The old man stopped suddenly, and his eyes shifted from Trant to the clock. “That’s all,” he concluded abruptly. “Not much psychology in that, is there? My car is waiting down stairs.”
He pulled the fur cap down upon his ears, and Trant had time only to throw on his coat and catch his client in the hall, as Sheppard walked toward the elevators. The chauffeur, at sight of them, opened the limousine body of the car, and Sheppard got in with Trant, leaving the man this time to guide the car through the streets.
“There’s where the Palace stood; Neal owns the lot still, and has made two re-buildings on it,” he motioned toward a towering office structure as the car slowed at the Clark Street crossing. Then, as they stopped a moment later at the Polk Street Station, he laid a muscular hand upon the door, drove it open and sprang out, leaving Trant inside. The clock in the tower showed just half past eight, and he hurried into the train shed. Ten minutes later he reappeared, leading a plump, almost roly-poly man, with a round face, fiery red from exposure to the weather, who was buttoned from chin to shoe tops in an ulster and wore a fur cap like his own. Behind them with noiseless, woodland tread glided a full-blooded Indian, in corduroy trousers and coat blotched with many forest stains, carrying carefully a long leather gun-case and cartridge belt.
“This is Chapin, Trant,” Sheppard introduced them, having evidently spoken briefly of the psychologist to Chapin in the station; “and McLain,” he motioned toward the Indian.
He stepped after them into the limousine, and as the car jerked and halted through the crowded city streets back toward his home, he lifted his eyes to the round-faced man opposite him.
“Where was it, Chapin?” he asked abruptly.
“In Bowton’s mining shack, Steve.”
“What! what!”
“You say the body was found in a miner’s cabin, Mr. Chapin,” the psychologist broke in, in crisp tones. “Do you mean the miners live in the cabin and carried him in there after he was shot?”
“No, it is an abandoned mine, Mr. Trant. He was in the deserted cabin when shot down—shot like a dog, Steve!”
“For God’s sake, let’s drop this till we get to the house!” Sheppard burst out suddenly, and Trant fell back, still keenly observant and attentive, while the big car swept swiftly through the less crowded streets. Only twice Sheppard leaned forward, with forced calmness and laconic comment, to point out some sight to the Indian; and once he nodded absently when, passing a meat shop with deer hung beside its doors, the Indian—finding this the first object on which he dared to comment—remarked that the skins were being badly torn. Then the motor stopped before twin, stately, gray-stone houses facing the lake, where a single broad flight of steps led to two entrance doors which bore ornate door plates, one the name of Stephen, the other Neal, Sheppard.
Sheppard led the way through the hall into a wide, high trophy and smoking-room which occupied a bay of the first floor back of the dining-room, and himself shut the door firmly, after Chapin and Trant and the Indian, still carefully carrying the gun-case, had entered.
“Now tell me,” he commanded Chapin and the Indian equally, “exactly how you found him.”
“Neal had plainly taken refuge in the cabin from the snowstorm, Steve,” Chapin replied almost compassionately. “He was in his stocking feet, and his shooting-coat and cartridge-belt still lay on the straw in one of the bunks where he had been sleeping. The man, it seems clear, entered through the outer door of the mess cabin, which opens into the bunk-room through a door at its other end. Neal heard him, we suppose, and picking up his shoes and gun, went to see who it was; and the man, standing near the outer door, shot him down as he came through the other—four shots, Steve; two missed.”
“Four shots, and in the cabin!” Sheppard turned to the Indian almost in appeal; but at McLain’s nod his square chin set firmly. “You were right in telegraphing me it was murder!”
“Two hit—one here; one here,” the Indian touched his right shoulder and then the center of his forehead.
“How do you know the man who shot him stood by the outer door?” Trant interrupted.
“McLain found the shells ejected from his rifle,” Chapin answered; and the Indian took from his pocket five cartridges—four empty, one still loaded. “Man shooting kill with four shots and throw last from magazine there beside it,” he explained. “Not have need it. I find on floor with empty shells.”
“I see.” Sheppard took the shells and examined them tensely. He went to his drawer and took out a single fresh cartridge and compared it carefully with the empty shells and the unfired cartridge the Indian had found with them, before he handed them, still more tensely, to Trant. “They are all Sheppard-Tyler’s, Trant, which we were just trying out for the first time ourselves. No one else had them, no one else could possibly have them, besides ourselves, but Jim! But the gun-case, Chapin,” he turned toward the burden the Indian had carried. “Why have you brought that?”
“It’s just Neal’s gun that we found in his hand, Steve,” Chapin replied sympathetically, “and his cartridge-belt that was in the bunk.” The Indian unstrapped the case and took out the gun. Then he took from another pocket a single empty shell, this time, and four full ones, three of which he put into the magazine of the rifle, and extended it to Chapin.
“Neal had time to try twice for Ji—for the other fellow, Steve,” Chapin explained, “for he wasn’t killed till the fourth shot. But Neal’s first shell,” he pointed to the pierced primer of the cartridge he had taken from the Indian, “missed fire, you see; and he was hit so hard before he could shoot the other,” he handed over the shell, “that it must have gone wild. Its recoil threw the next cartridge in place all right, as McLain has it now,” he handed over the gun, “but Neal couldn’t ever pull the trigger on it then.”
“I see.” Sheppard’s teeth clenched tight again, as he examined the faulty cartridge his brother had tried to shoot, the empty shell, and the three cartridges left intact in the rifle. He handed them after the others to Trant. And for an instant more his green-gray eyes, growing steadily colder and more merciless, watched the silent young psychologist as he weighed again and again and sorted over, without comment, the shells that had slain Neal Sheppard; and weighed again in his fingers the one the murderer had not needed to use. Then Trant turned suddenly to the cartridge-belt the Indian held, and taking out one shell compared it with the others.
“They are different?” he said inquiringly.
“Only that these are full metal-patched bullets, like the one I showed you from the drawer, while those in Neal’s belt are soft-nosed,” Sheppard answered immediately. “We had both kinds in camp, for we were making the first real trial of the new gun; but we used only the soft-nosed in hunting. They are Sheppard-Tyler’s, Trant—all of them; and that is the one important thing and enough of itself to settle the murderer!”
“But can you understand, Mr. Sheppard, even if the man who shot the four shells found he didn’t need the fifth,”—the young psychologist held up the single, unshot shell which the Indian had found near the door—“why he should throw it there? And more particularly I can’t make out why—” He checked himself and swung from his client to the Indian as the perplexity which had filled his face when he first handled the shells gave way to the quick flush of energetic action.
“Suppose this were the mess-room of the cabin, McLain,” he gestured to the trophy-room, as he shot out his question; “can you show me how it was arranged and what you found there?”
“Yes, yes;” the Indian turned to the end wall and pointed, “there the door to outside; on floor near it, four empty shells, one full one.” He stalked to a corner at the opposite end. “Here door to bunkroom. Here,” he stopped and touched his fingers to the floor, “Neal Sheppard’s shoes where he drop them. Here,” he rose and touched the wall in two spots about the height of a man’s head above the floor, “bullet hole, and bullet ho
le, when he miss.”
“What! what!” cried Trant, “two bullet holes above the shoes?”
“Yes; so.”
“And the body—that lay near the shoes?”
“Oh, no; the body here!” the Indian moved along the end wall almost to the other corner. “One shell beside it that miss fire, one empty shell. Neal Sheppard’s matchbox—that empty, too—on floor. Around body burned matches.”
“Burned matches around the body?” Trant echoed in still greater excitement.
“Yes; and on body.”
“On it?”
“Yes; man, after he shot, go to him and burn matches—I think—to see him dead.”
“Then they must have shot in the dark!” Trant’s excited face flushed red with sudden and complete comprehension. “Of course, dolt that I was! With these shells in my hand, I should have guessed it! That is as plain a reason for this peculiar distribution of the shells as it is for the matches which, as the Indian says, the man must have taken from your brother’s match-box to look at him and make sure he was dead.” He had whirled to face his client. “It was all shot in the dark.”
“Shot in the dark!” Sheppard echoed. He seemed to have caught none of the spirit of his young adviser’s new comprehension; but, merely echoing his words, had turned from him and stared steadily out of the window to the street; and as he stared, thinking of his brother shot down in darkness by an unseen enemy, his eyes, cold and merciless before, began to glow madly with his slow but—once aroused—obstinate and pitiless anger.
“Mr. Trant;” he turned back suddenly, “I do not deny that when I called for you this morning, instead of getting a detective from the city police as Chapin expected, it was not to hang Jim Tyler, as I pretended, but with a determination to give him every chance that was coming to him after I had to go against him. But he gave Neal none—none!—and it’s no matter what Neal did to his father; I’m keeping you here now to help me hang him! And Chapin! when I ordered Tyler’s arrest, I told the police I’d prefer charges against him this morning, but he seems impatient. He’s coming here with Captain Crowley from the station now,” he continued with short, sharp distinctness. “So let him in, Chapin—I don’t care to trust myself at the door—Jim’s come for it, and—I’ll let him have it!”
“You mean you are going to charge him with murder now, before that officer, Mr. Sheppard?” Trant moved quickly before his client, as Chapin obediently went toward the door. “Don’t,” he warned tersely.
“Don’t? Why?”
“The first bullet in your brother’s gun that failed—the other three—the one which the other fellow did not even try to shoot,” Trant enumerated almost breathlessly, as he heard the front door open. “Do they mean nothing to you?”
And putting between his strong even teeth the cartridge with its primer pierced which had failed in Neal Sheppard’s gun, he tore out the bullet with a single wrench and held the shell down. “See! it was empty, Mr. Sheppard! That was the first one in your brother’s gun! That was why it didn’t go off! And this—the last one the other man had, the one he didn’t even try to shoot,” Trant jerked out the bullet from it too with another wrench of his teeth—“was empty as well. See! And the other man knew it; that was why he didn’t even try to shoot it, but ejected it on the floor as it was!”
“How did you guess that? And how did you know that the other cartridge, the one Jim—the other fellow—didn’t even try to fire—wasn’t loaded, too?” Sheppard now checked short in surprise, stupefied and amazed, gazed, with the other white-haired man and the Indian, at the empty shells.
But Trant went on swiftly: “Are Sheppard-Tyler shells so poorly loaded, Mr. Sheppard, that two out of ten of them are bad? And not only two, but this—and this—and this,” at each word he dropped on the table another shell, “the three left in your brother’s rifle. For these others are bad—unloaded, too! So that even if he had been able to pull the trigger on them, they would have failed like the first; and I know that for the same reason that I know about the first ones. Five out of ten shells of Sheppard-Tyler loading ‘accidentally’ with no powder in them. That is too much for you—for anyone—to believe, Mr. Sheppard! And that was why I said to you a moment ago, as I say again, don’t charge that young man out there with murder!”
“You mean,” Sheppard gasped, “that Jim did not kill Neal?”
“I didn’t say that,” Trant returned sharply. “But your brother was not shot down in cold-blooded murder; I’m sure of that! Whether Jim Tyler, or another, shot him, I can not yet say; but I hope soon to prove. For there were only four men in the woods who had Sheppard-Tyler guns; and he must have been shot either by Tyler, or Findlay, or Chapin, or—to open all the possibilities—by yourself, Mr. Sheppard!” the psychologist continued boldly.
“Who? Me?” roared Chapin in fiery indignation. “What—what’s that you’re saying?” The old sportsman stood staring at his young adviser, half in outrage, half in astonishment.
Then, staring at the startling display of the empty shells—whose meaning was as yet as incomprehensible to him as the means by which the psychologist had so suddenly detected them—and dazed by Trant’s sudden and equally incomprehensible defense of young Tyler after he had detected them, he weakened. “I—I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean, Mr. Trant!” he said helplessly; then, irritated by his own weakness, he turned testily toward the door: “I wonder what is keeping them out there?”
“Mr. Trant says,” Chapin burst out angrily, “that either you or I is as likely to have shot Neal as young Jim! But Mr. Trant is crazy; we’ll have young Jim in here and prove it!” and he threw open the door.
But it was not young Tyler, but a girl, tall and blond, with a lithe, straight figure almost like a boy’s, but with her fine, clear-cut features deadly pale, and with her gray eyes—straight and frank, like Sheppard’s, but much deeper and softer—full of grief and terror, who stood first in the doorway.
“Leigh! So it was you keeping them out there! Leigh,” her uncle’s voice trembled as he spoke to the girl, “what are you doing here?”
“No; what are you doing, uncle?” the girl asked in clear, fearless tones. “Or rather, I mean, what have Mr. Chapin and this guide and this—this gentleman,” she looked toward Trant and the gun Sheppard had handed him, “come here for this morning? And why have they brought Jim here—this way?” She moved aside a little, as though to let Trant see behind her the set and firm, but also very pale, features of young Tyler and the coarser face of the red-haired police officer. “I know,” she continued, as her uncle still stood speechless, “that it must have something to do with my father; for Jim could not deny it. But what—what is it,” she appealed again, with the terror gleaming in her eyes which told, even to Trant, that she must half suspect, “that brings you all here this way this morning, and Jim too?”
“Run over home again, my dear,” the uncle stooped and kissed her clumsily. “Run back home now, for you can’t come in.”
“Yes; you’ll go back home now, won’t you, Leigh?” Tyler touched her hand.
“Perhaps you had better let Miss Sheppard in for a moment first, Mr. Tyler,” Trant suggested. “For, in regard to what she seems to fear, I have only encouragement for her.”
“You mean you—” Tyler’s pale, defiant lips parted impulsively, but he quickly checked himself.
“I am not afraid to ask it, Jim,” the girl this time sought his fingers with her own. “Do you mean you—are not here to try to connect Jim with the—disappearance of my father?”
“No, Miss Sheppard,” Trant replied steadily, while the eyes of the two older men were fixed upon him scarcely less intently than the girl’s; “and I have asked you to come in a moment, because I feel safe in assuring you that Mr. Tyler can not have been connected with the disappearance of your father in the way they have made you fear. And more than that, it is quite possible that w
ithin a few moments I will be able to prove that he is clear of any connection with it whatever—quite possible, Miss Sheppard. That was all I wanted to tell you.”
“Who are you?” the girl cried. “And can you make my uncle believe that, too? Do you think I haven’t known, uncle, what you thought when Jim went up there after you and—father was lost? I know that what you suspect is impossible; but,” she turned to Trant again, “can you make my uncle believe that, too?”
“Your uncle, though he seemed to forget the fact a moment ago, has retained me precisely to clear Mr. Tyler from the circumstantial evidence that seemed so conclusive against him,” said Trant, with a warning glance at the amazed Sheppard, “and I strongly hope that I will be able to do so.”
“Oh, I did not understand! I will wait upstairs, then,” the girl turned from Trant to Sheppard in bewilderment, touched Tyler’s arm as she brushed by him in the door, and left them.
“Thank you for your intention in making it easier for her—whoever you are—even if you have to take it back later,” Tyler said grimly to the psychologist. “But since Crowley has told me,” he turned now to Sheppard, “that it was you who ordered him to arrest me at the club this morning, I suppose, now that Leigh is gone, that means that you have found your brother shot as he deserved and as you expected and—you think I did it!”
“Morning, Mr. Sheppard,” the red-haired police captain nodded. “Morning, Mr. Trant; giving us some more of the psycho-palmistry? Considerable water’s gone past the mill since you put an electric battery on Caylis, the Bronson murderer, and proved him guilty just as we were getting ready to send Kanlan up for the crime. As for this young man,” he motioned with his thumb toward Tyler, “I took him in because Mr. Sheppard asked it; but as Mr. Sheppard didn’t make any charge against him, and this Tyler wanted to come up here, I brought him on myself, not hearing from Mr. Sheppard. I suppose now it’s Mr. Neal Sheppard’s death, after seeing the morning papers and hearing the young lady.”
The Mystery & Suspense Novella Page 37
