Coming out of the booth she said scornfully: "Clumsy work, Bella. The gentleman called up to say if we wanted to know what was good for us we'd stay away from Mrs. Brager."
"What an extraordinary growling voice!" I said. "It didn't suggest the voice of either of the men we saw there."
"It wouldn't," said Mme Storey. "Come on, let's finish our dinner."
IV
Notwithstanding Mme Storey's advice, Mrs. Brager herself called up the Stanfield newspapers that night and announced her intention of founding the Brager Home for Aged Gentlewomen. The news created a sensation locally when the papers came out next morning.
Shortly before we were to close the office that day, Mr. Riordan called up from Stanfield in distress. When he took the papers to Mrs. Brager to be signed she had refused to see him. Evidently the gang had been at her. He had succeeded in getting her to promise him an appointment at eleven the following day; and he wanted to know if Mme Storey would accompany him to her house. My mistress good-humouredly consented. We were very busy at the time, but this case had intrigued her interest.
So for the second time we motored up to Stanfield, taking our work with us. It was a clear and frosty day in February. We picked up Mr. Riordan at his office and went on. No suspicion of what lay before us troubled our minds, I remember. We anticipated merely a repetition of the scene of two days before. Mme Storey had no doubt of her ability to bring the weak-minded old woman around again. Mr. Riordan had the papers in his pocket, and we hoped to get them signed for good and all before leaving the house.
The maid informed us that Mrs. Brager was not up yet. We asked for Mrs. Marlin, who presently came hurrying to us in the drawing room. For Mme Storey and me she had a delightful friendly smile, very different from the guarded look that she customarily wore on her face in that house. She was apologetic.
"Mrs. Brager awoke at seven," she said, "and claimed to be feeling unwell. She said she would remain in bed this morning and Mr. Riordan would have to come another day. It was only an excuse to get out of seeing him, of course. What could I do?"
"Well, here I am," said Mme Storey, smiling. "I've come all the way from New York. She can't in common decency refuse to see me."
"I'll fix it," said Mrs. Marlin, and scampered away up the stairs.
We did not bother to sit down in the chilly room, but stood waiting near the open door, laughing among ourselves at the absurd old woman's childish pretexts. I heard Mrs. Marlin open her door; she left it standing open. I heard her knock on the second door, then she unlocked it. A moment later her shriek rang through the house.
The sound froze us where we stood. It had the dreadful staccato quality of shock. A brief cry, followed by silence. Mme Storey ran for the stairs and sprang up like a man, two steps at a time. Riordan and I followed more clumsily. We burst through Mrs. Marlin's room. Just inside of Mrs. Brager's room we found Mrs. Marlin clinging to the door handle, her face ashy, her eyes witless from shock. She pointed to Mrs. Brager's bed.
"Dead—dead..." she whispered.
A look was enough. The old woman lay in her immense, ugly wooden bedstead, her eyes closed, a half smile on her face, like one in a happy sleep. But her flesh had taken on a yellowish waxen consistency, and her face bore an expression of awful dignity such as had never visited it in life. Oh, there was no mistaking it! Mme Storey glided to the bed and touched the hand that lay outside the spread—it no longer looked withered. "Cold," she murmured, and automatically glanced at her wrist watch. "Eleven-five."
There was no sign of any disturbance: the whole house was in order; and for a moment I hoped that the old woman had died from natural causes and that we were to be spared a hideous sensation. But my mistress, with a quick glance around, pointed without speaking to two brass cages which hung one in each of the front windows. Apparently they were empty; but as I approached, I saw in each a tiny yellow form lying on its back with piteous claws in the air. This discovery was unspeakably horrible. It sickened me worse than the dead human figure on the bed.
"Mrs. Marlin," said Mme Storey crisply, "telephone for the doctor."
The young housekeeper, though very pale, had by this time recovered her self-command. It was the shock that had unnerved her. She whispered imploringly: "Do not let them come in here!" And ran downstairs.
We knew to whom she referred.
"Mr. Riordan," Mme Storey went on, "you had better take my car and go for the police. We don't want to telephone that call."
The good little man was aghast at the prospect. "Must we—must we?" he stammered.
"Instantly," said Mme Storey.
He went heavily out.
My mistress placed me at the door while she conducted one of her characteristic searches of the room and the adjoining room. It is wonderful to watch her at such moments: like a divine hound, all her senses are brought into action, guided by her beautiful intelligence. Eyes, nose, and finger tips all take part. She moves with incredible swiftness, leaving everything exactly as it was, making no sound. After five minutes I am sure she could have written a book about what she discovered in those rooms, had she cared to. She did not confide her findings to me.
"You had better close the door between and stand outside of it," she said. "Let no one enter." She then departed to conduct her lightning search through the rest of the house before she might be interrupted.
Meanwhile the maidservant and the fat cook had come to the outer door of Mrs. Marlin's room, where they stood gasping and carrying on as such people always do. They appeared to be enjoying their own horror. I heard the front door close, and somebody came up the stairs. It was Oneto. Seeing the servants in the doorway, he broke through them into the room.
"What's the matter?" he demanded.
"Mrs. Brager is dead," I said.
He was young and had not yet acquired full control over his features. An ugly triumphant grin overspread his face. "Are you sure? Are you sure?" he eagerly demanded.
Disgusted, I refused to answer.
"Let me in there!" he cried.
"You can't go in there."
He ran to the door and violently rattled it. "I will go in! Nobody has a better right."
"Well, I haven't the key," I said.
Mme La France was the next to appear. I suppose she came from out-of-doors too, since she was wearing hat and cape. Her unwholesome flesh turned mottled in her excitement; her hard eyes bored into me. I have never seen such baleful eyes. They were at once bright and thick looking, if you get what I mean: like a blue glaze on cheap china.
"Who found her?" she said thickly.
"Mrs. Marlin," I said.
She laughed hatefully. The whole atmosphere was charged with hate and suspicion. Oneto and the La France woman measured each other up and down with ugly sneers.
"Aah, you cur!" the woman said suddenly.
He retorted with an unprintable epithet. "You'll soon find out where you get off!" he added.
"Is that so? Is that so?" she retorted. "You wait!"
Suddenly, as if seized by a common impulse, they turned and shouldered each other out of the room. Oneto, being the more active, gained the stairs first and ran down, with the woman following heavily. I couldn't guess what they were up to.
The next thing I remember, Mrs. Marlin was bringing the doctor in. He was a grave, decent, middle-aged man, that I was glad to see. She opened the door of Mrs. Brager's room for him to enter, while she hung back to whisper to me:
"Your friend says please telephone for Crider and Stephens to come at once. They are to apply at the back door."
Crider and Stephens, as you know, were two of four best operatives. I went down to do Mme Storey's bidding. The telephone was under the stairs. Oneto was using it, while Mme La France waited, biting her fingers in impatience. As well as I could make out, each was calling up a lawyer. They hung about to learn what I wanted with the 'phone, but I contrived to speak so that they could not hear. Stephens was keeping the office during our absence; and he kne
w how to get in touch with Crider.
Oneto and the woman followed me back to Mrs. Marlin's room. Mme Storey was there, having completed her survey of the house. The servants had returned to the kitchen. My mistress, who had put on a silly-seeming air, immediately sidled over to the two behind me and said, goggling with affected horror:
"Oh, isn't it terrible?"
They looked at her suspiciously, not knowing how to take this.
The doctor (his name was Patten) came out of the further room, followed by Mrs. Marlin. The young woman had regained complete control of herself. Her face was a dead-white mask. Dr. Patten said gravely:
"Mrs. Brager is dead of suffocation. She has been asphyxiated."
Mme Storey uttered an affected little scream of horror. "Oh, how awful!"
I was watching the remaining two persons in the room. Oneto turned very pale and then flushed deeply. He quickly lowered his eyes, but the whole air of the man proclaimed that he was swelling with a secret joy. Mme La France was not giving so much away. Her face still showed that mottled look under the make-up, and she was breathing hard; but her blue eyes remained staring defiantly ahead of her, impervious as earthenware. I could not understand it. Suppose Mrs. Brager had been murdered, they could not have done it together, since they hated each other so intensely. And apparently neither of them was going to profit by it anyway.
"Oh, Doctor, oh, Doctor, how can that be?" gabbled Mme Storey—my mistress is most dangerous when she is playing the part of the foolish, pretty woman. "When we went in there awhile ago the air was perfectly good. There was no smell."
"I cannot explain that, Madame," said Dr. Patten. "It is a matter for the police."
V
>Mr. Riordan presently returned with two policemen, who took up their watch within Mrs. Brager's room. It appeared that nothing could be done without the Public Prosecutor; and as this official was absent in a near-by village, we had to wait until he could motor back. Our friend Mr. Riordan was somewhat disconcerted by the role that he found Mme Storey had assumed. Fearful, perhaps, of betraying his uneasiness, he waited downstairs.
Mrs. Marlin's room, while smaller than the corner chambers, was nevertheless of a good size for a bedroom: say, fifteen by twenty. Opposite the door from the hall was a triple window which must have been immediately above the front door of the house. There was another door corresponding to the door into Mrs. Brager's room, but this was closed up. Mme La France's room lay on that side. The two men occupied the rear chambers on this floor.
As I have said before, Mrs. Marlin had arranged her room as a bed-sitting-room. As you entered from the hall, the narrow bed was on your left, a couch on your right. At the front there was a bureau on one side, a writing desk on the other, and in the centre of the free space a table which bore a china tea service on a tray, together with a little brass kettle suspended over a spirit lamp. Two or three comfortable chairs completed the furnishings. On the walls hung many photographs of Mrs. Marlin's children at different ages, and of an intelligent-looking man with the eyes of a dreamer, whom I supposed to be her fiancé, Dr. Brill. The entire drama was played out in that room with the different characters continually coming and going. At a moment when we were unobserved, Mme Storey instructed me to remain there and to take particular care that nobody tampered with the brass kettle or tried to remove it.
Oneto and Mme La France, having been away to remove their outer things, returned to the door of the death chamber, whence nothing could budge them. Mme Storey curried favour first with one, then the other, and by degrees got herself accepted by both as a harmless sort of fool. Her method was to talk a great deal and apparently never to listen. It is surprising what a lot she can pick up that way. I could overhear but little of their low-voiced talk.
Then the lawyers came, the woman's first. He was fetched up to the room where we all were, a lanky young man with a prominent Adam's apple, who seemed to be well-nigh overwhelmed by the magnitude of the situation. His name was Mr. Deisel.
"Have you got the will?" barked Mme La France.
He nodded, swallowing hard.
"Read it to these people."
He drew the document from his pocket. It was contained on a single sheet of foolscap. He read it tremulously. In effect it constituted "my dear friend Mme Rose La France" the sole benefactor. The woman, unable to contain her feelings any longer, broke out into a vulgar, shrewish cry of triumph.
"Now! Now, who is the mistress here?"
Oneto had listened to the reading, posing with one hand on his hip and a hateful, conceited smile on his face. "And the date?" he drawled.
The lawyer named a day in November.
"I see," said Oneto, grinning still, "a Thanksgiving present!"
Mme Storey immediately went up to the woman with fulsome congratulations and side glances of contempt for Oneto. The two women drew aside toward the window, Mme La France flushed with triumph, confiding eagerly in my mistress. I could not hear what she said.
Oneto's lawyer, Mr. Paulson, was an older man and more urbane than Deisel; his present errand was clearly not to his taste. He remonstrated quietly with his client, but in vain. He too was forced to take a will from his pocket and read it aloud to us. In phraseology it was similar to the first, but in this case the beneficiary was "my dear fiancé Raymondo Oneto." Mme La France was left a legacy.
"And the date?" drawled Oneto with his hateful smile.
"December twenty-fourth."
"Mine was a Christmas present, you see."
A shocking change had taken place in Mme La France. Her face seemed to have turned black, and the blue eyes protruded. She gasped for breath, one hand clutching her fat throat. At last a vitriolic stream of abuse issued from her lips, directed at Oneto. She brought up the very dregs of foul speech. I can convey no idea of it. The burden of it was: "You killed her! You killed her!"
To which Oneto retorted: "Why me any more than you? You thought you were the heir."
All this in the very antechamber of death, remember. It was a disgusting exhibition.
Rage overcame the woman. She staggered and fell into a chair, half fainting. One could imagine the hell of disappointment in her breast. Mrs. Marlin, with a cold air of disgust, fetched her a glass of water. Presently she got to her feet and made her way slowly out of the room, supporting herself from object to object. The rest of us looked on the ground, shamed by the scene.
Curiosity soon brought her back again, looking like a wreck of her former self. Her face was strangely streaked and discoloured, her hair disordered, her dress awry. I saw then that she must be nearer sixty years old than the forty I had supposed.
Meanwhile, Mme Storey, unabashed, was making up to Oneto with alluring smiles and much play of her fine eyes, and the young man quickly fell for it. It was the first time a woman like that had ever come his way. Mme Storey's actions seemed perfectly natural to these people, since it was exactly the way they would have comported themselves under the same circumstances. They whispered together, while the La France woman watched them with a sick sneer.
A car drove up outside, and the Hon. Shep Chew came hastening upstairs. Evidently he had learned the news outside; he was prepared for the scene which met his eyes. There was nothing crude here: he was perfectly master of himself and of the situation; full of pious expressions of grief, and displaying courtesy toward all. But how those greedy black eyes glittered! Throwing his hat and coat on the bed, he immediately undertook to tell us all in the nicest way where to get off at. He reminded me of a high-priced undertaker.
He tackled Mme Storey first. "My dear Mrs. Pomeroy, what a dreadful thing has happened! It was so good of you to come and see us again, but under the circumstances I am sure you will..."
His object was to get her out of the house, but she displayed a bland obtuseness. "I'm waiting to hear what the Prosecutor says," she answered with a silly smile.
He had to give her up. He then tried to waft us all out of the room with motions of his outspread arm
s. "Let us wait down in the drawing room," he said unctuously; "it will be more seemly."
"Who the hell do you think you are, giving me orders?" said Oneto.
Mr. Chew looked inexpressibly grieved. "I speak in the name of the common affection that we all bore to the dear one who has left us," he said gently.
"Speak in the name of what you please," said Oneto. "I stay here."
Without another word Mr. Chew walked out of the room. Oneto swaggered and plumed himself but was perhaps not quite so confident as he wished to appear. Mme Storey soothed his vanity. He whispered to her. And then Mr. Chew returned, dragging a very reluctant Mr. Riordan after him.
"Mr. Riordan," he said impressively, "be good enough to explain to this young man what relation I stand in to the late Mrs. Brager."
Mr. Riordan scowled, removed his glasses and violently polished them. I doubt if in his whole career he had ever had a client that he liked less than his present one. He said huffily: "All I know is that at Mrs. Brager's request I drew up a will for her which is now in my office safe. After making a number of unimportant bequests, she named Mr. Chew as her principal beneficiary."
"What was the date?" cried several voices at once.
"February ninth; eight days ago."
A fleering laugh broke from Mme La France. Having nothing more to lose herself, she was delighted to be a witness of Oneto's discomfiture. That young man's voice scaled up like a woman's.
"It's a lie!" he cried. "I'll believe it when I see it and not before. Mrs. Brager and I were engaged to be married. We made an agreement."
The woman redoubled her laughter.
Mr. Chew held up his hand in pious horror. "Pray, dear Madame La France, not here! not here! Think of the respect that is due to the dead!"
"Judas!" she hissed at him.
Oneto's face was working like that of a child who is about to burst into tears. "You damned mealy-mouthed hypocrite!" he cried. "I see it all now! You read the papers yesterday morning, didn't you? You didn't intend that she should make another will which would throw yours into the discard! You are the murderer!"
MRS3 The Velvet Hand Page 25
