Mr. Howell came for it on the Thursday of that week.
I was on my knees scrubbing the parlor floor, when he rang the bell. I let him in, and it seemed to me that he looked tired and pale.
"Well, Mrs. Pitman," he said, smiling, "what did you find in the cellar when the water went down?"
"I'm glad to say that I didn't find what I feared, Mr. Howell."
"Not even the onyx clock?"
"Not even the clock," I replied. "And I feel as if I'd lost a friend. A clock is a lot of company."
"Do you know what I think?" he said, looking at me closely. "I think you put that clock away yourself, in the excitement, and have forgotten all about it."
"Nonsense."
"Think hard." He was very much in earnest. "You knew the water was rising and the Ladleys would have to be moved up to the second floor front, where the clock stood. You went in there and looked around to see if the room was ready, and you saw the clock. And knowing that the Ladleys quarreled now and then, and were apt to throw things--"
"Nothing but a soap-dish, and that only once."
"--you took the clock to the attic and put it, say, in an old trunk."
"I did nothing of the sort. I went in, as you say, and I put up an old splasher, because of the way he throws ink about. Then I wound the clock, put the key under it, and went out."
"And the key is gone, too!" he said thoughtfully. "I wish I could find that clock, Mrs. Pitman."
"So do I."
"Ladley went out Sunday afternoon about three, didn't he--and got back at five?"
I turned and looked at him. "Yes, Mr. Howell," I said. "Perhaps you know something about that."
"I?" He changed color. Twenty years of dunning boarders has made me pretty sharp at reading faces, and he looked as uncomfortable as if he owed me money. "I!" I knew then that I had been right about the voice. It had been his.
"You!" I retorted. "You were here Sunday morning and spent some time with the Ladleys. I am the old she-devil. I notice you didn't tell your friend, Mr. Holcombe, about having been here on Sunday."
He was quick to recover. "I'll tell you all about it, Mrs. Pitman," he said smilingly. "You see, all my life, I have wished for an onyx clock. It has been my ambition, my Great Desire. Leaving the house that Sunday morning, and hearing the ticking of the clock up-stairs, I recognized that it was an onyx clock, clambered from my boat through an upper window, and so reached it. The clock showed fight, but after stunning it with a chair--"
"Exactly!" I said. "Then the thing Mrs. Ladley said she would not do was probably to wind the clock?"
He dropped his bantering manner at once. "Mrs. Pitman," he said, "I don't know what you heard or did not hear. But I want you to give me a little time before you tell anybody that I was here that Sunday morning. And, in return, I'll find your clock."
I hesitated, but however put out he was, he didn't look like a criminal. Besides, he was a friend of my niece's, and blood is thicker even than flood-water.
"There was nothing wrong about my being here," he went on, "but--I don't want it known. Don't spoil a good story, Mrs. Pitman."
I did not quite understand that, although those who followed the trial carefully may do so. Poor Mr. Howell! I am sure he believed that it was only a good story. He got the description of my onyx clock and wrote it down, and I gave him the manuscript for Mr. Ladley. That was the last I saw of him for some time.
That Thursday proved to be an exciting day. For late in the afternoon Terry, digging the mud out of the cellar, came across my missing gray false front near the coal vault, and brought it up, grinning. And just before six, Mr. Graves, the detective, rang the bell and then let himself in. I found him in the lower hall, looking around.
"Well, Mrs. Pitman," he said, "has our friend come back yet?"
"She was no friend of mine."
"Not she. Ladley. He'll be out this evening, and he'll probably be around for his clothes."
I felt my knees waver, as they always did when he was spoken of.
"He may want to stay here," said Mr. Graves. "In fact, I think that's just what he will want."
"Not here," I protested. "The very thought of him makes me quake."
"If he comes here, better take him in. I want to know where he is."
I tried to say that I wouldn't have him, but the old habit of the ward asserted itself. From taking a bottle of beer or a slice of pie, to telling one where one might or might not live, the police were autocrats in that neighborhood. And, respectable woman that I am, my neighbors' fears of the front office have infected me.
"All right, Mr. Graves," I said.
He pushed the parlor door open and looked in, whistling. "This is the place, isn't it?"
"Yes. But it was up-stairs that he--"
"I see. Tall woman, Mrs. Ladley?"
"Tall and blond. Very airy in her manner."
He nodded and still stood looking in and whistling. "Never heard her speak of a town named Horner, did you?"
"Horner? No."
"I see." He turned and wandered out again into the hall, still whistling. At the door, however, he stopped and turned. "Look anything like this?" he asked, and held out one of his hands, with a small kodak picture on the palm.
It was a snap-shot of a children's frolic in a village street, with some onlookers in the background. Around one of the heads had been drawn a circle in pencil. I took it to the gas-jet and looked at it closely. It was a tall woman with a hat on, not unlike Jennie Brice. She was looking over the crowd, and I could see only her face, and that in shadow. I shook my head.
"I thought not," he said. "We have a lot of stage pictures of her, but what with false hair and their being retouched beyond recognition, they don't amount to much." He started out, and stopped on the door-step to light a cigar.
"Take him on if he comes," he said. "And keep your eyes open. Feed him well, and he won't kill you!"
I had plenty to think of when I was cooking Mr. Reynolds' supper: the chance that I might have Mr. Ladley again, and the woman at Horner. For it had come to me like a flash, as Mr. Graves left, that the "Horn--" on the paper slip might have been "Horner."
CHAPTER VII
After all, there was nothing sensational about Mr. Ladley's return. He came at eight o'clock that night, fresh-shaved and with his hair cut, and, although he had a latch-key, he rang the door-bell. I knew his ring, and I thought it no harm to carry an old razor of Mr. Pitman's with the blade open and folded back on the handle, the way the colored people use them, in my left hand.
But I saw at once that he meant no mischief.
"Good evening," he said, and put out his hand. I jumped back, until I saw there was nothing in it and that he only meant to shake hands. I didn't do it; I might have to take him in, and make his bed, and cook his meals, but I did not have to shake hands with him.
"You, too!" he said, looking at me with what I suppose he meant to be a reproachful look. But he could no more put an expression of that sort in his eyes than a fish could. "I suppose, then, there is no use asking if I may have my old room? The front room. I won't need two."
I didn't want him, and he must have seen it. But I took him. "You may have it, as far as I'm concerned," I said. "But you'll have to let the paper-hanger in to-morrow."
"Assuredly." He came into the hall and stood looking around him, and I fancied he drew a breath of relief. "It isn't much yet," he said, "but it's better to look at than six feet of muddy water."
"Or than stone walls," I said.
He looked at me and smiled. "Or than stone walls," he repeated, bowing, and went into his room.
So I had him again, and if I gave him only the dull knives, and locked up the bread-knife the moment I had finished with it, who can blame me? I took all the precaution I could think of: had Terry put an extra bolt on every door, and hid the rat poison and the carbolic acid in the cellar.
Peter would not go near him. He hobbled around on his three legs, with the splint beating a sort of tat
too on the floor, but he stayed back in the kitchen with me, or in the yard.
It was Sunday night or early Monday morning that Jennie Brice disappeared. On Thursday evening, her husband came back. On Friday the body of a woman was washed ashore at Beaver, but turned out to be that of a stewardess who had fallen overboard from one of the Cincinnati packets. Mr. Ladley himself showed me the article in the morning paper, when I took in his breakfast.
"Public hysteria has killed a man before this," he said, when I had read it. "Suppose that woman had been mangled, or the screw of the steamer had cut her head off! How many people do you suppose would have been willing to swear that it was my--was Mrs. Ladley?"
"Even without a head, I should know Mrs. Ladley," I retorted.
He shrugged his shoulders. "Let's trust she's still alive, for my sake," he said. "But I'm glad, anyhow, that this woman had a head. You'll allow me to be glad, won't you?"
"You can be anything you want, as far as I'm concerned," I snapped, and went out.
Mr. Holcombe still retained the second-story front room. I think, although he said nothing more about it, that he was still "playing horse." He wrote a good bit at the wash-stand, and, from the loose sheets of manuscript he left, I believe actually tried to begin a play. But mostly he wandered along the water-front, or stood on one or another of the bridges, looking at the water and thinking. It is certain that he tried to keep in the part by smoking cigarettes, but he hated them, and usually ended by throwing the cigarette away and lighting an old pipe he carried.
On that Thursday evening he came home and sat down to supper with Mr. Reynolds. He ate little and seemed much excited. The talk ran on crime, as it always did when he was around, and Mr. Holcombe quoted Spencer a great deal--Herbert Spencer. Mr. Reynolds was impressed, not knowing much beyond silks and the National League.
"Spencer," Mr. Holcombe would say--"Spencer shows that every occurrence is the inevitable result of what has gone before, and carries in its train an equally inevitable series of results. Try to interrupt this chain in the smallest degree, and what follows? Chaos, my dear sir, chaos."
"We see that at the store," Mr. Reynolds would say. "Accustom a lot of women to a silk sale on Fridays and then make it toothbrushes. That's chaos, all right."
Well, Mr. Holcombe came in that night about ten o'clock, and I told him Ladley was back. He was almost wild with excitement; wanted to have the back parlor, so he could watch him through the keyhole, and was terribly upset when I told him there was no keyhole, that the door fastened with a thumb bolt. On learning that the room was to be papered the next morning, he grew calmer, however, and got the paper-hanger's address from me. He went out just after that.
Friday, as I say, was very quiet. Mr. Ladley moved to the back parlor to let the paper-hanger in the front room, smoked and fussed with his papers all day, and Mr. Holcombe stayed in his room, which was unusual. In the afternoon Molly Maguire put on the striped fur coat and went out, going slowly past the house so that I would be sure to see her. Beyond banging the window down, I gave her no satisfaction.
At four o'clock Mr. Holcombe came to my kitchen, rubbing his hands together. He had a pasteboard tube in his hand about a foot long, with an arrangement of small mirrors in it. He said it was modeled after the something or other that is used on a submarine, and that he and the paper-hanger had fixed a place for it between his floor and the ceiling of Mr. Ladley's room, so that the chandelier would hide it from below. He thought he could watch Mr. Ladley through it; and as it turned out, he could.
"I want to find his weak moment," he said excitedly. "I want to know what he does when the door is closed and he can take off his mask. And I want to know if he sleeps with a light."
"If he does," I replied, "I hope you'll let me know, Mr. Holcombe. The gas bills are a horror to me as it is. I think he kept it on all last night. I turned off all the other lights and went to the cellar. The meter was going around."
"Fine!" he said. "Every murderer fears the dark. And our friend of the parlor bedroom is a murderer, Mrs. Pitman. Whether he hangs or not, he's a murderer."
The mirror affair, which Mr. Holcombe called a periscope, was put in that day and worked amazingly well. I went with him to try it out, and I distinctly saw the paper-hanger take a cigarette from Mr. Ladley's case and put it in his pocket. Just after that, Mr. Ladley sauntered into the room and looked at the new paper. I could both see and hear him. It was rather weird.
"God, what a wall-paper!" he said.
CHAPTER VIII
That was Friday afternoon. All that evening, and most of Saturday and Sunday, Mr. Holcombe sat on the floor, with his eye to the reflecting mirror and his note-book beside him. I have it before me.
On the first page is the "dog meat--two dollars" entry. On the next, the description of what occurred on Sunday night, March fourth, and Monday morning, the fifth. Following that came a sketch, made with a carbon sheet, of the torn paper found behind the wash-stand:
And then came the entries for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Friday evening:
6:30--Eating hearty supper.
7:00--Lights cigarette and paces floor. Notice that when Mrs. P. knocks, he goes to desk and pretends to be writing.
8:00--Is examining book. Looks like a railway guide.
8:30--It is a steamship guide.
8:45--Tailor's boy brings box. Gives boy fifty cents. Query. Where does he get money, now that J.B. is gone?
9:00--Tries on new suit, brown.
9:30--Has been spending a quarter of an hour on his knees looking behind furniture and examining base-board.
10:00--He has the key to the onyx clock. Has hidden it twice, once up the chimney flue, once behind base-board.
10:15--He has just thrown key or similar small article outside window into yard.
11:00--Has gone to bed. Light burning. Shall sleep here on floor.
11:30--He can not sleep. Is up walking the floor and smoking.
2:00 A.M.--Saturday. Disturbance below. He had had nightmare and was calling "Jennie!" He got up, took a drink, and is now reading.
8:00 A.M.--Must have slept. He is shaving.
12:00 M.--Nothing this morning. He wrote for four hours, sometimes reading aloud what he had written.
2:00 P.M.--He has a visitor, a man. Can not hear all--word now and then. "Llewellyn is the very man." "Devil of a risk--" "We'll see you through." "Lost the slip--" "Didn't go to the hotel. She went to a private house." "Eliza Shaeffer."
Who went to a private house? Jennie Brice?
2:30--Can not hear. Are whispering. The visitor has given Ladley roll of bills.
4:00--Followed the visitor, a tall man with a pointed beard. He went to the Liberty Theater. Found it was Bronson, business manager there. Who is Llewellyn, and who is Eliza Shaeffer?
4:15--Had Mrs. P. bring telephone book: six Llewellyns in the book; no Eliza Shaeffer. Ladley appears more cheerful since Bronson's visit. He has bought all the evening papers and is searching for something. Has not found it.
7:00--Ate well. Have asked Mrs. P. to take my place here, while I interview the six Llewellyns.
11:00--Mrs. P. reports a quiet evening. He read and smoked. Has gone to bed. Light burning. Saw five Llewellyns. None of them knew Bronson or Ladley. Sixth--a lawyer--out at revival meeting. Went to the church and walked home with him. He knows something. Acknowledged he knew Bronson. Had met Ladley. Did not believe Mrs. Ladley dead. Regretted I had not been to the meeting. Good sermon. Asked me for a dollar for missions.
9:00 A.M.--Sunday. Ladley in bad shape. Apparently been drinking all night. Can not eat. Sent out early for papers, and has searched them all. Found entry on second page, stared at it, then flung the paper away. Have sent out for same paper.
10:00 A.M.--Paper says: "Body of woman washed ashore yesterday at Sewickley. Much mutilated by flood débris." Ladley in bed, staring at ceiling. Wonder if he sees tube? He is ghastly.
That is the last entry in the note-book for that day. Mr. Holcom
be called me in great excitement shortly after ten and showed me the item. Neither of us doubted for a moment that it was Jennie Brice who had been found. He started for Sewickley that same afternoon, and he probably communicated with the police before he left. For once or twice I saw Mr. Graves, the detective, sauntering past the house.
Mr. Ladley ate no dinner. He went out at four, and I had Mr. Reynolds follow him. But they were both back in a half-hour. Mr. Reynolds reported that Mr. Ladley had bought some headache tablets and some bromide powders to make him sleep.
Mr. Holcombe came back that evening. He thought the body was that of Jennie Brice, but the head was gone. He was much depressed, and did not immediately go back to the periscope. I asked if the head had been cut off or taken off by a steamer; he was afraid the latter, as a hand was gone, too.
It was about eleven o'clock that night that the door-bell rang. It was Mr. Graves, with a small man behind him. I knew the man; he lived in a shanty-boat not far from my house--a curious affair with shelves full of dishes and tinware. In the spring he would be towed up the Monongahela a hundred miles or so and float down, tying up at different landings and selling his wares. Timothy Senft was his name. We called him Tim.
Mr. Graves motioned me to be quiet. Both of us knew that behind the parlor door Ladley was probably listening.
"Sorry to get you up, Mrs. Pitman," said Mr. Graves, "but this man says he has bought beer here to-day. That won't do, Mrs. Pitman."
"Beer! I haven't such a thing in the house. Come in and look," I snapped. And the two of them went back to the kitchen.
"Now," said Mr. Graves, when I had shut the door, "where's the dog's-meat man?"
"Up-stairs."
"Bring him quietly."
I called Mr. Holcombe, and he came eagerly, note-book and all. "Ah!" he said, when he saw Tim. "So you've turned up!"
The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart Page 80
