by Rex Stout
“It was not.” Again the lawyer’s eyes flashed, and again he visibly restrained himself. “All the entries in those books for the past twenty years, with very few exceptions, were made by me. This one also.”
“I see. Now, Mr. Mawson, I’d like you to tell me one thing. When was that entry made?”
This time the restraint failed. Mawson rose swiftly to his feet, pushing back his chair so violently that it teetered and nearly upset. His face was pale and his eyes flashed fire, but there was nothing exactly threatening in his attitude to account for the suddenness with which the detective also got to his feet and advanced to the desk, just across from Mawson. The eyes of the two men met, and it was like the crossing of steel blades. They stood, silently . . .
At that instant the telephone bell rang.
CHAPTER VI
Conclusion
Mawson and Rankin both started a little at the jingling of the bell, but it was Harry, who stepped to the instrument and picked up the receiver.
“Hello. Yes. This is Harry Adams speaking.”
During the time that Harry talked into the telephone the two men remained silently facing each other from opposite sides of the desk. Harry’s part of the conversation consisted mainly of monosyllables and ejaculations. Finally, he asked the other end of the wire to “wait a minute,” and placing his hand over the transmitter turned to Rankin with a worried countenance and an air of excitement:
“It’s Gil Warner. They’ve got him—this morning, on Broadway. He wants me to go bail for him.”
“Nothing doing,” the detective replied, with instant decision. “No use. Nothing can save him now. Drop it. You’re done. Tell him so.”
The young man hesitated a moment, then turned again to the instrument and followed the other’s advice. This evidently provoked an explosion at the other end, but Harry remained firm, and at length banged the receiver on the hook with a gesture of finality. The look on his face as he turned away showed plainly how little he had relished it. He was ·still young. He started to return to his chair near the window, but Rankin’s voice interposed:
“Good riddance. You’ve done all you could for him. Now, if you’ll leave Mr. Mawson and me alone a few minutes—”
“Certainly, sir.”
“And say nothing to anyone of what has passed in here—”
“Certainly, sir.”
The eyes of the two men met, and it was like the crossing
of steel blades.
No one spoke as the young man passed out of the room and closed the door behind him, and for a long moment after he had gone the two men stood regarding each other silently. At length the detective turned, pulled a chair up to the side of the desk and calmly seated himself. When he spoke his tone was easy and amiable.
“To go back to where we were interrupted, Mr. Mawson, would you mind telling me when that entry was made?”
The lawyer, too, had reseated himself, and seemed to have entirely recovered his composure. He sat for a moment as if calmly meditating his answer, then moved his eyes to meet the other’s gaze with a look that would have been a challenge if it had been less quiet and unconcerned.
“You remember, Mr. Rankin, that I showed you that entry yesterday morning?”
The detective nodded.
“Well, I had just finished blotting it. The entry was made not five minutes before you entered the room.”
Again Rankin nodded, and for an instant his eye gleamed. He was silent a moment before he replied.
“You seem pretty sure of yourself, Mawson?”
“Sure of myself? I’m afraid that remark is too cryptic for me. You asked when that entry was made. I told you.”
“Perhaps you will also be good enough to tell me,” replied the other, abruptly, “just when that poisoned needle entered Colonel Phillips’s stomach.”
There was a quick movement of Fraser Mawson’s hand and a sudden flash of his eye—then suddenly he was calm again. He replied quietly:
“But I thought that was what you were trying to discover.”
“It is.”
“Discover it, then.”
“I intend to. I ask you.”
“And I regret my ignorance.”
These words passed back and forth with the speed and crack of rifle shots, and left the two men leaning forward in their chairs a little toward each other, their eyes meeting like those of two boxers in a prize ring. Those of Mawson were confident, with a little excitement behind the confidence. The detective’s gaze was steady and determined. There was a short silence.
“You’re pretty sure of yourself, Mr. Mawson,” repeated Rankin, at length, slowly. “When I do discover it I am certain you will be much interested.”
“I will,” agreed the lawyer. He suddenly pushed his chair back a little and threw one leg over the other in an easy position. “I suppose I know what you mean when you say I’m sure of myself,” he continued, amiably. “The legal mind is accustomed to piercing obscurity. But for once I feel that I would enjoy plain words. It rather amuses me to hear myself say that I am accused of being a murderer. I take it that’s your meaning?”
Rankin frowned a little. “I haven’t said so.”
“But it is?”
The frown deepened, and there was a pause. “It is,” said the detective, abruptly.
The lawyer’s mouth twisted into a grimace. “That’s pretty good,” he said slowly. “And frank. I must say, Mr. Rankin, you shift your attack in a manner that leaves me breathless. First, it was Fred—because he wanted to get married. Then Harry, because he made a foolish speculation. And now me. I suppose poor old Wortley will be next—but, of course, he wasn’t there.”
“What makes you think I suspected Harry?” asked the detective, quickly.
“Why—” The lawyer’s eyes shifted, and he hesitated. “You had evidently been questioning him—”
“And I followed him last night?”
“I don’t know. Did you?”
“I did.” Rankin stopped, opened his mouth to continue, then closed it again. “And you know I did,” he went on at length. “You see, Mr. Mawson, I do intend to be frank. For a moment yesterday I did suspect Fred, but I was groping in the dark, then, and grasping at straws. Last night, when I saw Harry leave the house in a furtive and suspicious manner, I followed him to Brockville. There he unwittingly led me onto another false trail—this man Gil Warner. Warner is a crook, but evidently he isn’t a murderer. And Harry is neither. I say I intend to be frank. Can you explain these two facts: First, why did you follow me to Brockville last night, and second, why did Colonel Phillips sink half a million in United Traffic, after warning his nephew to keep out of it?”
The lawyer’s eyes were on a paper weight on his desk as he turned it over and back again with long, white fingers that seemed somehow, without actually trembling, to lack a little in steadiness. At length he looked up.
“What makes you think I followed you to Brockville last night?”
“I don’t think you did. I know it.”
“Well, you’re mistaken. I followed Harry. The fact that you were between us was not of my choosing. The boy is my client, my ward in a way now—and I knew he was mixed up with this Warner.”
“And your excursion into the woods?”
The lawyer frowned. “You know, I don’t relish this questioning, Mr. Rankin. I submit to it as a matter of courtesy, though you stretch the bounds yourself. Naturally I didn’t want the boy to know I was trailing him about the country at night.”
“So you ran and hid in the woods.”
“I—yes, I ran and hid in the woods.”
Was Rankin’s shifting movement one of surprise at this admission? His face remained expressionless. Through the open window came a faint rustling sound, rapid and rhythmical—it was Harry returned to his task of polishing his dead uncle’s g
olf clubs.
“And the deal in United Traffic?” asked the detective.
Mawson frowned a little. “It seems to me,” he observed slowly, “that you forget you are asking a lawyer for confidential information of his client.”
“I am,” the other agreed. “You may withhold it if you choose.”
“And not only that, but you are asking for information I do not happen to possess. My client instructed me to invest a certain amount in a certain stock, and I obeyed.”
“Have you the order—or a check or draft to cover it?”
At that the lawyer rose to his feet with a violent push of his chair. “Mr. Rankin, you are going too far,” he exclaimed angrily. “I have borne your insinuations—”
“You may refuse to answer whenever you choose,” was the tranquil reply.
“There is only one answer to an insult!”
“Then you do refuse?”
Their eyes met, and all at once Fraser Mawson was calm again. He resumed his seat. There was a new air about him as he did so—an air of resolve that seemed to have in it something of bravado; and it was reflected in his voice as he spoke:
“No. To both questions. You do not understand the nature of the relations between Colonel Phillips and myself. It has been ten years and more since he gave me any kind of an order in writing; that statement may be verified in a hundred ways. I had his power of attorney, and I myself drew all checks against his account in the National Park Bank—his personal account, of course, was separate. I handled all his business, speculations, investments, everything—directly, subject of course to his advice and instructions, which were always verbal. The United Traffic deal was handled the same as many others; he simply instructed me to take on a certain amount of that stock, and I did so; and when he finally told me to unload—I obeyed. That was last Wednesday. The loss was the figure I showed you yesterday in this book.”
The lawyer laid his hand on a loose-leaf volume, bound in leather and canvas, on the desk.
There was a moment’s silence.
“I see,” observed Rankin at length, slowly. “Carson trusted you implicitly, then.”
“He did.”
“And he has paid for it.”
There was no resentment, almost no feeling, in the smile with which the lawyer met this remark. And there was even a touch of indifferent condescension in his tone when he spoke after a moment:
“If you choose to think he has paid for it, Mr. Rankin, I shan’t argue about it. I am even willing to help you get the case a little clearer.”
He stopped, cleared his throat, and went on:
“What you are trying to do is to discover the murderer of Carson Phillips and bring him to justice. Very well. It is a difficult task. I know you have been successful in a few minor cases which interested you, but to speak frankly, Mr. Rankin, I’m afraid you’re in a little beyond your depth here. To get to the bottom of this will require something more than a curious dilettantism.
“Why do I say that? Look at the facts. Neither Fred nor Harry, according to your own statement, is to be considered. I will say in parenthesis that I agree with you. Leaving myself also out of it for the moment, you then have eliminated everyone who was present at the scene—and you are lost. The mystery is buried in a darkness which I think you would find impenetrable. Quite naturally you turn from that darkness to what you consider a ray of light. You suspect me.”
The lawyer paused to recover a sheet of paper that was being blown across the desk by the breeze from the open window, through which still came the sound of emory paper on steel as Harry Adams rubbed away at the golf clubs.
“Well?” said Rankin dryly.
“You suspect me,” the lawyer repeated. “But it seems to me your ray of light is obviously deceptive. Granting as a postulate that your suspicion is just, that I am in fact guilty, what then? As a motive you accuse me of embezzling half a million dollars. But granting that I did so, you can’t possibly prove it. What I have just said of the manner in which the Colonel and I transacted business has shown you that. There would be one hope left—if you could connect me with the actual deed. But you don’t even know how it was committed; all you know is that a poisoned needle was found in the Colonel’s abdomen; you have no idea how it got there, and no likelihood of finding out.”
The lawyer stopped abruptly, deliberately seeking the other’s eye. “And so,” he finished calmly, “admitting—which of course I do not admit—that I am the criminal, how the devil are you going to prove it?”
The detective returned his gaze without replying.
“By Jove, Mawson,” he said at length, “you’ve more nerve than I gave you credit for.” Suddenly his lips came together. “It won’t save you,” he added grimly and rose to his feet.
“Nerve? Merely logic.”
“Nor will logic save you.”
“I am not aware of being in danger.”
“We shall see.”
With that Rankin turned abruptly and left the room.
The question remained as before: “How the devil did he do it?”
Rankin pounded his brain with it for two hours.
Returning to the house, he encountered Harry Adams in the hall with a bag of golf clubs under his arm. The detective wanted to know where Fred was, and was answered by a voice from above on the stairway.
“Here, sir. Did you want me?”
“Yes. You two come with me to the library a moment.”
When they were inside, with the door closed, Rankin asked them to recount once more the incidents of the foursome on Saturday afternoon. Again they went over each detail, and back and over again, from the time they had driven off at the first tee until the Colonel’s second at the fifth, when all had ended in abrupt tragedy. Rankin bade them cudgel their brains for the minutest recollected fact, the slightest suspicious circumstance; every shot, every movement almost, of each member of the foursome was repeated, and considered—and it all came to nothing. They could recall no unusual action on the part of Fraser Mawson at any time; at the fifth hole he had taken four to get out of a bunker, just before the catastrophe, so all they could remember of him at that particular moment was a marked indulgence in profanity. He had not been near Colonel Phillips, then, just before the attack? As they remembered it, no.
Rankin at length falling into silence, the two young men began discussing the poisoned needle and the curious fact that it had entered the Colonel’s abdomen pointing upward; Harry appeared to hold some absurd theory in the matter and Fred undertook to explode it.
That done, they too became silent. Fred strolled across to a window. It was swinging open, and from the garden the hot summer breeze brought a mingling of heavy odors sifted through the sunshine. From somewhere in the rear of the grounds came the sound of a whirring engine, and a moment later an automobile rolled down the driveway—one of the men going to Brockville to meet the officer from Governor’s Island. Fred turned away from the window, moved across to the mantel and idly began to inspect an old portrait of some former Phillips that hung there; then his eye fell on the Colonel’s bag of golf clubs which Harry had set in a corner as he entered the room. Fred crossed to it and passed his hand back and forth over the shining irons. Mechanically he pulled out one of them and waggled it back and forth in front of him; and then, with a glance overhead and to either side to make sure of room, he swung the club far back of his head, raising on his toe, and brought it around with a mighty swing.
As he did so two things happened.
Canby Rankin leaped swiftly to his feet with an ejaculation of astonishment and triumph.
The door of the room opened and Fraser Mawson appeared on the threshold.
Rankin, who had started forward, his eyes flashing with excitement, stopped abruptly. Harry and Fred regarded him in inquiring wonder. Mawson glanced at each of them, then came quietly forward.
“He won’t need the loan, Mr. Mawson.” It was Rankin who spoke, in a voice that seemed to tremble a little. He had turned to face the newcomer with gleaming eyes.
“You’re just in time,” he went on more evenly. “To witness the lucky achievement of a curious dilettantism. Fraser Mawson, you are under arrest, charged with the murder of Carson Phillips.”
There was a gasp of amazement from Fred Adams, and Harry got excitedly to his feet. For one swift instant the color left Mawson’s face—then he smiled and bowed.
“Ah! You try to force your way through the darkness then. What can I do but humor you?”
“Quite commendable,” replied the detective grimly. “I’ll begin forcing my way by searching you. You may have another of those little needles in a handy pocket. Better still, I’ll fix you so you can’t use it.”
He stepped forward swiftly, seized Mawson’s arms from behind, and pinioned him.
“Mr. Rankin!”
“Fred! Harry! Help me here.”
And despite the lawyer’s protests his arms were tied firmly behind him and he was led to a chair.
The detective, crossing swiftly to the bag of golf clubs in the corner, paid no heed to him. One by one he lifted out the clubs and examined the butt of the shaft. Next to last was the driver. He glanced at it, held it closer, then straightened up and turned with an expression of triumph.
But the look on Fraser Mawson’s face made it unnecessary to say anything. During the few seconds that Rankin had been inspecting the clubs the lawyer’s countenance had gone from purple to white; the blazing light had gone from his eyes and left a dead despair; his whole form trembled, and though his lips moved no words came. As Rankin turned to face him he got halfway to his feet, then sank back again into the chair, ashen grey, limp, inert.
Two hours later he was lodged in the Brockville jail, and the New York dailies were preparing extra editions with sensational headlines six inches high across the front page.
