What would be the result of it all—the result for him? He remembered the gown she had worn to a ball, something of the palest yellow—how the blue of her eyes and the gleam of her hair had been emphasized by the simple perfection of the gown. What would she say if he went back to—
He forced himself down to reality.
He entered the bank and discovered that Morley had not reported for work. Having presented his card to a chilly, monosyllabic little man, he was shown, after a short wait, into a private office where, surrounded by several tons of mahogany, Mr. Joseph Beale reigned supreme.
Mr. Beale struck him as a fattened duplicate of Mr. Illington, thin of lip, hard of eye, slow and precise in enunciation. In spite of his stoutness, he had the same long, slender fingers, easy to grasp with, and the same mechanical Punch-and-Judy smile. When he greeted the detective, his voice was like a slow, thin stream that had run over ice.
“I’m not on a pleasant mission, Mr. Beale,” Braceway began. “It’s something in the line of duty.”
The bank president looked at the card which had been handed to him.
“Ahem!” he said, with a lip smile. “You’re a detective?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Mr. Braceway, what is it? Let’s see whether I can do anything for you. At least, I assume you want—”
This ruffled Braceway.
“I want nothing,” he said crisply; “and I’m afraid I’m going to do something for you.”
The banker stiffened.
“What is it?”
“It’s one of your employés; in fact, it’s your receiving teller.”
“What! Henry Morley! Impossible, sir! Outrageous! Preposterous!”
“Just a moment, if you please,” put in Braceway. “I was going to say that I was positive about nothing. I’ve been compelled to suspect, however, that Mr. Morley might be short in his accounts. There are unexplained circumstances which seem to connect Mr. Morley with the murder of a woman. Therefore—”
“One of the—one of my employés a thief and a murderer!” Mr. Beale pushed back his chair and fell to patting his knees with his fists. “Great God, Mr.—” He looked at the card again. “Why, Mr. Braceway, I can’t believe it. It would be treason to this bank, treason to all its traditions!” He had not suffered such an attack of garrulity for the past twenty years. “And Morley, his family, his birth! By George, sir, his blood! Are we to lose all faith in blood?”
“As I wanted to say,” Braceway managed to break in, “the murder of Mrs. George S. Withers in Furmville, North Carolina, led—”
This was the crowning blow. Mr. Beale gasped several times in rapid succession, not entirely hiding his slight, cold resemblance to a fish.
“Mrs. Withers!” he got out at last. “The daughter of my old friend, Will Fulton! Fulton, one of our depositors!”
He was reduced to silent horror.
Braceway took advantage of his condition and outlined the circumstances in considerable detail.
“If he’s short in his accounts,” he concluded, “the motive for the murder is established. And, if he’s been stealing from the bank, you want to know it.”
Mr. Beale pushed a bell-button.
“Charles,” he said to the chilly little man, “tell Mr. Jones I want to speak to him. Our first vice-president,” he explained to Braceway.
Mr. Jones, evidently dressed and ready for the part of president of the bank whenever Mr. Beale should see fit to die, came in and, with frowns, “dear-dears” and tongue-clucking, heard from the president the story of what had befallen the Anderson National.
“How soon,” inquired Beale, “can we give this—er—gentleman an answer, a definite answer, as to whether Morley, the unspeakable scoundrel, is a thief?”
Mr. Jones considered sadly.
“Perhaps, very soon; two o’clock or something like that—and again it may take time to find anything. Suppose we say five or half-past five this afternoon; to be safe, you understand. Half-past five?”
“Very well,” agreed Beale, and turned to Braceway: “Will that be satisfactory?”
“Perfectly.”
Braceway left them, their mask-like faces plainly damaged by anxiety; their cool, slow utterance slightly humanized by the realization that they must act at once. In fact, as the detective closed the door of the private office, Mr. Jones was reaching with long, slender fingers for the telephone. They would need the best accountant they could find for the quick work they had promised Braceway.
CHAPTER XX
THE DISCOVERY OF THE JEWELS
Braceway returned to the lobby of his hotel, and, having bought half a dozen New York newspapers, settled down to wait for a report from Golson’s bureau concerning Morley’s movements. A little after eleven he was called to the telephone.
“Your man caught the eight o’clock train for Baltimore.” Golson himself gave the information. “Delaney also caught it. They got to Baltimore at nine. Your man took a taxi straight to the shop of an old fellow named Eidstein, reaching there at twenty minutes past nine. He and Eidstein went into Eidstein’s private office back of the shop and stayed there for over an hour, in fact until about half-past ten. Your man came out and went to a down-town hotel. He was there when Delaney, still sticking to him, managed to get a wire to me telling me what I’ve just told you.”
“Fine!” said Braceway. “What was he doing in the hotel? Did he meet anybody, or write anything?”
“Delaney didn’t say.”
“Who’s this Eidstein, a pawn broker?”
“No; he’s a dealer in antiques: furniture, old gold, old jewels, anything old. He stands well over there. He’s all right. I know all about him.”
“That’s funny, isn’t it?”
“What’s funny?”
“That he didn’t go to a pawnshop.”
“Keep your shirt on,” laughed Golson. “The day’s not over yet.”
“No doubt about that. What about Corning, the loan-shark in Virginia?”
“I’ve got a man over there, just as you asked. Shall I keep him on?”
“Sure!” snapped Braceway. “Suppose Morley gives Delaney the slip in Baltimore and doubles back to Corning’s! Keep him there all day.”
He left the telephone and went up to Bristow’s room, No. 717. When he knocked, the door was opened by a young woman in the uniform and cap of a trained nurse.
“I beg your pardon,” he began, “I got the wrong room, I’m afraid. I—”
“This is Mr. Bristow’s room,” she said in a low tone. “Are you Mr. Braceway?”
“Yes.”
“Come in, then, please.” She stepped back and held open the door. “Mr. Bristow’s still very weak, but he told me to let you in. He said he must see you as soon as you arrived.”
Braceway saw that there was no bed in the room, and asked where the sick man was. The nurse pointed to a closed door leading into the adjoining room.
“What’s the matter with him?” he asked. “By George! He hasn’t had a hemorrhage, has he?”
“Yes, sir. That’s exactly what he has had. The doctor says all he needs now is rest. He doesn’t think there’s any real danger. Will you go in to see him?”
She quietly opened the door to the sickroom. Braceway went in on tiptoes, but Bristow stirred and turned toward him when the nurse put up the window shade.
“You’ll have to lie still, Mr. Bristow,” she cautioned on her way out. “It’s so important to keep these ice-packs in place.”
“Thanks, Miss Martin; I shall get on,” he answered in a voice so weak that it startled Braceway.
“I don’t think you’d better talk,” said his visitor. “Really, I wouldn’t.”
Bristow gave him a wry smile.
“It’s nothing serious; just a—pretty bad hemorrhage,” he said, finding it nec
essary to pause between words. “The boneheaded Mowbray—my physician in Furmville, you know—was right for once. He said—this might happen.”
“I’m going out and let you sleep,” Braceway insisted, displaying the average man’s feeling of absolute helplessness in a sickroom.
“No, not yet. The fellow I had in—knows his business—put ice on the lung and on my heart—gave me something to lessen the heart action.”
“And you’re not in pain?”
“No. I’ll be all right in—in a little—One thing I wanted to—tell you. Quite important—really.”
He mopped his forehead with tremulous, futile little dabs which accentuated his weakness. Braceway instinctively drew his chair closer to the bed so as to catch all of the scarcely audible words.
“Just occurred to me,” the sick man struggled on, “just—before I had this hemor—Ought to have somebody, extra man, working with Platt and Delaney. Tell you why: if Morley mailed the jewelry that—night of the murder, he wasn’t fool—enough to mail it to himself or to his own—house. If he visits anybody today—we ought to have an extra man with Delaney. Delaney can keep on Morley’s trail—extra man can watch and—if necessary, question anybody Morley visits or consults with. Then—”
“Correct!” exclaimed Braceway. “Right you are! Who says you’re sick? Why, your bean’s working fine. Don’t try to talk any more. I’m going out to get busy on that very suggestion.”
“Another thing,” Bristow said, lifting a feeble hand to detain his visitor. “Come up here at six—this evening, will you? I’ll have my strength back by that time. Don’t laugh. I will. I know I will. I’ve had hemorrhages before this.”
“What do you want to do at six?”
“Help you—be with you when you question Morley. Promise me. I’ll be in shape by that time.”
Braceway promised, and went into the outer room.
“Do you think,” he asked Miss Martin, “there’s the slightest chance of his getting up this evening, or tonight?”
“I really don’t know,” she smiled. “There may be. It all depends on his courage, his nerve. Anyway, he won’t be able to do much, to exert himself.”
“He’s got the nerve,” Braceway said admiringly; “got plenty of it. By the way, how did it happen? How do you happen to be here?”
“It seems that at about a quarter to ten Mr. Bristow called the downstairs operator and asked her to send a bellboy to his room, number seven-seventeen. When the boy came in here, Mr. Bristow was lying across the foot of his bed, pressing to his mouth a towel that was half-saturated with blood.
“He had dropped his saturated handkerchief on the bathroom floor. And he evidently had been bleeding when he was at the telephone. He was awfully weak, so weak that the boy thought he was dying. He couldn’t speak. The boy remembered having seen the house physician, Dr. Carey, at a late breakfast in the café, and got him up here at once. Dr. Carey called me to take the case as soon as he had seen Mr. Bristow.
“I think that’s all. Of course, the bed that was in here and all the other soiled things had been removed by the time I came in; and the management insisted on his taking the extra room.”
“Thank you,” said Braceway. “I’m glad to get the details. You’ll see that he has everything he needs, won’t you?”
A few minutes later, when Miss Martin entered the bedroom to lower the window shade, Bristow told her:
“I think I’ll sleep now. Shut the door and, on no account, let—anybody, doctor or anybody else—wake me up. You call me at six, please. What time is it now? Twelve-fifteen? Remember, you’ll let me sleep?”
Braceway went to his own room to brush up for lunch. Although he had not taken the trouble to tell Bristow, he had already arranged with Golson to have the “extra man” on the job. He was taking no chances. He smiled when he thought of the sick man’s eagerness to give him advice.
It occurred to him that he should have communicated with George Withers. The funeral was over; had been set for yesterday. He would send him a wire as soon as he went downstairs.
“By George!” Braceway communed with himself. “If I hadn’t been his friend, I probably would have worried him. Even if Morley has embezzled from the bank, how closely have I coupled him with the crime? Not very closely unless he tries to pawn, or produces, some of the stolen stuff—not any more closely than George has coupled himself with it! George acted like such an ass!”
He was about to leave the room when, for the first time, he looked the situation squarely in the face and made an important acknowledgment to himself. There had been in his mind, ever since that train had pulled out of Furmville with George’s rattling whisper still sounding in his ear, the desire and the plan to safeguard George. He had felt, on this trip, that, if his theory about the case broke down, it might be advisable, even necessary, to produce all the evidence possible to shield his friend either from ugly gossip or from the down-right charge of murder. He did not believe for a moment that Withers was guilty.
If things went wrong in the next eight or ten hours, if it was proved that Morley had nothing to do with the murder, the thing he wanted above all else was a story from Morley that he, Morley, had seen the struggle in front of No. 5 as Withers had described it. Somehow, that story about the struggle had struck him as the weakest link in George’s whole story.
He had resolutely refused to consider it up to now, but he no longer could dodge it. He had come to Washington to catch the criminal. But he also had come with the subconscious plan of getting at anything that would help Withers.
He stood for an instant, jangling the room key in his hand. A frown drew his brows together. The frown deepened. He unlocked the door, went back into the room, and put down his cane, leaning it against the wall near the bureau.
He reached the lobby in time to hear a callboy paging him. There was a telegram for him. It read:
“Mr. S. S. Braceway, Willard Hotel, Washington, D. C.
“Here.
(Signed) “Frank Abrahamson.”
“What the devil does he mean?” he asked himself several times. “What’s this ’here’ about?”
He thought a long time before he remembered having asked the Furmville pawn broker to try to recall where he had seen the bearded man in another disguise, a disguise which, apparently, had consisted of nothing but a black moustache and bushy eyebrows. And Abrahamson had promised to wire him if he did remember. The “here” meant it was in Furmville that he had seen the moustached man.
He went to the telegraph desk and wrote out a message:
“Mr. Frank Abrahamson, 329 College Street, Furmville, N. C.
“Silence.
(Signed) “Braceway.”
“One-word telegrams!” he smiled grimly. “Thrifty fellows, these chosen people.”
He found the telephone booths and called up Golson.
“Got anything from Baltimore?” he inquired.
“Just been talking to Delaney on long-distance,” Golson answered without enthusiasm.
“Well! What is it?”
“Your man gave him the slip a quarter of an hour ago, and he wants—”
“Gave him the slip!” shouted Braceway. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t like it any more than you do,” snapped Golson. “But that’s what happened: gave him the slip.”
“How?”
“I didn’t get that exactly. Delaney merely said he lost him in the hotel. Your man was evidently waiting there for a message or phone call. If he received it, Delaney was fooled. Anyway, he’s gone now; and Delaney wants to know what he’s to do. What’ll I tell him?”
“Tell him to go to hell!” Braceway said hotly. “No! Tell him to go back to Eidstein’s and wait there until Morley shows up. That’s his only chance to pick him up again.”
“O.K.,” growled Golson.
“Say! Put somebody on the job of watching for the incoming trains from Baltimore, will you? Right away?”
“Platt’s just come into the office. I’ll send him to the station at once.”
“What time did Delaney lose sight of Morley?”
“Twelve forty-five.”
Braceway hung up the receiver and looked at his watch. It was ten minutes past one. He had fifty minutes to kill before keeping an appointment he had made with Major Ross, chief of the Washington police.
After a quick lunch, he strolled over to the news-stand and picked up the early edition of an afternoon paper.
The first headlines he saw were:
STOLEN GEMS FOUND IN SUSPECT’S YARD
Under these lines was a dispatch from Furmville giving the information that plain-clothes men of the Furmville police force had discovered the emerald-and-diamond lavalliere worn by Mrs. Enid Fulton Withers the night she was murdered. The jewelry had been found in the yard of the house where Perry Carpenter had lived. The lavaliere was concealed in tall grass immediately beneath the window of Carpenter’s room, and thus had at first escaped the eyes of the police. When found, it was intact except for the six links that had been broken from the chain and dropped the night of the murder.
Braceway threw down the paper and went to the Pennsylvania Avenue door.
“Damn!” he addressed mentally the top of the Washington monument. “More grist for Bristow’s mill! I’m not crazy, am I? I’m not that crazy, that’s sure!”
He set out to keep his appointment with Major Ross. After all, he felt reasonably sure of himself, and he had made up his mind to carry things through as he originally had intended. His shoulders were well back, his step elastic and quick. He flung off discouragement as if it had been an over-coat too warm for that weather.
He would not permit Delaney’s fiasco to annoy him. The Baltimore police had been tipped to watch the pawnshops; Delaney probably would pick Morley up again; and there was the extra man yet to be heard from. Besides, Morley would break down and confess cleanly after his fright on being arrested. Things were not so bad after all.
CHAPTER XXI
BRISTOW SOLVES A PROBLEM
The Classic Mystery Novel Page 87
