by Zenith Brown
At the sight of Mr. Rand’s portly white-haired figure Franklin came to an abrupt stop. I gathered it was the first time they’d met that day. And it was a very curious meeting; and more curious to me now, when I look back on it, than it seemed then. Neither of them spoke. Their eyes, level with each other, met, and for a good minute neither of them wavered. Franklin’s back was turned to me, so that I couldn’t see the expression in his; but I could see Mr. Rand’s blue eyes looking steadily into the younger man’s. They were appraising, counseling, questioning. It was almost as if Mr. Rand knew something he’d rather not know, and was putting it up to Franklin then and there before it was too late.
Mr. Sullivan interrupted.
“I’ll see you in a few minutes, Hawkins,” he said. “Wait outside.”
He turned to Mr. Rand.
“Mr. Knox wishes to sign a confession,” he said pleasantly, precisely as if he were ordering tea. “He says he shot and killed Mr. Sutton last night a few minutes after 1:30 o’clock.”
Mr. Rand hadn’t taken his eyes off Franklin’s. Now I saw a flash of fire in them. Then a calculating questioning. Then a weary little smile.
He raised his brows.
“I see,” he said. “Then the case is settled?”
“By no means,” said Mr. Sullivan. “I’m convinced Mr. Knox is confessing to a crime he knows nothing about, in order to save Miss Thorn Carter.”
Mr. Rand turned to Franklin. I thought for an instant that he was puzzled; but that seemed unlikely, under the circumstances. All of Franklin’s conduct was perfectly obvious.
Franklin’s jaw, which had relaxed a little, clamped shut again until you could see the white ridges of its muscles.
“I shot Sutton, Mr. Sullivan,” he said stubbornly. “That is all I have to say.”
“Just wait a few minutes,” Mr. Rand said quietly. “Let us talk this over with Mr. Sullivan.”
He motioned to a chair, and Franklin, after a moment’s hesitation, nodded and sat down. Mr. Sullivan held the door of his office open for us. I caught for an instant as I went past him the serious dark eyes in Franklin’s sober American face. Not a flicker responded. I tried to imagine Ben sticking his head in a noose for me. I couldn’t, some way. But Franklin is just the stuff that heroes are made of. Not handsome in the sense that Mr. Baca is, but awfully fine, clean, intelligent and hardy looking.
Mr. Sullivan closed the door.
“Will you sit here, please, Mrs. Niles?” he said. He pointed to a chair facing the window where the late afternoon sun was shining.
I gathered that he was about to use psychology on me. I have a friend who uses that method in dealing with prospective clients.
“If you don’t mind, Mr. Sullivan,” I said sweetly, “I’ll sit here. The light bothers my eyes.”
He looked at me sharply, his grey eyebrows bristling like the hairs on a dog’s back. I sat down with my back to the window. Mr. Rand smiled and sat in the chair meant for me. Mr. Sullivan settled himself in the squeaking fumed-oak swivel chair behind his desk.
CHAPTER XXIII
“Mr. Rand,” began Mr. Sullivan in a fine man-to-man fashion, “you were Mr. Sutton’s legal adviser, and I assume naturally”—he pronounced that and many other words exactly as Reverdy would—“that you want this thing cleared up and his murderer convicted.”
Mr. Rand bowed his acquiescence with fine deliberateness. Mr. Sullivan went on.
“With that in mind, and because I’ve ceased to expect any intelligent cooperation from Mrs. Niles”—he bowed to me with ironic courtesy—“I have asked both of you here to tell you exactly where I stand in the matter as the representative of the State of Maryland.”
He should have said “Free State of Maryland,” of course, but we let that pass. We entered at once into the spirit of the thing, though I—and of course Mr. Rand—saw that this scene had been carefully rehearsed, the stage set beforehand.
“I want to tell you just what happened at Seaton Hall last night as I have it from every person there. Let me take them in order, now, beginning with Daniel Sutton.”
If I’d been in the full light of the western glow, as Mr. Rand was, I must have looked rather startled at such a beginning. I hadn’t thought of Mr. Sullivan as one likely to have communication with the departed. Mr. Rand however did not bat an eye.
“I have the incontestable evidence of Mr. Sutton’s dead body. He was sitting, talking to someone he had no reason to fear. His posture, his face, his cigar, indicate this. His cigar especially; because everyone who knew Mr. Sutton even casually, as I did, knows that when he was . . . provoked, let us say, he chewed the end of his cigar violently. The tip of the cigar that Mr. Sutton was smoking that night shows no teeth marks; and it was half smoked.
“My next is Mrs. Niles. She went home at one o’clock and went to bed and to sleep. At 2:15 she arose and let Miss Thorn Carter in, talked with her about half an hour, went back to Seaton Hall with her; was with her when she rang the bell; and was admitted with her by Tim Healy—except that Tim Healy was dead. Entered the house, did not go in to speak to Mr. Sutton, whom she heard moving about—except that Mr. Sutton was dead. Helped Miss Thorn to bed, came down, heard someone in the back parlor, ran to the library, turned on the light, and found, quite by accident you understand, that Mr. Sutton was dead. Fainted, and was found by Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe, and later taken home by him.”
This piece was spoken to gentlemen of the jury, and with an effective irony that even I could appreciate.
“Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe states that he was awakened by something, he thinks by someone passing his door. He heard a lady scream. He hurried downstairs, caught the lady as she fainted, then took her home.”
Mr. Sullivan consulted a sheaf of papers on his desk.
“Dan Sutton heard a noise down stairs and came hurrying down from his room on the third floor, to see Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe leaning over Mrs. Niles, who was in a chair.
“Bill Sutton, asleep in the guest wing, heard a commotion and came through the open door from the hyphen to the back parlor, to see his brother standing by the wing chair with Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe, Mrs. Niles still seated.
“Susan Atwood asleep on the second floor heard a commotion, and came down to see all the above in the library.”
Mr. Sullivan looked at me with hardly concealed pleasure, in thus offering my case to the mercies of my twelve imaginary peers.
“Miss Thorn Carter on the second floor slept soundly through all of this.
“Miss Mildred Carter—a very light sleeper—slept soundly through all of this. Also on the second floor.
“Mr. Baca, the Mexican, sleeping in a strange bed in a strange house, slept soundly through all of this.
“Mr. Wallace Fenton, on the third floor, the same.”
Mr. Sullivan paused, with an affable air, to let this sink into our heads. Then suddenly he leaned forward, his eyes narrowing a little, his hands still folded quietly on the little pile of papers in front of him.
“We have here two possible conclusions,” he said in a whisper. “Those people who slept quietly through all of this did not hear any noise, and it is therefore necessary to determine why Dan Sutton, Bill Sutton, Susan Atwood and Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe heard it so clearly. Or, the second group having heard the noise so plainly, it is necessary to explain why Miss Mildred Carter, Miss Thorn Carter, Mr. Fenton and Mr. Baca did not hear it.”
Mr. Sullivan relaxed and sat back. So did I. It seemed to me to be, in a queer way, a fair statement of the case.
“Now,” he went on, “we have a confession to this murder.”
He picked up the paper on top of the pile and looked over it.
“Mr. Franklin Knox says that at 1:15 he climbed over the high wall at Seaton Hall, entered the study, had an argument with Mr. Sutton and shot him dead. He then went down to the river, threw the revolver out into the stream as far as he could, and came home, entering his father’s house at 2:30 in the morning.”
If
Mr. Rand had not been sitting facing the light I shouldn’t have caught the scarcely perceptible quickening of interest in his face and posture.
Mr. Sullivan, a furtive eye on me, paid no attention to him. After he made his first statement he looked down at the paper again meditatively and shrugged his shoulders.
“I have my men dragging the river,” he went on. “We’ll see shortly.”
His face wore a grim anticipatory smile that would have done credit to Shylock whetting his knife.
“My last witness is Tim Healy.”
As Mr. Sullivan’s voice fell reverently I remembered his telling me the Saturday before to tell Mr. Sutton that if that mick watchman of his got tight again he’d land in the city cooler.
“Tim Healy doing his rounds at 1:30, came to a stop outside the open window of the library. Here is the evidence of that.”
He handed me a thin paper disc. I looked blankly at it.
“Do you know what that is, Mrs. Niles?”
“No, I don’t.”
“It’s a record from a watchman’s punch clock. When Tim Healy started his rounds he pressed a button. The station and time are recorded automatically. What you see there is Station 1, Time 1:26.”
I looked and saw the raised letters.
“Tim Healy started at 1:26 from the lodge. He walked up the path, saw a light that you and Thorn Carter did not see. He stepped to the open window and saw something that shocked him, shocked him so terribly that he died.”
Mr. Sullivan tilted his chair back with a long drawn-out screaking.
“Healy’s watch broke when he fell. But that is unsound as evidence. His watchman’s clock he would have punched again in six or eight minutes—at 1:38 o’clock—at the King Charles Street gate, which is his Station 2, just as he has done every night for six years.”
Leaf by leaf he turned over a three- or four-inch sheaf of the little discs from the watchman’s clock.
“Station 1, 1:26,” he read slowly. “Station 2, 1:38. Now ask yourself, Mrs. Niles, what Tim Healy saw that made his heart beat so rapidly that it exhausted itself and stopped beating forever.”
He leaned forward and fixed me with his dissecting gaze.
“Simply ask yourself. And what is the answer?”
I began to wonder if he really wanted me to start a catechism aloud then and there. But he went on smoothly.
“We can dismiss anything so strange and unknown as to be horrible enough in itself so to affect him.”
“As a matter of fact that isn’t necessarily true,” I said. Mr. Sullivan was so annoyed that I saw I’d got on the wrong line. But I Went on.
“Tim believed entirely in fairies, goblins, witches and ghosts. It would have been perfectly possible for him to see anything.”
Mr. Sullivan made a gesture of impatience.
“True, Mrs. Niles. But there was plainly some actual thing there. I meant it was actual enough to shoot Mr. Sutton. And since Sutton wasn’t frightened in the least, I think we can assume that it was nothing either supernatural or horrible.”
As that was plain enough I subsided into my proper rôle of auditor.
“And I put it to you that whoever it was that Tim Healy saw, it was someone he knew; someone he had faith and confidence in; someone he loved.”
I nodded unhappily. Mr. Sullivan’s eye brightened.
“Now let us run over the list of such people on your fingers, Mrs. Niles.”
I had no intention of doing so, but he raised his own pudgy hand and ticked them off, beginning with his thumb.
Dan Sutton.
Bill Sutton.
Susan Atwood.
Miss Mildred Carter.
Mrs. Niles.
Thorn Carter.
Franklin Knox.
He stopped.
“What about Wallace Fenton?” I said.
He shook his head.
“That wouldn’t have surprised Healy.”
I looked up in amazement. He smiled. “I know more than you think I know, Mrs. Niles,” I expected him to say; but he didn’t.
“What about Mr. Sutton’s two guests,” Mr. Rand remarked.
Again Mr. Sullivan shook his head.
“No,” he said. “That would not have been a shock to Tim.”
Which, of course, was perfectly true.
“Now,” Mr. Sullivan went on, after a pause, “I’m going to take each of these seven that I’ve named, and tell you as much as I know about their motives in this matter.
“Dan Sutton. No motive that I’ve any proof of. Joan Frazier perhaps.
Bill Sutton—none.
Susan Atwood—none.
Miss Mildred Carter.
Here Mr. Sullivan paused. Then he said, “None.”
“Mrs. Niles.” He paused again and looked at me appraisingly. “Mrs. Niles has a very strong motive,—one of the strongest. If Mr. Sutton had died this evening instead of this morning at 1:30, your husband—hence you—would have lost $8,000 a year for life. A very powerful motive, Mrs. Niles.”
I nodded.
“Very true,” I said.
“Thorn Carter.—You said, Mr. Rand, that you had not a copy of Mr. Sutton’s will with you?”
“I’ve sent for one,” Mr. Rand said.
“Inasmuch as your client directed you to bring his will as he wished to change it, isn’t it strange you didn’t do so?”
I shuddered to hear him speak so directly to Mr. Rand.
He only smiled. “I’ve been dealing with Sutton for twenty-two years, Sullivan,” he said. “I’ve changed his will in that period at least a hundred times. In late years, when I get a summons from Sutton, I come, make a memorandum of his wishes, go back to New York; and if, twenty-four hours later, I haven’t ten telegrams telling me to disregard our recent conversations, I then make the change and forward the will for his signature.”
Mr. Sullivan nodded his comprehension.
“Can you, then, tell me approximately how much Thorn Carter stood to lose if her uncle cut her out of the will?”
“The income for life on about three million dollars,” Mr. Rand said simply.
“I think we have a motive for Thorn Carter, then,” Mr. Sullivan returned. “I think we also have the same motive for Franklin Knox. I think this motive is insurmountable.”
There was a long silence in the room.
“In that case,” I asked, “what about Fenton?”
“I’m not overlooking that, Mrs. Niles. It’s possible that it was Fenton that Tim Healy saw. He may have made a sudden move to stop him. His heart was bad, it may not have needed a great shock. It’s possible that just the shock of seeing Sutton dead in the chair was enough to do it; Mr. Sutton may possibly have been killed half an hour before.”
In that case, I thought, why carry on so? Presumably he had before ruled out Baca and Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe. But not at all. He seemed to sense my inward protest, for he said quietly, “No, Mrs. Niles, I have not disregarded anyone whatsoever.”
I was about to demand what then, in the name of time, he was getting at, when there was a commotion in the outer office. The door opened, and young Basil, the state policeman, came in with another man. They were excited.
“Here you are, Mr. Sullivan!” Basil said. He stepped up to the table and laid down on it something wrapped in a piece of gunny sack.
Mr. Sullivan waited without a word until the door of his office, on its automatic slide, clicked shut. Then he took up the object and opened the burlap wrapping. It was a revolver, covered with mud.
We stared at it. I don’t know which of us was the most astounded.
“Where’d you get this?” Mr. Sullivan barked.
“In the river, sir. Foot of York Road. Less than ten feet from the bank.”
Mr. Sullivan looked at it a second.
“Ask Mr. Knox to come in, Basil. Stay out there until I call you.”
I looked in the greatest astonishment from one to the other of the men in the room. Mr. Sullivan stood up, one hand in h
is pocket, the finger tips of the other beating a puzzled tattoo on his desk. Mr. Rand looked very grave, and I thought I could see a watchful flicker in his eyes.
The door opened and Franklin Knox came in. He saw the gun on the desk. From his perceptible start I thought he hadn’t quite expected this.
“You shot Daniel Sutton, did you?” Mr. Sullivan said.
“I did.”
“With this gun? It’s a .38 calibre.”
Franklin looked at it closer.
“That’s the gun,” he said.
“After you shot Mr. Sutton with this gun, you threw it in the river?”
“That’s right.”
“Where?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean where did you go to the river to throw the gun in?”
He paused only an instant.
“I went down King Charles Street,” he said.
Mr. Sullivan sat down and drew his chair forward.
“You threw this gun in the river from the foot of King Charles Street?”
“Yes,” said Franklin shortly.
“That’s all. Will you wait in the other room.”
Franklin disappeared. Mr. Sullivan looked at Mr. Rand, whose face was almost as puzzled as my own.
“In other words, Mrs. Niles,” Mr. Sullivan said, turning to me, “Franklin Knox, knowing that Thorn Carter went to your house, through the King Charles Street Gate at 2:15 this morning, assumes that before she went to your house she went down King Charles Street and threw the weapon in the river.”
I started. He interpreted my surprise again.
“How do I know Thorn went through the King Charles Street gate?”
I flushed in annoyance at being so transparent.
“You omitted to tell me, and I haven’t seen Thorn Carter. Well, I was told by Colonel Arbuthnot-Howe.”
I stared again in amazement.
“He believes, Mrs. Niles, that the only way to clear Thorn Carter is for someone to tell the truth.”
What he meant was clear enough.
