“Thank you, inspector,” said Trant as he rose from the chair. “It works very well; you see, my palms couldn’t help sweating when you snapped the gun at me before I appreciated that it wasn’t loaded. Now, we’ll test Caylis as we did Kanlan.”
The inspector went to the door, took Caylis from Sweeny, and led him to the chair.
“Sit down,” he said. “Mr. Trant wants to talk to you.”
The childlike, brown eyes, covertly alert and watchful, followed Trant, and Caylis nervously grasped the two inviting knobs on the arms of his chair. Walker and Crowley, standing where they could watch both Trant and the galvanometer dial, saw that the needle stood where it had stood for Trant before Walker put the revolver to his head.
Trant quietly took from his pocket the newspaper containing the false account of Johanson’s escape, and, looking about as though for a place to put it—as he had done in his trial of Kanlan—laid it, with the Johanson paragraph uppermost, in Caylis’s lap. Walker smothered an exclamation; Crowley looked up startled. The needle—which had remained so still when the paper was laid upon Kanlan’s knee—had jumped across the scale.
Caylis gave no sign; his hands still grasped the brass knobs nervously; his face was quiet and calm. Trant took from his pocket the little phial refilled with banana oil and emptied its contents on the floor as he had done that morning. Again Walker and Crowley, with startled eyes, watched the needle move. Trant took his watch from his pocket, and, as in the morning, before Caylis’s face he set it an hour ahead.
“What are all these tricks?” said Caylis, contemptuously.
But Walker and Crowley, with flushed faces bent above the moving needle, paid no heed. Trant posted himself between Caylis and the door.
“You see now,” Trant cried, triumphantly, to the police officers, “the difference between showing the false account of the escape of Johanson to an innocent man, and showing it to the man whom it sent out to do murder. You see the difference between loosing the stench of banana oil before a man who associates nothing with it, and before the criminal who waited in the vestibule of the electro-plater’s shop and can never in his life smell banana oil again without its bringing upon him the fear of the murderer. You see the difference, too, Captain Crowley, between setting a watch forward in front of a man to whom it can suggest nothing criminal, and setting it an hour ahead in front of the man who, after he had murdered Bronson—not at two, but a little after one—stooped to the body and set the watch at least an hour fast, then rushed in to talk coolly with you, in order to establish an incontestable alibi for the time he had so fixed for the murder!”
Police Captain Crowley, livid with the first flash of fear that the murderer had made of him a tool, swung threateningly toward Caylis. For a moment, as though stiffened by the strain of following the accusation, Caylis had sat apparently paralyzed. Now in the sudden change from his absolute security to complete despair, he faced Crowley, white as paper; then, as his heart began to pound again, his skin turned to purple. His handsome, vain face changed to the face of a demon; his childlike eyes flared; he sprang toward Trant. But when he had drawn the two police officers together to stop his rush, he turned and leaped for a window. Before he could dash it open, Walker’s powerful hand clutched him back.
“This, I think,” Trant gasped, and controlled himself, as he surveyed the now weak and nerveless prisoner, “should convince even Captain Crowley. But it was not needed, Caylis. From the time Mrs. Mitchell showed you the report of Johanson’s escape in the News and you thought you could kill Bronson safely, and you got her to send him out to you, until you had struck him down, set his watch forward and rushed to Crowley for your alibi, my case was complete.”
“She—she”—Caylis’s hands clenched—“peached on me—but you—got her?” he shouted vengefully.
Walker and Crowley turned to Trant in amazement.
“Mrs. Mitchell?” they demanded.
“Yes—your wife, Caylis?” Trant pressed.
“Yes, my wife, and mine,” the man hissed defiantly, “eight years ago back in St. Louis till, till this cursed Bronson broke up the gang and sent me over the road for three years, and she got to thinking he must be stuck on her and might marry her, because he helped her, until—until she found out!”
“Ah; I thought she had been your wife when I saw you, after the boy; but, of course—” Trant checked himself as he heard a knock on the door.
“Miss Allison is in her carriage outside sir,” the officer who had knocked saluted Inspector Walker. “She has come to see you, sir. She says you sent no word.” Walker looked from the cringing Caylis to Trant.
“We do not need Caylis any longer, inspector,” said Trant. “I can tell Miss Allison all the facts now, if you wish to have her hear them.”
The door, which shut behind Crowley and his prisoner, reopened almost immediately to admit the inspector, and Miss Allison. With her fair, sweet face flushed with the hope which had taken the place of the white fear and defiance of the morning, Trant barely knew her.
“The inspector tells me, Mr. Trant,” she stretched out both her hands to him, “that you have good news for me—that Kanlan was not guilty—and so Randolph was not going out as—as they said he was when they killed him.”
“No; he was not!” Trant returned, triumphantly. “He was going instead on an errand of mercy, Miss Allison, to summon a doctor for a little child whom he had been told was suddenly and dangerously ill. The telephone in the house had been broken, so at the sudden summons he dashed out, without remembering his danger. I am glad to be able to tell you of that fine, brave thing when I must tell you, also, the terrible truth that the woman whom he had helped and protected was the one who, in a fit of jealousy, when she found he had merely meant to be kind to her, sent him out to his death.”
“Mrs. Mitchell?” the girl cried in horror. “Oh, not Mrs. Mitchell!”
“Yes, Mrs. Mitchell, for whom he had done so much and whose past he protected, in the noblest way, even from you. But as she was the wife of the criminal we have just caught, I am glad to believe this man played upon her old passions, so that for a while he held his old sway over her and she did his bidding without counting the consequences.
“I told you this morning, Inspector Walker, that I could not explain to you my conclusions in the test of Kanlan. But I owe you now a full explanation. You will recall that I commented upon the fact that the crime which was puzzling you was committed within so short a time after the knowledge of Mr. Bronson’s engagement became known, that I divined a possible connection. But that, at best, was only indirect. The first direct thing which struck me was the circumstance that the man waited in the vestibule of the electro-plater’s shop. I was certain that the very pungent fruit-ether odor of banana oil—the thinning material used by electro-platers in preparing their lacquers—must be forever intimately connected with the crime in the mind of the man who waited in that vestibule. To no one else could that odor connect itself with crime. So I knew that if I could test all sixteen men it would be child’s play to pick the murderer. But such a test was cumbersome. And the next circumstance you gave me made it unnecessary. I mean the fact of the ‘fast watch ‘which, Miss Allison was able to tell me, could not have been fast at all. I saw that the watch must therefore have been set forward at least ten minutes, probably much longer. Who, between half past ten and two, could have done this, and for what reason? The one convincing possibility was that the assassin had set it forward, trusting it would not be found till morning, and his only object could have been to establish for himself an alibi—for two o’clock.
“I surprised you, therefore, by assuring you, even before I saw Kanlan, that he was innocent, because Kanlan had no alibi whatever. I proved his innocence to my own satisfaction by exhibiting before him without exciting any emotional reaction at all, the report in the News which, I felt fairly sure, must have had something to do with the c
rime; by loosing the smell of banana oil, and setting forward a watch in his presence. The objects which Crowley used had been so thoroughly connected with the crime in Kanlan’s mind that—though he is innocent—they caused reactions to which I paid no attention, except the one reaction which, at Crowley’s threat, told me of Kanlan’s negro blood. As for the rest, they merely scared Kanlan as your pistol scared me, and as they would have scared any innocent man under the same conditions. My own tests could cause reactions only in the guilty man.
“That man, I think you understand now,” Trant continued rapidly, “I was practically sure of when Crowley told me of Caylis’s alibi. You have just seen the effect upon him of the same tests I tried on Kanlan, and the conclusive evidence the galvanometer gave. The fact that Caylis himself never read the News only contributed to my certainty that another person was concerned, a person who could have either decoyed or sent Mr. Bronson out. So I went to the place, found the doctor’s sign just beyond, discovered that that doctor treated, not Bronson, but the little Mitchell boy, that the telephone had been broken inside the house that evening to furnish an excuse for sending Bronson out, and that Mrs. Mitchell reads the News.”
“The Mitchell woman sent him out, of course,” Walker checked him almost irritably. “Six blocks away—Crowley ought to have her by now.”
Miss Allison gathered herself together and arose. She clutched the inspector’s sleeve. “Inspector Walker, must you—” she faltered.
“None of us is called upon to say how she shall be punished, Miss Allison,” Trant said, compassionately. “We must trust all to the twelve men who shall try these two.” But to her eyes, searching his, Trant seemed to be awaiting something. Suddenly the telephone rang. Walker took up the receiver. “It’s Crowley,” he cried. “He says Mrs. Mitchell skipped—cleared. You could have taken her,” he accused Trant, “but you let her go!”
Trant stood watching the face of Miss Allison, unmoved. The desk sergeant burst in upon them.
“Mrs. Mitchell’s outside, inspector! She said she’s come to give herself up!”
“You counted upon that, I suppose,” Walker turned again upon Trant. “But don’t do it again,” he warned, “for the sake of what’s before you!”
III
THE RED DRESS
“Another morning; and nothing! Three days gone and no word, no sign from her; or any mark of weakening!”
The powerful man at the window clenched his hands. Then he swung about to face his confidential secretary and stared at her uncertainly. It was the tenth time that morning, and the fiftieth time in the three days just gone, that Walter Eldredge, the young president of the great Chicago drygoods house of Eldredge and Company, had paused, incapable of continuing business.
“Never mind that letter, Miss Webster,” he commanded. “But tell me again—are you sure that no one has come to see me, and there has been no message, about my wife—I mean about Edward—about Edward?”
“No; no one, I am sure, Mr. Eldredge!”
“Send Mr. Murray to me!” he said. “Raymond, something more effective must be done!” he cried, as his brother-in-law appeared in the doorway. “It is impossible for matters to remain longer in this condition!” His face grew gray. “I am going to put it into the hands of the police!”
“The police!” cried Murray. “After the way the papers treated you and Isabel when you married? You and Isabel in the papers again, and the police making it a public scandal! Surely there’s still some private way! Why not this fellow Trant. You must have followed in the papers the way he got immediate action in the Bronson murder mystery, after the police force was at fault for two weeks. He’s our man for this sort of thing, Walter! Where can we get his address?”
“Try the University Club,” said Eldredge.
Murray lifted the desk phone. “He’s a member; he’s there. What shall I tell him, “Eldredge himself took up the conversation.
“Yes! Mr. Trant? Mr. Trant, this is Walter Eldredge, of Eldredge and Company. Yes; there is a private matter—something has happened in my family; I cannot tell you over the phone. If you could come to me here.… Yes! It is criminal.” His voice broke. “For God’s sake come and help me!”
Ten minutes later a boy showed Trant into the young president’s private room. If the psychologist had never seen Walter Eldredge’s portrait in the papers he could have seen at a glance that he was a man trained to concentrate his attention on large matters; and he as quickly recognized that the pale, high-bred, but weak features of Eldredge’s companion belonged to a dependent, subordinate to the other. Eldredge had sprung nervously to his feet and Trant was conscious that he was estimating him with the acuteness of one accustomed to judge another quickly and to act upon his judgment. Yet it was Murray who spoke first.
“Mr. Eldredge wished to apply to the police this morning, Mr. Trant,” he explained, patronizingly, “in a matter of the most delicate nature; but I—I am Raymond Murray, Mr. Eldredge’s brother-in-law—persuaded him to send for you. I did this, trusting quite as much to your delicacy in guarding Mr. Eldredge from public scandal as to your ability to help us directly. We understand that you are not a regular private detective.”
“I am a psychologist, Mr. Eldredge,” Trant replied to the older man, stifling his irritation at Murray’s manner. “I have merely made some practical applications of simple psychological experiments, which should have been put into police procedure years ago. Whether I am able to assist you or not, you may be sure that I will keep your confidence.”
“Then this is the case, Trant.” Murray came to the point quickly. “My nephew, Edward Eldredge, Walter’s older son, was kidnapped three days ago.”
“What?” Trant turned from one to the other in evident astonishment.
“Since the Whitman case in Ohio,” continued Murray, “and the Bradley kidnapping in St. Louis last week—where they got the description of the woman but have caught no one yet—the papers predicted an epidemic of child stealing. And it has begun in Chicago with the stealing of Walter’s son!”
“That didn’t surprise me—that the boy may be missing,” Trant rejoined. “But it surprised me, Mr. Eldredge, that no one has heard of it! Why did you not at once give it the greatest publicity? Why have you not called in the police? What made you wait three days before calling in even me?”
“Because the family,” Murray replied, “have known from the first that it was Mrs. Eldredge who had the child abducted.”
“Mrs. Eldredge?” Trant cried incredulously. “Your wife, sir?” he appealed to the older man.
“Yes, Mr. Trant,” Eldredge answered, miserably.
“Then why have you sent for me at all?”
“Because in three days we have gained nothing from her,” the brother-in-law replied before Eldredge could answer. “And, from the accounts of your ability, we thought you could, in some way, learn from her where the child is concealed.”
The young president of Eldredge and Company was twisting under the torture of these preliminaries. But Trant turned curiously to Murray. “Mrs. Eldredge is not your sister?”
“No; not the present Mrs. Eldredge. My sister, Walter’s first wife, died six years ago, when Edward was born. She gave her life for the boy whom the second Mrs. Eldredge—” he remembered himself as Eldredge moved quickly.
“Isabel, my second wife, Mr. Trant,” Eldredge burst out in the bitterness of having to explain to a stranger his most intimate emotion, “as I thought all the world knew, was my private secretary—my stenographer—in this office. We were married a little over two years ago. If you remember the way the papers treated her then, you will understand what it would mean if this matter became public! The boy—” he hesitated. “I suppose I must make the circumstances plain to you. Seven years ago I married Edith Murray, Raymond’s sister. A year later she died. About the same time my father died, and I had to take up the business. Mrs. M
urray, who was in the house at the time of Edith’s death, was good enough to stay and take charge of my child and my household.”
“And Mr. Murray? He stayed too?”
“Raymond was in college. Afterwards he came to my house, naturally. Two years ago I married my second wife. At Mrs. Eldredge’s wish, as much as my own, the Murrays remained with us. My wife appreciated even better than I that her training had scarcely fitted her to take up at once her social duties: the newspapers had prejudiced society against her, so Mrs. Murray remained to introduce her socially.”
“I see—for over two years. But meanwhile Mrs. Eldredge had taken charge of the child?”
“My wife was—not at ease with the boy.” Eldredge winced at the direct question. “Edward liked her, but—I found her a hundred times crying over her incompetence with children, and she was contented to let Mrs. Murray continue to look after him. But after her own son was born—”
“Ah!” said Trant, expectantly.
“I shall conceal nothing. After her own son was born, I am obliged to admit that Mrs. Eldredge’s attitude changed. She became insistent to have charge of Edward, and his grandmother, Mrs. Murray, still hesitated to trust Isabel. But finally I agreed to give my wife charge of everything and complete control over Edward. If all went well, Mrs. Murray was to reopen her old home and leave us, when—it was Tuesday afternoon, three days ago, Mr. Trant—my wife took Edward, with her maid, out in the motor. It was the boy’s sixth birthday. It was almost the first time in his life he had left the house to go any distance without his grandmother. My wife did not bring him back.
“Why she never brought him back—what happened to the boy, Mr. Trant,” Eldredge stooped to a private drawer for papers, “I wish you to determine for yourself from the evidence here. As soon as I saw how personal a matter it was, I had my secretary, Miss Webster, take down the evidence of the four people who saw the child taken away: my chauffeur, Mrs. Eldredge’s maid, Miss Hendricks and Mrs. Eldredge. The chauffeur, Morris, has been in my employ for five years. I am confident that he is truthful. Moreover, he distinctly prefers Mrs. Eldredge over everyone else. The maid, Lucy Carew, has been also singularly devoted to my wife. She, too, is truthful.
The Mystery & Suspense Novella Page 23
