The Case of Jennie Brice

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER X

  I have said before that I do not know anything about the law. Ibelieve that the Ladley case was unusual, in several ways. Mr. Ladleyhad once been well known in New York among the people who frequent thetheaters, and Jennie Brice was even better known. A good many lawyers,I believe, said that the police had not a leg to stand on, and I knowthe case was watched with much interest by the legal profession.People wrote letters to the newspapers, protesting against Mr. Ladleybeing held. And I believe that the district attorney, in taking himbefore the grand jury, hardly hoped to make a case.

  But he did, to his own surprise, I fancy, and the trial was set forMay. But in the meantime, many curious things happened.

  In the first place, the week following Mr. Ladley's arrest my housewas filled up with eight or ten members of a company from the GaietyTheater, very cheerful and jolly, and well behaved. Three men, Ithink, and the rest girls. One of the men was named Bellows, JohnBellows, and it turned out that he had known Jennie Brice very well.

  From the moment he learned that, Mr. Holcombe hardly left him. Hewalked to the theater with him and waited to walk home again. He tookhim out to restaurants and for long street-car rides in the mornings,and on the last night of their stay, Saturday, they got gloriouslydrunk together--Mr. Holcombe, no doubt, in his character ofLadley--and came reeling in at three in the morning, singing. Mr.Holcombe was very sick the next day, but by Monday he was all right,and he called me into the room.

  "We've got him, Mrs. Pitman," he said, looking mottled but cheerful."As sure as God made little fishes, we've got him." That was all hewould say, however. It seemed he was going to New York, and might begone for a month. "I've no family," he said, "and enough money to keepme. If I find my relaxation in hunting down criminals, it's a harmlessand cheap amusement, and--it's my own business."

  He went away that night, and I must admit I missed him. I rented theparlor bedroom the next day to a school-teacher, and I found theperiscope affair very handy. I could see just how much gas she used;and although the notice on each door forbids cooking and washing inrooms, I found she was doing both: making coffee and boiling an eggin the morning, and rubbing out stockings and handkerchiefs in herwash-bowl. I'd much rather have men as boarders than women. The womenare always lighting alcohol lamps on the bureau, and wanting the bedturned into a cozy corner so they can see their gentlemen friends intheir rooms.

  Well, with Mr. Holcombe gone, and Mr. Reynolds busy all day and halfthe night getting out the summer silks and preparing for remnant day,and with Mr. Ladley in jail and Lida out of the city--for I saw inthe papers that she was not well, and her mother had taken her toBermuda--I had a good bit of time on my hands. And so I got in thehabit of thinking things over, and trying to draw conclusions, as Ihad seen Mr. Holcombe do. I would sit down and write things out asthey had happened, and study them over, and especially I worried overhow we could have found a slip of paper in Mr. Ladley's room with alist, almost exact, of the things we had discovered there. I used toread it over, "rope, knife, shoe, towel, Horn--" and get more and morebewildered. "Horn"--might have been a town, or it might not have been.There _was_ such a town, according to Mr. Graves, but apparently hehad made nothing of it. _Was_ it a town that was meant?

  The dictionary gave only a few words beginning with "horn"--hornet,hornblende, hornpipe, and horny--none of which was of any assistance.And then one morning I happened to see in the personal column of oneof the newspapers that a woman named Eliza Shaeffer, of Horner, hadday-old Buff Orpington and Plymouth Rock chicks for sale, and itstarted me to puzzling again. Perhaps it had been Horner, and possiblythis very Eliza Shaeffer--

  I suppose my lack of experience was in my favor, for, after all, ElizaShaeffer is a common enough name, and the "Horn" might have stood for"hornswoggle," for all I knew. The story of the man who thought ofwhat he would do if he were a horse, came back to me, and for an houror so I tried to think I was Jennie Brice, trying to get away and hidefrom my rascal of a husband. But I made no headway. I would never havegone to Horner, or to any small town, if I had wanted to hide. Ithink I should have gone around the corner and taken a room in my ownneighborhood, or have lost myself in some large city.

  It was that same day that, since I did not go to Horner, Horner cameto me. The bell rang about three o'clock, and I answered it myself.For, with times hard and only two or three roomers all winter, I hadnot had a servant, except Terry to do odd jobs, for some months.

  There stood a fresh-faced young girl, with a covered basket in herhand.

  "Are you Mrs. Pitman?" she asked.

  "I don't need anything to-day," I said, trying to shut the door. Andat that minute something in the basket cheeped. Young women sellingpoultry are not common in our neighborhood. "What have you there?" Iasked more agreeably.

  "Chicks, day-old chicks, but I'm not trying to sell you any. I--may Icome in?"

  It was dawning on me then that perhaps this was Eliza Shaeffer. I ledher back to the dining-room, with Peter sniffing at the basket.

  "My name is Shaeffer," she said. "I've seen your name in the papers,and I believe I know something about Jennie Brice."

  Eliza Shaeffer's story was curious. She said that she was postmistressat Horner, and lived with her mother on a farm a mile out of the town,driving in and out each day in a buggy.

  On Monday afternoon, March the fifth, a woman had alighted at thestation from a train, and had taken luncheon at the hotel. Shetold the clerk she was on the road, selling corsets, and was muchdisappointed to find no store of any size in the town. The woman, whohad registered as Mrs. Jane Bellows, said she was tired and would liketo rest for a day or two on a farm. She was told to see Eliza Shaefferat the post-office, and, as a result, drove out with her to the farmafter the last mail came in that evening.

  Asked to describe her--she was over medium height, light-haired, quickin her movements, and wore a black and white striped dress with a redcollar, and a hat to match. She carried a small brown valise that MissShaeffer presumed contained her samples.

  Mrs. Shaeffer had made her welcome, although they did not usually takeboarders until June. She had not eaten much supper, and that night shehad asked for pen and ink, and had written a letter. The letter wasnot mailed until Wednesday. All of Tuesday Mrs. Bellows had spent inher room, and Mrs. Shaeffer had driven to the village in the afternoonwith word that she had been crying all day, and bought some headachemedicine for her.

  On Wednesday morning, however, she had appeared at breakfast, eatenheartily, and had asked Miss Shaeffer to take her letter to thepost-office. It was addressed to Mr. Ellis Howell, in care of aPittsburgh newspaper!

  That night when Miss Eliza went home, about half past eight, the womanwas gone. She had paid for her room and had been driven as far asThornville, where all trace of her had been lost. On account of thedisappearance of Jennie Brice being published shortly after that, sheand her mother had driven to Thornville, but the station agent therewas surly as well as stupid. They had learned nothing about the woman.

  Since that time, three men had made inquiries about the woman inquestion. One had a pointed Vandyke beard; the second, from thedescription, I fancied must have been Mr. Graves. The third withoutdoubt was Mr. Howell. Eliza Shaeffer said that this last man hadseemed half frantic. I brought her a photograph of Jennie Brice as"Topsy" and another one as "Juliet". She said there was a resemblance,but that it ended there. But of course, as Mr. Graves had said, by thetime an actress gets her photograph retouched to suit her, it doesn'tparticularly resemble her. And unless I had known Jennie Brice myself,I should hardly have recognized the pictures.

  Well, in spite of all that, there seemed no doubt that Jennie Bricehad been living three days after her disappearance, and that wouldclear Mr. Ladley. But what had Mr. Howell to do with it all? Why hadhe not told the police of the letter from Horner? Or about the womanon the bridge? Why had Mr. Bronson, who was likely the man with thepointed beard, said nothing about having traced Jennie Brice toHorner?


  I did as I thought Mr. Holcombe would have wished me to do. I wrotedown on a clean sheet of note-paper all that Eliza Shaeffer said: thedescription of the black and white dress, the woman's height, and therest, and then I took her to the court-house, chicks and all, and shetold her story there to one of the assistant district attorneys.

  The young man was interested, but not convinced. He had her storytaken down, and she signed it. He was smiling as he bowed us out. Iturned in the doorway.

  "This will free Mr. Ladley, I suppose?" I asked.

  "Not just yet," he said pleasantly. "This makes just eleven placeswhere Jennie Brice spent the first three days after her death."

  "But I can positively identify the dress."

  "My good woman, that dress has been described, to the last stiltedarch and Colonial volute, in every newspaper in the United States!"

  That evening the newspapers announced that during a conference at thejail between Mr. Ladley and James Bronson, business manager at theLiberty Theater, Mr. Ladley had attacked Mr. Bronson with a chair, andalmost brained him.