“But Sir Henry Marquis refused to be convinced.
“ ‘The shot,’ he said, ‘came from this side.’
“Brexford lost his temper.
“ ‘That’s impossible,’ he cried. ‘Wasn’t I sitting here, didn’t I hear the bullet pass me, didn’t I see the glass break?’
“Sir Henry only repeated what he’d said.
“ ‘The shot came from this side!’
“Brexford blew up at that.
“Do you think I’m a liar?’ he said.
“What Sir Henry Marquis replied was:
“ ‘I know you’re a liar!’
“Then he went at him, and before he got through old Brexford admitted that he fired the shot through the window himself from the drawing-room; and Marquis made him put up the money to find young Winton and bring him back to England … that’s what took Sir Henry Marquis on that hell journey into Central Africa, justice to young Winton, not justice to the peace and dignity of the county of Hampshire.… Young Winton hadn’t been near old Brexford that night; he had gone to Christ Church determined to settle matters with this American girl—he was mad about her, she must take him or he would get as far out of the world as he could. He missed her by an accident. She had gone out to tea somewhere in Hants; the motor had broken down and she could not get back; and being Sunday she could not telegraph. Winton took it for intention, because she had given him her word that she would be there, and went on into Central Africa … that was the truth about it.”
Barclay had gone over to the window and was looking down on the entrance to the hotel doorway, there was a bit of noise as though some one were going out.
“But the shot—” I said. “How did Marquis know that it was fired from the inside of the drawing-room.… You’re leaving unfinished explanations in your story?”
“That was simple,” he answered. “When a bullet passes through a pane of glass it always breaks off a little rim of chips on the side where it comes out.… When Sir Henry Marquis examined that window he saw at once that the rim of chips was on the outside of the pane, and consequently the bullet must have come the other way.”
I got up and went over toward the window where Barclay stood.
“And there’s another thing,” I said. “Who was the mysterious person who followed you in to join Winton?”
Barclay looked up from the window; there was the sound of a motor moving from the door below.
“That was Lady Winton,” he said.
I stopped short; the pride of race rising in me.
“An English woman!” I cried. “Right, my friend, one of our women could do that … they have the vigor and the fiber and the courage … no tender American pretty-doll carted about in cushions!”
Barclay beckoned me to the window.
“I’ll show you Lady Winton,” he said.
I crossed to him and looked down.
The big limousine motor was going out, and nestling in its soft upholstery, in an attitude of luxurious languor, was the yellow-haired American girl with the Pekinese dog in her arms!
THE PHANTOM WOMAN
Sir Henry Marquis, Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard, has a monograph on this case. He said we were accustomed to believe that the dead were impotent in human affairs; but it was a thing of which no man could be certain. How could we know whether the power of those gone out of sight and hearing, waxed or waned, or ceased; or by what means, or in what manner they might be able to move the living to their will.
He said this case profoundly impressed him.
We stopped in the pine woods to listen. The music seemed to fill the world; it was low and soft, a sort of vague elfin music appearing as by some enchantment.
There was this strange quality in it—that it seemed to emerge from the wood itself, to be a part of this aspect of nature, the filtered sunlight, the odor of the wood and the soft air from the sea. And it drugged the senses in us. One heard it and was transported to a kingdom of the fairy and all things about it took on the glamour of a dream.
I stopped beside Sir Henry Marquis on the path, behind us was the village and its inn where we had gone for luncheon at the end of our motor journey from London that morning. And before us, at the end of the path through the wood, was the house and below it the sea. It was a lovely artistic house that my father’s wife had built here for this romantic marriage after my father’s death; and now that she, too, was dead it remained in the possession of this Hungarian fiddler. When one considered the man alone, when one looked coolly at him, it was past belief that my step-mother should have been so infatuated with him. The Count Andreas was, merely to the eye, what I have written, a Hungarian fiddler. It must have been this music that had entranced the woman, for out of the spell of it she seemed to be also out of the spell of this strange creature. For when she lay dying in her London house she expressed the wish that a bracelet of Burma rubies in the Count’s possession should be given to me. And when her solicitor pointed out that her verbal wish could have no effect against the Count’s resistance, she said, “I will return and make him do it!”
Count Andreas would make no reply to my solicitor. And so on the morning I went with Sir Henry Marquis, Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard, to this interview with him. The verities of justice were on my side, the rubies had come from my American mother, had been passed on by my father to his second wife, and now by operation of the English law this Hungarian fiddler took them. I felt crowded out of my inheritance by a combination of evil events. My father’s wife had tried to return my mother’s jewels to me and here by the running of this English law I was dispossessed.
I had gone from my solicitor to Sir Henry Marquis for he had known my mother in the old days, and remained a friend.
He had listened with rather a strange face, I thought, when I had related to him all the details of the matter.
“Sarah,” he said, “you have your mother’s eyes and that lovely line of the hair around the forehead.”
Then he had got up and walked about the room.
“We shall go down and see this Count Andreas. I know something of him.”
And so we had come down, on this August morning, where the great moors lay above the sea fringed along their edges by the pine trees. It was a lovely prospect in the sun; the bracken of the wild moors, the wood along their face when they fell sheer into the sea, and the sea itself with its great colored patches lying below the blue water as though it were on a painted floor.
We could see the grass terrace before the house; for the house stood on a shelf of the moor—a space had been cut out of the pine woods for it—and this green terrace flanked by the wood on either side and the house behind looked down on the sea. It was two hundred feet above but one could have cast a stone into the water. The brow of the moor here dropped like a plummet into the ocean. The music came from the terrace. We could see a man, walking about on it, a violin at his shoulder, his bow hand flying. And in the glamour of the melodies he was a sylvan creature. One held the breath to see him, and ventured softly lest he vanish.… I saw how the hypnotic virtues of this music had entranced my father’s wife, especially when she felt alone and with age before her. The man when he played was within the music as in a golden haze … but when he stepped out of it he was the Hungarian fiddler.
He stepped out of it as we came up, but he was a very clever person, carefully dressed and with a suave demeanor.
“It is Sir Henry Marquis,” he said, “and Miss Sarah Whitney. I am honored.”
Then he spoke directly to Sir Henry Marquis.
“You arrive quickly. My telegram to Scotland Yard could not have reached London before an hour of noon.”
I caught the fleeting evidence of surprise in Sir Henry’s face but there was no surprise in his voice or manner. He had not journeyed here at the call of any telegram from the Count to Scotland Yard; but his profession was not one permitting of surprises. The situation before Sir Henry, I th
ought was difficult. And I wondered what Delphic answer he could make.
“What are the details of this matter?” he said.
It was a key that would fit any lock.
The Count put his violin down carefully on a stone seat and went with us toward a window on the first floor of the house on the farther side. The house sat parallel with the terrace in its longest direction; there was a hall in the center and a stairway going up and on one side the drawing-room with the dining room on the opposite side across the hall. It was not a large house but it was beautifully designed and its furnishings were artistic.
But Count Andreas did not go on directly to the window. He stopped.
“It was all very cleverly done,” he said, “there was no sound.… I am puzzled to know if the woman was alone, or had an accomplice.”
Sir Henry put a query then.
“Were you alone in the house?”
Again it was a key for any lock for he did not know what was before him and whether it had happened in the night or day, or in fact what it was in which a woman had been concerned.
Count Andreas made a vague gesture.
“I am very careless,” he said. “I sleep here alone, the servants come out from the village of a morning, but I have no fear.”
Sir Henry made a rather strange reply.
“It is very dangerous,” he said, “to have no fear.”
The Count shrugged his shoulders.
“I am not a practical man,” he said, “or else I would have taken my wife’s jewels to London and a bank vault; but I wished her room in this house to remain as she left it … nothing has been changed or moved in it, the dust, and the spiders have their way.… I had forgotten that her jewels remained in a little drawer of her writing table.”
Then he turned quickly about to me; as though some sharp amazing thing had suddenly occurred to him.
“Alas! Miss Sarah,” he cried. “You will be a loser with me; for the ruby bracelet about which you wrote me is gone with the other jewels.”
The words were like a blow to me, for I had hoped to recover this heirloom of my mother—this bracelet of rubies set in a gold work that hinged between the stones. It was of great value and had been in my mother’s family for a hundred years.
I suppose I must have looked the despair I felt, and I could not keep back a mist of tears.
Sir Henry touched me gently.
“Perhaps we shall find it,” he said—and he went on behind the Hungarian who had faced about after the delivery of his blow. He also hoped that the jewels would be recovered, he said. No doubt Sir Henry Marquis would find them. Scotland Yard was so wonderful and wise. It was marked fulsome flattery, but it had in it I thought a note of the praise of the prophet for the accomplishments of Baal. I fear that I was a rather pathetic figure as I came on behind them. Sir Henry Marquis did not put any query; he followed the man to the window. The Count directed Sir Henry’s attention first to the window and after that to the flower bed below it.
“Here,” he said, “the thief entered; the bolt fastening the window was probably turned from the inside, or by collusion with one of the servants. You will observe that when the window is unfastened the knob stands perpendicular, in precisely the same position as when it is closed, so no one would notice that it was unfastened.”
He paused a moment.
“I say she, Sir Henry, because you will see that it was a woman; a woman about the size of Miss Whitney. There are her tracks quite clearly marked in the soft earth of this flower bed below the window.”
And there were the tracks, indeed to be seen where the woman had stood before the window while she had carefully pushed the swinging window that opened the house to her.
Sir Henry examined these footprints.
“The lady,” he said, “has been very considerate of us. These faint footprints are in the very best position on this soft earth to remain clear.”
Then he turned to Count Andreas.
“But why do you say ‘a woman about the size of Miss Whitney’?”
The man hesitated as though puzzled to find a reply, then he gave the reason.
“I was thinking of my wife’s maids,” he said; “they have been all women of about Miss Whitney’s size; and this robbery will be the work of some one familiar with the house.”
“On the contrary,” replied Sir Henry, “these footprints were made by a thin woman—Miss Whitney will weigh nine stone—an incredibly thin woman.”
The Count was astonished.
“Look at the print,” he said. “These footprints might have been made by Miss Sarah Whitney.”
Sir Henry turned to me.
“Quite so,” he said; “the prints here might have been made by Miss Whitney’s slipper if there was no such thing as gravity.” Then he addressed me directly. “Sarah,” he said, “will you kindly walk from the flag path of the terrace to this window and stand a moment before it.”
I did as he directed, although I was puzzled to understand what it meant; was I perhaps to be indicted as the thief?
Count Andreas cried out in confirmation of Sir Henry.
“You see the prints are almost identical.”
“Ah, so!” replied Sir Henry. “But you fail to note the important feature. You will observe that the heel of Miss Whitney’s slipper sank into the turf on her way from the flag path and here in the flower bed it makes a deep footprint. While the heel of this other woman’s shoe cannot be seen on the turf which she must have crossed from the path and here in the flower bed where she stood the footprints are clear but faint … these evidences could mean only one thing—an absence of weight!”
Then he stooped suddenly over as though to look closely at the footprints, but he was looking rather, I thought, at the grass beside the flower bed; it appeared, even to my unpracticed eye, pressed over, faintly, as though something long and heavy, and of some bulk had been put down there.
But he made no comment and presently turned to Count Andreas. His face strange.
“Gravity has been negatived here,” he said. “This will be a sort of miracle.”
The astonishment in Count Andreas’s manner gave way to a suave irony.
“How clever,” he said. “Yours, Sir Henry. is an extraordinary profession!”
But Sir Henry Marquis replied as if the compliment were sincere.
“Ah, Count,” he said, “if we were only clever enough no criminal would escape us. One may think what he likes and be safe but when one acts he leaves behind him evidences that indicate him. And if we have the skill to assemble and fit together these evidences, we can in a fashion build up the criminal agent … but one’s deductions must be correct.”
“Like this deduction of yours about the miracle here!” cried the Count.
“Precisely,” replied Sir Henry.
“I would call that inspiration,” said the Count.
Sir Henry Marquis looked grave.
“I fear that would be an unhappy word here,” he replied. “Inspiration has usually served only to mislead the one that it pretended to enlighten.” Then he added a rather queer comment. “My deduction here that this was a thin woman may be too comprehensive … that the body of the woman lacked weight may be as far as I ought to go … we usually associate weight with bulk, but the relation is not constant even in nature and outside of nature, in what we call the supernatural there may be bulk without weight or with little weight … the small size of these footprints and the depths to which they are sunk in the earth, to be precisely accurate, indicate a woman of very little weight—as we understand weight!”
Count Andreas looked puzzled; and I was certainly puzzled at this speech. But Sir Henry Marquis was not pausing to consider us. He was going on into the house. Count Andreas overtook him and led the way up the stairs to the room which his wife had occupied and from which the jewels had been taken. It adjoined the room which the Count himself occupied separated only by a thin partition. Count Andreas stopped at the door leading from the hal
l at the head of the stairs into his wife’s room.
“I have not permitted this room to be disturbed,” he said, “it remains as my wife left it. I preferred to think of her, here, in this setting where she was in loving sympathy with me, and not in the London house where she had the strange delusions against me.”
Sir Henry Marquis stopped short as though suddenly seized with some idea, until then vague.
“Ah, yes,” he said, “it was in her London house that this lady died, during your absence in Paris, and it was there she called a solicitor ‘wishing to bequeath’ this ruby bracelet to Miss Sarah Whitney; and it was to this solicitor that she made her strange remark: ‘I will come back and make him do it.’”
The Count’s shoulder moved as at some unpleasant touch, but he made no reply. He turned at once to the door.
“I regret, sir,” he said, “that I am unable to say whether this door was locked, or unlocked, when the thief entered last night. If it were locked, then the thief had a key to it, which is in line with the evidences that this is the work of some discharged servant familiar with the house.” Then he turned about to Sir Henry. “Perhaps you can tell this by an examination of the lock.”
But Sir Henry Marquis declined to give the door the slightest attention. I was no less astonished than Count Andreas. The door was the way into the room, whether it was fastened or opened seemed to me to be of the very vitals of this inquiry. There was only one possible explanation and the Count put that in his query.
“Do you, perhaps, conclude that the thief did not enter through this door?”
“Oh, no,” replied Sir Henry. “The thief entered by this door, but I have a theory that this door was no bar to the sort of creature that accomplished this robbery … perhaps no door in this house would have been any bar.… I am inclined to believe that the door means nothing.”
The Bradmoor Murder Page 10
