The End of Mr. Garment

by Vincent Starrett

  His wife seemed puzzled. “No,” she replied, “they haven’t called.”

  “Then they’re due now,” said Pope, looking at his watch. “In fact they’re overdue. I thought they might like another afternoon together,” he explained, “before the Kimbarks take her back to Chicago. They’ve already postponed their return twice. What under the sun do lovers do, in New York, Mollock, when they want to be alone?”

  Mollock laughed. “The lower classes, I believe, go to motion-picture houses and hold hands. The upper classes go to hotels and—”

  “Tut, tut, Mr. Mollock!” cried Myra Pope, scandalized.

  “—have tea with their friends,” finished Mollock. “When they have any! All the world is supposed to love a lover, I believe; but in point of fact most lovers are infernal nuisances, not to say actual liabilities. Anger and Miss Waterloo, I admit, are less mucilaginous than most of their kind, but I shall be pleased and relieved to hear that they are married.”

  “Great Scott, man!” laughed Curly Pope. “What have they ever done to you? I thought you were fond of both of them.”

  “So I am,” said Mollock; “but here they are, in the middle of a perfectly good detective story, so to speak, contributing nothing to its outcome, yet occupying the minds of two important investigators. Love, as I have said, time and again, has no place in a detective story. When it isn’t an impertinence it’s a concession. Personally, I am in positive need of a cup of tea. I came here expecting to get it. And I find that this precious pair of lovers is gumming up the whole proceeding.”

  Mrs. Kingsley Duane was delighted. “Any time at all, Mr. Mollock,” she burbled urgently, “that you are in need of a cup of tea, just call me up and say so. I love to serve it.”

  “Bless its poor little heart,” added Mrs. Pope, “it shall have its cup of tea at once!”

  “No,” said Mollock, “that’s the difficulty. I wouldn’t feel right about it unless the lovers were here also. I’ll give them another ten minutes.”

  “Very well,” agreed his hostess. “I’ll order it now, and perhaps in ten minutes we shall have it.”

  She vanished into an adjoining room to telephone her order.

  Mrs. Kingsley Duane, struck by one of the novelist’s observations, had been seized of an idea of her own. “But why hasn’t Mr. Anger contributed something to that Garment case, Mr. Mollock?” she asked suddenly, leaning toward him. “Surely he knew Stephen Garment better than anyone else. He was closest to him, wasn’t he? Aware of his private affairs? Surely if anybody could find a motive for such a murder it would be the murdered man’s secretary.”

  “Well, that depends, I suppose!” Mollock shrugged his shoulders. “Men who are likely to be murdered, and who may perhaps suspect it, aren’t likely to tell their secretaries everything. Anger has his suspicions, I imagine; but if so he is wise in keeping them to himself, unless he is able to prove them correct. The fact is, though, Anger hasn’t been with Mr. Garment—hadn’t been, I should say—for very long. A trifle over a year, I think. And while it is certainly true that the motive for the murder may have developed within a fortnight of the deed, it is equally true that it may go far back beyond the time of the secretary’s employment.”

  It was, he thought to himself, a sufficiently noncommittal statement. Dignified, resonant with authority, and convincingly dull.

  “Frankly,” cried Mrs. Duane winningly, “what do you think about it all yourself, Mr. Mollock?”

  “Frankly,” said Mollock, “I don’t know what the dickens to think about it. I’ve suspected people in that case, Mrs. Duane, until my mind is a whirl. Now I suspect nobody. If Walter Ghost were not at work on the problem, I’d gamble even money that the mystery would never be solved.”

  Pope agreed. “At that,” he contributed, “it’s less mysterious than the case of this unknown girl at Amersham. We can guess about Garment, and maybe come within a hundred miles of the truth. But the girl’s case has got me giddy. It actually touches me—and Myra—and still there’s no answer. Myra’s note—Myra’s dress—”

  “Some day Mrs. Pope will remember about that dress,” said Mollock. “When she has quit thinking about it consciously, her subconscious will get to work, and then there’ll be results. Mark my words! She’ll wake you up some night out of a sound sleep and tell you whom she gave it to. It’ll come to her in a flash of recollection. I know! That sort of thing has happened to me. When it comes, everything will fall into place like the pieces of a puzzle—click, click, click!—and the mystery will be solved. And everybody will say: ‘My God! Why didn’t we think of that before?’”

  “Of course, you know how sorry I am that I made that frightful error,” murmured Mrs. Duane, looking at the novelist. “But what else could I have done?”

  “Nothing, I’m sure.” Mollock’s reply was not strictly truthful. “As matters turned out, you we re perhaps a trifle precipitate; but I can sympathize with your emotion. Your own sister!”

  “Shocking!” said Mrs. Kingsley Duane. “It was shocking!”

  “Whistle it,” said Curly Pope. “It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that you had arranged the whole business yourself, you old turkey buzzard!”

  But he did not make these remarks aloud to Mrs. Duane. They were merely the words that passed swiftly through his mind and trembled for an instant on his lips. Visibly, he contented himself —Mrs. Duane’s glance at the moment being downcast—with dropping one eyelid in Mollock’s direction and kicking at an imaginary cat.

  Mrs. Pope returned from the telephone and announced that tea was coming up at once.

  “Then I’ll be getting along,” said Mrs. Duane reluctantly. She rose to her feet. “No, I didn’t really intend to stay at all. But I see you so seldom, Myra, that I like to make the most of my opportunities, now that you are really here.”

  She gave her hand to Mollock. “It’s been so nice to meet you. Mr. Duane has all your books and has read some of them twice. You won’t forget about that cup of tea?”

  So there was a Mr. Duane!

  “Certainly not,” cried Mollock, with emphasis. “It’s jolly nice of you to want me.”

  With relief they saw her vanish through the door and heard that barrier close behind her.

  Myra Pope turned swiftly and laid a finger against her lips. “Not a word,” she warned, “until she is out of hearing. She’s quite capable of coming back to listen.”

  “I don’t even want to think about her for another year,” growled Curly Pope, drawing his pipe from his pocket. Slowly he filled and lighted it. “Now what the devil do you suppose has happened to Anger and Miss Waterloo?”

  “They’re not coming?” cried his wife. “Good heavens! I thought you said that to get rid of Kate. I’ll have to order more tea.”

  She rushed away to the telephone in the other room. But before she could reach it, it tinkled of its own accord.

  “Oh, Lord! She’s forgotten something!” groaned Pope. He glanced hurriedly around the room to ascertain what his sister-in-law might have left behind.

  But the clerk at the desk below was merely announcing that Mr. Anger and Miss Waterloo were coming up.

  Apologizing profusely, a moment later they stood inside the door. Anger was red and perspiring, Miss Waterloo as pale as washing on a line. Something, apparently, had happened. So might they have appeared had the young Englishman, a scant ten seconds before, snatched his sweetheart from beneath the wheels of a train. Something of tragic import clung about them, standing there. Their agitation was painful and profound.

  Myra Pope was swept with a sudden premonition of disaster. “What is it, darling?” she asked quickly, her hand upon her throat

  It was Anger who answered.

  “We want you to break it to the Kimbarks,” he answered hoarsely. “They wanted it to happen in Chicago. We’re married—and they don’t know anything about it!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  In Chicago, meanwhile, the situation had become for Detective-Sergeant Cic
otte a matter of profane irritation. Certain as it seemed that the impostor who called himself Holmes was in some fashion connected with the mystery, it was annoying to find the man’s alibi so formidable in prospect. Closely questioned, the prisoner had stuck manfully to his preposterous story.

  He was not, he admitted, a resident of Chicago; had not been for some years. A few years before, however, he had known Chicago very well indeed; and it was then, he said, that his likeness to Cicotte had been noted and commented upon.

  In support of his assertions he offered to bring witnesses to prove that he had been elsewhere on the night of the crime. By way of immediate corroboration he called upon the night clerk of the hotel at which he had been stopping. The night clerk, and the hotel register, gave evidence strongly in his favour. Both testified that John Holmes had registered at the Hotel Avalanche— as from Niagara Falls—on the evening preceding the capture of Holmes in the Kimbark dwelling.

  But as Cicotte pointed out, nothing really was proved thereby. The fellow might actually live within a stone’s throw of the hotel. He might quietly have left his own doorstep, a few minutes before registering, and walked around the block to the hotel, to register from any point under the sun.

  There was an easy assurance about the man that troubled the experienced Cicotte. It seemed to tell him something. It seemed to whisper that this scoundrel who had dared to impersonate Detective-Sergeant Bernard Cicotte was not alarmed about the future. Consequently he must be telling the truth. But not—aha!—not necessarily the whole truth! The detective had little doubt, however, that the prisoner—sooner or later—would produce witnesses to prove his absence from the city on the night of Garment’s murder.

  It was this intuitive certainty that completed Cicotte’s mystification. For if the fellow were not the murderer, who was he?—and what could be his interest in the case? An interest so profound as to lead him to the astounding insolence of impersonating Detective-Sergeant Bernard Cicotte, the better to gain entrance to the Kimbark household!

  It was the detective’s tentative theory that the man was an emissary of the actual murderer. If the impostor was not the murderer in propria persona, he was the murderer’s agent. But agent in what connection? Was it the weapon he had come to find? Might it not be letters, after all? Weapons, when one came to think about it, proved little or nothing, as a rule. Particularly knives. And this one seemed sufficiently well hidden, it occurred to Cicotte, to satisfy the most apprehensive of murderers.

  “Well,” said Detective-Sergeant Cicotte grimly, “we’ve still got Spessifer! And,” he added, not without satisfaction, “we’ve got this bird, too.”

  Walter Ghost, meanwhile, was debating a return to the East. One of his first acts before leaving for Chicago with Cicotte had been to send an imperative cable to an agent in London, and he was hoping shortly to have an answer from the late novelist’s publishers. One thing stood in the way of an immediate return to New York—the impending arrival in Chicago of the several members of the yachting party. Mollock, in response to a query, had wired him of their plans, in so far as he had been able to ascertain them. The amateur, highly pleased with the results of his Western expedition, had a number of questions to put to the Kimbarks, and possibly to those others who had been their guests on the night of the Chicago murder.

  Mollock’s first wire, sent from the railroad station in New York, on the return from Amersham, had startled Ghost. It had not occurred to him to suspect the essential honesty of Mrs. Kingsley Duane, in the matter of the Amersham outrage. The novelist’s sensational “hunch,” he was forced to admit, might be worth looking into. But since, in any case, it had to do only with the lesser problem of the Amersham victim, he temporarily put it from his mind. The murder of Stephen Garment outside the home of Howland Kimbark, in Chicago, and the murder of the mysterious young woman on a country road, in New York, were not related. On that point his mind had never wavered, and it did not waver now.

  That he was upon the point of solving both murder mysteries Ghost was entirely certain, but he was not unduly elated. He realized that there was still work to be done; that both of his solutions would have to be proved up to the very hilt. He had said nothing, as yet, to Cicotte about the rusting, silver-handled dagger in the Kimbark flower bed.

  When the Kimbarks again had established themselves in Chicago, he hastened to pay a visit. Anger and Miss Waterloo (now Mrs. Anger), he learned, had remained behind to spend their honeymoon in the East. There was a chance that they would go on to Europe and not return to Chicago at all.

  The amateur and Howland Kimbark shook hands with mutual respect. Each had heard a great deal about the other. Once more an extraordinary conversation was to go forward in the Kimbark library.

  “Frankly,” said Kimbark, “I’ve been expecting you to look me up.” He smiled his hard, dry smile and added: “You know, of course, I really didn’t do it!”

  “I’m glad to hear you say so,” responded Ghost courteously. “I’m not sure that I ever really thought you did, although I’ve been obliged to play with the idea, off and on. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  Kimbark hesitated. “I’ll be glad to answer any questions that I can,” he said. The note of caution in his voice, however, was easily to be read.

  “Thank you,” said Ghost; and he smiled an understanding smile. “I may say, for your comfort, that I have no intention of asking you to name the murderer to me.”

  Kimbark leaned back against the cushions of his chair, his cold, bright eyes on those of Ghost. There was a moment of silence; then without emotion he asked: “You know the murderer, then?”

  “I think so—yes. It is, of course, possible that I am mistaken.”

  Kimbark bowed his head, and again for a moment silence fell between them. “There are—I hope—extenuating circumstances?” spoke Howland Kimbark, at last. “Some reasonable motive?”

  “I hope so,” agreed Ghost gravely. “I shall make it my business to find out.” He spoke more briskly: “So much for that. All other questions I think you may safely answer. Indeed, by answering them, you may be helping me to find those extenuating circumstances. You know, of course, that it was your dagger that murdered Garment?”

  Kimbark raised his eyes. “I supposed it was,” he answered. “I looked for it—afterward—and it was gone.”

  “Or perhaps it was your wife’s?”

  “No, mine.”

  “Do you mind telling me where you got it?”

  “There’s no significance in that,” said Kimbark, with a faint smile. “I simply bought it myself, because it was attractive. My initial—K—is on the hilt. But I suppose you know that, since you know about the dagger. Has it been found?”

  “I found it,” replied Ghost. “The police know nothing of it, as yet. Where did you make a practice of keeping it, Mr. Kimbark?”

  “Here—in the library. It hung over there, in a little sheath, from that corner of the farthest bookcase. It was taken from the sheath the night of the murder. I don’t know exactly when.”

  “The sheath was not removed at the time the knife was taken?”

  “No.”

  Walter Ghost laughed silently. “And Cicotte sat here, that night, facing the empty sheath, and never knew it!” he said, at last.

  Kimbark smiled. “Not exactly, Mr. Ghost,” he demurred. “I had already removed the sheath from view before Mr. Cicotte arrived.”

  It was Ghost’s turn to lean back and stare at Kimbark. “You mean—?” he questioned.

  “I knew who took it the night the murder was committed,” answered Kimbark. “I have known from the beginning.”

  Both were scrupulously avoiding the suggestion of a name.

  “Well!” said Ghost; and then he laughed an odd little laugh that held a note of admiration. “I had thought your suspicions might be strong, but I confess I had no notion of the burden you were carrying.”

  “Nor have you now,” said Howland Kimbark shortly. Suddenly he was lea
ning forward in his chair and tapping the amateur lightly upon the breast. “I’ve told you, Mr. Ghost, that I didn’t kill Stephen Garment,” he continued, “and it’s true. I didn’t. Now I’ll tell you something else. I intended to kill him—that night—and I was—ah —anticipated.”

  “My dear fellow!” said Ghost quickly.

  “I thought you might be shocked.”

  “Shocked? My remark was the purest sympathy.”

  Kimbark got suddenly to his feet and crossed the room to the window. After a moment he returned to his chair, shrugging lightly. “Thank you,” he said without further emotion; “but probably I don’t deserve your sympathy. And you’ll understand me, I’m sure, when I say that I don’t want it. Yes, I intended to kill Garment that night, Mr. Ghost. I had no plan; but I supposed an opportunity would offer, sometime before he left When I knew that he was dead, I felt cheated. I was appalled, of course; but at first, I think, I felt a sense of outrage—that someone had been before me. Perhaps you can understand that, too.”

  “Yes,” said Ghost, “it’s understandable. You had no doubt, then, as to who killed him?”

  “None,” said Kimbark; “but I prefer, you understand, to give no evidence that would—”

  Ghost nodded. “It’s all right,” he smiled. “And I don’t think I really need it. But you have suggested that you can think of no reasonable motive!”

  “No reasonable motive,” agreed Kimbark. “Of course, there must be one.”

  Ghost lighted one of his curious cigars and pulled at it for some minutes. Once or twice he glanced shrewdly at the lean horseman who sat opposite him, twisted in his chair. The man was still suffering. After a time he spoke again.

  “The dagger,” he said quietly, “was found in a flower bed, on your front lawn, where the murderer had placed it. Not, of course, to incriminate you, but to hide it below the earth. Your wife,” he continued slowly, “thinking you had committed the murder, found the dagger where it had been placed—a clever bit of discovery—and removed it to another hiding place, where it remained until the lawn had been thoroughly searched by the police, when she returned it to the flower bed— another clever piece of work. I realized, of course, that she had been protecting you.”