the sound came from Barker's room. When I did, I made a jump toward it, and the elevator man, who had been waiting since Barker got out, came only a step behind me. We pushed the door open,--it yielded at once,--and there, outstretched on the floor, lay Barker. I dropped on my knee beside him and turned him over. He turned astonished and inquiring eyes upon me, and made a slight motion with his hand, but even while I was holding up his head, the consciousness faded from his eyes, his head fell forward, and I knew it was a dead man whom I laid down upon the bare floor of his dingy office. I had never before seen a man die, and the solemnity of the event swept everything else out of my mind for the moment. But soon I began to realize the situation.
"Do you see a weapon anywhere about?" I asked the elevator man, glancing myself about the room.
"No, sir. There ain't none."
"Then he was murdered, and his murderer is in there," I said in a low voice, indicating the inner office by a glance.
The man immediately backed toward the door,--and I didn't blame him. It gives one a curious feeling to think of interfering with someone who has no restraining prejudices against taking the life of people with whom he is displeased. But for the credit of my superior civilization, I could not join the retreat.
"I'm going in," I said, and laid my hand on the doorknob. The door was locked.
"Is there anyone on this floor at this time?" I asked the elevator man. "No, sir."
"Or in the building?"
"The watchman."
"Find him. Or, first, telephone to the police station. Then send the watchman here and then go out on the street and try to find a policeman. Bring in anybody who looks equal to breaking in the door. I'll wait here and see that he doesn't get out--if I can prevent it."
The man seemed glad to go, and I took a position at one side of the inner door with my hand on the back of a stout office chair. An unarmed man does feel at a disadvantage before a gun! The very silence seemed full of menace.
In a few minutes there was a sound of running feet in the hall, and the watchman came in.
"He won't be in there by this time," he said at once. "The fire escape runs by the window!" And with the courage of assured safety he opened the door with a pass key. The room was empty, and the window, open to the fire escape, showed that the watchman's surmise was justified. The escape ran down to an alley that opened in turn upon the street. The murderer could have made his descent and joined the theater crowds on the street without the slightest difficulty. He had had at least ten minutes' clear time before we looked vainly out into the night after him.
We were still at the window when the police arrived,--the officer on the beat, whom the elevator man had soon found, and a sergeant with another man from the station. The sergeant took charge.
"Man dead," he said briefly. "And the murderer gone by the window, eh? Tell me what you know about it."
I told him the facts as I have given them above. He lit the gas in the private office and examined the door between the rooms.
"Easy enough," he said.
The upper half of the door consisted of four panes of glass, behind which hung a flimsy curtain. But the lower right-hand pane was gone, leaving merely an open space before the curtain.
"He sat here watching for him through the curtain,--dark in here, light on the outside,--and then, when he came in, he shot through this opening without unlocking the door, dropped the curtain, and quietly went out by the window. He could be five blocks from here by the time you telephoned, and where he may be now,--well, the devil knows. Here is where he sat waiting."
We all looked with interest at the inner room. A chair had been drawn up in front of the door and beside it was a table with a basket of apples on it. The murderer had been munching apples while waiting for his victim! The peelings and cores had been dropped into an office waste-basket beside the chair. It was a curious detail, gruesome just because it was so commonplace and matter of fact. I shivered as I turned away.
By this time the coroner had arrived. He immediately took possession of the premises. I followed his every movement as he went from one room to the other, for I was by no means easy in my mind as to the revelations that might develop. If Barker had committed any of his profitable secrets to writing, his death would not of necessity clear the slate for Kenneth Clyde! But they did not seem to make any compromising discoveries. The desk in the outer office held nothing whatsoever but the decoy circulars which I had already examined, a dried bottle of ink, and some unused pens and penholders. The inner office held a cheap wooden table, but the drawer in it was empty. There was nothing on the table but the basket of apples. The coroner then went through Barker's pockets. He laid out on the floor, and then listed in a note-book, these items:
A worn purse, with eighty dollars in bills.
Three dollars and fifteen cents in loose change.
A ring with six keys.
A narrow memorandum book, worn on the edges.
A pocket-knife, handkerchief, and a small comb.