“He’s right, Berne,” Wilton cautioned again. “He’s taken the friendly course.”
“I understand that, judge,” Berne said; and, without answering Hastings, turned squarely to Wilton: “But it’s a thin clue. He admits Russell lost a nail-file, too.”
“Several years ago,” Hastings goaded, so that Webster pivoted on his heel to face him; “you lost yours when?—last night?—this morning?”
“I don’t know! I noticed its absence this morning.”
“There you are!—But,” Hastings qualified, to avoid the quarrel, “the nail-file isn’t much of a clue if unsupported.” He approached cordiality. “And I appreciate your intending to tell me. That was what you intended to give me in confidence, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Webster answered, half-sullen.
Hastings changed the subject again.
“Did you know Mildred Brace intended to clear out, leave Washington, today?”
“Why, no!” Webster shot that out in genuine surprise.
“I got it from Russell,” Hastings informed, and went at once to another topic.
“And that brings us to the letter. Judge Wilton tell you about that?”
Webster was lighting a cigarette, with difficulty holding the fire of the old one to the end of the new. The operation seemed to entail hard labour for him.
“In the grey envelope?” he responded, drawing on the cigarette. “Yes. I didn’t get it.”
He took off his coat. The heat oppressed him. At frequent intervals he passed his handkerchief around the inside of his collar, which was wilting. Now, more than ever, he gave the impression of exaggerated watchfulness, as if he attempted prevision of the detective’s questions.
“Nobody got it, so far as I can learn,” Hastings said, a note of sternness breaking through the surface of his tone. “It vanished into thin air. That’s the most mysterious thing about this mysterious murder.”
He, in his turn, began pacing the floor, a short distance to and fro in front of Judge Wilton’s chair, his hands behind him, flopping the baggy tail of his coat from side to side.
“You doubtless see the gravity of the facts: that letter was mailed to Sloanehurst. Russell has just told me so. She waved it in his face, to taunt him about you, before she dropped it into the mail-box. He swears”—Hastings stopped, at the far end of his pacing, and looked hard at Webster—“it was addressed to you.”
Webster, again with his queer, high-pitched laugh, like derision, threw back his head and took two long strides toward the centre of the room. There he stood a moment, hands in his pockets, while he stared at the toe of his right shoe, which he was carefully adjusting to a crack in the flooring.
Judge Wilton made his chair crackle as he moved to look at Webster. It was the weight of the detective’s gaze, however, that drew the lawyer’s attention; when he looked up, his eyes were half-closed, as if the light had suddenly become painful to them.
“That would be Russell’s game, wouldn’t it?” he retorted, at last.
“Mrs. Brace told me the same thing,” Hastings said quietly, flashing a look at Wilton and back to the other.
“Damn her!” Webster broke forth with such vehemence that Wilton stared at him in amazement. “Damn her! And that’s the first time I ever said that of a woman. It’s as I suspected, as I expected. She’s begun some sort of a crooked game!”
He trembled like a man with a chill. Hastings gave him no time to recover himself.
“You know Mrs. Brace, then? Know her well?” he pressed.
“Well enough!” Webster retorted with hot repugnance. “Well enough, although I never had but one conversation with her—if you may call that bedlam wildness a conversation. She came to my office the second day after I’d dismissed her daughter. She made a scene. She charged me with ruining her daughter’s life, threatened suit for breach of promise. She said she’d ‘get even’ with me if it took her the rest of her life. I don’t as a rule pay much attention to violent women, Mr. Hastings; but there was something about her that affected me strongly, she’s implacable, and like stone, not like a woman. You saw her—understand what I mean?”
“Perfectly,” agreed Hastings.
There flashed across his mind a picture of that incomprehensible woman’s face, the black line of her eyebrows lifted half-way to her hair, the abnormal wetness of her lips thickened by a sneer. “If she’s been after this man for two weeks,” he thought, “I can understand his trembles!”
But he hurried the inquiry.
“So you think she lied about that letter?”
“Of course!” Webster laughed on a high note. “Next, I suppose, she’ll produce the letter.”
“She can’t very well do that.”
Something in his voice alarmed the suspected man.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Hastings smiled.
“What do you mean?” Webster asked again, his voice lowered, and came a step nearer to the detective.
Hastings took a piece of paper from his pocket.
“Here’s the flap of the grey envelope,” he said, as if that was all the information he meant to impart.
Webster urged him, with eyes and voice:
“Well?”
“And on the back of it is some of Mildred Brace’s handwriting.”
The old man examined the piece of paper with every show of absorption. He could hear Webster’s hurried breathing, and the gulp when he swallowed the lump in his throat.
The scene had got hold of Wilton also. Leaning forward in his chair, his lips half-parted, the thumb and forefinger of his right hand mechanically fubbing out his cigar, so that a little stream of fire trickled to the floor, he gazed unwinking at the envelope flap.
Webster went a step nearer to Hastings, and stood, passing his hand across the top of his head and staring again out of his half-closed eyes, as if the light had hurt them.
“And,” the old man said, regarding Webster keenly but keeping any hint of accusation out of his voice, “I found it last night in the fireplace, behind the screen, in your room upstairs.”
He paused, looking toward the door, his attention caught by a noise in the hall.
Webster laughed, on the high, derisive note. He was noticeably pale.
“Come, man!” Judge Wilton said, harsh and imperious. “Can’t you see the boy’s suffering? What’s written on it?”
“What difference does it make—the writing?” Webster objected, with a movement of his shoulders that looked like a great effort to pull himself together. “If there’s any at all, it’s faked. Faked! That’s what it is. People don’t write on the inside of envelope flaps.”
His face did not express the assurance he tried to put into his voice. He went back to the piano and leaned on it, his posture such that it might have indicated a nonchalant ease or, equally well, might have betrayed his desperate need of support.
“This letter incident can’t be waved away,” Hastings, without handing over the scrap of envelope, proceeded in even, measured tones—using his sentences as if they were hammers with which he assailed the young lawyer’s remnants of self-control. “You’re not trifling with a jury, Mr. Webster. I believe I know as much about the value of facts, this kind of facts, as you do. Consider what you’re up against. You—”
Webster put up a hand in protest, the fingers so unsteady that they dropped the cigarette which he had been on the point of lighting.
“Just a moment!” the old man commanded him. “This Mildred Brace claimed she had suffered injury at your hands. You fired her out of your office. She and her mother afterwards pursued you. She came out here in the middle of the night, where she knew you were. She was murdered, and by a weapon whose blade may have been fashioned from an article you possessed, an article which is now missing, missing since you came to Sloanehurst this time. You were found
bending over the dead body.
“Her mother and her closest friend, her would-be fiancé, say she wrote to you Friday night, addressing her letter to Sloanehurst. The flap of an envelope, identified by her mother and friend, and bearing the impression in ink of her handwriting, is found in the fireplace of your room here. The man who followed her out here, who might have been suspected of the murder, has proved an alibi.
“Now, I ask you, as a lawyer and a sensible man, who’s going to believe that she came out here without having notified you of her coming? Who, as facts stand now, is going to believe anything but that you, desperate with the fear that she would make revelations which would prevent your marriage to Miss Sloane and keep you from access to an immense amount of money which you needed—who’s going to believe you didn’t kill her, didn’t strike her down, there in the night, according to a premeditated plan, with a dagger which, for better protection of yourself, you had manufactured in a way which you hoped would make it beyond identification? Who’s—”
Wilton intervened again.
“What’s your object, Hastings?” he demanded, springing from his chair. “You’re treating Berne as if he’d killed the woman and you could prove it!”
Webster was swaying on his feet, falling a little away from the piano and reeling against it again, his elbows sliding back and forth on its top. He was extremely pale; even his lips, still stiff and twisted to what he thought was a belittling smile, were white. He looked at the detective as a man might gaze at an advancing terror which he could neither resist nor flee. His going to pieces was so complete, so absolute, that it astonished Hastings.
“And you, both of you,” the old man retorted to Wilton’s protest; “you’re treating me as if I were a meddlesome outsider intent on ‘framing up’ a case, instead of the representative of the Sloane family—at least, of Miss Lucille Sloane! Why’s that?”
“Tell me what’s on that paper,” Webster said hoarsely, as if he had not heard the colloquy of the other two.
He held up a trembling hand, but without taking a step. He still swayed, like a man dangled on strings, against the piano.
“Yes; tell him!” urged Wilton.
Hastings handed Webster the envelope flap. Instead of looking at it, Webster let it drop on the piano.
“One of the words,” Hastings said, “is ‘pursuit.’ The other two are uncompleted.”
“And it’s her handwriting, the daughter’s?” Wilton said.
“Beyond a doubt.”
Webster kept his unwinking eyes on the detective, apparently unable to break the spell that held him. For a long moment, he had said nothing. When he did speak, it was with manifest difficulty. His words came in a screaming whisper:
“Then, I’m in desperate shape!”
“Nonsense, man!” Judge Wilton protested, his voice raised, and, going to his side, struck him sharply between the shoulders. “Get yourself together, Berne! Brace up!”
The effect on the collapsing man was, in a way, magical. He stood erect in response to the blow, his elbows no longer seeking support on the piano. He got his eyes away from Hastings and looked at the judge as a man coming out of a sound sleep might have done. For a few seconds, he had one hand over his mouth, as if, by actual manipulation, he would gain control of the muscles of his lips.
“I feel better,” he said at last, dropping the hand from before his face and squaring his shoulders. “I don’t know what hit me. If I’d—you know,” he hesitated, frowning, “if I’d killed the woman, I couldn’t have acted the coward more thoroughly.”
Hastings went through with what he wanted to say:
“About that letter, Mr. Webster: have you any idea, can you advance any theory, as to how that piece of the envelope got into your room?”
Webster was passing his hand across his hair now, and breathing in a deep, gusty fashion.
“Not the faintest,” he replied, hoarsely.
“That’s all, then, gentlemen!” Hastings said, so abruptly that both of them started. “We don’t seem to have gone very far ahead with this business. We won’t, until you—particularly you, Webster—tell me what you know. It’s your own affair—”
“My dear sir—” Judge Wilton began.
“Let me finish!” Hastings spoke indignantly. “I’m no fool; I know when I’m trifled with. Understand me: I don’t say you got that letter, Mr. Webster; I don’t say you ever saw it; I don’t know the truth of it—yet. I do say you’ve deliberately refused to respond to my requests for cooperation. I do say you’d prefer to have me out of this case altogether. I know it, although I’m not clear as to your motives—or yours, judge. You were anxious enough, you said when we talked at Sloane’s door, for me to go on with it. If you’re still of that opinion, I advise you to advise your friend here to be more outspoken with me. I’ll give you this straight: if I can’t be corn, I won’t be shucks. But I intend to be corn. I’m going to conduct this investigation as I see fit. I won’t be turned aside; I won’t play second to your lead!”
He was fine in his intensity. Astounded by his vehemence, the two men he addressed were silent, meeting his keen and steady scrutiny.
He smiled, and, as he did so, they were aware, with an emotion like shock, that his whole face mirrored forth a genuine and warm self-satisfaction. The thing was as plain as if he had spoken it aloud: he had gotten out of the interview what he wanted. Their recognition of this fact increased their blankness.
“You know my position now,” he added, no longer denunciatory. “If you change your minds, that will be great! I want all the help I can get. And, take it from me, young man, you can’t afford to throw away any you can get.”
“Threats?”
Webster had shot out the one word with cool insolence before the judge could begin a conciliatory remark. The change in the lawyer’s manner was so unpleasant, the insult so palpably deliberate, that Hastings could not mistake the purpose back of it. Webster regarded him out of burning eyes.
“No; not threats,” Hastings answered him in a voice that was cold as ice. “I think you understand what I mean. I know too little, and I suspect too much, to drop my search for the murderer of that woman.”
Judge Wilton tried to placate him:
“I don’t see what your complaint is, Hastings. We—”
A smothered, half-articulate cry from Webster interrupted him. Hastings, first to spring forward, caught the falling man by his arm, breaking the force of the fall. He had clutched the edge of the piano as his legs gave under him. That, and the quickness of the detective, made the fall more like a gentle sliding to the floor.
Save for the one, gurgling outcry, no word came from him. He was unconscious, his colourless lips again twisted to that poor semblance of smiling defiance which Hastings had noticed at the beginning of the interview.
X
THE WHISPERED CONFERENCE
Dr. Garnet, reaching Sloanehurst half an hour later, found Webster in complete collapse. He declared that for at least several days the sick man must be kept quiet. He could not be moved to his apartment in Washington, nor could he be subjected to questioning about anything.
“That is,” he explained, “for three or four days—possibly longer. He’s critically ill. But for my knowledge of the terrific shock he’s sustained as a result of the murder, I’d be inclined to say he’d broken down after a long, steady nervous strain.
“I’ll have a nurse out to look after him. Miss Sloane has volunteered, but she has troubles of her own.”
Judge Wilton took the news to Hastings, who was on the front porch, whittling, waiting to see Lucille before returning to Washington.
“I think Garnet’s right,” Wilton added. “I thought, even before last night, Berne acted as if he’d been worn out. And you handled him rather roughly. That sort of questioning, tantalizing, keeping a man on tenterhooks, knocks the metal out of a h
igh-strung temperament like his. I don’t mind telling you it had me pretty well worked up.”
“I’m sorry it knocked him out,” Hastings said. “All I wanted was the facts. He wasn’t frank with me.”
“I came out here to talk about that,” Wilton retorted, brusquely. “You’re all wrong there, Hastings! The boy’s broken all to pieces. He sees clearly, too clearly, the weight of suspicion against him. You’ve mistaken his panic for hostility toward yourself.”
The old man was unconvinced, and showed it.
“Suspicion doesn’t usually knock a man into a cocked hat—unless there’s something to base it on,” he contended.
“All right; I give up,” Wilton said, with a short laugh. “All I know is, he came to me before we saw you in the music room, and told me he wanted me to be there, to see that he omitted not even a detail of what he knew.”
Hastings, looking up from the intricate pattern he was carving, challenged the judge:
“Has it occurred to you that, if he’s not guilty, he might suspect somebody else in this house, might be trying to shield that person?”
In the inconsiderable pause that followed, Wilton’s lips, parting for an incredulous smile, showed the top of his tongue against his teeth, as if set for pronunciation of the letter “S.” Hastings, in a mental flash, saw him on the point of exclaiming: “Sloane!” But, if that was in his mind, he put it down, elaborating the smile to a laughing protest:
“That’s going far afield, isn’t it?”
Hastings smiled in return: “Maybe so, but it’s a possibility—and possibilities have to be dealt with.”
“Which reminds me,” the judge said, now all amiability; “don’t forget I’m always at your service in this affair. I see now that you might have preferred to question Webster alone, in the music room; but my confidence in his innocence blinded me to the fact that you could regard him as actually guilty. I expected nothing but a friendly conference, not a fierce cross-examination.”
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