The account of Molly's dinner with Tony Ford was given Sunday morning by Molly herself to George and the chief in the Whitney home. I went there in the afternoon—dread of possible developments drew me like a magnet—and heard the news. It was more ominous than even I, steeled and primed for ill tidings, had expected. I didn't say much. There was no use in showing my disbelief; besides if they suspected its strength there was a possibility of their confidence being withheld from me. I had to hear everything, be familiar with every strand in the net they were weaving round the woman of whose guilt they were now certain.
George was going to call somewhere on Fifth Avenue, and I walked up with him, for the pleasure of his company he supposed, in reality to hear in detail how he and the chief had pieced into logical sequence the broken bits of information.
Roughly speaking, he said, "it's this way: Barker was the brains of the combination, Ford and Miss Whitehall the instruments he used. Ford did the killing and was paid. Miss Whitehall's part, which was puzzling before, is now clear. She takes her place as The Woman in the Case, the spider that decoyed the fly into the web."
He paused for me to answer, but I could say nothing.
"
It was one of the most ingenious plots I've ever come up against. A master mind conceived it and must have been days perfecting it. Think of the skill with which every detail was developed, and those two alibis—Ford's and Barker's. How carefully they were carried out. That afternoon visit of Harland to Miss Whitehall was planned. Barker followed it and heard that all was ready—the trap set and the quarry coming. Then he went up to the floor above establishing his presence there, and knowing, when Harland left, that the girl was waiting below to meet and hold him in the front room. Then comes Tony Ford, finds Harland and Miss Whitehall, apologizes and goes through to the private office where Barker is lying low. That the murder was committed there is proved by the two blood spots. Ford established his alibi by leaving; Barker's is already established—he is in the room above unable to get out without being seen. Even if a crime had been discovered, they were both as safe from suspicion as if they'd been in their own homes.
""
Miss Whitehall and Barker stay in the Azalea Woods Estates office till the excitement in the street subsides. They're perfectly safe there; the police, when they come, are going to go to the floor above. When the crowd disperses they leave by the service stairs, she first, Barker a short while afterward. The building and the street are deserted, but even if he is seen, nobody knows enough at that time to question his movements. After that it all goes without a hitch, even the arrest of the chauffeur was all to the good, as it delayed the search for two days. When it's known that he has voluntarily disappeared, what's the explanation? He's welched on his associates and found it best to take to the tall timber. At this moment he's probably congratulating himself on his success. There's just one thing that, so far, he hasn't been able to accomplish—get his girl.""
"
I walked along, not answering. It was pretty sickening to hear how straight they had it. But there was one weak spot; at least I thought it was weak.
Just why do you think a girl like Miss Whitehall—a woman without a spot or stain on her—would lend herself to an affair like that?
Perfectly simple, he answered. "She expects to marry Barker. Whether she loves him or his money, her actions prove that she is ready to join him whenever he sends for her—ready to do what he tells her. He's a tremendous personality, stronger than she, and he's bent her to his will."
Oh, rot! I said. "You can't bend a perfectly straight woman to help in such a crime unless she's bent that way by nature, and she isn't."
He grinned in a complacent, maddening way.
I guess Barker could. He's as subtle as the serpent in Eden. Besides, how can you be so sure what kind of a girl she is? Who knows anything of these Whitehalls? They came from the West two years ago and settled on a farm—quiet, ladylike women—but not a soul has any real information about them or their antecedents. And they haven't given out much. They've been curiously secretive all along the line. I'm not saying the girl's a natural born criminal—she doesn't look the part—but you'll have to admit her speech and her actions are not those of a simple-minded rustic beauty. In my opinion she's fallen under Barker's spell, and he's molded her to his purpose. He's the one, he's the brain. She and Ford were only the two hands.
We'd reached the place he was bound for, and I was glad to break away. I wanted to think, and the more I thought the more wild and fantastic and incredible it seemed. A week ago a girl like any other girl, and today suspected of complicity in a primitively savage crime. I thought of the case they were building up against her and I thought of her in her room that morning, and it seemed the maddest nightmare. Then her face that day in the Whitney office rose on my memory, the stealthily watching eyes with their leaping fires, the equivocations, the lies! I walked for the rest of the afternoon, miles, somewhere out in the country. My brain was dried like a sponge in the sun as I came home—I couldn't get anywhere, couldn't get beyond that fundamental conviction that it wasn't true. I think if she'd confessed it with her own lips I'd have gone on persisting she was innocent.
Two days after that a chain of events began that put an end to all inaction and plunged the Harland case deeper than ever into sinister mystery. I will write them down in the order in which they occurred.
The first was on Tuesday—the Tuesday night following Molly's dinner with Tony Ford. That night an unknown man attacked Ford in his room, leaving him for dead.
For some years Ford had lived in a lodging house on the East Side near Stuyvesant Park. The place was decent and quiet, run by a widow and her daughter, the inmates of a shabby-genteel class—rather an odd place for a man of Ford's proclivities to house himself. It was one of those old-fashioned, brown-stone fronts, set back from the street behind a little square of garden, a short flagged path leading to the front door.
On the evening of the attack Ford had come in about half-past eight, and, after a few words with his landlady, who was sitting in the reception room, had gone upstairs. A little after ten, as they were closing up for the night, there was a ring at the bell and the door was opened by the servant, a Swede. The widow was as economical with her gas as lodging-house keepers usually are, and the Swede said she could only dimly see the figure of a man in the vestibule. He asked for Mr. Anthony Ford, and she told him Mr. Ford was in and directed him to a room on the third floor back. Without more words he entered and went up the stairs. After locking the door she followed him, being on her way to bed. When she reached the third floor he was standing at Ford's door, and, as she ascended to the fourth, she heard his knock and Ford's voice from the inside call out, "Hello, who's that?"
When the police asked her about the man's appearance her description was meager. He had worn the collar of his overcoat turned up and kept on his hat. All that she could make out in the brief moment when he crossed the hall to the stairs was that his eyes looked bright and dark, that he wore glasses, and that he had a large aquiline nose. She thought he had a white mustache, but on this point was uncertain, as the upturned collar hid the lower part of his face.
Babbitts, who reported the affair for the Dispatch and for the Whitney office on the side, questioned the girl carefully. She was stupid, not long landed, and could only be sure of the nose and the glasses. But one thing he elicited from her was an important touch in this impressionist picture—the man was small. When he passed her in the hall she noticed that he was not so tall as she was, and he moved quickly and lightly as he went up the stairs.
On the third floor front were two rooms, one vacant, one occupied by a boy named Salinger, a clerk in a near-by publishing house. Salinger came in at half-past ten, and as he passed Ford's door heard in the room men's voices, one loud, one low. A sentence in the raised voice—it did not sound like Ford's—caught his ear. The tone denoted anger, likewise the words: "I've come for something more than talk. I've had enough of that."
Knowing Ford was out of work he supposed he was having a row with a dun, and passed on to his own room, where he went to bed and read a novel. He was so engrossed in this that he said he would not have heard anyone come or go in the hall, but the landlady, who with her daughter occupied the parlor on the ground floor, at a little before eleven heard steps descending the stairs and the front door open and close.
It wasn't till nearly two in the morning that Salinger was wakened by a feeble knocking. He jumped up, and before he could reach the door heard a heavy fall in the passage. There, prostrate by the sill, lay Ford, unconscious, his head laid open by a deep wound.
Salinger dragged him back to his room, then roused the landlady, who sent for a doctor. He told Babbitts that the place gave no evidence of a struggle, the droplight was burning, a chair drawn close to it, and a book lying face down on the table as if Ford had been reading when the stranger interrupted him. On the floor near a desk standing between the two windows, a trickle of blood showed where Ford had fallen, suggesting that the attack had been made from behind as he stood over the desk. The doctor pronounced the injury serious. The blow had been delivered on the back of the head, and Ford's condition was critical.
When the police turned up they could find nothing to give them a clue to the assailant—no finger prints, no foot marks, no weapon or implement. Ford had been stricken down by one violent blow, falling on him suddenly and evidently unexpectedly. He was taken to the hospital, unconscious, no one knowing whether he would die before they could get a statement out of him.
The cause of the assault was at first puzzling. Robbery seemed improbable, as a man in Ford's position was not likely to have much money and as his gold watch and chain were found in full view on the table. But when the first excitement quieted down one of the women in the house came forward with the story that a few days before Ford had told her he had recently been left a legacy by an uncle up-state, and in proof of his newly acquired wealth had shown her two fifty-dollar bills. This put a different face on the matter. If Ford had carried such sums on him, it was probable the fact had become known and burglary been the motive of the attack.
The police looked over the papers in his wallet and desk but found nothing that threw any light on the mystery. Babbitts was present at this search and found three letters—tossed aside by the city detectives as having no bearing on the subject—that he knew must be seen by Whitney & Whitney. He and the precinct captain had hobnobbed together over many cases, and a few sentences in the hall resulted in the transfer of the papers to Babbitts' breast pocket with a promise to return them the next day.
I'll give you these letters later on—when we pored over them in the old man's private office.
In the hospital Ford came back to consciousness long enough to make an ante-mortem statement. It was short and explicit, satisfying the authorities, who didn't know that the victim himself was a criminal with matters in his own life to hide. Here it is, copied from the evening paper:
I don't know who the man was. I never saw him before. He had some story that he knew me and asked for money. I tried to stand him off, but when he got threatening, not wanting him to make a row in the house, I went to the desk where I had a few loose bills in a drawer. It was while I was standing there with my back to him, that he struck me. I don't know what he did it with—something he had under his coat. When I came to myself later I got to Salinger's door. That's all I know. A week ago I'd had some money on me—part of a small legacy—but I'd banked it a few days before. He must have heard of it some way and was after it.
That settled the question as far as the police and the general public went. That the watch and chain were not touched nor the few dollars in the desk drawer was pointed to as positive proof that Ford's assailant was no common sneak thief or second-story man. He was not wasting his time on small change or articles difficult to dispose of. For a few days the police hunted for him, but not a trace of him was to be found. "An old hand," they had it, "dropped back into the darkness of the underworld."
There was not a detective or reporter in New York who connected that half-seen figure, stealing by night into a cheap lodging house, with the financier whose disappearance had been the nine days' wonder of the season.
On Wednesday evening Babbitts brought the letters to the Whitney office (we were all there but Molly), and we sat round the table passing the papers from hand to hand.
One was on a sheet of Harland's business stationery and was in Harland's writing, which both George and the chief knew. It was dated January second, and ran as follows:
Dear Ford,
Excellent. If possible, I'll try to see you tomorrow. I'll be going down to lunch about one. Yours,
H. H.
As a document in the case it had no especial value, beyond confirming the fact that Ford was—as he had told Molly—on friendly terms with the lawyer.
The others were of vital significance. They were on small oblongs of white paper, the finely nicked upper edge indicating they had been attached to a writing tablet. Both were in ink, and in the same hand, rapid and scratchy, the words trailing off in unfinished scrawls. Neither had any address, but both bore dates: one December 27 and the other January 10.
Here is the first:
December 27.
Dear Girl,
Thanks for your note. Things begin to look more encouraging. That I must stand back and let you do so much—win our way by your cleverness and persuasion—is a trial to my patience. But my time will come later.
J. W. B.
The signature was a hurried scratch. Babbitts said the police had glanced at the letter, set it down as the copy of a note Ford had written to some girl, and thrown it aside. Those half-formed initials might have been anything to the casual, uninterested eye.
The second, dated January 10, was a little longer:
Dearest,
I hoped to see you today but couldn't make it. So our end seems to be in sight—at last approaching after our planning and waiting. What a sensation we're going to make! But it won't touch us. We're strong enough to dare anything when our happiness is the stake.
J. W. B.
We agreed with O'Mally when he sized these letters up as copies in Ford's hand—he had samples of it—of notes written by Barker to Carol Whitehall. The reason for Ford's taking them was not hard to guess with our knowledge of the gunman's character.
It shows him up as a pretty tough specimen, said the detective, astride on a chair with a big black cigar in the corner of his mouth. "He wasn't going to lose a trick. While he was working for Barker he was gathering all the evidence against his employer that his position in the Whitehall office gave him access to."
Laying his plans for blackmail, said George.
That's it. He had his eagle eye trained on the future. When Barker and his girl were feeling safe in some secluded corner, these letters—documentary testimony to the plot—could be used as levers to extort more money.
Do you suppose Barker was on to it and decided to get him out of the way before he had a chance to use them? said Babbitts.
No—I don't see it that way. There was no indication in the room of a search. I guess Barker acted on the principle that the fewer people share a secret the easier it is to keep.
Looks to me, said George, "as if Ford had made some move that scared the old man. Coming back that way into a house full of people! Considering the circumstances he took a mighty big risk."
Not as big a one as having Ford at large, answered O'Mally. "You've got to remember that not one of the three knows the murder has been discovered. They think they're as safe as bugs in a rug. With Ford out of it the only menace to Barker's safety is removed. I look at this as a last perfecting touch, the coping stone on the edifice."
The chief, who had been silently pacing back and forth across the end of the room, came slouching to the table and picked up the longer of the two letters. Holding it to the light he read it over murmuringly, then dropped it and said:
Curious that a man who had conceived such a plot would allude to it in writing.
I spoke up. What seemed to me the first rational words of the meeting gave me my cue.
What makes you so sure the thing alluded to in those letters is the murder?
I was standing back between the window and the table. They all squared round in their chairs to stare at me, O'Mally bending his head to level a scornful glance below the shade of the electric standard.
What else could they allude to? he said.
I don't know. Nobody, not a person here, knows all that existed between Barker and Miss Whitehall. There's no reason to take for granted that the plan, scheme, whatever you like to call it those letters indicate, was the killing of Harland.
O'Mally gave an exasperated grunt and cast an eye of derisive question at the chief. It enraged me and my hands gripped together.
Oh, Lord, Jack, you're nutty, said George. "We know Barker and Miss Whitehall were in love, and we know Barker committed the murder, and we know she helped. That was enough to occupy their minds without going off on side mysteries."
Nature has cursed me with a violent temper. During the last two years—since the dark days of the Hesketh tragedy—I've thought it was conquered—a leashed beast of which I was the master. Now suddenly it rose, pulling at its chain. I felt the old forgotten stir of it, the rush of boiling blood that in the end made me blind. I had sense enough left to know I'd got to keep it down and I did it. But if there'd been no need for restraint, for dissimulation, it would have burst out as it has in the past, burst against O'Mally with a fist in the middle of his cock-sure, sneering face. I heard my voice, husky, but steady, as I said,
That's all very well, but how about what the chief has just said? Why should Barker write when he could say what he wanted? Why did he, so cautious in every other way, do a thing a green boy would have known the danger of? You're building up your whole case on the vaguest surmises.
O'Mally took his cigar out of his mouth, his eyes narrowed and full of an ugly fire.
I suppose the initial fact that a murder's been committed is surmise?
No, I came nearer the table, the blood singing in my ears, "it's your evidence against the woman, that you're twisting and coloring to match your preconceived theories. There's not an attempt been made to reconcile her previous record with the villainous act of which you accuse her. There's a gulf there you can't bridge. Why don't you go down into the foundations of the thing instead of putting your attention on surface indications? Why don't you go into the psychology of it, build on that, not the material facts that a child could see?"
I don't believe one of them guessed the state I was in—took my vehemence as an enthusiasm for impartial justice. But a few minutes more of it and the old fury would have broken loose. I saw O'Mally's face, red through a red mist, saw he was mad, mad straight through, enraged at the aspersions on his ability. He got up, ready to answer, and Lord knows what would have happened—a rough and tumble round the room probably—if the door hadn't opened and a clerk put in his head with the announcement:
A gentleman on the phone wants Mr. O'Mally.
The words transformed the detective; his anger vanished as if it never had been. Quick as a wink he made for the door, flinging back over his shoulder:
I told them at the office if anything turned up I'd be here. There's something doing.
A hush fell on the rest of us, the tense quiet of expectancy. The fire in me died like a flame when a bellows is dropped. News—any news—might bring help for her, exonerate her, wipe away the stain of the suspicions that no one but we six would ever know.
The door opened and O'Mally entered. His face was illuminated, shining with an irrepressible triumph, his movements quick and instinctively stealthy. Pushing the door to behind him he said as softly as if the walls had ears:
They've got Barker in Philadelphia.
Inside an hour O'Mally, Babbitts and I were on our way to Philadelphia. All friction was forgotten, a bigger issue had extinguished the sparks that had come near bursting into flame. A mutual desire united us, the finding of Barker.
The train, an express, seemed to crawl like a tortoise, but the way I felt I guess the flight of an aëroplane would have been slow. I had hideous fears that he might give us the slip, but O'Mally was confident. One of his men had got a lead on Barker through a vendor of newspapers, from whom the capitalist twice in the last week had purchased the big New York dailies. It had taken several days to locate his place of hiding—a quiet boarding house far removed from the center of the city—which was now under surveillance. As we swung through the night, shut close in a smoke-filled compartment, we speculated as to whether he would try and throw a bluff or see the game was up and tell the truth.
At the station O'Mally's man met us and the four of us piled into a taxi, and started on a run across town. It was moonlight, and going down those quiet streets, lined with big houses and then with little houses—still, dwindling vistas sleeping in the silver radiance—seemed to me the longest drive I'd ever taken in my life. As we sped the detective gave us further particulars. By his instructions the newsstand man, who left the morning papers at the boarding house, had got into communication with the servant, a colored girl. From her he had learnt that Barker—he passed under the name of Joseph Sammis—had been away for twenty-four hours and had come back that morning so ill that a doctor had been called in. The doctor had said the man's heart was weak, and that his condition looked like the result of strain or shock. Questioned further the girl had said he was "A pleasant, civil-spoken old gentleman, giving no trouble to anybody." He went out very little, sitting in his room most of the time reading the papers. He received no mail there, but that he did get letters she had found out, as she had seen one on his table addressed to the General Delivery.
The house was on a street, quiet and deserted at this early hour, one of a row all built alike. As we climbed out of the taxi the moon was bright, the shadows lying like black velvet across the lonely roadway. On the opposite side, loitering slow, was a man, who, raising a hand to his hat, passed on into the darkness along the area railings. Though it was only a little after nine, many of the houses showed the blankness of unlit windows, but in the place where we had stopped a fan-light over the door glowed in a yellow semicircle.
As the taxi moved off we three—O'Mally's detective slipped away into the shadow like a ghost—walked up a little path to the front door where I pulled an old-fashioned bell handle. I could hear the sound go jingling through the hall, loud and cracked, and then steps, languid and dragging, come from somewhere in the rear. I was to act as spokesman, my cue being to ask for Mr. Sammis on a matter of urgent business.
The door was opened by the colored girl, who looked at us stupidly and then said she'd call Miss Graves, the landlady, as she didn't think anyone could see Mr. Sammis.
Standing back from the door she let us into a hall with a hatrack on one side and a flight of stairs going up at the back. The light was dim, coming from a globe held aloft by a figure that crowned the newel post. The paper on the walls, some dark striped pattern, seemed to absorb what little radiance there was and the whole place smelled musty and was as quiet as a church.
The colored girl had disappeared down a long passage and presently a door opened back there and a woman came out, tall and thin, in a skimpy black dress. She approached us as we stood in a group by the hatrack, leaning forward near-sightedly and blinking at us through silver-rimmed spectacles.
My maid says you want to see Mr. Sammis, she said, in an unamiable voice.
Yes, I answered. "We've come from New York and it's imperative we see him this evening."
But you can't, she snapped. "He's sick. The doctor says he mustn't be disturbed."
Talking it over afterward we all confessed that we were seized by the same idea—that this lanky old spinster might be in the game and Barker's illness was a fake. Feeling as I did I was ready to leap forward, grab her, and lock her in her own parlor while the others chased up the stairs. I could sense the slight, uneasy stir of the two men beside me, and I tried to inject a determination into my voice, that while it was civil was also informing:
I'm sorry, but it's absolutely necessary that we transact our business with him now.
Can't you give me a message? she demurred, squinting her eyes up behind the glasses. "I'll see that it's delivered in the morning."
No, Madam. This is important and can't wait. We won't be long, we only have to consult with him for a few minutes.
She gave a shrug as much as to say, "Well, this is your affair!" and, drawing back, pointed to the stairs.
He's up there, fourth floor front, second door to your left.
To each of us the suspicion that she was in with Barker had grown with every minute. The idea once lodged in our minds, possessed them, and we went up those stairs, slow at first, and then, as we got out of earshot, faster and faster. It was a run on the second flight and a gallop on the third. On this landing there was no gas lit, but a window at the end of the passage let in a square of moonlight that lay bright on the floor and showed us the hall's dim length and the outlines of closed doors.
It was the second of these, on the left-hand side, and creeping toward it we stood for a moment getting our wind. The place was very cold, as if a window was open, and there was not a sound. Standing by the door O'Mally knocked softly. There was no answer.
In that half-lit passage, chilled with the icy breath of the winter night and held in a strange stillness, I was seized by a grisly sense of impending horror. If I'd been a small boy my teeth would have begun to chatter. At thirty years of age that doesn't happen, but I doubt whether anyone whose body was supplied with an ordinarily active nervous system would not have felt something sinister in that cold, dark place, in the silence behind that close-shut door.
O'Mally knocked again and again; there was no answer.
Try it, I whispered and the detective turned the handle.
Locked, he breathed back, then—"Stand away there. I'm going to break it. There's something wrong here."
He turned sideways, bracing his shoulder against the door. There was a cracking sound, and the lock, embedded in old soft wood, gave way, the door swinging in with O'Mally hanging to the handle.
The room was unlit but for the silver moonlight that came from the window, uncurtained and open. At that sight the same thought seized the three of us—the man was gone—and O'Mally, fumbling in his pocket for matches, broke into furious profanity.
I had a box and as I dug round for it, took a look about, and saw the shapes of a chair with garments hanging over it, an open desk, and, against the opposite wall, the bed. It was only a pale oblong, and looked irregular, as if the clothes were heaped on it as the man had thrown them back. I could have joined O'Mally in his swearing. Gone—when our fingers were closing on him! Then I found the matches and the gas burst out over our heads.
My eyes were on the bed and O'Mally's must have been, for simultaneously I gave an exclamation and he leaped forward. There, asleep, under the covers lay a man. Quick as a flash of lightning the detective was beside him, bending to look close at the face, then he drew back with a sound—a cry of amazement, disbelief—and pulling off the bed clothes laid his hand on the sleeper's chest.
God in Heaven! he gasped, turning to us. "He's dead!"
Babbitts and I made a rush for the bed, I to the head, where I leaned low to make sure, staring into the gray, pale face with its prominent nose and sunken eyes. Then it was my turn to cry out, to stagger back, looking from one man to the other, aghast at what I'd seen:
It's not Barker at all.
For a moment we stared at one another, jaws fallen, eyes stony. Not a word came from one of us, the silence broken by the hissing rush of the gas turned up full cock in a sputtering ribbon of flame. I came to myself first, turned from them back to the dead face, its marble calm in strange contrast to the stunned consternation of the living faces.
It's not he, I repeated. "I've often seen him. It's not the man."
Well—well—— stammered O'Mally, coming out of his stupor. "Who on earth is it?"
How do I know—Sammis, I suppose. It's like him—the nose, the eyes and the eyebrows, and the mustache. But, I looked at them, gazing like two stupefied animals at the head on the pillow, "it's not Johnston Barker."
O'Mally, with a groan of baffled desperation, fell into a chair, his hands hanging over the arms, his feet limp on the floor before him. Babbitts stood paralyzed, leaning on the foot of the bed. It was an extraordinary situation—three live men, hot on the chase of a fourth and in the moment of victory faced by the most inscrutable and solemn thing that life holds—a dead man. We couldn't get over it, couldn't seem to think or act, grouped round the bed with the whistling rush of the gas loud on the silence.
Then suddenly, another and more distant sound broke up our stupefaction. Someone was coming up the stairs. It jerked us back to life, and I made a run for the door, O'Mally's whisper hissing after me:
If it's that woman, keep her away for a while. I want to go over the room.
It was Miss Graves, ascending slowly with the help of the balustrade. I caught her on the landing and told her what we'd found. She was not greatly surprised—the doctor had warned her. I explained the broken door by telling her we had been alarmed by the silence and had forced our way in. That, too, she took quietly, and turned away, gliding shadowlike down the stairs to send out the servant for the doctor.
When I reëntered the room its aspect was changed. A sheet covered the dead man and O'Mally and Babbitts, with all the burners in the chandelier blazing, had started looking over the room. The detective was already at work on the papers in the desk, Babbitts going through the clothes over the chair and the few others that hung in the cupboard.
Hustle and get busy, said O'Mally, as he heard me come in. "If this isn't Johnston Barker, it's the man we've been trailing and I'm pretty sure it's the one that attacked Ford."
There was a table by the bedside with a reading lamp and some books on it. Moving these I came upon two newspaper clippings, relating to the suicide of Harland. In both Anthony Ford was mentioned. The reporters had evidently spoken to him that night on the street, gleaning any fragments of information they could. One alluded to the fact that he was employed in the offices below Harland's, the Azalea Woods Estates. These words were heavily underlined in pencil.
Looks like it from this, I said, showing the clipping to O'Mally.
He glanced at it and grunted, going back to his inspection of a sheaf of papers he had found in one of the desk pigeonholes.
Meantime Babbitts had found in the coat that hung over the chair a wallet containing a hundred dollars, a tailor's bill for a suit and coat, receipted and bearing a New York address, and Tony Ford's house and street number written in pencil on a neatly folded sheet of note paper. Besides these there was one letter, dated January 13, typed and bearing no signature. Its contents was as follows:
Enclosed please find one hundred dollars in two bills of fifty. Will send same amount on same date next month if work should be still delayed. Will communicate further later.
The envelope, also addressed in typewriting, was directed to Joseph Sammis, General Delivery, Philadelphia, and bore a New York postmark.
We were working too quickly for much comment, but Babbitts held out the paper with Ford's address on it toward O'Mally.
This bears it out, too, he said.
O'Mally looked at it, and snapped the elastic back on the documents he'd been going over.
From what I've seen here, he said, "Sammis was the man Ford was with in the real-estate business. These are all contracts, bills and some correspondence, the records of a small venture that went to smash," he pushed the roll back in its pigeonhole—"not another thing."
There's not another thing in the room, I answered, "except two novels and a stack of New York papers on the floor there by the bureau. Hist! quiet!"
There were feet coming up the stairs. In a twinkling everything was as it had been, Babbitts and O'Mally withdrew to the window and I went out to see who was coming. It was Miss Graves and the doctor.
I explained the situation and found the doctor brusquely business-like and matter-of-fact. It was what might have been expected. When he had been called in that morning he had found Mr. Sammis a very sick man, suffering from angina pectoris and a general condition of debility and exhaustion. He had asked him if he had been subjected to any recent exertion or strain but been told no other than a trip the day before to Washington. Miss Graves said it was undoubtedly this trip that had done the damage. He had been well when he started on Tuesday morning, but on returning twenty-four hours later had been so weak and enfeebled that one of the other lodgers had had to assist him to his room. An examination proved that he had been dead some hours. Who his relations were or where he came from Miss Graves had no idea and would turn the matter over to the authorities.
It was close on midnight when we left, and there being no vehicle in sight we walked up the street. The moon was as bright as day, and, swinging along between those two lines of black houses, with here and there a light shining yellow in an upper window, we were silent, each occupied by his own thoughts.
I could guess those of the other two—Babbitts' chagrin at once again losing his big story, O'Mally's sullen indignation at having followed a clue that led to such a blind alley. But their disappointment and bitterness were nothing to mine. All my hopes gone again, and this last puzzle helping in no way, in no way as I then counted help.
To say that the expectant Whitney office got a jolt is putting it mildly. On the threshold of success, to meet such a setback enraged George and made even the chief grouchy. The new developments added new complications that upset their carefully elaborated theories. There had to be a readjustment. Whoever Sammis was and whatever his motive could have been it was undoubtedly he who had attacked Tony Ford.
It was inexplicable and mysterious. The chief had an idea that there was a connection between Sammis and Barker, that the man now dead might have been "planted" in Philadelphia to divert the search from the live man, who had stolen to safety after a rise to the surface in Toronto. George scouted it; an accidental likeness had fooled them and made them waste valuable time. The devil was on the side of Barker, taking care of his own.
It did look that way. Investigation of the few clues we had led to nothing. The tailor, whose bill was found in Sammis's pocket, remembered selling a suit and overcoat to a man called Sammis on January tenth. He was a quiet, polite old party who looked poor and shabby but bought good clothes and paid spot cash for them. The typewritten letter indicated that Sammis had been sent to Philadelphia and well paid for some work that had not yet started. It was upon this letter the chief based his contention that Sammis's appearance in the case was not a coincidence—he was another of Barker's henchmen, and it was part of Barker's luck that at the crucial moment he should have died.
But it was all speculation, nothing certain except that we had lost our man again. Philadelphia had dropped out as a point of interest and the case swung back to New York, where it now centered round the bed of Tony Ford.
We were in constant communication with the hospital and on Thursday received word that Ford would recover. That lifted us up from the smash of Wednesday night. When he was able to speak we would hear something—everything if he could be scared into a full confession. The hospital authorities refused to let anyone see him till he was perfectly fit, a matter of several days yet. That suited us, as we wanted no speech with him till he was strong enough to stand the shock of our knowledge. Caught thus, with his back against the wall, we expected him to make a clean breast of it.
The enforced waiting was—to me anyway—distracting. With the hope I'd had of Barker gone, I was now looking to Ford. He must, he could exonerate her, there wasn't the slightest doubt of it. But to have to wait for it, to be cool and calm, to get through the next few days—I felt like a man caught in the rafters of a burning building, trying to be patient while they hacked him out.
After the news from the hospital the temperature of the office fell to an enforced normal. O'Mally went back to his burrow and Babbitts to his paper with his big story still in the air. That night in my place, I measured off the sitting room from eight till twelve—five strides from the bookcase to the window, seven from the fire to the folding doors.
If I could only induce her to speak, if she herself would only clear up the points that were against her, there was still a chance of getting her out of it before Ford opened up. That she had something to hide, some mystery in connection with her movements that night, some secret understanding with Barker, even I had to admit. But whatever it was it would be better to reveal it than to go on into the fierce white light that would break over the Harland case within a week.
In that midnight pacing I tried to think of some way I could force her to tell—to tell me, but the clocks chimed on and the fire died on the hearth and I got nowhere. She knew me so slightly, might think I was set on by the office, the very fact that I was what I was might seal her lips closer. Instead of breaking down her reticence I might increase it, strengthen that wall of secretiveness behind which she seemed to be taking refuge like a hunted creature.
When I went to the office on Friday morning the chief asked me to go to Buffalo that night, to look up some witnesses in the Lytton case. It would take me all Saturday and I could get back by Sunday night or at the latest Monday morning. A phone message sent to the hospital before I came in had drawn the information that Tony Ford would not be able to see the Philadelphia detectives—O'Mally and Babbitts posed in that rôle—till Monday. That settled it—better to be at work out of town than hanging about cursing the slowness of the hours.
But the questions of the night before haunted me. Why, anyway, couldn't I go to see her? Wasn't it up to me, whether I succeeded or not, to make the effort to break through her silence—the silence that was liable to do her such deadly damage? I had to see her. I couldn't keep away from her. At lunch time I called her up and asked her if I could come. She said yes and named four that afternoon. On the stroke I was in the vestibule, pushing the button below her name, and with my heart thumping against my ribs like a steel hammer.
She opened the door and as I followed her up the little hall told me the servant had been sent away and her mother was out. As on that former visit she seated herself at the desk, motioning me to a chair opposite. The blinds were raised, the room flooded with the last warm light of the afternoon. By its brightness I saw that she was even paler and more worn than she had been that other time—obviously a woman harassed and preyed upon by some inner trouble.
On the way up I had gone over ways of approach, but sitting there in the quiet pretty room, so plainly the abode of gentlewomen, I couldn't work round to the subject. She didn't give me any help, seeming to assume that I had dropped in to pay a call. That made it more difficult. When a woman treats you as if you're a gentleman, actuated by motives of common politeness, it's pretty hard to break through her guard and pry into her secrets.
She began to talk quickly and, it seemed to me, nervously, telling me how the owner of their old farm on the Azalea Woods Estates had offered them a cottage there, to which they would move next week. It was small but comfortable, originally occupied by a laborer's family who had gone away. The people were very kind, would take no rent, and she and her mother could live for almost nothing till she found work. I sympathized with the idea, she'd get away from the wear and tear of the city, have time to rest and recuperate after her recent worry. She dropped her eyes to a paper on the desk and said:
Yes, I'm tired. Everything was so sudden and unexpected. I once thought I was strong enough to stand anything—but all this—
She stopped and picking up a pencil began making little drawings on the paper, designs of squares and circles.
It's worn you out, I said, looking at her weary and colorless face. Like the thrust of a sword a pang shot through me—love of a man, hidden and disgraced, had blighted that once blooming beauty.
She nodded without looking up:
It's not the business only, there have been other—other—anxieties.
That was more of an opening than anything I'd ever heard her say. I could feel the smothering beat of my heart as I answered, as quietly as I could:
Can't you tell them to me? Perhaps I can help you.
One of those sudden waves of color I'd seen before passed across her face. As if to hide it she dropped her head lower over the paper, touching up the marks she was making. Her voice came soft and controlled:
That's very kind of you, Mr. Reddy—But I know you're kind—I knew it when I first met you a year ago in the country. No, I can't tell you.
I leaned nearer to her. If I had a chance to make her speak it was now or never.
Miss Whitehall, I said, trying to inject a simple, casual friendliness into my voice. "You're almost alone in the world, you've no one—no man, I mean—to look after you or your interests. You don't know how much help I might be able to give you."
In what way? she asked, with her eyes still on the paper.
For a moment I was nonplused. I couldn't tell her what I knew—I couldn't go back on my office. I was tied hand and foot; all I could do with honesty was to try to force the truth from her. Like a fool I stammered out:
In advice—in—in—a larger knowledge of the world than you can have.
She gave a slight, bitter smile, and tilting her head backward looked critically at her drawings:
My knowledge of the world is larger than you think—maybe larger than yours. There's only one thing you can do for me, but there is one.
I leaned nearer, my voice gone a little hoarse:
What is it?
She turned her head and looked into my eyes. Her expression chilled me, cold, challenging, defiant:
Tell me if the Whitney Office has found Johnston Barker yet?
For a second our eyes held, and in that second I saw the defiance die out of hers and only question, a desperate question, take its place.
No, I heard myself say, "they have not found him."
Thank you, she murmured, and went back to her play with the pencil.
I drew myself to the edge of my chair and laid a hand on the corner of the desk:
You've asked me a question and I've answered it. Now let me ask one. Why are you so interested in the movements of Johnston Barker?
She stiffened, I could see her body grow rigid under its thin silk covering. The hand holding the pencil began to tremble:
Wouldn't anyone be interested in such a sensational event? Isn't it natural? Perhaps knowing Mr. Barker personally—as I told you in Mr. Whitney's office—I'm more curious than the rest of the world, that's all.
The trembling of her hand made it impossible for her to continue drawing. She threw down the pencil and locked her fingers together, outstretched on the paper, a breath, deep taken and sudden, lifting her breast. It was pitiful, her lonely fight. I was going to say something—anything, to make her think I didn't see, when she spoke again:
Do any of you—you men who are hunting him—ever think that he may not be able to come back?
Able? I exclaimed excitedly, for now again I thought something was coming. "What do you mean by able?"
I had said—or looked—too much. With a smothered sound she jumped to her feet and before I could rise or stay her with a gesture, brushed past me and moved to the window. There, for a moment, she stood looking out, her splendid shape, crowned with its mass of black hair, in silhouette against the thin white curtains.
Look here, Miss Whitehall, I said with grim resolution, "I've got to say something to you that you may not like, may think is butting in, but I can't help it."
What? came on a caught breath.
If you know anything about Barker—his whereabouts, his inability to come back—why don't you tell it? It will help us and help you.
She wheeled round like a flash, all vehement denial.
I—I? I didn't mean that I knew. I was only wondering, guessing. It's just as I told Mr. Whitney that day. And you seem to think I'm not open, am hiding something. Why should I do that? What motive could I have to keep secret anything I might know that would bring Mr. Barker to justice?
As she spoke she moved toward me, bringing up in front of me, her eyes almost fiercely demanding. Mine fell before them. It was no use. With my memory of those letters, of her mysterious plot with Barker clear in my mind, I could go no farther.
I muttered some sentences of apology, was sorry if I'd offended her, hadn't meant to imply anything, was carried away by my zeal to find the absconder. She seemed mollified and moved to her seat by the desk. Then suddenly, as if a spring that had upheld her had snapped, she dropped into the chair, limp and pallid.
I'm tired, I'm not myself, she faltered. "I don't seem to know what I'm saying. All this—all these dreadful things—have torn me to pieces——" Her voice broke and she averted her face but not before I'd seen that her eyes were shining with tears. That sight brought a passionate exclamation out of me. I went toward her, my arms ready to go out and enfold her. But she waved me back with an imploring gesture:
Oh go—I beg of you, go—I want peace—I want to be alone. Please go—Please don't torment me any more. I can't bear it.
She dropped her face into her hands, shrinking back from me, and I turned and left her. My steps as I went down the hall were the only sounds in the place, but the silence seemed to thrill with unloosed emotions, to hum and sing with the vibrations that came from my nerves and my heart and my soul.
The big moments in your life ought to come in beautiful places, at least that's what I've always thought. But they don't—anyway with me. For as I went down that dingy staircase, full of queer smells, dark and squalid, the greatest moment I'd ever known came to me—I loved her!
I'd loved her always—I knew it now. Out in the country those few first times, but then more as a vision, something that wove through my thoughts, aloof and unapproachable, like an inspiration and a dream. And that day in Whitney's office as a woman. And every day since, deeper and stronger, seeing her beset, realizing her danger, longing with every fiber to help her. It was the cause of that burst of the old fury, of the instinct that kept me close and secretive, of this day's fruitless attempt to make her speak. All the work, the growing dread, the rush of events, had held me from seeing, crowded out recognition of the wonderful thing. I stood in the half-lit, musty little hall in a trance-like ecstasy, outside myself, holding only that one thought—I loved her—I loved her—I loved her!
Presently I was in the street, walking without any consciousness of the way, toward the Park. The ecstasy was gone, the present was back again—the present blacker and more terrible after those radiant moments. I don't know how to describe that coming back to the hideous reality. Everything was mixed up in me—passion, pity, hope, jealousy. There was a space when that was the fiercest, gripped me like a physical pang, and then passed into a hate for Barker, the man she loved who had left her to face it alone. I think I must have spoken aloud—I saw people looking at me, and if my inner state was in any way indicated on my outer envelope I wonder I wasn't run in as a lunatic.
In a quiet bypath in the Park I got a better hold on myself and tried to do some clear thinking. The first thing I had to do was to rule Barker out. Even if my fight was to give her to him I must fight; that I couldn't do till we heard from Ford. Until then it was wisdom to say nothing, to keep my pose of a disinterested adherent of the theory of her innocence. If Ford's story exculpated her she was out of the case forever. If it didn't I couldn't decide what I'd do till I heard where it placed her.
It was a momentary deadlock with nothing for it but to wait. That I was prepared to do—go to Buffalo, get through my job there and come back. But I'd come back with my sword loose in its scabbard to do battle for my lady.
You can imagine after that disappointment in Philadelphia—it seems an unfeeling way to speak of the death of an old gentleman—how we all turned our eyes and kept them fixed on Tony Ford.
Friday night Babbitts told me the hospital had reported he couldn't be seen till Monday. The others were in a fever, he said, O'Mally smoking big black cigars by the gross and Jack Reddy gone off to Buffalo, and Mr. George that scared Ford would slip off some way he'd have liked to put a cordon of the National Guard round the hospital.
Then came Saturday—and Gee! up everything burst different to what anybody had expected.
It started with Mr. George. Being so nervous he couldn't rest he called up the hospital in the morning and got word that there'd been a mistake in the message of the day before and that Mr. Ford was well enough to see the Philadelphia detectives that afternoon. Before midday Babbitts and O'Mally were gathered in, and while I was waiting on pins and needles in Ninety-fifth Street and Jack Reddy was off unsuspecting in Buffalo, the two of them were planted by Tony Ford's bedside, hearing the story that lifted the Harland case one peg higher in its surprise and grewsomeness.
O'Mally and Babbitts had their plans all laid beforehand. They were two plain-clothes men from Philadelphia, who had just come on a new lead—the finding of Sammis. When they'd opened that up before him, they were going to pass on to the murder—take him by surprise. If Ford made the confession they hoped to shake out of him, the warrant for his arrest would be issued and the Harland case come before the public in its true light.
Babbitts had never seen Ford and when he described him to me it didn't sound like the same man. He was lying propped up with pillows, his head swathed in bandages, and his face pale and haggard. Under the covers his long legs stretched most to the end of the cot, and his big, powerful hands were lying limp on the counterpane. He was in a private room, in an inside wing of the hospital, very quiet and retired.
When the attendant left and they introduced themselves he looked sort of scowling from one to the other. Both noticed the same thing—a kind of uneasiness, as if his apprehensions were aroused, and for all his broken head he was on the job, not weak and indifferent, but wary and alert.
This wasn't what they wanted so they started in telling him the news they thought would please him and put him at his ease. A clue had been picked up in Philadelphia that looked like the mystery of his attack was solved.
In fact, says O'Mally, "a man's been run to earth there that we're pretty sure is the one."
Both men were watching him and both saw a change come over him that caught their eyes and held them. Instead of being relieved he was scared.
Have you got the man? he said.
O'Mally nodded:
That's what we have.
Who is he?
Party called Sammis. Answers to the description——
Before he could go further Ford raised himself on his elbow, looking downright terrified.
Joseph Sammis? he said, his eyes set staring on O'Mally.
That's it. We tracked him up and found him. But I don't want to raise any false hopes. We were too late. When we got there he was dead.
It had an extraordinary effect upon Ford. He gave a gasp, and raised himself up into a sitting posture, his mouth open, his eyes glued on O'Mally. For a minute not one of them said a word—Ford evidently too paralyzed at what he'd heard, and the others too surprised at the way Ford was acting which was exactly different to what they'd expected. It was he who spoke first, his voice gone down to a husky murmur:
Dead?
O'Mally answered:
Heart disease, angina pectoris. The doctor down there said some strain or effort had finished him. That, as we see it, was the attack he made on you.
Then Ford did the most surprising thing of all. Raising his hands he clapped both over his face, and with a big, heaving sob from the bottom of his chest, fell back on the pillows and began to cry.
Babbitts said you couldn't have believed it if you hadn't seen it—he and O'Mally looking stumped at each other and between them that great ox of a man, lying in the bed crying like a baby. Then Himself, being fearful that maybe they'd done the man harm, rose up to go after a nurse, but O'Mally caught him by the coat, whispering, "Keep still, you goat," then turned and said very pleasant to Ford:
Knocked you out, old man. That's natural, nerves still weak. Keep it up till you feel better. Don't mind us—we're used to it.
So there they sat, Babbitts still uneasy, but O'Mally, calm and patient, tilting back in his chair looking dreamy out of the window. He said afterward that he knew that hysterical fit for what it was—relief, and that was why he wouldn't let Babbitts call a nurse.
Presently the sobs began to ease off and Ford, groping under the pillow for a handkerchief, said, all choked up:
How did you come to connect him with me?
By papers found in his desk—records of a real-estate business you and he'd been in some years ago at Syracuse.
That's the man, said Ford, between his hiccuppy catches of breath, "and he's dead?"
Dead as Julius Cæsar. O'Mally leaned forward, his voice dropping, "You knew he was the chap that attacked you?"
Ford, his head drooped, his shoulders hunched up like an old woman's, nodded:
Yes, I lied when I said he was a stranger to me.
Why did you do that? asked Babbitts.
It was just what you might know he'd ask. One of the cutest things about Himself is that he never can understand why anyone, no matter what the provocation, has to lie.
Ford didn't answer and O'Mally, giving his chair a hitch nearer to the bed, said kind and persuasive:
Say, Ford, you'd better tell us all you know. We got the papers, and most of the information. The man's dead. Clean it up and we'll let it drop.
Without raising his head Ford said, low and sort of sullen:
All right—if you agree to that. I was in business with him and I—I—didn't play fair—lit out with some of the money. He turned a lowering look on Babbitts. "That's the answer to your question," then back to O'Mally, "I didn't run across him or hear of him in all this time and supposed the whole thing was buried and forgotten till he came into my room Tuesday night. He was blazing mad, said he'd been waiting for a chance to even up, and had at last found me. To keep him quiet I said I'd give him some money. I had some."
Yes, yes, said O'Mally, nodding cheerfully, "the legacy your uncle left you."
Ford shot a look at him, sharp and quick:
Oh, you know about that?
Naturally. Inquiries have been made in all directions. Go on.
I hadn't much cash there—a few dollars, but I thought I'd hand him that and agree to pay him more later. He said he didn't want money, that wouldn't square our accounts, and as I went to the desk he came up behind me and struck me. That's all I know.
Did he say how he'd located you?
Yes. He'd been looking for me ever since I'd skipped but couldn't find me. Then he saw my name in the papers after the Harland suicide. Some fool reporter spoke to me in the street that night and I told him who I was and where I worked. A short while after Sammis phoned up to the Black Eagle Building, heard from Miss Whitehall I'd left and got from her my house address.
Did he say what he was doing in Philadelphia?
He had some new job there, he didn't say what, but he said he was well paid. That came out in his blustering about not wanting my money.
There was a pause, Babbitts and O'Mally scribbling in their note books, Ford sitting up in that hunched position, looking surly at his hands lying on the counterpane. So far every word he'd said tallied with what they already knew. Babbitts was wondering how O'Mally was going to get round to the real business of the interview, when the detective suddenly raised up from his notes, and leaning forward tapped lightly on one of Ford's hands with the point of his pencil.
Say, Ford, how about that legacy from your uncle?
Ford gave a start, stiffened up and looked quick as a flash into the detective's face.
What about it? he stammered.
O'Mally, his body bending forward, his pencil tip still on Ford's hand, said with sudden, grim meaning:
We know where it came from.
For a second they eyed each other. Babbitts said it looked like an electric current was passing between them, holding them as still as if they were mesmerized. Then O'Mally went on, very low, each word falling slow and clear from his lips:
We know all about that money and the game you've been playing. This Sammis business isn't what we're here for. It's the other—the Harland matter, the thing that's been occupying your time and thoughts lately. That outside job of yours—that job that was finished on the night of January the fifteenth. He paused and Ford's glance slid away from him, his eyes like the eyes of a trapped animal traveling round the walls of the room. "We've got you, Ford. The whole thing's in our hands. Your only chance is to tell—tell everything you know."
In describing it to me Babbitts said that moment was one of the tensest in the whole case. Ford was cornered, you could see he knew it and you could see the consciousness of guilt in his pallid face and trembling hands. O'Mally was like a hunter that has his prey at last in sight, drawn forward to the edge of his chair, his jaw squared, his eyes piercing into Ford like gimlets.
Go ahead, he almost whispered. "What was that money paid you for?"
Ford tried to smile, the ghost of that cock-sure grin distorting his face like a grimace.
I guess you've got the goods on me, he said. "I know when I'm beaten. You needn't try any third degree. I'll tell."
Babbitts was so excited he could hardly breathe. The Big Story was his at last—he was going to hear the murderer's confession from his own lips. Ford lifted his head, and holding it high and defiant, looked at O'Mally and said slowly:
I got that money from Hollings Harland for reporting to him the affair between Johnston Barker and Miss Whitehall.
If you'd hit him in the head with a brick Babbitts said he couldn't have been more knocked out. He had sense enough to smother the exclamation that nearly burst from him, but he did square round in his chair and look aghast at O'Mally. That old bird never gave a sign that he'd got a blow in the solar plexus. For all anyone could guess by his face, it was just what he'd expected to hear.
You were in Harland's pay, he murmured, nodding his head.
I was in Harland's pay from the first of December to the day of his death. In that time he gave me eight hundred dollars.
O'Mally, slouching comfortable against his chair back, drooped his head toward his shoulder and said:
Suppose you tell us the whole thing, straight from the start. It'll be easier that way.
Any way you want it, said Ford. "It's all the same to me. I first met Harland in the elevator some time in the end of November. Seeing me every day he spoke to me casually and civilly, as one man does to another. There was nothing more than that till Johnston Barker began coming to the Azalea Woods Estates, then, bit by bit, Harland grew more friendly. I'll admit I was flattered, a chap in my position doesn't usually get more than a passing nod from a man in his. As he warmed up toward me, feeling his way with questions, I began to get a line on what he was after—he wanted a tab kept on Barker."
Jealous? O'Mally suggested.
Desperately jealous. As soon as the thing opened up before me I saw how matters stood. He was secretly crazy about Miss Whitehall and was easy until Barker cut in, then he got alarmed. Barker was a bigger man than he, and there was no doubt about it that she liked Barker. When he realized that he put it up to me straight. He'd sized me up pretty thoroughly by that time and knew that I'd—what's the use of mincing matters—do his dirty work for him.
O'Mally inclined his head as if he was too polite to contradict.
He offered me good money and all I had to do was to watch her and Barker and report what I heard or saw. It was a cinch—I was on the spot, the only other person in the office a fool of a stenographer, a girl, who hardly counted.
What was the result of your—er—investigations?
That Barker was in love with her too. He came often on a flimsy excuse that he wanted to build a house in the tract. She was friendly at first, then for a while very cold and haughty—as if they might have had a quarrel. Then they seemed to make that up, and get as thick as thieves.
Did she seem to care for Harland?
"
Not exactly—anyway not the way he did for her. She was always awfully nice to him—the few times he came into the office—gentle and sweet, but not the way she was with Barker. She was two different women to them—with Harland a sort of affable, gracious winner, but with Barker a girl with a man she's fond of, natural, glad to see him, no society stunts. A little before Christmas I caught on to the fact that she was receiving letters from Barker, and Harland offered me extra money if I'd get their contents. This wasn't so easy. Generally she took them away with her, but twice she left them on her desk. All I had to do then was to stay overtime and when she was gone, copy them. That way I got on to something that phazed us both—she and Barker were up to some scheme.""
"
O'Mally moved slightly in his chair.
Scheme? he said—"What do you mean by scheme?"
Something they were planning to do. After Christmas every time he'd come they'd go into the private office and talk there so low you couldn't catch a word. And the letters were all about it, but we couldn't get a line on what it was. I'll show them to you and you'll see for yourself. It got Harland wild, for though they weren't exactly love letters, they showed that she and Barker were close knit in some secret enterprise.
Did you continue this work till the day of the suicide?
"
I did—to the night—to the time it happened. Harland was getting more and more worked up. I don't know whether it was the Barker-Whitehall business or his own financial worries, but I could see he was holding the lid on with difficulty. That day, January fifteenth, as you may remember, he was in her office and had a talk with her. As he went out I saw that he looked cheered-up, brisk and confident. Of course I've no idea what she said to him, but knowing the state he was in, I'll swear it was something that gave him hope. Yet a few hours after that he killed himself. Seeing him so heartened up and being curious myself, I decided to stay that evening and do a little quiet snooping among her papers. But she nearly blocked that game. She was in the habit of going between half-past five and six, leaving me to close up. That night she didn't do it, but hung about in the office, and after watching her for a few minutes I saw that she was on the jump—moving about, going from one desk to the other, glancing at the clock. Her manner made me certain that something was up—it was possible it had to do with the scheme she and Barker were hatching. I got the idea that I'd go and come back after a while, on the chance of stumbling on something that would be useful to my employer. I left her there and after loafing round for about half an hour returned. The office was dark and she'd gone. I lit up and looked over her desk in the Exhibit Room and a table in my room where she kept some papers, but found nothing. Then I thought I'd take a look into the private office but that door was locked.""
"
Ah, locked, said O'Mally, calm as a summer sea. "Was that her custom?"
Not as far as I knew. I'd never found it locked before. It gave me an uneasy feeling for I thought she might have suspected what I was doing and turned the key against any invasion of her particular sanctum. She was no fool and might have caught on. So I fixed up the papers as I found them and left the office. You know what time that was, or you do if you read of the Harland suicide. I've always supposed the poor chap was up that side corridor as I stood there waiting for the car.
Babbitts bent over his notebook scribbling—he had to hide his face. He told me he thought the expression on it of stunned, crestfallen blankness would have given him away to an idiot. Waiting with their ears stretched to hear a confession of murder—and this was what they got! And the man wasn't lying. Every word he'd said matched with the facts we'd been worming and digging to find. He couldn't possibly have known murder had been discovered—he hadn't any suspicion a murder had been committed. The great revelation, that was to have broken on the public with an explosion like a dynamite bomb, was that Tony Ford was Harland's paid spy.
Well, he said, looking at O'Mally, "what have you got to say? Go ahead with it if it'll give you any satisfaction. Only you needn't waste your breath. I know, without being told, that it's a rotten, dirty business."
O'Mally, his face as red as the harvest moon, pulled at his mustache looking thoughtful. But, sore as he must have been—you'd have to know O'Mally to realize what his disappointment was—he answered cool and easy:
I ain't got anything to say. It's not my job to train the young. You've told me what I wanted to know—that's all I'm here for.
Ford turned to Babbitts and asked him to get some letters off the table and then went on to O'Mally:
How did you come to find it out?
Babbitts, gathering up the letters, cocked his head to listen, wondering how O'Mally was going to get out of it. But you couldn't phaze that veteran.
Several ways—you see what we're after is Johnston Barker. It's the Copper Pool that owns us, and nosing round in our quiet little way we got on to the Barker-Whitehall affair and from that followed the scent to that legacy of yours. We didn't altogether believe in that uncle up-state—thought maybe he was Johnston Barker in private life, and that you might know something, he gave a lazy, good-humored laugh. "Got fooled all round. I don't mind telling you now that the way we happened on Sammis was pure accident. Thought he was Barker and had him shadowed. He looked like enough to him to have been his brother."
That's so, said Ford, as Babbitts handed him the letters, "especially with his hat on. I noticed it myself." He selected two papers from the bunch and handed them to O'Mally. "There—those are the letters I spoke of. This one," he flicked it across the counterpane, "is just a note from Harland making a date. I don't know how I happened to keep it."
They were the three letters Babbitts had taken after the attack, copies of which at that moment were lying in O'Mally's pocket.
It was not till they were out on the hospital steps that they dared to speak. O'Mally's face was a study, his mouth drooped down to his chin and his eyes dismal and despairing like he'd come from a tragedy.
Well! he said, "what do you make of that?"
Zero!
Not a thing to do with it, hasn't a suspicion of it, no more involved in it than that sparrow there, he pointed to a sparrow that had lit on the step near-by. "I've had setbacks in my profession before—but this!" He stopped, stuck his hands into his pockets and stared blankly at the sparrow.
Well, if it lets him out, said Babbitts, "it tightens the cords round the other two."
Um, agreed O'Mally, still gazing stonily at the sparrow, "that's what keeps your spirits up."
With him eliminated the whole thing concentrates on her and Barker.
It does, my son. O'Mally roused up and came out of his depression. "Instead of a brain and a pair of hands as we've called it, it was a brain and one hand—the smart hand, the right. That was the woman."
He turned and began to descend the steps, taking Babbitts by the arm to draw him closer and speaking low:
Do you see how it went? They were in the private office when Ford came back—she and Barker and the dead man. When they heard him come they switched off the light and locked the door—and, Great Scott, can you imagine how they felt! Shut in there in the dark with their victim, not knowing who Ford could be or what he was doing, listening to him rummaging round, his steps coming nearer, his hand on the doorknob! I'm too familiar with murder to see any terrors in it—but that situation! I've never known the beat of it in all my experience. Then when Ford goes—on his very heels—over and out with the thing they'd killed. And both of them back there again, or maybe stealing to the front windows and taking a look down at the crowd below.
They walked up the street arm in arm, talking in hushed voices. As he looked at the faces of the people that passed the thought came to Babbitts that in a short time, maybe a few days, they'd be reading in the papers of the awful crime not one of them now had a suspicion of.
I heard all this late that night from Babbitts. But there was more to it than I've told in the last chapter, for after they left the hospital O'Mally and Babbitts went to the Whitney office and had a séance with the old man and Mr. George.
Though Ford had disappointed them his story had made the way clear for a decisive move. This was decided upon then and there. On Monday morning they would ask Miss Whitehall to come to Whitney & Whitney's and subject her to a real examination. If she maintained her pose of ignorance they would suddenly face her with their complete information. They felt tolerably certain this would be too much for her, secure in her belief that no murder had been suspected. Surprise and terror would seize her, even a hardened criminal, placed unexpectedly in such a position, was liable to break down.
The next day was Sunday. I'll not forget it in a hurry. Many a high pressure day I've had in my twenty-five years but none that had anything over that one. It was gray and overcast, clouds low down over the roofs which stretched away in a gray huddle of flat tops and slanting mansards and chimneys and clotheslines. Babbitts spent the morning on the davenport looking like he was in a boat floating through a sea of newspapers. I couldn't settle down to anything, thinking of what was going to happen the next morning, thinking of that girl, that beautiful girl, with her soul stained with crime, and wondering if she could feel the shadow that was falling across her.
After lunch Himself went out saying he'd take a shot at finding Freddy Jaspar and going with him up to Yonkers where there'd been some anarchist row. He was restless too. If things turned out right he'd get his Big Story at last—and what a story it would be!—he'd get a raise for certain, and as he kissed me good-bye he said he'd give me the two glass lamps and a new set of furs, anything I wanted short of sable or ermine.
In the afternoon Iola dropped in all dolled up and decked with a permanent smile, for she'd landed her new job and liked it fine. As she prattled away she let drop something that caught my ear, and lucky it was as you'll see presently. On her way over she'd met Delia, the Whitehalls' maid, who told her the ladies were going to move back to the Azalea Woods Estates where someone had given them a cottage. Delia had just been to see them and found that Mrs. Whitehall had already gone, and Miss Whitehall was packing up to follow on Monday afternoon. Iola thought it was nice they'd got the cottage but didn't I think Miss Whitehall would be afraid of the dullness of the country after living in town? I said you never could tell. What I thought was that if there was anything for Miss Whitehall to be afraid of it wasn't dullness.
At six Iola left, having a date for supper, and a little after that I had a call from Babbitts, saying he and Freddy Jaspar had found the anarchist business more important than they expected and he wouldn't be home till all hours.
Isabella doesn't come on Sunday so I got my own supper and then sat down in the parlor and tried to read the papers. But I couldn't put my mind on them. In a few days, perhaps as soon as Tuesday, the Dispatch would have the Harland murder on the front page. I could see the headlines—the copy reader could spread himself—and I tried to work out how Babbitts would write it, where he'd begin—with the crime itself or with all the story that came before it.
It was near eleven and me thinking of bed when there was a ring at the bell. That's pretty late for callers, even in a newspaper man's flat, and I jumped up and ran into the hall. After I'd jammed the push button, I opened the door, spying out for the head coming up the stairs. It came—a derby hat and a pair of broad shoulders, and then Jack Reddy's face, raised to mine, grave and frowning.
Hello, Molly, he said. "It's late, but I couldn't find any of the others so I came to you."
If he hadn't seen anyone he didn't know what had transpired. The thought made me bubble up with eagerness to tell him the new developments. That was the reason, I guess, I didn't notice how serious he was, not a smile of greeting, not a handshake. He didn't even take off his coat, but throwing his hat on one of the hallpegs, said:
I've only just got in from Buffalo. I phoned to the Whitney house from the Grand Central, but they're both out of town, not to be back till tomorrow morning, and O'Mally's away too. Do you know how Ford is?
You bet I do. He's sat up, taken nourishment and talked.
Talked? Have they seen him?
They have. I turned away and moved up the hall. "Come right in and I'll tell you."
I went into the dining-room where the drop light hung bright over the table, and was going on to the parlor when I heard his voice, loud and commanding, behind me:
What's he said?
I whisked round and there he was standing by the table, his eyes fixed hard and almost fierce on me.
Won't you come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly, I said laughing, just to tease him. He answered without the ghost of a smile:
No. Go on quick. What did Ford say?
All right. I dropped down into Babbitts' chair and motioned him to mine. "Sit down there. It's a long story and I can't tell it to you if you stand in front of me like a patience on a monument."
He took the chair and putting his elbows on the table, raised his hands, clasped together, and leaned his mouth on them. The light fell full on his face and over those clasped hands his eyes stared at me so fixed and steady they looked the eyes of an image. I don't think while I told him he ever batted a lid and I know he never said a word.
So you see, I said, when I was through, "Ford's as much out of it as you are."
Without moving his hands he asked:
What do they think?
Why, what do you suppose they think? Instead of there being three of them in it there were two.
They think she and Barker did it?
Of course. They've worked it out this way—I leaned over the table, my voice low, giving him the details of their new theory. As I told it there was something terrible in those eyes. All the kindness went out of them and a fire came in its place till they looked like crystals with a flame behind them.
When I finished he spoke and this time his voice sounded different, hoarse and muffled:
Have they made any plan? Decided on their next step?
They've got it all arranged, and I went on about the interview that was planned for the next morning. "With her thinking herself safe the way she does, they're sure they can give her such a jolt she'll lose her nerve and tell."
He gave an exclamation, not words, just a choked, fierce sound, and dropping his hands on the table, burst out like a volcano:
The dogs! The devils! Dragging her down there to terrify a lie out of her!
He leaped to his feet, sending the chair crashing down on the floor. I fell back where I sat paralyzed, not only by his words, but at the sight of him.
I think I've spoken of the fact that he had a violent temper and he's told me himself that he's conquered it. But now for the first time I saw it and believe me it was far from dead. I would hardly have known him. His face was savage, his eyes blazing, and the words came from him as if they were shot out on the breaths that broke in great heaving gasps from his lungs.
Haven't you, he said, "a woman, any heart in you? Are you, that I've always thought all kindness and generosity, willing to hound an innocent girl to her ruin?"
He grabbed the back of a chair near him and leaned over it glaring at me, shaking, gasping, and the color of ashes.
But—but, I faltered, "she's done it."
She hasn't, he shouted. "You're all fools, imbeciles, mad. It's a lie—an infamous, brutal lie!"
He dropped the chair and turned away, beginning to pace up and down, his hands clenched, raging to himself. The room was full of the sound of his breathing, as if some great throbbing piece of machinery was inside him.
And I—there in my seat, fallen limp against the back—saw it all. What a fool I'd been—what an idiot! He with his empty heart and that beautiful girl—the girl that any man might have loved and how much more Jack Reddy, knowing her poor and lonesome and believing her innocent and persecuted. I felt as if the skies had fallen on me. My hero—that I'd never found a woman good enough for—in love with a murderess!
He stopped in his pacing and tried to get a grip on himself, tried to speak quietly with his voice gone to a husky murmur:
Tomorrow do you say? Tomorrow they're going to do this damnable thing?
Tomorrow at ten in Mr. Whitney's office, I answered, weak and trembling.
He stood for a moment looking on the ground, his brows drawn low over his eyes, the bones of his jaw showing set under the flesh. A deadly fear seized me—a fear that followed on a flash of understanding. I got up—I guess as white as he was—and went over to him.
Jack, I said. "You can't do anything. Everything's against her. There's not a point that doesn't show she's guilty."
He gave me a look from under his eyebrows like the thrust of a sword.
Don't say that to me again, Molly, he almost whispered, "or I'll forget the debt I owe you and the affection I've felt for you since the day we swore to be friends."
What can you do? I cried, fairly distracted. "They've got the evidence. It's there——"
I tried to put my hand on his arm but he shook it off and walked toward the door. I followed him and during those few short steps from the dining-room to the hall, it came to me as clear as if he'd said it that he was going to Carol Whitehall to help her run away.
What are you going to do? I said, standing in the doorway as he pulled his hat off the peg and turned toward the hall door.
That's my affair, he threw back over his shoulder.
He had his hand on the knob when a thought—an inspiration flashed on me. I don't know where it came from, but when you're fond of a person and see them headed for a precipice, I believe you get some sort of wireless communication from Heaven or some place of that order.
Miss Whitehall's not in town now, I said.
He stopped short and looked back at me:
Where is she?
They've gone back to New Jersey. Some people loaned them a cottage in the Azalea Woods Estates.
I knew that—but they're not there yet?
Yes. They went yesterday, sooner than they expected.
He stood for a moment, looking at the floor, then glanced back at me and said:
Thank you for telling me that. Good night.
The door opened, banged shut and I was alone.
I wonder if anyone reading this story can imagine what I felt. It was awful, so awful that now, here, writing it down peaceful and happy, I can feel the sinking at my heart and the sick sensation like I could never eat food again. And laugh? It was an art I'd lost and never in this world would get back.
It was not only that he loved her—that woman, that vampire, who could sin at the word of an old man—but it was the thought, the certainty, that he was ready to betray his trust, go back on his partners, be a traitor to his office. All the work they'd done, all the hopes they'd built up, all their efforts for success, he was going to destroy. It was disgrace for him, he'd never get over it, he'd be an outcast. As long as he lived he'd be pointed at as the man who gave his honor for the love of a wicked woman.
That was the first of my thoughts and the second was that I wasn't going to let him do it. There was just one way of preventing it, and honest to God—think as badly of me as you like, I can't help it—when I got what that way was I was so relieved I didn't care whether I was a traitor or not. All that mattered then was if there'd got to be one—and as far as I could see there had to—it was better for it to be Molly Babbitts, who didn't amount to much in the world, than Jack Reddy, who was a big man and was going to be a bigger.
As I put on my coat and hat I heard the clock strike half-past eleven. There were no trains out to the Azalea Woods Estates before seven the next morning. Even if he took his own auto, which I guessed he'd do, it would take him the best part of an hour and a half to get there, and long before that she'd have had her warning from me.
Yes—that's what I was going to do—go to her and tell her before he could. Dishonest? Well, I guess yes! I know what's straight from what's crooked as well as most. But it seemed to me the future of a man, that man—was worth more than my pledged word, or the glory of Whitney & Whitney, or Babbitts' scoop. That was the cruelest of all—my own dear beloved Soapy—to go back on him too! Gosh!—going over in the taxi through the dark still streets, how I felt! But it didn't matter. If I died when I was through I'd got to do it. Maybe you never experienced those sensations, maybe you can't understand. But, take it from me, there are people who'd break all the commandments and all the laws to save their friends and, bad or good, I'm one of them.
As the taxi rolled up to her corner I saw that the windows of her floor were bright. She was still up, which would make things easier—much better than having to wake her from her sleep. In that sort of apartment they lock the outer doors at half-past ten and to get at the bells you have to wake the janitor, which I didn't want to do, as no one must know I'd been there. So before I rang the outside bell that connects with his lair in the basement, I tried the door, hoping some late comer had left it on the jar as they sometimes do. It opened—an immense piece of luck—which made me feel that fate was on my side and braced me like a tonic.
In the vestibule I pressed the button under her letter box and in a minute came the click, click of the inner latch and I entered. As I ascended the stairs I heard the door on the landing above softly open and looking up I saw a bright light illumine the dimness and then, through the balustrade, her figure standing on the threshold.
She must have been surprised for the person who mounted into her sight—a girl in a dark coat and hat—was someone she'd never seen before. She pushed the door wider, as if to let more light on me, looking puzzled at my face. The one electric bulb was just above her on the wall and its sickly gleam fell over her, tall and straight in a purple silk kimono. Her black hair curling back from her forehead stood out like a frame, and her neck, between the folds of the kimono, was as smooth and white as cream. The sight of her instead of weakening me gave me strength, for in that sort of careless rig, tired and pale, she was still handsome enough to make a fool of any man.
Do you want to see me? she said, "Miss Whitehall?"
I do, I answered. "I want to see you on a matter of importance. It can't wait."
Without another word she drew back from the doorway and let me come in.
Go in there, she said, pointing up the hall to the curtained entrance of the dining-room, and I went as she pointed.
The room was brightly lit, as was the parlor beyond, and on every side were the signs of moving—curtains piled below the windows, furniture in white covers, straw and bits of paper on the floor. Two trunks were standing in the middle of the parlor and on the chairs about were her clothes, all tumbled and mixed up, boots in one place, hats in another, lingerie heaped on the table. There was enough packing to keep her busy till morning, and I thought to myself that was what she intended to do—finish it up tonight and the next day make her move.
All this took only a minute to see and I was standing by the dining-table, clutching tight on my muff to hide the trembling of my hands, when she came in. In the brighter light I could see that she looked worn and weary, all her color gone except for the red of her lips, and her eyes sunken and dark underneath.
What do you want with me? she said, as the curtain fell behind her.
Her manner was abrupt and straight from the shoulder like a person's who's got past little pleasantnesses and politeness. The glance she fixed on me was steady and clear, but there was a sort of waiting expectation in it like she was ready for anything and braced to meet it.
I came, I said, choosing my words as careful as I could, "to tell you of—of—something that's going to happen—to warn you."
She gave a start and her face changed, as if a spring inside her had snapped and sort of focussed her whole being into a still, breathless listening.
Warn me, she repeated. "Of what?"
Miss Whitehall, I said, clearing my throat, for it was dry, "I'm a person you don't know, but I know you. I've been employed by people here in New York who've been watching you for the past few weeks. They've got the evidence they want—I've been helping them—and they're ready to act."
As I had spoken she had never taken her eyes off me. Big and black and unwinking they stared and as I stared back I could see it wasn't surprise or fear they showed but a concentrated attention.
What do you mean—act in what way?
Get you to their office tomorrow and question you about the Harland case and make you confess.
She was as still as a statue. You'd have thought she was turned to stone, but for the moving up and down of her chest.
What am I to confess? What have I done?
My hands gripped together in my muff and my voice went down to my boots for I couldn't say it aloud.
Been a party to the murder of Hollings Harland.
When I said it I had an expectation that she'd say something, deny it in some violent way that would make me think she was innocent. Maybe Jack Reddy had influenced me, but I wanted it, I looked for it, I hoped for it—and I was disappointed. If it had been a shock to her, if she hadn't known there'd been a murder, she would never have behaved as she did. For she said not a word, standing stock still, her face chalk white, even the red fading from her lips, and her eyes fixed on the wall opposite, like the eyes of a sleep-walker.
The murder of Hollings Harland, she whispered, and it was more as if she was speaking to herself than to me.
Yes, I went on. "They've discovered it—a group of us have been working in secret, following the clues and gathering the evidence. Now we've got it all ready and tomorrow they expect to arrest you."
She suddenly sank down into a chair by the table, her hands braced against its edge, her eyes riveted in that strange, mesmerized stare on the fern plant in front of her.
When did they discover it? she said in a low voice.
Not long after it happened—but that doesn't matter. They've got everything in their hands. Even if you insist that you're innocent they've got enough to arrest you on. You've been under surveillance all along—they've been shadowing you. They followed you that time you tried to go to Toronto.
I knew that, she said in the same low voice as if she was talking to herself.
They know how you came out of the building that night—not by the elevator as you said, but by the stairs, and how you didn't get home till nearly eight. They know about you and Barker.
She lifted her head and said quickly:
What do they know about me and Barker?
That he was in love with you and you with him.
Oh, that! Her tone was indifferent as if the point was a matter of no consequence.
They know how the murder was done. How you and Barker did it.
Barker and I—— She sank back in her chair, then suddenly leaning across the table, looked into my face and said, "Tell me how we did it. Let me see what they know."
I took the chair opposite and told her the whole plot and how we'd worked it out. While I was doing it she never said a word, but sat with her profile toward me and her eyes in that blank, motionless stare on the fern plant.
When I had finished there was a pause, then suddenly she drew a deep breath, turned toward me and said:
What brought you here to me tonight?
It came so unexpectedly I had no answer ready. What I'd looked for was a scene, terror, maybe hysterics and her breaking away as fast as she could put on her hat. Seeing me stupidly dumb she rose out of her chair, and moved away for a few steps, then stopped and seemed again to fall into that trance of thinking. It was like everything else in this nightmare—different to what I'd looked for, and a sickening thought came to me that maybe she was ready to throw up the sponge and go down and confess. And then—for all I knew—Jack Reddy might persuade her to marry him and go to prison with her. How can you be sure what a man crazy with love will do? If she got a life sentence he'd probably live at the gates of Sing Sing for the rest of his days. I was desperate and went round the table after her.
Say, I implored. "What are you going to do?"
I'm thinking, she muttered.
For God's sake don't think, I wailed. "Get up and act. If I go back on the people that employ me and come here in the middle of the night to warn you, isn't it the least you can do to take advantage of it and go?"
She wheeled round on me, her face all alight with a wonderful beaming look.
That's the reason, she said. "That's what made you come—humanity—pity! You've risked everything to help me. Oh, you don't know what you've done—what courage you've put into me. And you don't know what my gratitude is."
Before I knew it she had seized hold of one of my hands and held it against her heart, with her head bowed over it as if she was praying.
Do you guess how I felt? Ashamed?—perishing with it, ready to sink down on the floor and pass away. A murderess no doubt but even if a murderess thinks you did her a good turn when you didn't it makes you feel like a snake's a high-class animal beside you.
Oh, come on, I begged. "Let go of me and get out."
She dropped my hand and looked at me—Oh, so soft and sweet!—and I saw tears in her eyes. That pretty near finished me and I wailed out:
Don't stop to cry. You don't know but what they might get uneasy and come tonight. Put on your things and go.
Hadn't I got to hurry her? If Jack made a quick trip he'd be back in town between two and three and he'd come as straight as wheels could take him to her door.
Yes, I'll go, she said.
Now, I urged, "as soon as you can get into your coat and hat. Don't bother about this," I pointed to the disorder round us—"They'll think you've had another message from Barker and gone to him."
A curious, slight smile came over her face.
Yes, she said, "that's what they will think, I suppose."
Of course it is, and they'll waste time looking for him which'll give you a good start. If there's no train now to the place you're going to, sit in the depot, ride round in a taxi, walk up and down Fifth Avenue, only get out of this place.
I'll be gone in half an hour, she said, and moved between the trunks and piled up clothes to the bedroom beyond. I followed her and saw into the room, all confusion like the others, every gas in the chandelier blazing.
Can I help you? I said. "Can I pack a suitcase or anything?"
No— she halted in front of the mirror, letting the kimono slide off her to the floor, her arms and neck like shining marble under that blaze of light. "I'll only want a few things. There's a bag there I can throw them into. You'd better go now."
I was afraid she'd not be as quick as I wanted but I couldn't hang round urging any more after she'd told me to go. Besides I could see she was hurrying, grabbing a dress from the bed and getting into it so swiftly even I was satisfied.
Well then I'm off, I said.
She looked up from the hooks she was snapping together and said:
Before you go tell me who you are?
There's no need for that, I answered, thinking she'd probably never see me again. "I'm just someone that blew in tonight for a minute and who's going like she came."
Someone I'll never forget, she said, "and that some day, if all goes well, I'll be able to pay back."
I was afraid she was going to get grateful again and I couldn't stand any more of that. So with a quick "good-bye" away I went, up the hall, opening the door without a sound, and stealing down the stairs as soft as a robber.
Out in the street I stopped and reconnoitered. There was no one in sight except a policeman lounging dreary on the next corner. Across from the apartment was the entrance of a little shop—tobacco and light literature—and into that I crept, squeezing back against the glass door. I couldn't be at peace till I saw her leave and for fifteen or twenty minutes I stood there watching the lights in her windows. Then suddenly they began to go out, across the front and along down the side, till every pane was black. A few minutes later, she came down the steps carrying a bag. She stopped close to where I was, and hailed a car, and not till I saw it start with her sitting by the door, did I steal out of my hiding place and sprint up the street to Madison Avenue.
When I reached home I was shivering and wild-eyed, for if Babbitts was there what could I say to him? He wasn't—thank Heaven!—and cold as ice, feeling as if I'd been through a mangle, I crawled into bed.
There wasn't much sleep for me that night. About all I could say to myself was that I'd saved Jack. But the others—Oh, the others! I couldn't get them out of my mind. They'd come in a procession across the dark and look at me sad and reproachful. Mr. Whitney, who'd done everything in the world for me, and Mr. George, who could put on such side, but had always been so kind and cordial, and O'Mally, who'd told Babbitts the case was going to make him, and Babbitts—Oh, Babbitts!
I rolled over on the pillow and cried scalding, bitter tears. It wasn't only the scoop—it was that I'd have a secret from him forever—him that up to now had known every thought in my mind, had been like the other half of me. They say virtue is its own reward, and I've always believed it. But that night I had the awful thought that maybe I'd done wrong, for all the reward I got was to feel like an outcast with a stone for a heart.
That night when I left Molly there was only one thought in my mind—to reach Carol and help her get away. If the figure of Barker had not stood between us I would have then and there implored her to marry me and give me the right to fight for her. But I knew that was hopeless. As things stood, all I could do was to tell her the situation and give her a chance to escape.
I suppose it's a pretty damaging confession but the office, my duty to my work and my associates, cut no ice at all. Heretofore I'd rather patted myself on the back as a man who stood by his obligations. That night only one obligation existed for me—to protect from disgrace the woman I loved.
I knew the trains to Azalea—it was on the road to Firehill—and though one left at midnight, the last train on the branch line to the Azalea Woods Estates had long gone. The shortest and quickest way for me to get there was to take out my own car. This would also insure the necessary secrecy. I could bring her back with me and let her slip away in the crowds at one of the big stations.
It was a wild, windy night, a waning moon showing between long streamers of clouds. By the time I struck the New Jersey shore—after maddening delays in the garage and at the ferry—it was getting on for one, and the clouds had spread black over the sky. It was a fiendish ride for a man on fire as I was. For miles the road looped through a country as dark as a pocket, broken with ice-skimmed pools and deep-driven ruts. In the daylight I could have made the whole distance inside an hour, but it was after two when I came to the branch line junction and turned up the long winding road that led over the hills to the Azalea Woods Estates.
As I sighted the little red-roofed station and the houses dotted over the tract, the moon came out and I slowed up, having no idea where the cottage was or what it looked like. The place was quiet as the grave, the light sleeping on the pale walls of the stucco villas backed by the wooded darkness of the hills.
I was preparing to get out and rouse one of the slumbering inhabitants when I heard the voices of women. They were coming down a side road and looking up it I saw three figures moving toward me, their shadows slanting black in front of them. At the gate of a large, white-walled house, two of them turned in, their good-nights clear on the frosty air, and the third advanced in my direction. I could see her skirts, light-colored below her long dark coat, and her head tied up in some sort of scarf. By their clothes and voices I judged them to be servant girls coming back from a party.
As she approached I hailed her with a careful question:
I beg your pardon, but I think I'm lost. Can you tell me where I am?
I can, she said, drawing up by the car. "You're in the Azalea Woods Estates."
Oh, I am a bit out of my way. The Azalea Woods Estates, I surveyed the scattered houses and wide-cut avenues, "I've heard of them but never seen them before. Doesn't a Mrs. Whitehall live here?"
The girl smiled; she had a pleasant, good-natured face.
She surely does—in the Regan cottage over beyond the crest there. I'm living with her, doing the heavy work, until she gets settled. I belong on the big farm, but as she was lonesome and had no girl I said I'd come over and stay till her daughter joined her.
I smothered a start—could Molly have made a mistake?
Her daughter, eh? Isn't her daughter with her now?
No, sir. She's coming tomorrow afternoon, then I'm going home. We'll have the cottage all ready for her. She's not expected till the 2.40 from town. Do you know the ladies?
I bent over the wheel, afraid even by that pale light my face might show too much. Molly had made a mistake, sent me out here on a fruitless quest, wasted three or four precious hours. I could have wrung her neck. I heard my voice veiled and husky as I answered:
Only by hearsay. I knew Miss Whitehall was the head of the enterprise, that's all. Er—er—it's Azalea I'm aiming for. How do I get there?
She laughed.
Well you are out of your way. You'll have to go back to the Junction on the main line. Then follow the road straight ahead and you'll strike Azalea—about twenty miles farther on.
Thank you, I said and began to back the car for the turn.
No thanks, she answered and as I swung around called out a cheery "Good night."
That ride back—shall I ever forget it! It was as if an evil genius was halting me by every means malevolence could devise. Before I reached the highway the moon disappeared and the darkness settled down like a blanket. The wind was in my face this way and it stung till the water ran out of my eyes. Squinting through tears I had to make out the line of the road, black between black hedges and blacker fields. I went as fast as I dared—nothing must happen to me that night for if I failed her, Carol was lost. With the desire to let the car out as if I was competing in the Vanderbilt Cup Race, I had to slow down for corners and creep through the long winding ways that threaded the woods.
And finally—in a barren stretch without a light or a house in sight a tire blew out! I won't write about it—what's the use? It's enough to say it was nearly six, and the East pale with the new day, when I rushed into Jersey City. I was desperate then, and police or no police, flashed like a gray streak through the town to the ferry.
On the boat I had time to think. I decided to phone her, tell her I was coming and to be dressed and ready. I could still get her off three or four hours ahead of them. I stopped at the first drug store and called her up. The wait seemed endless, then a drawling, nasal voice said, "I can't raise the number. Lenox 1360 don't answer." I got back in the car with my teeth set—sleeping so sound on this morning of all mornings! Poor, unsuspecting Carol!
The day was bright, the slanting sun rays touching roofs and chimneys, when I ran up along the curb at her door. An old man in a dirty jumper who was sweeping the sidewalk, stopped as he saw me leap out and run up the steps. The outer door was shut and as I turned I almost ran into him, standing at my heels with his broom in his hand. He said he was the janitor, took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and unlocked the door, fastening the two leaves back as I pressed her bell.
There was no answering click of the latch and I tried the inner door—fast, and all my shaking failed to budge it.
Isn't Miss Whitehall here? I said, turning on the man who was watching me interestedly.
Sure, he answered. "Anyways she was last night. She talked to me down the dumbwaiter at seven and told me she wasn't going till this afternoon."
Open the door, I ordered, speaking as quietly as I could. "She's probably asleep—I've an important message for her, and I want to give it now before I go downtown."
He did as I told him and I ran up the stairs, and pressed the electric button at her door. As I waited I heard the janitor's slow steps pounding up behind me, but from the closed apartment there was not a sound.
She ain't there, I guess, he said as he gained the landing. "She must have gone last night."
I turned on him:
Have you a key for this apartment?
I've a key for every apartment, he answered, holding out the bunch in his hand.
Then open the door. If she's not here I've got to know it.
He inserted a key in the lock and in a minute we were inside. The morning light filtered in through drawn blinds, showing a deserted place, left in the chaos of a hasty move. Everything was in disorder, trunks open, furniture stacked and covered. The curtains to the front bedroom that I'd always seen closed were pulled back, revealing the evidences of a hurried packing, clothes on the bed, bureau drawers half out, a purple silk thing lying in a heap on the floor.
She was gone, gone in wild haste, gone like one who leaves on a summons as imperative as the call of death—or love!
She's evidently gone to her mother or some friend for the night, I said carelessly. "She'll be back again to finish it up."
The janitor agreed and asked if I'd leave a message. No, I'd phone up later. I cautioned him to keep my visit quiet and he nodded understandingly—took me for a desperate lover, which Heaven knows I was. But in order to run no risks of his speaking to those who would follow me, I sealed his lips with a bill that left him speechless and bowing to the ground.
I was in my own apartment before Joanna and David were up, ready to be called to breakfast from what they, in their fond old hearts, thought was a good night's rest. Sitting on the side of my bed, with my head in my hands, I struggled for the coolness that day would need. Of course she'd gone to Barker—nothing else explained it. The state of the apartment proved she had intended leaving for the cottage, her mother had unquestionably expected her, not a soul in the world but myself could have warned her. Only another command from the man who ruled her life could account for her disappearance. Some time that night she had heard from him, and once again had gone to join him. I tried to dull my pain with the thought that she was safe, kept whispering it over and over, and through it and under it like the unspoken anguish of a nightmare went the other, "She's with him, flown to him, in his arms."
There was fury in me against every man in the Whitney office, but I could no more have kept away from it than I could have from her if she'd been near me. At nine o'clock I was there and found the chief, George and O'Mally already assembled. The air was charged with excitement, the long, slow work had reached its climax, the bloodhounds were in sight of the quarry. I could see the assurance of victory in their faces, hear it in the triumphant note of their voices. I don't think any man has ever stood higher in my esteem than Wilbur Whitney, but that morning, with the machinery of his devising ready to close on his victim, I hated him.
Immediately after I arrived they sent a phone message to her. I sat back near the window, to all intents and purposes a quiet, unobtrusive member of the quartette. When the reply came that the number didn't answer they concluded she was out, arranging for her departure that afternoon. The second message went at 9.30, and on the receipt of the same answer, a slight, premonitory uneasiness was visible. A third call was sent a few minutes before ten and this time central volunteered the information that "Lenox 1360 wasn't answering at all that morning."
The chief and O'Mally kept their pose of an unruffled confidence, but George couldn't fake it—he was wild-eyed with alarm. After a few minutes' consultation O'Mally was sent off to find out what was up, leaving the chief musing in his big chair and George swinging like a pendulum from room to room. I had to listen to him—he only got grunts from his father—and it took pretty nearly all the control I had to answer the stream of questions and surmises he deluged me with.
When O'Mally came back with the news that the bird had flown, the fall of the triumph of Whitney & Whitney was dire and dreadful. The announcement was met by dead silence, then George burst out sentences of sputtering fury, heads would drop in the basket after this. Even the chief was shaken out of his stolidity, rising from his chair, a terrible, old figure, fierce and bristling like an angry lion. I don't think in the history of the firm they'd ever had a worse jar, a more complete collapse in the moment of victory.
But O'Mally and the old man were too tried and seasoned timber to let their rage stand in the way. The detective had hardly finished before they were up at the table getting at their next move. All were agreed that she had had another communication from Barker and had gone to him. They saw it as I had—as anyone who knew the circumstances would. The first message had been by phone, the second might have been, and there was the shade of a possibility that she might have phoned back. If she had there would be a record, easily traced. The power of the Whitney office stretched far and through devious channels. In fifteen minutes the machinery was started to have the records of all out of town messages sent from Lenox 1360 within the last week turned in to Whitney & Whitney.
It was what I'd feared, but I was powerless, also I thought the chances were in her favor. Barker, no matter how he loved her, might not dare to trust her with his telephone number. Judging by the way he had frustrated all our efforts to find him, he was taking no risks. It would have been in keeping with his unremitting caution to hold all communications with her by letter. That kept me quiet, kept me from bursting out on them as they schemed and plotted close drawn round the table.
The next move was suggested by the chief—to find Mrs. Whitehall and bring her to the office. In default of the daughter they would try the mother. All were of the opinion that the older woman was ignorant of the murder, but it was possible that she might know something of her daughter's movements. And even if she didn't, that attack by surprise which was to have broken down Carol Whitehall might, tried in a lesser degree, draw forth some illuminating facts from her mother. It was nearly midday when George and O'Mally set out in a high-powered motor for the Azalea Woods Estates.
I spent the next few hours in my own office, sitting at the desk. Every nerve was as tight as a violin string, hope and dread changing places in my mind. Awful hours, now when I look back on them. The whole thing hung on a chance. If her recent communications with Barker had been by letter, if her mother knew nothing, there was a fighting hope for her. But if she knew his number and had phoned—if her flight had been planned and Mrs. Whitehall did know! I remembered her as I'd seen her in the country, a fragile, melancholy woman. What chance had she with the men pitted against her?
I don't know what time it was, but the sun had swung round to the window, when I heard steps in the passage and a woman's voice, high and quavering. I leaped up and entered the chief's office by one door as Mrs. Whitehall, George and O'Mally came in by the other.
She looked pale and shriveled. I didn't then know what they'd said to her, whether they'd already tried their damnable third degree. But they hadn't, all they had done was to tell her her daughter had been wanted at the Whitney office and couldn't be found. That scared her, she'd come with them at once, only insisting that they stop at the flat and let her see that Carol was not there. This they did, admitting afterward that her surprise and alarm struck them as absolutely genuine.
These emotions were plain on her face; any fool could see she was racked with fear and anxiety. It was stamped on her features, it was in her wildly questioning eyes.
Mr. Whitney, she said, without preamble or greeting, "what does this mean? Where is my daughter?"
The old man was as courteous as ever, but under the studied urbanity of his manner, I could feel the knife-edged sharpness that only cut through when his blood was up.
That is what we want to know from you, Mrs. Whitehall. We needed some information from your daughter this morning and we find that she has—I think I may say, fled. Where to, surely you, her mother, must know.
No, she cried, her hollow eyes riveted on his. "No. She was coming to me this afternoon, everything was arranged, ready and waiting. And now she's gone, and you, you men here, want to find her. What is it? There's something strange, something I don't know." Her glance moved over the watching faces. They were ominously unresponsive. Where she looked for hope or help she saw nothing but a veiled menace, every moment growing clearer.
What is it? she cried, her voice rising to a higher note, shrill and shaking. "What is the matter? Tell me. You know—you know something you're hiding from me?"
We think that of you, Mrs. Whitehall, said the chief, ponderous and lowering, "and we want to hear it. The time has come for frankness. Hold nothing back for, as you say, we know."
The woman gave a gasp and took a step nearer to him:
Then for God's sake tell me. Where has she gone?
His answer came like the spring of an animal on its prey:
To join her lover, Johnston Barker.
If he expected to have it strike with an impact he was not disappointed. She fell back as if threatened by a blow, and for a second stood transfixed, aghast, her lower jaw dropped, staring at him. Amazement isn't the word for the look on her face, it was a stupefaction, a paralysis of astonishment. The shock was so violent it swept away all anxiety for her daughter, but it also snapped the last frail remnant of her nerve. From her pale lips her voice broke in a wild, hysterical cry:
Her lover! He was her father!
In the moment of silence which followed that sentence you could hear the fire snap and the tick of the clock on the mantel. I saw the men's faces held in expressions of amazement so intense they looked like caricatures. I saw Mrs. Whitehall try to say something, then with a rustle and a broken cry crumple up in a chair, her face hidden, stuttering, choked sounds coming from behind her hands.
That broke the tension. Like a piece of machinery momentarily out of gear, the group adjusted itself and snapped back into action. All but me—I stood as I had been standing when Mrs. Whitehall spoke those words. My outward vision saw their moving figures, their backs as they crowded round her, a hand that held a glass to her lips, her face bent toward the glass, ashen and haggard. I saw but realized nothing. For a moment I was on another plane of existence, seemed to be shot up into it. I don't tell it right—a fellow who doesn't know how to write can't explain a feeling like that. You've got to fill it in out of your imagination. A man who's been in hell gets suddenly out—that's the best way I can describe it.
I didn't get back to my moorings, come down from the clouds to the solid ground, till the scene by the table was over. Mrs. Whitehall was sitting up, a little color in her cheeks, mistress of herself again. They'd evidently said something to lull her fears about Carol for the distraction of her mood was gone. It wasn't till I saw the narrowed interest of George's eyes, the hungry expectation of O'Mally's watching face, that I remembered they were still on the scent of a murder in which Barker's daughter was as much involved as Barker's fiancée. That brought me back to the moment and its meaning like an electric shock.
I made a stride forward, to get closer, to hear them, for they were at the table again, waiting on the words of Mrs. Whitehall. The first sentence that struck my ear aptly matched her pitiful appearance:
Gentlemen, I'm broken. I've been through too much.
The chief answered very gently:
Having said what you have, would it not be wisdom to tell us everything? We pledge ourselves to secrecy.
She nodded, a gesture of weary acquiescence.
Oh, yes. I don't mind telling—it was to be told; but, she dropped her eyes to her hands clasped in her lap. In that position her likeness to Carol, as she had sat there a few weeks before, was singularly striking. "I'll have to go back a good many years, before my child was born, before the world had heard of Johnston Barker."
Wherever you want, Mrs. Whitehall, the chief murmured. "We're entirely at your service."
She drew a deep breath and without raising her eyes said:
"
I was married to Johnston Barker twenty-eight years ago in Idaho. He was a miner then and I was a school teacher, nineteen years old, an orphan with no near relations. I was not strong and had gone to the Far West for my health. Under the unaccustomed work I broke down, developing a weakness of the lungs, and casual friends, the parents of a pupil, took me with them to a distant mining camp for the drier air. There I met Johnston and we became engaged. In those days in such remote places there were no churches or clergymen and contract marriages were recognized. I did not believe in them, would not at first consent to such a ceremony, but a great strike taking place in a distant camp, he prevailed upon me to marry him by contract, the friends with whom I was living acting as witnesses.
""
The place to which he took me was wild and inaccessible, connecting by trails with other camps and by a long stage journey with a distant railway station. We lived there for a month—happy as I have never been since. Then a woman, a snake in the garden, finding out how I had married hinted to me that such contracts were illegal. I don't know why she did it—I've often wondered—but there are people in the world who take a pleasure in spoiling the joy of others. I didn't tell Johnston but resolved when an opportunity came to stand up with him before an ordained minister. It came sooner than I hoped. Not six weeks after we were man and wife a 'missioner' made a tour through the mining camps of that part of the state. He would not come to ours—we were too small and distant—so I begged my husband to go to him, tell him our case and bring him back. It would have been better for us both to have gone, but I was sick—too young and ignorant to know the cause of my illness—and Johnston, who seemed willing to do anything I wanted, agreed.
""
We calculated that the trip—on horseback, over half-cut mountain trails—would take three or four days there and back. At the end of the fifth day he had not returned and I was in a fever of anxiety. Then again that woman came to me with her poisoned words: I was not a legal wife; could he, knowing this, have taken the opportunity to desert me? God pity her for the deadly harm she did. Sick, alone, inexperienced, eaten into by horrible doubts, I waited till two weeks had passed. Then I was sure that he had done as she said—left me. I won't go over that—the past is past. I took what money I had and made my way to the railway. From there by slow stages, for by this time I was ill in mind and body, I got as far as St. Louis, where, my money gone, unable to work, I wrote to an uncle of my mother's, a doctor, whom I had never seen but of whom she had often spoken to me.
""
Men like him make us realize there is a God to inspire, a Heaven to reward. He came at once, took me to his home in Indiana, and nursed me back to health. He was a father to me, more than a father to the child I had. No one knew me there—no one but he ever heard my story. I took a new name, from a distant branch of his family, and passed as a widow. When my little girl was old enough to understand I told her her father had died before she was born. We lived there for twenty-four years. Before the end of that time the name of Johnston Barker rose into prominence. My uncle hated it—would not allow it mentioned in his presence. When he died three years ago, he left us all he had—fifty thousand dollars, a great fortune to us. Then Carol, who had chafed at the narrow life of a small town, persuaded me to come to New York. I had no fear of meeting Barker, our paths would never cross, and to please her was my life.
""
She is not like me, fearful and timid, but full of daring and ambition. When the farm we bought in New Jersey suddenly increased in value and the land scheme was suggested, she wanted to try it. At first it wasn't possible as we hadn't enough money. It was not until she met Mr. Harland at a friend's house in Azalea, that the plan became feasible for he was taken with the idea at once. After visiting the farm a few times, and talking it over with her, he offered to come in as a silent partner, putting up the capital. The move to town alarmed me. There, in business, she might run across the man who was her father—and this is exactly what happened. You've seen my daughter—you know what she is. Looking at me now you may not realize that she is extraordinarily like what I was when Johnston Barker married me.
""
He saw her first in the elevator at the Black Eagle Building. Men always noticed her—she was used to it—but that night she told me laughing of the old man who had stared at her in the elevator, stared and stared and couldn't take his eyes off. My heart warned me, and when I heard her description I knew who he was and why he stared. After that there was no peace for me. I had a haunting terror that he would find out who she was and might try to claim her. This increased when she told me of his visit to her office to buy the lot—an excuse I understood—and his questions about her former home. Then I tried to quiet myself with the assurances that he could not possibly guess—he had never heard the name of Whitehall in connection with me, he had never known a child was expected.
""
But a night came when I was put with my back against the wall. She returned from work, gay and excited, saying Mr. Barker had been in the office that afternoon and asked her if he might call and meet her mother. The terrible agitation that threw me into betrayed me. I couldn't evade her eyes or her questions, and I told her. She was horrified, stunned. I can't tell you what she said—I can only make you understand her feelings by saying she loved me as few daughters love their mothers. After that—ah, it was horrible! She tried to cancel the sale, but he—of course, he was angry and puzzled by the change in her, could make nothing out of it, and finally insisted on knowing what had happened. There was no escape for her and taking him into the private office they had an interview in which he forced the truth from her.
""
Johnston Barker's life has been full of great things, triumphs and conquests. But I think that hour in the Azalea Woods Estates office must have been the crowning one of his career. To hear that Carol, my wonderful Carol, was his child! He had had no suspicion of it until then. He told her he had been interested by her strange likeness to me, had thought she might be some distant connection, who could give him news of his lost wife. For—here is the bitter part of it—he had come back. In that long mountain journey an accident, a fall from his horse, had injured him. He had been found unconscious by a party of miners who had taken him to their camp and cared for him. For two weeks he lay at death's door, no one knowing who he was, or understanding the wanderings of his delirium. When he returned I was gone—lost like a raindrop in the ocean. He was too poor to hire the aid that might have found me then. He went back to his work, moved to other camps, struggled and thrived. In time the story of his marriage was forgotten. Those who remembered it set it down as an illegal connection, a familiar incident in the miner's roving life.
""
Years later, when he grew rich he hunted for me, but it was too late. Then he turned his whole attention to business, flung himself into it. The making of money filled his life, became his life till he saw the girl in the elevator, who so strikingly resembled the woman he had loved in his youth. This was what he told Carol and this she believed. She was convinced of the truth of every word and tried to convince me. But I was full of suspicions. Having found himself the father of such a girl might he not go to any lengths to gain her love and confidence? His life was empty, he was lonely, Carol would have been the consolation and pride of his old age. Gentlemen—"" she looked at the listening faces—""can you blame me? A youth blasted, years of brooding bitterness—might not that make a woman incredulous and slow to trust again?
""
When she saw the way I took it she went about the business of proving it. Through a lawyer she learned that contract marriages at that time in that state were valid. I had been Johnston Barker's wife and she was legitimate. But I hung back. Many things moved me. He wanted to acknowledge us, take us to live with him and I shrank from all that publicity and clamor. Also—I am telling everything—I think I was jealous of him, fearful that he might take from me some of the love which had made my life possible. I knew she saw him often, and that she heard from him by letter. All through the end of December and the early part of January she urged and pleaded with me. And finally I gave in—I had to, I couldn't stand between her and what he could give her—and the day came when I consented to see him. That day was the fifteenth of January.""
"
George cleared his throat and O'Mally stirred uneasily in his chair. The old man rumbled an encouraging "fifteenth of January," and she went on:
"
She left in the morning greatly excited, telling me she would phone him that she had good news and would bring him home with her that evening. She was radiant with joy and hope when I kissed her good-bye. When she returned that night—long after her usual time—all that hope and joy were dashed to the ground. As you know, she did see him that afternoon and told him of my consent. He appeared overjoyed and said he would come, but first must go to Mr. Harland's offices on the floor above to talk over a matter of great importance. This, he said, would probably occupy half to three-quarters of an hour, after which he would return to her. As they wished to avoid all possibility of gossip through her clerks or the people in the building, they decided not to meet in her offices, but in the church which is next door. From there they would take a cab and come to me.
"
The appointment was for a quarter-past six. Carol was ahead of time and waited for him over an hour, then came home, shattered, broken, almost unable to speak—for, as you know, he never came.
She paused, her face tragic with the memory of that last, unexpected blow. No one spoke, and looking round at them, she threw out her hands with a gesture of pleading appeal:
What could I think? Was it unnatural for me to disbelieve him again? Hasn't all that's come out shown he was what I'd already found him—false to his word and his trust?
Does your daughter think that, too? asked the chief.
No. She believes in him, even now, with him in hiding and branded as a traitor. But that's Carol—always ready to trust where her heart is. She says it's all right, that he'll come back and clear himself, but I can see how she's suffering, how she's struggling to keep her hopes alive.
I burst out—wild horses couldn't have kept me quiet any longer. Reaching a long arm across the table, without any consciousness that I was doing it, I laid my hand on Mrs. Whitehall's:
How did she get out of the building that night?
She looked surprised, and strangely enough embarrassed.
Why—why— she stammered, and then suddenly, "you seem to know so much here—do you know anything about Mr. Harland and Carol?"
Something, said the chief guardedly.
Everything, I shot out, not caring for her, or him, or the case, or anything but the answer to my question.
Then I don't mind telling you, though Carol wouldn't like it. She glanced tentatively at me. "Did you know he was in love with her?"
All about it. Yes. Go on—
"
She went down by the stairs, all those flights, to avoid him. I guessed the way he felt about her. I knew it soon after the business was started and told her but she only laughed at me. That afternoon, when he came to her office, she saw I was right. Not that he said anything definite, but by his manner, the questions he asked her. He was wrought up and desperate, I suppose, and let her see that he was jealous of Mr. Barker, demanding the truth, whether she loved him, whether she intended marrying him. She was angry, but seeing that he had lost control of himself, told him that her feeling for Mr. Barker was that of a daughter to a father and never would be anything else. That seemed to quiet him and he went away. When she was leaving her offices she heard foot-steps on the floor above and looking up saw him through the balustrade walking to the stair head. She at once thought he was coming to see her and not wanting any more conversation with him, stole out and down the hall to the side corridor, where the service stairs are. Her intention was to pick up the elevator on the floor below, but on second thoughts she gave this up and walked the whole way. Finding her gone he would probably take the elevator himself and they might meet in the car or the entrance hall. Of course we know now she was all wrong. It was not to see her he was coming down, it was to make up his mind to die.""
"
My actions must have surprised them. For without a word to Mrs. Whitehall I jumped up and left the room—I couldn't trust myself to speak, I had to be alone. In my own office I shut the door and stood looking with eyes that saw nothing out of the window, over the roofs to where the waters of the bay glittered in the sun. Have you ever felt a relief so great it made you shaky? Probably not—but wait till you're in the position I was. The room rocked, the distance was a golden blue as I whispered with lips that were stiff and dry:
Thank God! Oh, thank God! Oh, thank God!
I don't know how long a time passed—maybe an hour, maybe five minutes—when the door opened and George's head was thrust in:
What are you doing shut in here? Get a move on—we want you. The telephone returns have come.
I followed him back. Mrs. Whitehall was not there—the chief and O'Mally had their heads together over a slip of paper.
Here you, Jack, said the old man turning sharply on me. "You've got to go out tonight with O'Mally. They're in Quebec."
He handed me the slip of paper. On it was one memorandum. The night before at 12.05 New York, Lenox 1360 had called up Quebec, St. Foy 584.
That night Babbitts, O'Mally and I left for Quebec. Before we went the wires that connected us with the Canadian city had been busy. St. Foy 584 had been located, a house on a suburban road, occupied for the last two weeks by an American called Henry Santley. Instructions were carried over the hundreds of intervening miles to surround the house, to apprehend Santley if he tried to get away, and to watch for the lady who would join him that night. Unless something unforeseen and unimaginable should occur we had Barker at last.
As we rushed through the darkness, we speculated on the reasons for his last daring move—the sending for his daughter. O'Mally figured it out as the result of a growing confidence—he was feeling secure and wanted to help her. He had had ample proof of her discretion and had probably some plan for her enrichment that he wanted to communicate to her in person. I was of the opinion that he expected to leave the country and intended to take her with him, sending back later for the mother. He was assured of her trust and affection, knew she believed in him, and was certain the murder hadn't been and now never would be discovered. He could count on safety in Europe and with his vast gains could settle down with his wife and his daughter to a life of splendid ease. Well, we'd see to that. The best laid schemes of mice and men!
The sun was bright, the sky sapphire clear as the great rock of Quebec, crowned with its fortress roofs, came into view. The two rivers clasped its base, ice-banded at the shore and in the middle their dark currents flowing free. Snow and snow and snow heaved and billowed on the surrounding hills, paved the narrow streets, hooded the roofs of the ancient houses. Through the air, razor-edged with cold and crystal clear, came the thin broken music of sleigh bells, ringing up from every lane and alley, jubilant and inspiring, and the sleighs, low running, flew by with the wave of their streaming furs and the flash of scarlet standards.
Glorious, splendid, a fit day, all sun and color and music, for me to come to Carol!
A man met us at the depot, a silent, wooden-faced policeman of some kind, who said yes, he thought the lady was there, and then piloted us glumly into a sleigh and mounted beside the driver. A continuous, vague current of sound came from Babbitts and O'Mally as we climbed a steep hill with the Frontenac's pinnacled towers looming above us and then shot off down narrow streets where the jingle of the bells was flung back and across, echoing and reverberating between the old stone houses. It made me think of a phrase the boys in the office used, "coming with bells!"
We went some distance through the town and out along a road, where the buildings drew apart from one another, villas and suburban houses behind walls and gardens. At a smaller one, set back in a muffling of whitened shrubberies, the sleigh drew in toward the sidewalk. Before the others could disentangle themselves from the furs and robes, I was out and racing up the path.
My eyes, ranging hungrily over the house, thinking perhaps to see her at one of the windows, saw in it something ominous and secretive. There was not a sign of life, every pane darkened with a lowered blind. All about it the snow was heaped and curled in wave-like forms as if endeavoring to creep over it, to aid in the work of hiding its dark mystery. Barker's lair, his last stand! It looked like it, white wrapped, silent, inscrutable.
As I leaped up the piazza steps the door was opened by a man in uniform. He touched his hat and started to speak, but I pushed him aside and came in peering past him down a hall that stretched away to the rear. At the sound of his voice a door had opened there and a woman came out. For a moment she was only a shadow moving toward me up the dimness of the half-lit passage. Then I recognized her, gave a cry and ran to her.
My hands found hers and closed on them, my eyes looking down into the dark ones raised to them. Neither of us spoke, it didn't occur to me to explain why I was there and she showed no surprise at seeing me. It seemed as if we'd known all along we were going to meet in that dark passage in that strange house. And standing there silent, hand clasped in hand, I saw something so wonderful, so unexpected, that the surroundings faded away and for me there was nothing in the world but what I read in her beautiful, lifted face.
I never had dared to hope, never had thought of her as caring for me. All I had asked was the right to help and defend her. Perhaps under different circumstances, when things were happy and easy, I'd have aspired, gone in to try and win. But in the last dark month, when we'd come so close, we'd only been a woman set upon and menaced, and a man braced and steeled to do battle for her. Now, with her stone-cold hands in mine, I saw in the shining depths of her eyes—Oh, no, it's too sacred. That part of the story is between Carol and me.
There had been sounds and voices in the vestibule behind us. They came vaguely upon my consciousness, low and then breaking suddenly into a louder key, phrases, exclamations, questions. I don't think if the house had been rocked by an earthquake I'd have noticed it, and it wasn't till O'Mally came down the passage calling me, that I dropped her hands and turned. His face was creased into an expression of excited consternation, and he rapped out, not seeing Carol:
What the devil are you doing there? Haven't you heard? Then his eye catching her, "Oh, it's Miss Whitehall. Well, young lady, you must have had a pretty tough time here last night."
She simply drooped her eyelids in faint agreement.
What do you mean? I cried, and looked from O'Mally's boisterously concerned countenance to Carol's worn, white one. "What is it, something more?"
She gave a slight nod and said:
The last—the end this time.
O'Mally wheeled on me:
She hasn't told you. He shot himself—here, last night, shortly after she arrived.
Before I had time to answer, Babbitts and the man in uniform, a police inspector, were beside us. Babbitts was speechless—as I was myself—but the inspector, pompous and stolid, answered my look of shocked amazement:
A few minutes after one. Fortunately I'd got your instructions and the house was surrounded. My men heard the report and the screams and broke in at once.
I looked blankly from one to the other. There was a confused horror in my mind, but from the confusion one thought rose clear—Barker had done the best, the only thing.
The inspector, ostentatiously cool in the midst of our aghast concern, volunteered further:
He didn't die till near morning and we got a full statement out of him. For an hour afterward he was as clear as a bell—they are that way sometimes—and gave us all the particulars, seemed to want to. I've got it upstairs and from what I can make out he was one of the sharpest, most daring criminals I ever ran up against. I've had the body kept here for your identification. Will you come up and see it now?
He moved off toward the stairs. O'Mally and Babbitts, muttering together, filing after him. I didn't go but turned to Carol, who had thrust one hand through the balustrade that ran up beside where we were standing. As the tramp of ascending feet sounded on the first steps, she leaned toward me, her voice hardly more than a whisper:
Do you know who it is?
Who what is? I said, startled by her words and expression.
The man upstairs?
I was terror-stricken—the experiences of the night had unhinged her mind. I tried to take her hand, but she drew it back, her lips forming words just loud enough for me to hear:
You don't. It's Hollings Harland.
Carol! I cried, certain now she was unbalanced.
She drew farther away from me and slipping her hand from the balustrade pointed up the stairs:
Go and see. It's he. There's nothing the matter with me, but I want you to see for yourself. Go and see and then come back here and I'll tell you. I know everything now.
I went, a wild rush up the stairs. In a room off the upper hall, the light tempered by drawn blinds, were O'Mally, Babbitts and the inspector, looking at the dead body of Hollings Harland.
When I came down she was waiting for me. With a finger against her lips in a command for silence, she turned and went along the passage to the door from which I had seen her enter. I followed her and catching up with her as she placed her hand on the knob, burst out:
What is it—what does it mean? Where's Barker? In the name of Heaven tell me quickly what has happened?
I'll tell you in here, she said softly, and opening the door preceded me into the room.
It was evidently the dining-room of the house, a round table standing in the center, a sideboard with glass and china on it against the wall. A coal fire burned in the grate, and the blinds were raised showing the dazzling glitter of the snow outside. It was warm and bright, the one place in that sinister house that seemed to have a human note about it. She passed round the table to the fire and, standing there, made a gesture that swept the walls and unveiled windows:
Last night in this room I at last understood the tragedy in which we've all been involved.
I stood like a post, still too bemused to have any questions ready. There were too many to ask. It was like a skein so tangled there was no loose thread to start with.
Did you know Harland was here when you came? was what I finally said.
She nodded:
I suspected it on Sunday afternoon. I was certain of it on Sunday night before I left New York. She dropped into a chair by the fire, and pointed me to one near-by at the table. "Sit down and let me tell it to you as it happened to me, my side of it. When you've heard that, you can read the statement he gave, then you'll see it all. Straight from its beginning to its awful end here last night."
Before she began I told her of our interview with Mrs. Whitehall and that we knew her true relationship to Barker.
She seemed relieved and asked if her mother had also told us of her position with regard to Harland. When she saw how fully we'd been informed she gave a deep sigh and said:
Now you can understand why I prevaricated that day in Mr. Whitney's office. I was trying to shield my father, to help him any way I could. Oh, if I'd known the truth then or you had—the truth you don't know even yet! It was Johnston Barker that was murdered and Hollings Harland who murdered him!
I started forward, but she raised a silencing hand, her voice shaken and pleading:
Don't, please, say anything. Let me go on in my own way. It's so hard to tell. She dropped the hand to its fellow and holding them tight-clenched in her lap, said slowly: "If my mother told you of that conversation I had with Mr. Harland you know what I discovered then—that he loved me. I never suspected it before, but when he pressed me with questions about Johnston Barker, so unlike himself, vehement and excited, I understood and was sorry for him. I told him as much as I could then, explained my feeling for the man he was jealous of without telling my relationship, said how I respected and trusted him, what any girl might say of her father. He seemed relieved but went on to ask if Mr. Barker and I were not interested in some scheme, some undertaking of a secret nature. That frightened me, it sounded as if he had found out about us, had been told something by someone. Taken by surprise, I answered with a half truth, that Mr. Barker had a plan on foot for my welfare, that he wanted to help me and my mother to a better financial position, but that I was not yet at liberty to tell what it was. I saw he thought I meant business, and as I go on, you'll see how that information gave him the confidence to do what he did later.
I know now that the Whitney office discovered I had had a letter from Mr. Barker mailed from Toronto asking me to join him there and that I agreed to do so in a phone message that same day. That letter, directed to my office, was in typewriting and was signed with my father's initials. It was short, merely telling me that there was a reason for his disappearance which he would explain to me, that his whereabouts must be kept secret, and that he wanted me to come to him to make arrangements for a new business venture in which he hoped to set me up. As you know I attempted to do what he asked, and was followed by two men from the Whitney office.
How do you know all this? I couldn't help butting in.
She gave a slight smile, the first I had seen on her face:
I'll tell you that later—it's not the least curious part of my story. Realizing by the papers that there was a general hue and cry for him I was very cautious, much more so than your detectives thought. I saw them, decided the move was too dangerous, and came back. At that time, and for some time afterward, I believed that letter was from my father.
Wasn't it?
She shook her head:
"
No—but wait. I had no other letter and no other communication of any sort. I searched the papers for any news of him, thinking he might put something for me in the personal columns, but there was not a sign. Days passed that way, my business was closed and I had time to think, and the more I thought the more strange and inexplicable it seemed. Why, in the letter, had he made no reference to the broken engagement, so vital to both of us, that night in the church. Why had he said nothing about my mother whose state of mind he would have guessed? From the first I had suspicions that something was wrong. I could not believe he would have done what they said he had. Even after I read in the papers of his carefully planned get-away I was not convinced. After that scene in the Whitney office, when I saw you were all watching me, eager to trip me into any admission, my suspicions grew stronger. There was more than showed on the surface. I sensed it, an instinct warned me.
""
As days passed and I heard nothing more from him, the conviction grew that something had happened to him. If it was accident I was certain it would have been known; if, as many thought, he'd lost his memory and strayed away, I was equally certain he'd have been seen and recognized. What else could it be? Can you picture me, shut up with my poor distracted mother, ravaged by fear and anxiety? Those waiting days—how terrible they were—with that sense of dread always growing, growing. Finally it came to a climax. If my father was dead as I thought, there was only one explanation—foul play. On Friday, when you came to see me, I was at the breaking point, afraid to speak, desperate for help and unable to ask for it. Now I come to the day when I learned everything, when all these broken forebodings of disaster fell together like the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope and took a definite shape. It was Sunday, can it be only two days ago? My mother had moved to the cottage and I was alone in the apartment packing up to follow her. About the middle of the afternoon while I was hard at work the telephone rang. I answered it and was told by the operator Long Distance was calling me, Quebec. At that my heart gave a great jump of joy and relief—my father was alive and sending for me again. It was like the wireless answer of help to a foundering vessel.
""
You know how often the Long Distance connection varies—one day you can recognize a voice a thousand miles off that on the next you can't make out at a hundred? The voice that had spoken to me from Toronto was no more than a vibration of the wire, thin and toneless. The one that spoke from Quebec was distinct and colored with a personality. The first words were that it was J. W. B. and at these words, as if the receiver had shot an electric current into me, I started and grew tense, for it did not sound like the voice of J. W. B. It went on, explaining why he had not communicated with me, and how he now again wanted me to come to him. I, listening, became more and more sure that the person speaking was not my father, but that, whoever he was, his voice stirred a faint memory, was dimly suggestive of a voice I did know.
""
I was confused and agitated, standing there with the receiver at my ear, while those sentences ran over the wire, every syllable clear and distinct. Then, suddenly, I thought of a way I could find out. My father was the only man in the world who knew of our secret, of the plan for our reunion. A simple question would test the knowledge of the person talking to me. When he had finished I said: 'I've been longing to hear from you, not only for myself but for my mother—she's been in despair.'
""
There was a slight pause before the voice answered: 'Why should Mrs. Whitehall be so disturbed?'
""
Then I knew it wasn't Johnston Barker. The reason for Mrs. Whitehall's disturbance was as well known to him as it was to me. Besides in our talks together he had never alluded to her as 'Mrs. Whitehall' but always as 'your mother' or by her Christian name, Serena. I said the mystery of his disappearance had upset her, she was afraid something had happened to him. A faint laugh—with again that curiously familiar echo in it—came along the wire:
""
'You can set her mind at rest after you've seen me.' There was something ghastly about it—talking to this unknown being, listening to that whispering voice that called me to come and wasn't the voice I knew. It was like an evil spirit, close to me but invisible, and that I had no power to lay hold of.
""
While I was thinking this he was telling me that he had a safe hiding place and that I must join him at once, the plans were now perfected for the new enterprise in which he was to launch me. I demurred and to gain time told him how I'd tried to go before and been followed. That caught his attention at once, his questions came quick and eager. Perhaps before that he had tried to disguise his voice, anyway now the familiar note in it grew stronger. I began to catch at something—inflexions, accent—till suddenly, like a runner who rounds a corner and sees his goal unexpectedly before him, my memory saw a name—Harland! I was so amazed, so staggered that for a moment I couldn't speak. The voice brought me back, saying sharply, 'Are you there?' I stammered a reply and said I couldn't make up my mind to come. He urged, but I wouldn't promise, till at length, feeling I might betray myself, I said I'd think it over and let him know later. He had to be satisfied with that and gave me his telephone number telling me to call him up as soon as I decided.
""
What did I feel as I sat alone in that dismantled place? Can you realize the state of my thoughts? What did it mean—what was going on? The man was not Johnston Barker, but how could he be Harland, who was dead and buried? Ah, if you had come then instead of Friday I'd have told you for I was in waters too deep for me. All that I could grasp was that I was in the midst of something incomprehensible and terrible, from the darkness of which one thought stood out—my father had never sent for me, I had never heard from him—it had been this other man all along! I was then as certain as if his spirit had appeared before me that Johnston Barker was dead. And now I come to one of the strangest and finest things that ever happened to me in my life. Late on Sunday night a girl—unknown to me and refusing to give her name—came and told me of the murder, the whole of it, the evidence against me, and that I stood in danger of immediate arrest.""
"
I jumped to my feet—I couldn't believe it:
A girl—what kind of a girl?
Young and pretty, with dark brown eyes and brown curly hair. Oh, I can place her for you. She said she had been employed to help get the information against me and my father, and was the only woman acting in that capacity.
Molly! I gasped, falling back into my chair. "Molly Babbitts! What in Heaven's name—"
You're right to invoke Heaven's name, for it was Heaven that sent her. She wouldn't tell me who she was or why she came, but I could see. What reason could there have been except that she believed me innocent and wanted to help me escape?
For a moment I couldn't speak. I dropped my head and a silent oath went up from me to hold Molly sacred forever more. I could see it all—she'd found her heart, realized the cruelty of what was to be done, discovered in some way she'd given me wrong information, and done the thing herself. The gallant, noble little soul! God bless her! God bless her!
Carol went on:
"
I wonder now what she thought of me. I must have appeared utterly extraordinary to her. She thought she was telling me what I already knew, or at least knew something of. But as I sat there listening to her I was piecing together in my mind what she was saying with what I myself had found out. I was building up a complete story, fitting new and old together, and it held me dumb, motionless, as if I didn't care. It would take too long to tell you how I got at the main facts—the smaller points I didn't think of. It was as if what she said and what I knew jumped toward each other like the flame and the igniting gas, connecting the broken bits into a continuous line of fire. I knew that murder had been committed. I knew that the body was unrecognizable. I knew that had my father been living I would have heard from him. I knew that the voice on the phone was Harland's. Without all the details she gave me it would have been enough. Before she had finished my mind had grasped the truth. It was Johnston Barker who had been murdered and Harland—trying now to draw me to him—was the murderer. Do you guess what a flame of rage burst up in me—what a passion to trap and bring to justice the man who could conceive and execute such a devilish thing? I could hardly wait to go. I was too wrought up to think out a reasonable course. Looking back on it today it seems like an act of madness, but I suppose a person in that state is half mad. I never thought of getting anybody to go with me, of applying to the police. I only saw myself finding Harland and accusing him. It's inconceivable—the irrational action of a woman beside herself with grief and fury.
""
I called up the number he'd given me and told him I was coming on the first train I could catch. He told me at what hour that morning it would leave New York and when it would reach Quebec. He said he would send his servant, a French woman, to meet me at the depot as he didn't like to risk going himself. Then I left the house and went to the Grand Central Station, where I sat in the women's waiting room for the rest of the night. I did not get to Quebec till after midnight. The servant met me, put me in a sleigh that was waiting for us, and together we drove here.
""
The house was lit up, every lower window bright. As we walked up the path from the gate I saw a man moving behind the shrubbery and called her attention to him. While she was opening the door with her key I noticed another loitering along the footpath by the gate, obviously watching us. This time I asked her why there should be men about at such an hour and on such a freezing night. She seemed bewildered and frightened, muttering something in French about having noticed them when she went out. In the hallway she directed me to a room on the upper floor, telling me, when I was ready, to go down to the dining-room where supper was waiting. I went upstairs and she followed, showing me where I was to go and then walking down the passage to another room. As I took off my wraps and hat I could hear her voice, loud and excited, telling someone of the two men we had seen. Another voice answered it—a man's—but pitched too low for me to make out the words.
""
When I was ready I went downstairs and into the room. No one was about, there was not a sound. The fire was burning as it is now, the curtains drawn, and the table, set out with a supper, was brightly lit with candles and decorated with flowers. I stood here by the fire waiting, white, I suppose, as the tablecloth, for I was at the highest climax of excitement a human being can reach and keep her senses. Suddenly I heard steps on the stairs. I turned and made ready, moistening my lips which were stiff and felt like leather. The steps came down the passage—the door opened. There he was!
""
That first second, when he entered as the lover and conqueror, he looked splendid. The worn and harassed air he had the last time I'd seen him was gone. He was at the highest pinnacle of his life, 'the very butt and sea mark of his sail,' and it was as if his spirit recognized it and flashed up in a last illuminating glow of fire and force. He was prepared for amazement, horror, probably fear from me. The first shock he received was my face, showing none of these, quiet, and, I suppose, fierce with the hatred I felt. He stopped dead in the doorway, the confidence stricken out of him—just staring. Then he stammered:
""
'Carol—you—you—' He was too astounded to say any more. I finished for him, my voice low and hoarse:
""
'You think I didn't expect to see you. I did. I knew you were here—I came to find you. I came to tell you that I know how you killed Johnston Barker.' I don't think anyone has ever said he lacked courage. He was one of those bold and ruthless beings that came to their fullest flower during the Italian Renaissance—terrible and tremendous too. I've thought of him since as like one of the Borgias or Iago transplanted to our country and modern times. When he saw that I knew he went white, but he stood with the light of the candles bright on his ghastly face, straight and steady as a soldier before the cannon.
""
'Johnston Barker,' he said very quietly—'killed him? You bring me interesting news. I didn't know he was dead!' As I've told you I had come without plans, with no line of action decided upon. Now the futility, the blind rashness of what I had done was borne in upon me. His stoney calm, his measured voice, showed me I was pitted against an antagonist whose strength was to mine as a lion's to a mouse. The thought maddened me, I was ready to say anything to break him, to conquer and crush him and in my desperation—guided by some flash of intuition—I said the right thing:
""
'Oh, don't waste time denying it. It's too late for that now. It's not I alone who knows—they know in New York—everything. How you did it, how you stole away, and where you are now. The net is around you—they've got you. There's no use any more in lies and tricks, for you can't escape them.' He had listened without a movement or a sign of agitation. But when I finished he straightened his shoulders and throwing up his head sent a glance of piercing question over the curtained windows. His whole being suggested something arrested and fiercely alert, not fear, but a wild concentration of energy, as if all his forces were aroused to meet a desperate call.
"
Then suddenly he made a step forward, leaned across the table and spoke. I can't tell you all he said. It was so horrible and his face—it was like a demon's in its death throes! But it was about his love for me—that he'd done it all for me—that he could give me more than any woman ever had before—lay the world at my feet. And to come with him—now—we could get away—we had time yet. Oh! she closed her eyes and shuddered at the memory—"I can't go on. He knew it was hopeless, he must have known then what the men outside meant. It was the last defiance—the last mad hope.
"
And then I conquered him, not as I'd meant to do, not with any intention. All the horror and loathing I felt came out in what I said. Terrible words—how I hated him—all that had been locked up in me since I'd known the truth. His face grew so dreadful that I shrank back in this corner, and finally to hide it, hid my own in my hands. People do such strange things in life, not at all like what they do in books and plays. When I stopped speaking he said nothing, and dropping my hands I looked at him, not knowing what I'd see. He was standing very quiet, gazing straight in front of him, like a man thinking—deeply thinking, lost in thought.
""
We were that way for a moment, so still you could hear the clock ticking, then, without a word or look at me, he turned and went out of the room. I was so paralyzed by the scene that for a space I stood where he'd left me, squeezed into the angle behind the mantelpiece, stunned and senseless. Then the sound of his feet on the stairs called me back to life. He was going, he was running away. I did not know myself then who the men outside were and thought he could easily make his escape.
""
I ran out into the hall, calling to the French woman. She came, out of a door somewhere in the back part of the house, and I have a queer impression of her face by the light of a bracket lamp, almost ludicrous in its expression of fright. As I ran up the stairs I screamed to her to come, to follow me, and heard her steps racing along the passage and her panting exclamations of terror. At the stair head my ear caught the snap of a closing door and the click of a key turned in a lock. It came from the darkened end of the hall and as I ran down I cried to the woman, 'Get someone. Call. Get help.' Then and there she threw up a window and thrusting out her head screamed into the darkness, 'Au secours! Au secours!' A man's voice, close under the window, answered her and she flew past me to another staircase beyond in the darkness down which I could hear her clattering rush. Then there were the sound of steps, and the breaking of wood, sharp tearing noises mixed with the shouts of men. It all came together, for as I stood outside that locked door, listening to the woman's cries and the smashing of the wood below, sharp as a flash came the report of a pistol from the closed room.
"
That's all. I didn't see him again, I couldn't. The police inspector—they've all been very kind, have done everything for me they could—let me see the statement. When you've read that you'll know everything—it'll be the last chapter. I can't tell it to you—it's more than I can bear.
She glanced at me and then suddenly looked away for tears, quick and unexpected, welled into her eyes. She put up one hand, pressing it against her eyelids, while the other lay still on the table. I leaned forward and laid mine over it. As she sat speechless, struggling with her moment of weakness, I looked at the two hands—mine big and hard and brown, almost hid hers, closing round it, sheltering and guarding it, as my life, if God willed it, would close round and shelter and guard hers.
I am coming to the end of my part of the story and it's only up to me now to give the final explanation—furnished by Harland's statement—of the strangest crime that had ever come within the ken of the Whitney office.
We all read the statement that day and that night in our sitting-room at the Frontenac, O'Mally, Babbitts and I talked it over. A good deal had to be supplemented by our own inside information. For anyone who had not our fuller knowledge there would have been many broken links in the chain. But to us it read as a clear, consecutive sequence of events. One thing I drew from it—almost as if Harland had told me himself—its unconscious revelation of the development in him of sinister possibilities that had lain dormant during the struggle of his early years. In middle life, his world conquered, two master passions, love of gain and love of a woman, had seized him, and swept him to his ruin.
I won't give it in his words, but in as plain and short a narrative as I can.
Harland had been the welcher in the Copper Pool and Barker had suspected him. This was the immediate cause of the murder. Back of that, the root from which the whole intricate crime grew, was his love of Carol Whitehall and determination to make her his wife.
Briefly outlined, his position with regard to her was as follows. His passion for her had started with the inauguration of the land company, but while she was grateful and friendly, he soon saw that she was nothing more. So he kept his counsel, making no attempt by word or look to disturb the harmony of their relations. But while he maintained the pose of a business partner he studied her and saw that she was ambitious, large in her aims, and aspiring. This side of her character was the one he decided to lay siege to. If he could not win her heart, he would amass a fortune and tempt her with its vast possibilities. His membership in the Copper Pool gave him the opportunity, and he saw himself able to lay millions at her feet.
On January fifth, he met Barker on the street and in the course of a short conversation learned that the head of the pool suspected his treachery. That half-expressed suspicion, with its veiled hint of publicity, planted the seed of murder in his mind.
It was not, however, till two days later that the seed sprouted. How his idea came to him indicated the condition of morbidly acute perception and wild recklessness he had reached. Walking up Fifth Avenue after dark he had seen a man standing under a lamp, lighting a pipe. The man, Joseph Sammis, was so like Barker, that he moved nearer to address him. A closer view showed him his mistake, but also showed him that Sammis, feeble in health, shabby and impoverished, was sufficiently like Barker to pass for him.
From that resemblance his idea expanded still further. He followed Sammis to his lodgings, had a conference with him, and told him he had work in Philadelphia which he wanted Sammis to undertake. The man, down to his last dollar, flattered and amazed at his good fortune, agreed at once. Though the work had not developed, it was necessary for Sammis to be on the ground and stay there awaiting instructions. Money was given him for proper clothes and an advance of salary. The date when he was to leave would be communicated to him within a few days. It would appear that Sammis never knew his benefactor's real name, but accepted the luck that came to him eagerly and without question. In his case the chief had guessed right—he was a "plant."
From this point the plot mushroomed out into its full dimensions. Harland and Barker were of a size, small, light and wiry, both men had gray hair and dark eyes. The features obliterated, clothes, personal papers and jewelry would be the only means of identification. The back office with its one egress through the other rooms was selected as the scene of the crime. Barker's body could be lowered from the cleat—tried and tested—to the floor below. Through his acquaintance with Ford and Miss Whitehall, Harland was familiar with the hours of the Azalea Woods Estates people. They would be gone when he went down, entered their office with the pass key he had procured, and made the change of clothing with his victim. His own disguise was a very simple matter. Through an acquaintance with actors in his youth he had learned their method of building up the nose by means of an adhesive paste—that and the white mustache were all he needed. He took one chance and one only—a gambler's risk—that the body might not be sufficiently crushed to escape recognition. This chance, as we know, went his way.
Gone thus far he had only to wait his opportunity. Against that he bought and concealed the rope, the blackjack for the blow, and the articles for his own transformation—all the properties of the grisly drama he was about to stage.
Meantime his scheme to win Carol was working out less successfully and the strain was wearing on him. On January fifteenth, his nerves stretched to the breaking point, he went to her determined to find out how she stood with Barker. Her answer satisfied him. He knew her to be truthful and when she told him she had no other than a filial affection for the magnate he believed her. The information she gave about Barker's intention of helping her, of having plans afoot for her future welfare, he seized upon and subsequently used.
He also, in that interview, learned that she had had a phone message from the magnate saying he was coming to her office that afternoon and would later go to the floor above to see Mr. Harland. When he heard this he knew that his time had come.
From her he went straight to a telephone booth, called up Barker's garage and gave Heney the instructions to meet him that night and take him to the Elizabeth Depot. That done he returned to the Black Eagle Building, saw that his stenographer and clerk were disposed to his satisfaction, and made ready for the final event.
The quarrel with Barker was genuine. The head of the Copper Pool burst into accusations of treachery and threatened immediate exposure. Sitting at the desk, engrossed in his anger, he did not notice Harland slip behind him. One blow of the blackjack delivered below the temple resulted in death, as instantaneous as it was noiseless. Fastening the rope about the body, Harland swung it from the cleat to the floor below, where in the darkness it would have been invisible at a distance of ten feet.
He then passed through the outer offices and went downstairs. He must have missed Carol by a few seconds. His knock being unanswered, he let himself in with his pass key, and walked through to the back room. Here he drew in the body, then curtaining the window, turned on the lights and effected the change of clothes, shaving off the mustache, and looking for the scarf pin which he couldn't find. He had just completed this when Ford entered—a terrible moment for him.
When Ford left his nerve was shaken and he realized he must finish the job at once. After he had done so he went back to the private office, carefully arranged his own disguise, and after waiting for over an hour, put on Barker's hat and coat and went down the service stairs.
He met no person or obstacle, skirted the back of the block and picked up Heney at the place designated. At the Elizabeth Station he bought a ticket to Philadelphia, but when he saw his chance, crossed the lines to the Jersey Central platform and boarded a local for Jersey City, from which by a devious route he made his way to Canada. It was in the waiting-room at the Jersey City depot that he removed his disguise.
In Toronto he sublet a small apartment, only going out at night, and keeping a close watch on the developments in New York which he followed through the papers. By these he learned that everything had worked out as he hoped, that the crime was unsuspected, and the public interest centered on the chase for Barker. All that now remained to complete his enterprise was to get Carol.
That his continued success must have given him an almost insane confidence is proved by the way he went about this last and most difficult step. Criminals all slip up somewhere. He had attended to the details of the murder with amazing skill and thoroughness. It was in his estimate of the character of Carol that he showed that blind spot in the brain they all have.
The only way to explain it is that he was so sure of his own powers, so confident that she was heart whole and would be unable to resist the temptation of his enormous wealth, that he took the final risk—sent for her in Barker's name. Her response to his first summons encouraged him. When she didn't come he had many reasons with which to buoy himself up—fears, illness, the impossibility of leaving her mother.
But it made him more cautious and he didn't venture again till the hue and cry for Barker had subsided and he had made a move to the last port of call on the St. Lawrence. That he had expected to take her by storm, win her consent and leave her no time to deliberate was proved by the fact that "Henry Santley" had engaged accommodations for himself and "sister" on the Megantic, sailing from Quebec at ten the next morning.
What had he intended to say to her, how was he going to explain? If he had not mentioned it in his statement we never would have known, for Carol did not give him time to tell. The story was simple and in the face of her supposed ignorance of the murder, might have satisfied her.
He was going to admit his duplicity in the Copper Pool—his excuse being he had done it for her. In his last interview with Barker he saw that discovery was imminent, and decided to drop out of sight. When he passed through his own office he was on his way out of the building, descending unseen by the stairs, and going immediately to Canada. When he read in the papers of the suicide, identified as Hollings Harland, no one was more surprised than he was.
How the mistake had been made he readily guessed. Some months before he had discharged one of his clerks for intemperance. The man, unable to get another job and in the clutch of his vice, had gone to the dogs, applying frequently to Harland for help. The lawyer, moved to pity, had given this in the form of clothing and money. On the afternoon of January fifteenth he had visited the Harland offices, in a suit of Harland's clothes, begging for money and threatening suicide. He was sunk to the lowest depths of degradation, for, during a few moments when he was alone in the private office, he had evidently searched among his employer's papers and taken a watch and chain which was lying on the desk, to be sent to a jeweler's for repairs. Startled in his hunt among the papers he had had no time to replace them and had put them in his pocket. After the man had gone Harland noticed the missing documents and jewelry but in the stress of his own affairs paid no attention to the theft. The next day when he read of the suicide, he remembered the man's threat to kill himself and realized he had done it later that afternoon. That the body, crushed beyond recognition, had been identified through the clothes, papers and watch as himself, he regarded as a lucky chance. Without his intervention a thing had occurred which forever severed him from the life he wished to be done with.
Such was Harland's crime as explained in Harland's statement. How we talked it over! How we mused on the slight happening that had brought it to light—a child at a window! Strange and wonderful! The hotel noises, the traffic in the street, faded into the silence of the night as we sat there, pondering, speculating, and awed too by this modern fall of Lucifer.
They all came back on Wednesday night, late, in the small hours. I had a wire from Babbitts—and Gosh, as I sat up waiting for him I thought I'd die right there on my own parlor carpet! For, of course, I supposed she'd tell them what I'd done and he was coming straight home to divorce me.
First off when he came in I was afraid to move, then, when I got a good look at his face, I saw he didn't know. He was so crazy with joy and triumph he didn't notice how I acted—trembly and excited about the things that didn't matter. How did she get there—what made her go—were the questions I was keen to have answered. Did it off her own bat—recognized the voice on the phone—instinct—knew all along something was wrong—and just rushed off without thinking of anything. She was a tip-topper—wonderful girl—seemed almost as if she was clairvoyant, didn't I think so? Yes, I did, but maybe when it was your father you felt that way, and I sank back against the cushions of the davenport, weak in the knees and swallowing down a lump in my throat as big as a new potato.
The next day I had a letter from her that made me sick—gratitude bubbling out of every line—and saying she'd told Jack and how never, as long as either of them lived, would they reveal it to a soul. That made me sicker—the two of them down on their bended knees! I've lied in my life, and though it's come back on me like a bad dream, I've been able to bear it. But having two people like that ready to worship you because you did something that you didn't do would take the spirit out of Theodore Roosevelt.
Then came the great excitement, the case going to the public, and Babbitts' getting his Big Story. It made a worse uproar than the suicide and disappearance, the city was stunned and thrilled and everything else it could be, and not a man, woman or child but was reading the Dispatch and asking you if you'd ever heard of such an awful thing and enjoying every word of it. Babbitts' picture was in all the papers—and a raise, well, I guess so!
It would have been the proudest moment of my life, but who can be proud when they're full up with nothing but guilty conscience? Not me, anyway. Even when Babbitts came home Friday night with a set of black lynx furs, carrying them himself and putting them on me, I felt no joy. Can you understand it—having a secret from the one you love best, and not knowing if he knew that secret whether he wouldn't drop you out of his arms like a live coal and you'd see the love dying from his face? Oh, it was awful. I had to turn away from him to the mirror—getting up the right smile for a fur set when a rope of pearls wouldn't have lifted the misery off me.
Sunday Jack asked us to his place for dinner—just us two and Miss Whitehall. All the way downtown Babbitts was wondering why it was only Miss Whitehall—sort of funny he didn't include Mr. George, who was often there, and even the old man, seeing it was to be a dinner of the Harland case outfit. I had my own ideas on the subject, and they made me limp, sitting small and peaked beside Babbitts, with my hands damp and clammy in my new white gloves.
It was a swell dinner, the finest things to eat I ever had, even there. Miss Whitehall, all in black with her neck bare, and Jack in his dress suit, were such a grand pair I'd have enjoyed the mere sight of them, only for that terrible secret.
It wasn't till the end of dinner—old David gone off into the kitchen—that the thing I'd been waiting for came out. Jack's face told me it was coming—happiness and pride were shining from it like a light. He'd asked us there—his best and truest friends—to tell us before anyone else, that he and Miss Whitehall were going to be married.
They looked across the table at each other—a beautiful beaming look—and Babbitts with his mouth open looked at them, and I looked down at my plate where the ice cream was melting in a pink pool. Then Jack poured champagne into our glasses and raising them high we drank their healths, and then clinked the rims together and laughed, and wished them joy. It ought to have been perfectly lovely and it would have been if that fiendish guilty conscience of mine could only have gone to sleep for a few minutes.
And then came the awful and unexpected. I didn't think he'd dare to do it but he did. Turning to me with his glass in his hand, and his face so kind it made me melt like the ice cream, Jack said:
And there's going to be another health drunk—Molly's. Molly Babbitts, the best friend that any man and woman ever had, the person who did the biggest thing in the whole Harland case.
He wasn't going to tell—he knew enough for that, he knew that Babbitts wasn't on, but he wanted me to understand. I looked at their faces, Jack's with its grateful message, and Carol's saying the same, and Babbitts' red with pride and joy. Then I couldn't bear it. Feeling queer and weak, I sat dumb, not touching my glass, looking at the plate.
Why, Mollie, said Babbitts surprised, "aren't you going to answer?"
No, I said suddenly, "not till I've told something first."
I guess I looked about as cheerful as the skeletons they used to have at feasts in foreign countries. Anyway I saw them all amazed, their eyes fixed staring on me. I stiffened up and set both hands hard on the edge of the table, and looked at Carol. My lips were so shaky I could hardly get out the words:
You're all wrong—you've made a mistake. I didn't do it for you the way you think—I—I— I turned to Jack and the tears began to spill out of my eyes, "I did it for him."
Me? he exclaimed.
Yes, you. We swore to be friends once and that's what I am. I saw you were going to tell her. I thought it would ruin you and I knew I couldn't stop you—so—so—as I didn't matter—I did it myself before you could.
He pushed back his chair all stirred and pale. Carol, with a catch of her breath, said my name—just "Molly," nothing more. But Babbitts, who didn't know where he was at, cried out:
Did what? For Heaven's sake what's it all about?
Then I told him—the whole thing—out it came with tears and sobs—all to him, every word of it, with not a voice to interrupt, and when it was done, down went my head on the table with my hair in the ice cream.
Well, what do you think happened? Was he mad—did he say, "You're a false, deceitful woman. Begone?" Oh, he didn't—he didn't! He got up and came around the table and Carol and Jack slipped away somewhere and left us alone.
Afterward in the parlor, me a sight with my nose red and the ice cream only half out of my hair, we talked it all out and they—Oh well, they said a lot of things—I can't tell you what—too many and sort of affecting. It made me feel awful uncomfortable, not knowing what to say, but Babbitts adored it, couldn't get enough of it, just sat there nodding like the Chinese image on the mantelpiece, while those two fine people sat and threw bouquets at his wife.
On the way up the street, we didn't say much, walking close together hand tucked in arm. But suddenly, up under one of those big arc lights in Gramercy Park, he stopped short, and looking strange and solemn, gave me a kiss, a good loud smack, and said, sort of husky:
I love you more this evening, Morningdew, than I ever did since the first day I met you.
Well—that's the end. Jack and Carol are going to be married this spring and go to Firehill. Babbitts and I have a standing invitation down there for every Sunday and all summer if we want. There's a great lawsuit started to prove the claims of Mrs. Whitehall and Carol as Johnston Barker's wife and child. He died without a will, so in the end they'll get most all he left—piles and piles of money. It's in the Whitney office and last time I saw Mr. Whitney he told me Carol would some day be one of the richest women in New York.
It won't spoil her—she's not that kind—a grand, fine woman, true blue every inch of her. I've come to know her well and I'm satisfied she's just the girl I would have chosen for Jack Reddy. Queer, isn't it, the way things come about? Here was I, searching for a wife for him, turning them all down, and he goes and stumbles on the only one in the country I'd think good enough. That's the way it is with life—when it looks most like a muddle it's going straightest. It sure is sort of confusing—but it's a good old world after all.