The End of Mr. Garment

by Vincent Starrett

  Kimbark was now sitting stiffly upright in his chair.

  “No!” he cried.

  “Yes,” said Ghost, “just as I have described it.”

  Howland Kimbark dashed open the door of a small liquor cabinet and dragged forth a bottle and a glass. He poured and drank a staggering dash of whisky, his hands shaking. Then he profusely apologized.

  “Well,” said Howland Kimbark, when his visitor had declined to drink, “it was pretty decent of her to do that, Ghost—eh?”

  He spoke lightly, but Ghost knew that he had been touched.

  Once more the amateur became a brisk and incisive questioner. He produced from his pocket the photograph that the impostor had taken from the wall of Kimbark’s study.

  “You probably recognize this, and wonder where I got it,” he observed, smiling. “It’s a good story, and you’ll hear it all, in time. Just now I want you to look at it and tell me who the several persons in the picture are. Do you mind?”

  Kimbark’s eyebrows pushed upward in surprise. “You are really a most astonishing fellow, Ghost,” he testified, dropping for the second time the arm’s-length “Mister” with which he had begun the interview. “I haven’t missed it from the wall. I wonder how you managed to obtain it. But perhaps it’s another picture?”

  “No, it’s yours,” said Ghost. “It is a postal-card photograph of the deck of Pope’s yacht, holding, at the time the photograph was taken, a group of guests and, apparently, some of the members of the crew. I can recognize you, of course, and Mrs. Kimbark, and Mr. and Mrs. Pope; but there my knowledge ends.”

  Kimbark took the picture in his hands, and Ghost rose and bent over him from behind.

  “It was taken some time ago,” explained the Chicagoan, “during a run along the Atlantic coast. A couple of summers ago, I think. Nothing remarkable about the cruise that I can remember. Van Peter and his wife are in the picture, but of course you haven’t met them yet. The stoutish man is Allan Dromgoole, the writer. The woman beside him is Susan Bland—a playwright—of no particular importance. Curly and his wife, you say you recognize.”

  “I met Mrs. Pope in New York,” said Ghost. “I assumed the man beside her to be her husband.”

  “Quite right. And beside Pope—the elderly couple—are a Mr. and Mrs. Grace of Evanston.” His finger indicated. “Then comes a Mr. John Hare of Glencoe; two college boys—Harry and Peter Dawlish—and the two girls in front are a Miss Alice Langley, now Mrs. Stanley Bauld of New York City, and Betty Waterloo, our niece. The young man at the extreme right is Ronald Key, the English aviator.”

  “And the others, too, if you don’t mind.”

  “The others, as you surmise, are members of the crew or servants of the members of the party. Everybody on board, practically, was in the group. It was taken by Kingsley Duane, Pope’s brother-in-law.”

  “Whose wife seems not to be in the picture,” commented Ghost.

  Kimbark looked again. “That’s a fact. I hadn’t noticed it before. Probably she was ill. She usually is ill, I believe. I’m sure she was on the yacht.”

  “And now the crew, if you please, and all the servants—by name. You see, I am very curious.”

  So was Kimbark; but he answered readily enough, naming off the several others whose portraits appeared in the photograph. Ghost nodded his head as the figures were tapped off by the horseman’s finger. Then rapidly and without difficulty he went over the list himself, correctly naming every individual, while Kimbark stared.

  “You have a memory,” remarked the Chicagoan, in tribute.

  “Yes,” answered Ghost, smiling, “it’s a useful thing to have. This young man with the peaked cap, then—the somewhat stoutish youth—is called Harry Blonde, is he? Just who was he, Mr. Kimbark?”

  “An extraordinary fellow,” replied Kimbark. “A sort of chief steward of the yacht and general factotum. Amusing chap, too. Used to play the guitar and sing. He did both very well.”

  “Popular fellow, I imagine,” commented Ghost, a bit dryly. “And the young woman beside him— Madeline Darrow you called her, I think? You’ll note that the popular Mr. Blonde has his arm around her!”

  Kimbark smiled faintly and looked more closely at the picture. “So he has,” he said. “I hadn’t noticed it.”

  “Who is Madeline Darrow?”

  “She was one of Nidia’s maids.”

  “But is so no longer?”

  “No, we haven’t had her for at least a year— possibly longer. Nidia would know.”

  “You have no idea, I suppose, why she left your wife’s employ?”

  Kimbark looked sharply at his questioner, but again withheld the questions on his own tongue.

  “As it happens, I have. I remember her saying, or Nidia telling me, that she was going to get married.”

  “To Harry Blonde, by any chance?”

  “By Jove, Ghost! That’s something I really don’t know,” cried Kimbark stiffly. “I don’t keep track—”

  Ghost laughed. “I know you don’t,” he soothed. “I thought it possible that you had heard. Pretty girl, I suppose?”

  “Very pretty, as I remember her. We were sorry to have her go.” Kimbark’s curiosity overcame him. “What is it that you are getting at, anyway, Mr. Ghost? Surely these people have nothing to do with—”

  “Bear with me a little longer, please,” smiled Ghost. “The next question will surprise you. Since meeting the celebrated Cicotte, has it ever occurred to you that he resembled this steward, Harry Blonde?”

  There was no question about Kimbark’s surprise. He was astounded. He stared at the amateur for almost a minute before he replied. Then he remembered that a question had been asked him.

  He vigorously shook his head. “It certainly never has. But why in the world do you ask that? You’re not telling me that Cicotte is Harry Blonde!”

  “No,” said Ghost, “I’m not. Nevertheless, the resemblance exists, I think. If it doesn’t, I’m all at sea, and will have to begin over again. I think I’d better tell you now why I ask these questions,” he added; and quickly he sketched the amazing adventure of the police detective and himself in the Kimbark dwelling, only a day or so before.

  Kimbark was appalled. “But what was the fellow doing here?” he cried.

  “Stealing this picture from your wall. And why? Obviously, because it presented—in a house that was under police surveillance—a portrait of himself and a young woman—Madeline Darrow. So I read it, anyway. I recognized the fellow’s own portrait, when I came to examine the photograph, and surmised the rest. Somebody, Mr. Blonde argued, sooner or later would put two and two together, as I am doing now. Possibly it would be you, possibly Mrs. Kimbark; possibly even Cicotte would see the thing and become curious about it, since, after all, it was a picture of the yacht, and Pope’s name had been vaguely involved in the Garment mystery, after the supposed discovery of his wife’s body. While the picture existed, it was a constant source of danger to Mr. Harry Blonde; and ultimately he ran a grave risk to recover it.”

  “Great heavens!” cried Howland Kimbark, wondering if he had gone mad. “Why should the fellow care?”

  “I had thought you quicker of apprehension,” smiled Ghost. “If I am right, it was Harry Blonde who murdered the girl at Amersham—and the girl at Amersham was once Madeline Darrow, your wife’s maid.”

  Kimbark fell back in his seat as if he had been pushed. “Ohl” he said. For some minutes he thought it over. Then he thumped the arm of his chair. “Yes, it’s quite possible. In the circumstances, it’s almost certainly what happened. Good God! Little Madeline Darrow!”

  “It was she who told him, I suppose, that the picture was here,” said Ghost. “Somehow, at some time, she mentioned it to him—and he remembered.”

  Kimbark was thinking hard—testing the case against the impostor at all its points.

  “She was about the size of Myra Pope,” he mused. “Yes, she was about her size and colour too. Oh, you’re right, of course! It’s extrao
rdinary, Ghost. And rather wonderful, too! I mean the way you’ve run it down.”

  “No,” said Ghost, “his coming here to get the photograph the very day that Cicotte and I were in the house was singularly fortuitous. After it happened, and I had acquired the picture, the solution was staring.”

  “But the note,” cried Kimbark suddenly. “The suicide note—and Myra’s dress! How do you explain them?”

  “The note was in a pocket of the dress, almost certainly, when it was given or thrown away. I fancy it was discarded on the yacht—possibly on the very cruise on which this picture was taken. At any rate, whenever it was discarded, Blonde acquired it for his swetheart—Madeline Darrow. It may have been during this voyage, it may have been earlier, it may have been later. The date of the death of Mrs. Pope’s child will approximately establish it, since it was after that event that she wrote the note.”

  It was just remotely possible, too, thought Ghost, remembering Mollock’s surprising “hunch,” that Mrs. Kingsley Duane had had a hand in the transfer of the dress; she had been on board the yacht during the Atlantic run. But the theory was involved, and there was at the moment nothing to support it. In any case it was not a matter to discuss with Howland Kimbark.

  Kimbark again came out of a coma of thinking. “Why should he have killed her, Ghost?” he asked. “She was a pretty, harmless little thing.”

  “The Lord knows,” replied Ghost. “Possibly he married her and tired of her. Possibly he didn’t marry her—and tired of her. In any case I feel sure that the popular Mr. Harry Blonde is about as undiluted a scoundrel as one is likely to encounter in a long journey. Always supposing I am right, of course!”

  “You’re right enough,” said Kimbark, with conviction. “I feel it.”

  “Yes,” said Ghost, “I feel it myself. And now,” he added grimly, “I am going to have a talk with Mr. Harry Blonde. I rather fancy he will be surprised to hear my mention of his name.”

  Kimbark rose to his feet. “Will you want to speak with Nidia?” he asked.

  “I think not. I had intended to have a further word with her; but there’s no necessity.”

  “I may tell her about Madeline Darrow?”

  “Well—yes—but be sure that it goes no farther. Tell her, also, Kimbark, that the dagger is still exactly where she placed it, and that I think it may be well to leave it there until the Garment matter also is settled.”

  On the doorsill the two men again shook hands.

  Kimbark’s step, as he reëntered the house, was lighter than it had been in many days.

  Damn Garment! Damn him to the depths of hell and back again! But, after all, the fellow was dead. Perhaps he had been too hard upon his wife? Certainly he had made her suffer since that memorable ride along the parkway. Did she still believe him guilty?

  Never by word or sign had he confessed the deed or denied it. It had been part of her punishment not to know.

  And yet …

  He heard her moving in the corridor above, and with a little, dubious smile went up the stairs to meet her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was the next day that Spessifer, the imprisoned taxi driver, sent for Cicotte. William, at long last, after days of unhappy incarceration, had been visited of an idea. William, with great mental distress, had been desperately remembering.

  Painstakingly, in the night watches, he had shredded his brain over the problem of Stephen Garment deceased, endeavouring to reconstruct a picture—to bring back every moment, every fleeting, vanished instant, of that bewildering episode which had ended in his own confinement in a cell.

  Most vividly he remembered the staring body in the taxicab, as he opened the door upon it and saw the slow stain of blood that gathered on the novelist’s shirt bosom. That spectacle of horror had done something to his brain. All that had gone forward before, all that had happened afterward, had become to him like a troubled dream, no single detail of which stood clearly forth.

  With the passing of many hours the nightmare had passed. He was again clear-eyed—profane— quick-witted—his own man again. And—by God! —he had remembered!

  It was the staring eyes of the dead Garment that had turned the trick. He had told Cicotte, believing it to be the truth, that Garment was living when he—Spessifer—had climbed down from his cab before the Kimbark dwelling. But was he? The eyes, to be sure, had looked back at him, precisely as he had testified; but there had been no movement, no flicker of the lashes, no gleam of living cognizance behind that level glance. Why, the man was dead, of course; just as the detective had suspected! And he, Spessifer—blundering ape!—had denied it. He saw it all quite clearly now.

  Not literally in these terms did William Spessifer think his prodigious thoughts, but haltingly, ungrammatically, to this effect.

  His mind went back to the scene before the Van Peter apartment. It was clearer now than it had been at any time since the moment of its occurrence. Two men in evening clothes—no, one man at first—the man called Anger, waiting at the curb, looking up and down the street for a taxicab. Then the second man—Van Peter—and the drunken fare, issuing from the doorway: Anger running to meet them: himself—Spessifer—getting down from his seat to open the taxi door.

  And the legs of the drunken man had moved! There was still no doubt about it. Supported only by Van Peter, Stephen Garment had walked to the taxicab at the curb. Anger and Van Peter had bundled him in. He—Spessifer—had not touched the man. Had it been possible, he wondered, for the last of the two men who had withdrawn his head from the cab to stab the drunkard to the heart, then quickly slam the door? Not a chance! thought William Spessifer. And why? Because the light was burning all the time. It ceased to burn only with the slamming of the door. Good old light!

  Not until the cab door was closed had he—Spessifer—climbed back into his own seat at the front.

  It was at this point that William Spessifer remembered something that had vanished utterly from his mind. A small point—but it was to be remembered that he had, then, no suspicion of the two upon the pavement.

  One of them—he was sure it was Van Peter— had walked around behind the cab, to talk for a moment through the window on the other side. Through the window that looked upon the street! The left-hand window—which was down to catch the breezes from the lake! He had leaned upon the frame for a minute, with his arms inside!

  A cold perspiration stood out on William Spessifer’s forehead; then he was on fire within. He swore a mighty oath and sent for Cicotte.

  The comment of Detective-Sergeant Cicotte was a thoughtful “H-m-m!” He looked at William Spessifer with a certain suspicion. Then he asked a question: “You’re sure you’re not inventing this, William?”

  Nevertheless the detective’s pulses had jumped within him.

  The driver’s sudden gesture, in response, would have convinced a jury.

  “Well, well,” said Cicotte placatingly, “people do remember things that never happened—particularly when they’re in a jam.”

  After all, it was precisely the sort of incident that would have happened, he reasoned to himself. A trifling incident that could easily be forgotten. Yet how significant a trifle when remembered! Just what, though, he wondered, might the man called Holmes have had to do with Van Peter, if Van Peter were the murderer?

  He was still vastly troubled by the mystery of the insolent impostor, and rather hoped that he would turn out to be, at least, the murderer’s accomplice. Mr. John Holmes, thought Cicotte, would look extremely well sitting in the electric chair.

  “That’s all you’ve remembered that you haven’t told?” he questioned sharply.

  “So help me God!” swore William Spessifer.

  “Well,” said the detective, “keep it under your hat, William. I mean, if any of these damned reporters get to questioning you again, tell ’em nothing about it. It may be important.”

  He did not tell the driver how important he really believed the forgotten incident to be. In point of fact, for
Cicotte—groping in blackness, while his superiors and the press bothered him for a solution—it was almost the end of the case. And the more he thought about it the better he liked it. It pleased him enormously to recall how close he had been to the truth of matters on the very night of the murder. And now there would be a motive that would hold water—if he could only find the motive.

  He gave over his suspicions of Kimbark without a pang. They had been strong, but they had come to nothing. Van Peter was as good as Kimbark, and no doubt the motive he had ascribed to the one would do excellently for the other.

  Was the secretary in on it? Or was it Van Peter’s private feud? The woman, unquestionably, would turn out to be the cause—Van Peter’s woman. A bitch, no doubt. It was easy enough, of course, to understand how it had been done. Anger’s back would be turned for the instant, whether or not he knew it was going to happen. Van Peter’s hand, dangling in the cab, through the open window, would hold the knife. His left hand, since presumably he was facing the novelist as he talked. Was he by any chance left-handed? Or was it merely that the left-hand window was open and the other closed? The driver would be monkeying with his gears, getting ready for a start.

  And Garment, drunk as a precinct captain, would never know what struck him.

  It occurred to Cicotte that William Spessifer would shortly be out of jail. “I never thought the poor sap did it, anyway,” mused Detective-Sergeant Cicotte, with sympathy, as he walked away.

  Anger had not returned to Chicago, which was unfortunate, since it must be through Anger, in large part, that Van Peter must be convicted. Apparently Van Peter and the English secretary were as thick as thieves. Why should Anger have remained behind at Van Peter’s, the night of Garment’s murder? Why did he not accompany his employer in the cab? His excuse, that night, had been very lame indeed. A better one now had been found for him by Spessifer. Small wonder he didn’t care to make the trip to Kimbark’s, jolting along beside a dead man!