CHAPTER XXV
MEASURE FOR MEASURE
Miss Jane Maitland had been missing for ten days. In that time not oneword had come from her. The reporter from the _Eagle_ had located her ina dozen places, and was growing thin and haggard following little oldladies along the street--and being sent about his business tartly whenhe tried to make inquiries.
Some things puzzled me more than ever in the light of Wardrop's story.For the third time I asked myself why Miss Letitia denied the loss ofthe pearls. There was nothing in what we had learned, either, to tellwhy Miss Jane had gone away--to ascribe a motive.
How she had gone, in view of Wardrop's story of the cab, was clear. Shehad gone by street-car, walking the three miles to Wynton alone at twoo'clock in the morning, although she had never stirred around the houseat night without a candle, and was privately known to sleep with alight when Miss Letitia went to bed first, and could not see it throughthe transom.
The theory I had formed seemed absurd at first, but as I thought itover, its probabilities grew on me. I took dinner at Bellwood andstarted for town almost immediately after.
Margery had gone to Miss Letitia's room, and Wardrop was pacing up anddown the veranda, smoking. He looked dejected and anxious, and hewelcomed my suggestion that he walk down to the station with me. As wewent, a man emerged from the trees across and came slowly after us.
"You see, I am only nominally a free agent," he said morosely. "They'llpoison me yet; I know too much."
We said little on the way to the train. Just before it came thunderingalong, however, he spoke again.
"I am going away, Knox. There isn't anything in this political game forme, and the law is too long. I have a chum in Mexico, and he wants me togo down there."
"Permanently?"
"Yes. There's nothing to hold me here now," he said.
I turned and faced him in the glare of the station lights.
"What do you mean?" I demanded.
"I mean that there isn't any longer a reason why one part of the earthis better than another. Mexico or Alaska, it's all the same to me."
He turned on his heel and left me. I watched him swing up the path, withhis head down; I saw the shadowy figure of the other man fall into linebehind him. Then I caught the platform of the last car as it passed, andthat short ride into town was a triumphal procession with the wheelsbeating time and singing: "It's all the same--the same--to me--to me."
I called Burton by telephone, and was lucky enough to find him at theoffice. He said he had just got in, and, as usual, he wanted somethingto eat. We arranged to meet at a little Chinese restaurant, where atthat hour, nine o'clock, we would be almost alone. Later on, after thetheater, I knew that the place would be full of people, andconversation impossible.
Burton knew the place well, as he did every restaurant in the city.
"Hello, Mike," he said to the unctuous Chinaman who admitted us. And"Mike" smiled a slant-eyed welcome. The room was empty; it was anunpretentious affair, with lace curtains at the windows and small, veryclean tables. At one corner a cable and slide communicated through ahole in the ceiling with the floor above, and through the aperture,Burton's order for chicken and rice, and the inevitable tea, was barked.
Burton listened attentively to Wardrop's story, as I repeated it.
"So Schwartz did it, after all!" he said regretfully, when I finished."It's a tame ending. It had all the elements of the unusual, and itresolves itself into an ordinary, every-day, man-to-man feud. I'mdisappointed; we can't touch Schwartz."
"I thought the _Times-Post_ was hot after him."
"Schwartz bought the _Times-Post_ at three o'clock this afternoon,"Burton said, with repressed rage. "I'm called off. To-morrow we run aphotograph of Schwartzwold, his place at Plattsburg, and the next day weeulogize the administration. I'm going down the river on an excursionboat, and write up the pig-killing contest at the union butchers'picnic."
"How is Mrs. Butler?" I asked, as his rage subsided to mere rumbling inhis throat.
"Delirious"--shortly. "She's going to croak, Wardrop's going to Mexico,Schwartz will be next governor, and Miss Maitland's body will be foundin a cistern. The whole thing has petered out. What's the use of findingthe murderer if he's coated with asbestos and lined with money? Mike, Iwant some more tea to drown my troubles."
We called up the hospital about ten-thirty, and learned that Mrs. Butlerwas sinking. Fred was there, and without much hope of getting anything,we went over. I took Burton in as a nephew of the dying woman, and I wasglad I had done it. She was quite conscious, but very weak. She told thestory to Fred and myself, and in a corner Burton took it down inshorthand. We got her to sign it about daylight sometime, and she diedvery quietly shortly after Edith arrived at eight.
To give her story as she gave it would be impossible; the ramblings of asick mind, the terrible pathos of it all, is impossible to repeat. Shelay there, her long, thin body practically dead, fighting the deathrattle in her throat. There were pauses when for five minutes she wouldlie in a stupor, only to rouse and go forward from the very word whereshe had stopped.
She began with her married life, and to understand the beauty of it isto understand the things that came after. She was perfectly, ideally,illogically happy. Then one day Henry Butler accepted the nomination forstate treasurer, and with that things changed. During his term in officehe altered greatly; his wife could only guess that things were wrong,for he refused to talk.
The crash came, after all, with terrible suddenness. There had been anall-night conference at the Butler home, and Mr. Butler, in a frenzy atfinding himself a dupe, had called the butler from bed and forciblyejected Fleming and Schwartz from the house. Ellen Butler had beenhorrified, sickened by what she regarded as the vulgarity of theoccurrence. But her loyalty to her husband never wavered.
Butler was one honest man against a complete organization ofunscrupulous ones. His disgrace, imprisonment and suicide at the WhiteCat had followed in rapid succession. With his death, all that was worthwhile in his wife died. Her health was destroyed; she became one of thewretched army of neurasthenics, with only one idea: to retaliate, to payback in measure full and running over, her wrecked life, her deadhusband, her grief and her shame.
She laid her plans with the caution and absolute recklessness of adiseased mentality. Normally a shrinking, nervous woman, she becamecold, passionless, deliberate in her revenge. To disgrace Schwartz andFleming was her original intention. But she could not get the papers.
She resorted to hounding Fleming, meaning to drive him to suicide. Andshe chose a method that had more nearly driven him to madness. Whereverhe turned he found the figures eleven twenty-two C. Sometimes just thenumber, without the letter. It had been Henry Butler's cell numberduring his imprisonment, and if they were graven on his wife's soul,they burned themselves in lines of fire on Fleming's brain. For over ayear she pursued this course--sometimes through the mail, at other timesin the most unexpected places, wherever she could bribe a messenger tocarry the paper. Sane? No, hardly sane, but inevitable as fate.
The time came when other things went badly with Fleming, as I hadalready heard from Wardrop. He fled to the White Cat, and for a weekEllen Butler hunted him vainly. She had decided to kill him, and on thenight Margery Fleming had found the paper on the pillow, she had been inthe house. She was not the only intruder in the house that night. Someone--presumably Fleming himself--had been there before her. She found aladies' desk broken open and a small drawer empty. Evidently Fleming,unable to draw a check while in hiding, had needed ready money. As tothe jewels that had been disturbed in Margery's boudoir I could onlysurmise the impulse that, after prompting him to take them, had failedat the sight of his dead wife's jewels. Surprised by the girl'sappearance, she had crept to the upper floor and concealed herself in anempty bedroom. It had been almost dawn before she got out. No doubt thiswas the room belonging to the butler, Carter, which Margery had reportedas locked that night.
She took a key from the door
of a side entrance, and locked the doorbehind her when she left. Within a couple of nights she had learned thatWardrop was coming home from Plattsburg, and she met him at Bellwood. Wealready knew the nature of that meeting. She drove back to town, halfmaddened by her failure to secure the letters that would have clearedher husband's memory, but the wiser by one thing: Wardrop hadinadvertently told her where Fleming was hiding.
The next night she went to the White Cat and tried to get in. She knewfrom her husband of the secret staircase, for many a political meetingof the deepest significance had been possible by its use. But the doorwas locked, and she had no key.
Above her the warehouse raised its empty height, and it was not longbefore she decided to see what she could learn from its upper windows.She went in at the gate and felt her way, through the rain, to thewindows. At that moment the gate opened suddenly, and a man mutteredsomething in the darkness. The shock was terrible.
I had no idea, that night, of what my innocent stumbling into thewarehouse yard had meant to a half-crazed woman just beyond my range ofvision. After a little she got her courage again, and she pried up anunlocked window.
The rest of her progress must have been much as ours had been, a fewnights later. She found a window that commanded the club, and with threepossibilities that she would lose, and would see the wrong room, she wonthe fourth. The room lay directly before her, distinct in every outline,with Fleming seated at the table, facing her and sorting some papers.
She rested her revolver on the sill and took absolutely deliberate aim.Her hands were cold, and she even rubbed them together, to make themsteady. Then she fired, and a crash of thunder at the very instantcovered the sound.
Fleming sat for a moment before he swayed forward. On that instant sherealized that there was some one else in the room--a man who took anuncertain step or two forward into view, threw up his hands anddisappeared as silently as he had come. It was Schwartz. Then she sawthe door into the hall open, saw Wardrop come slowly in and close it,watched his sickening realization of what had occurred; then a suddenpanic seized her. Arms seemed to stretch out from the darkness behindher, to draw her into it. She tried to get away, to run, even toscream--then she fainted. It was gray dawn when she recovered her sensesand got back to the hotel room she had taken under an assumed name.
By night she was quieter. She read the news of Fleming's death in thepapers, and she gloated over it. But there was more to be done; she wasonly beginning. She meant to ruin Schwartz, to kill his credit, to fellhim with the club of public disfavor. Wardrop had told her that herhusband's letters were with other papers at the Monmouth Avenue house,where he could not get them.
Fleming's body was taken home that day, Saturday, but she had gone toofar to stop. She wanted the papers before Lightfoot could get at themand destroy the incriminating ones. That night she got into the Fleminghouse, using the key she had taken. She ransacked the library, finding,not the letters that Wardrop had said were there, but others, equally ormore incriminating, canceled notes, private accounts, that would haveruined Schwartz for ever.
It was then that I saw the light and went down-stairs. My unluckystumble gave her warning enough to turn out the light. For the rest, thechase through the back hall, the dining-room and the pantry, hadculminated in her escape up the back stairs, while I had fallen down thedumb-waiter shaft. She had run into Bella on the upper floor, Bella, whohad almost fainted, and who knew her and kept her until morning, pettingher and soothing her, and finally getting her into a troubled sleep.
That day she realized that she was being followed. When Edith'sinvitation came she accepted it at once, for the sake of losing herselfand her papers, until she was ready to use them. It had disconcerted herto find Margery there, but she managed to get along. For several dayseverything had gone well: she was getting stronger again, ready for thesecond act of the play, prepared to blackmail Schwartz, and then exposehim. She would have killed him later, probably; she wanted her measurefull and running over, and so she would disgrace him first.
Then--Schwartz must have learned of the loss of the papers from theFleming house, and guessed the rest. She felt sure he had known from thefirst who had killed Fleming. However that might be, he had had her roomentered, Margery chloroformed in the connecting room, and her paperswere taken from under her pillow while she was pretending anesthesia.She had followed the two men through the house and out the kitchen door,where she had fainted on the grass.
The next night, when she had retired early, leaving Margery and medown-stairs, it had been an excuse to slip out of the house. How shefound that Schwartz was at the White Cat, how she got through the sideentrance, we never knew. He had burned the papers before she got there,and when she tried to kill him, he had struck her hand aside.
When we were out in the cheerful light of day again, Burton turned hisshrewd, blue eyes on me.
"Awful story, isn't it?" he said. "Those are primitive emotions, if youlike. Do you know, Knox, there is only one explanation we haven't workedon for the rest of this mystery--I believe in my soul you carried offthe old lady and the Russia leather bag yourself!"
CHAPTER XXVI
LOVERS AND A LETTER
At noon that day I telephoned to Margery.
"Come up," I said, "and bring the keys to the Monmouth Avenue house. Ihave some things to tell you, and--some things to ask you."
I met her at the station with Lady Gray and the trap. My plans for thatafternoon were comprehensive; they included what I hoped to be thesolution of the Aunt Jane mystery; also, they included a little drivethrough the park, and a--well, I shall tell about that, all I am goingto tell, at the proper time.
To play propriety, Edith met us at the house. It was still closed, andeven in the short time that had elapsed it smelled close and musty.
At the door into the drawing-room I stopped them.
"Now, this is going to be a sort of game," I explained. "It's a sort ofbutton, button, who's got the button, without the button. We arelooking for a drawer, receptacle or closet, which shall contain, bunchedtogether, and without regard to whether they should be there or not, asmall revolver, two military brushes and a clothes brush, two or threesoft bosomed shirts, perhaps a half-dozen collars, and a suit ofunderwear. Also a small flat package about eight inches long and threewide."
"What in the world are you talking about?" Edith asked.
"I am not talking, I am theorizing," I explained. "I have a theory, andaccording to it the things should be here. If they are not, it is mymisfortune, not my fault."
I think Margery caught my idea at once, and as Edith was ready foranything, we commenced the search. Edith took the top floor, beingaccustomed, she said, to finding unexpected things in the servants'quarters; Margery took the lower floor, and for certain reasons I tookthe second.
For ten minutes there was no result. At the end of that time I hadfinished two rooms, and commenced on the blue boudoir. And here, on thetop shelf of a three-cornered Empire cupboard, with glass doors andspindle legs, I found what I was looking for. Every article was there. Istuffed a small package into my pocket, and called the two girls.
"The lost is found," I stated calmly, when we were all together in thelibrary.
"When did you lose anything?" Edith demanded. "Do you mean to say, JackKnox, that you brought us here to help you find a suit of gaudy pajamasand a pair of military brushes?"
"I brought you here to find Aunt Jane," I said soberly, taking a letterand the flat package out of my pocket. "You see, my theory worked out._Here_ is Aunt Jane, and _there_ is the money from the Russia leatherbag."
I laid the packet in Margery's lap, and without ceremony opened theletter. It began:
"MY DEAREST NIECE:
"I am writing to you, because I can not think what to say to Sister Letitia. I am running away! I--am--running--away! My dear, it scares me even to write it, all alone in this empty house. I have had a cup of tea out of one of your lovely cups, and a nap on your pretty couc
h, and just as soon as it is dark I am going to take the train for Boston. When you get this, I will be on the ocean, the ocean, my dear, that I have read about, and dreamed about, and never seen.
"I am going to realize a dream of forty years--more than twice as long as you have lived. Your dear mother saw the continent before she died, but the things I have wanted have always been denied me. I have been of those that have eyes to see and see not. So--I have run away. I am going to London and Paris, and even to Italy, if the money your father gave me for the pearls will hold out. For a year now I have been getting steamship circulars, and I have taken a little French through a correspondence school. That was why I always made you sing French songs, dearie: I wanted to learn the accent. I think I should do very well if I could only sing my French instead of speaking it.
"I am afraid that Sister Letitia discovered that I had taken some of the pearls. But--half of them were mine, from our mother, and although I had wanted a pearl ring all my life, I have never had one. I am going to buy me a hat, instead of a bonnet, and clothes, and pretty things underneath, and a switch; Margery, I have wanted a switch for thirty years.
"I suppose Letitia will never want me back. Perhaps I shall not want to come. I tried to write to her when I was leaving, but I had cut my hand in the attic, where I had hidden away my clothes, and it bled on the paper. I have been worried since for fear your Aunt Letitia would find the paper in the basket, and be alarmed at the stains. I wanted to leave things in order--please tell Letitia--but I was so nervous, and in such a hurry. I walked three miles to Wynton and took a street-car. I just made up my mind I was going to do it. I am sixty-five, and it is time I have a chance to do the things I like.
"I came in on the car, and came directly here. I got in with the second key on your key-ring. Did you miss it? And I did the strangest thing at Bellwood. I got down the stairs very quietly and out on to the porch. I set down my empty traveling bag--I was going to buy everything new in the city--to close the door behind me. Then I was sure I heard some one at the side of the house, and I picked it up and ran down the path in the dark.
"You can imagine my surprise when I opened the bag this morning to find I had picked up Harry's. I am emptying it and taking it with me, for he has mine.
"If you find this right away, please don't tell Sister Letitia for a day or two. You know how firm your Aunt Letitia is. I shall send her a present from Boston to pacify her, and perhaps when I come back in three or four months, she will be over the worst.
"I am not quite comfortable about your father, Margery. He is not like himself. The last time I saw him he gave me a little piece of paper with a number on it and he said they followed him everywhere, and were driving him crazy. Try to have him see a doctor. And I left a bottle of complexion cream in the little closet over my mantel, where I had hidden my hat and shoes that I wore. Please destroy it before your Aunt Letitia sees it.
"Good-by, my dear niece. I suppose I am growing frivolous in my old age, but I am going to have silk linings in my clothes before I die.
"YOUR LOVING AUNT JANE."
When Margery stopped reading, there was an amazed silence. Then we allthree burst into relieved, uncontrolled mirth. The dear, little, oldlady with her new independence and her sixty-five-year-old, romantic,starved heart!
Then we opened the packet, which was a sadder business, for it hadrepresented Allan Fleming's last clutch at his waning public credit.
Edith ran to the telephone with the news for Fred, and for the firsttime that day Margery and I were alone. She was standing with one handon the library table; in the other she held Aunt Jane's letter, halftremulous, wholly tender. I put my hand over hers, on the table.
"Margery!" I said. She did not stir.
"Margery, I want my answer, dear. I love you--love you; it isn'tpossible to tell you how much. There isn't enough time in all existenceto tell you. You are mine, Margery--mine. You can't get away from that."
She turned, very slowly, and looked at me with her level eyes. "Yours!"she replied softly, and I took her in my arms.
Edith was still at the telephone.
"I don't know," she was saying. "Just wait until I see."
As she came toward the door, Margery squirmed, but I held her tight. Inthe doorway Edith stopped and stared; then she went swiftly back to thetelephone.
"Yes, dear," she said sweetly. "They are, this minute."
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