CHAPTER X
MOLLY TELLS THE STORY
Friday night I brought the information from Troop in to Mr. Whitney, andknew then for the first time why he wanted it.
Gee, it was an awful thought!
As I sat there between him and Mr. George--Jack Reddy went away, I don'tknow why--with neither of them saying a word, I saw, like it was avision, the Harland case spreading out black and dreadful. It made methink of ink spilled on a map, running slow but sure over places thatwere bright and clean, trickling away in directions no one ever thoughtit would take.
I left soon after Jack, as I could see they wanted to get rid of me.Before I went the old man said to try and get a line on the Whitehalls'servant--I might work it through Iola--and find out what time MissWhitehall came home the night of January fifteenth. If I couldn't manageit I was to let him know and it could be passed on to O'Mally, but hethought I had the best chances. That, as far as he knew now, was thelast he'd need of me. My work at the Black Eagle was done. The next daywould be my last one there. Say nothing to anyone about it--simply dropout. The reappearance of Miss McCalmont was his affair.
In the next twenty-four hours things came swift, as they do in thesecases. You'll have a long spell with the wires dead, then suddenlythey'll begin to hum. And you've got to be ready when it happens--jumpquick as lightning. I learned that in the Hesketh case.
The first chance came that night, was sitting in the parlor when Ireached home--Iola! She had the hope of a new job--a good one--andwanted a recommendation letter from Miss Whitehall, and naturally, beingIola, couldn't go unless I came along and held the sponge.
It was so pat you'd think fate had fixed it, and it worked out as pat asit began. While Iola was in the parlor getting her letter I stayed inthe kitchen--very meek and humble--and when the servant came back--Deliawas her name--started in to help her with the dishes. We grew neighborlyover the work, she washing and I wiping, and what was more natural thanthat we'd work around to the affairs of the ladies. They'd lost alltheir money and Delia was going to leave. How did that happen now? Sure,it's the feller that killed himself done it--didn't I know? I only hadto let her talk, she was the flannel-mouth Irish kind. Here are thefacts as they went in to Whitney & Whitney the next day.
Miss Whitehall was generally very punctual, always getting home abouthalf-past six. On the night of January fifteenth she didn't get backtill a quarter to eight. Such a delay was evidently not expected as Mrs.Whitehall became extremely nervous, couldn't keep still or settle toanything. At a quarter to eight, hearing the key inserted in the door,Delia had gone into the hall, and seen Miss Whitehall enter. She wasvery pale and agitated. Delia had never seen her look so upset. Shewalked up the passage, met her mother and without a word they went intoa bedroom and shut the door.
At dinner she ate nothing and hardly spoke at all--looked and acted asif she was sick. The next morning when she read of the Harland suicidein the paper she nearly fainted, and after that was in bed for threedays, prostrated by the shock, she told Delia.
I guessed this would be my last piece of work on the Harland case and Iwasn't sorry. There was an awfulness coming over it that was too muchfor me. But it wasn't, not by a long shot. I was in deeper than I knew,so deep--but that comes later. I'll go on now to tell what happened thatlast night I was in the Black Eagle Building.
It was coming on for closing time and I was making ready to go. I'dcleared up all my little belongings, and was standing by the switchboardpressing the tray cloth careful into my satchel, when I heard a stepstop at the door and a cheerful voice sing out:
"Just in the nick of time. Spreading her wings ready for flight."
There in the doorway, filling it up with his big shape, was Tony Ford.For the first moment I got a sort of setback. Mightn't anyone--thinkingof home and husband and finding yourself face to face with a gunman?
With one hand still in the satchel I stood eyeing him, not a word out ofme, solemn as a tombstone. It didn't phaze him a bit. Teetering from hisheels to his toes, a grin on him like the slit in a post box, he stoodthere as calm as if he'd never come nearer murder than to spell it inthe fourth grade.
"It just came to me a few moments ago--as I was passing by here--thatthe prettiest and smartest hello girl in New York mightn't have gonehome yet," he said.
Now if you're experienced about men--and take it from me hello girls_are_--you never believe a word a chap like Tony Ford hands out. Buthearing those words and looking at his broad, conceited face, it came tome that these were true. He'd been passing, suddenly thought of me, anddropped in to see if I was there.
"Well," I answered, "here I am. What of it?"
"First of it," he said, "is how long are you going to be there?"
"Till I get this satchel closed," I said and pressing hard on the catchit snapped shut.
"And second of it," he went on, "is where are you going afterward?"
My first thought was I was going to get away from _him_ as fast as theInterborough System could take me--and then I had a second thought. Whyhad Tony Ford dropped in so opportune at my closing hour? To ask me todinner. And why couldn't I, hired to do work for Whitney & Whitney, do alittle extra for good measure? I knew they wanted to hear Ford's ownaccount of what he did the evening of January fifteenth, but that theycouldn't get it. What was the matter with me, Molly Babbitts, getting itfor them?
It flashed into my head like lightning and it didn't flash out again.Frightened? Not a bit! Keyed up though--like your blood begins to runquick. I'd taken some risky dares in my time but it was a new one on meto dine with a murderer. But honest, besides the pleasure of doingsomething for the old man, there was a creepy sort of thrill about itthat strung up my nerves and made me feel like I was going to shootNiagara in a barrel.
"Going home, eh?" said he. "It's a long, cold ride home."
"That's the first truth you've said," I answered. "And for showing meyou can do it I'll offer you my grateful thanks."
I began to put on my gloves, he standing in the doorway watching.
"To break the journey with a little bit of dinner might be a good idea."
"It might," I said, "if anybody had it."
"I have it. I've had it all day."
"What's the good of having it if you haven't got the price." I picked upmy satchel and looked cool and pitying at him. "Unless you'recalculating to take me to the bread line."
"There you wrong me," he answered. "Nothing but the best for you," andputting his hand into his vest pocket he drew out a roll of bills,folding them back one by one and giving each a name, "Canvas back,terrapin, champagne, oyster crabs, alligator pears, anything the ladycalls for."
Those greenbacks, flirted over so carelessly by his strong, brownfingers, gave me the horrors. Blood money! I drew back. If he hadn'tbeen blocking up the entrance, I think I'd have quit it and made a breakfor the open. He glanced up and saw my face, and I guess it lookedqueer.
"What are you staring so for? They're not counterfeit."
The feeling passed, and anyway I couldn't get out without squeezing byhim and I didn't want to touch him any more than I would a spider.
"I was calculating how much of it I could eat," I said. "My folks don'tlike me to dine out so when I do I try to catch up with all the timesI've refused."
"Come along then," he said, stepping back from the doorway. "I know abully little joint not far from here. You can catch up there if you'vebeen refusing dinners since the first telephone was installed."
So off we trotted into the night, I and the murderer!
Can you see into my mind--it was boiling with thoughts like a Hammambath with steam? What would Soapy say? He'd be raging, but after all hecouldn't do anything more than rage. You can't divorce a woman fordining with a murderer, especially if she only does it once. Mr.Whitney'd be all right. If I got what I intended to get he'd pass mecompliments that would take O'Mally's pride down several pegs. As formyself--Tony Ford wouldn't want to murder me. There was nothing in it,and judging b
y the pleasant things he said as we walked to therestaurant, you'd think to keep me alive and well was the dearest wishof his heart.
The restaurant was one of those quiet foreign ones, in an old dwellinghouse, sandwiched in among shops and offices. It was a decent place--I'dbeen there for lunch with Iola--in the daytime full of business people,and at night having the sort of crowd that gathers where boarding housesand downtown apartments and hotels for foreigners give up their dead.
We found a table in a corner of the front room, with the wall to oneside of us and the long curtains of the window behind me. There were alot of people and a few waiters, one of whom Mr. Ford summoned with ahaughty jerk of his head. Then he sprawled grandly in his chair withmenus and wine lists, telling the waiter how to serve things that werehot and ice things that were cold till you'd suppose he'd been a chefalong with all his other jobs. He put on a great deal of side, like hewas a cattle king from Chicago trying to impress a Pilgrim Father fromBoston. The only way it impressed me was to make me think a gunman withblood on his soul wasn't so different from an innocent clerk withnothing to trouble him but the bill at the end.
As he was doing this I took off my veil and gloves, careful to pull offmy wedding ring--I wasn't going to have that sidetracking him--andthinking how I'd begin.
We were through the soup and on the fish when I decided the time wasripe to ring the bell and start. I did it quietly:
"I guess you've got a new place?"
"No, I'm still one of the unemployed. Don't I act like it?" He smiled, apatronizing smirk, pleased he'd got the hello girl guessing.
"You act to me like the young millionaire cutting his teeth onBroadway."
He lifted his glass of white wine and sipped it:
"I inherited some money this winter from an uncle up-state. You're notdrinking your wine. Don't you like it?"
In his tone, and a shifting of his eyes to the next table, I caught asuggestion of something not easy, put on. Maybe if you hadn't known whatI did you wouldn't have noticed what was plain to me--he didn't like thesubject.
"No, I never touch wine," I answered. "I don't want to speak unfeelinglybut it was mighty convenient your uncle died just as your businessfailed. Wasn't it too bad about Miss Whitehall?"
"Very unfortunate, poor girl. Bad for me but worse for her."
"She had no idea it was coming, I suppose?"
He looked up sudden and sharp:
"_What_ was coming?"
His small gray eyes sent a glance piercing into mine, full of a quick,arrested attention.
"Why--why--the ruin of Mr. Harland."
"Oh, _that_," he was easy again, "I thought you meant the suicide. Idon't know whether she knew or not. Waiter"--he turned and made one ofthose grandstand plays to the waiter--"take this away and bring on thenext."
"She'd have known that night as soon as she heard he was dead but Iguess she was so paralyzed she didn't think of herself."
"I don't know what she thought of. She wasn't in the office."
I dropped my eyes to my plate. Eliza crossing on the ice didn't haveanything over me in the way she picked her steps.
"Oh, she'd gone before it happened?"
"Yes. I left early myself that night--before she did. I was halfway homewhen I remembered some papers I'd said I'd go over and had to hike backfor them. She was gone when I got there. And just think how gruesome itwas, when I was going down in the elevator Harland jumped, struck thestreet a few minutes before I reached the bottom."
Could you beat it! Knowing what had been done in that closed office,knowing what was going to be done while he was sliding down from storyto story and then getting it off that way, as smooth as cream. A sickfeeling rose up inside me. I wanted to get away from him and see anhonest face and feel the cold, fresh air. Dining with a gunman wasn't aseasy as I'd thought.
Tony Ford, leaning across his plate, tapped on the cloth with his knifehandle to emphasize his words:
"He must have been up that side corridor waiting. When he heard the gateshut and the car go down, he came out, walked to the hall window andjumped. Ugh!" he gave a wriggling movement with his broad shoulders."_That_ takes nerve!"
I suppose sometimes in crowds you pass murderers, but you don't knowthem for what they are. Probably never again if I lived to be a hundred,would I sit this way, not only conversing with one, but conversing abouthis crime. It wasn't what you'd look back on afterward as one of thehappy memories of your life, but it was a red-letter experience. I had avision of telling my grandchildren how once, when I was young, I talkedwith one of the blackest criminals of his day on the subject of the deedhe'd helped commit.
"It's a fortunate thing he left no family." It was something to say, andI had to keep him moving along the same line. "You'd suppose he'd havemarried again, being wealthy and handsome."
Mr. Ford, who was lighting a cigarette, smiled to himself and said: "Soyou would."
"And I guess he could have had his pick. Maybe he cared for someone whodidn't reciprocate."
He threw away the match and lolled back in his chair.
"Maybe," he said with a meaning secret air.
It wouldn't have taken a girl just landed at Ellis Island to see that hewanted to be questioned. It was out on him like a rash. So not todisappoint him and also being curious I asked:
"_Was_ he in love with someone?"
He said nothing but blew a smoke ring into the air, staring at it as itfloated away. I waited while he blew another ring, the look on his faceas conscious as an actor's when he has the middle of the stage. Then hespoke in a weighty tone:
"Harland was in love--madly in love."
This was news to me. I hadn't looked for it and I didn't know where itmight lead. I didn't have to hide my interest; he expected it, wasgratified when he saw me open-mouthed. But he had to do a little moreacting, and tapping on his wine glass with his forefinger said languidto the waiter:
"Fill it up--the lady won't take any." Then, his eyes following thesmoke rings--"Nobody had an idea of it--nobody but me. I knew Harlandbetter than many who considered themselves his friends."
"_You_ knew him," it came out of me before I thought, or I'd never haveput the accent on the "you" that way.
"I knew him well. He'd--er--taken rather a fancy to me."
I couldn't say anything--the man he'd killed! Fortunately he didn'tnotice me. The wine he'd taken was beginning to make him less sharp. Notthat he was under the influence, but he was not so clear-headed and hisnatural vanity was coming up plainer every minute. He went on:
"I met him quite casually in the Black Eagle Building and then--well,something about me attracted him. Anyway we grewfriendly--and--er--that's how I stumbled on his secret."
"His love?"
He inclined his head majestically:
"You can see how it was possible when I tell you the lady was MissWhitehall."
Believe _me_ I got a thrill! There was a second when I had to bite on myunder lip to keep an exclamation from bursting out. _This_ wassomething, something that no one had had a suspicion of, something thatmight lead--I couldn't follow it then--that time, what I had to do wasto find out everything he knew.
"Are you sure?" I breathed out incredulous.
"Perfectly. He was daffy about her."
"You just guessed it?"
He suddenly wheeled in his chair and looked at me, with that samepiercing, almost fierce look I'd seen before. The wine he'd beendrinking showed red in his face, and in his manner there was a roughnessthat was new.
"Of course I guessed it. A man like Harland doesn't go round _telling_you he's in love. But I'm a pretty sharp chap. Many things don't escapeme. He didn't have to tell me. I was on the spot and I _saw_."
Why didn't Iola see? She was on the spot too and when it came to romanceno man that breathes has anything on Iola. I ventured as carefully as ifI was walking on the subway tracks, and didn't know which was the thirdrail.
"He tried to keep it a secret?"
"Oh, he tried an
d I guess he did except from little Tony."
"What did she feel--Miss Whitehall--about him?"
"Not the way he did."
"Perhaps there was someone else?"
A meaning look came over his face and he said softly:
"Perhaps there was."
"Who?"
I don't know whether it was an interest that stole into my voice withoutmy knowledge or some instinct that warned him, but suddenly he pulledhimself up. The lounging swagger dropped from him, and he gave me a lookfrom under his eyebrows, sullen and questioning. Then like a big animal,restless and uneasy, he glanced over the littered-up table, pushing hisnapkin in among the glasses and muttering something about the wine. Ididn't want him to know I was watching and hunted in my lap for mygloves. But to say I was keen isn't the word, for I could see into himas if his chest was plate glass and what I saw was that he was scaredhe'd said too much.
"How should I know?" he suddenly exclaimed, as if there'd been no pause."I don't know anything about Miss Whitehall. Just happening to be roundin the office I caught on to Harland's infatuation. Anyone would. Shemay have a dozen strings to her bow for all I know or care." He gave mean investigating look--how was I taking it?--and I smiled innocentlyback. That reassured him and he twisted round in his chair, snapping hisfingers at the waiter, "Here, lively--my bill. Don't keep us waiting allnight."
The waiter who'd been hovering round watching us eating through thoselayers of food darted off like a dog freed from the leash. Mr. Fordsubsided back into his chair. He was more at ease, but not all right yetas his words proved.
"Don't you go quoting me, now, as having said anything about Harland andMiss Whitehall. He's in his grave, poor chap, and I don't like to figureas having talked over his private affairs. Doesn't look well, you know."
"Sure," I said comfortably. "I'm on."
My gloves were buttoned and my veil down. Mr. Ford, leaning his elbowson the table, was looking at me with what he thought was a romanticgaze, long and deep. In my opinion he looked like a fool--men mostly dowhen they're trying to be sentimental on a heavy meal. But I wasn'tworrying about that. What was engaging me was how I could shake himwithout telling him who I was or where I lived. In the first excitementof corralling him I'd never thought of it. Now the result of my rash actwas upon me. If you ever dine with a murderer, take my advice--when youstart in lay your pipes for getting out.
As we waited for that bill I was as uncomfortable as if I had to pay it.Suppose I couldn't escape and he followed me home? Babbitts would belike the mad elephant in the Zoo, and from what I knew of Tony Ford hemight draw a pistol and make me a widow.
"Have you enjoyed your dinner, little one?" said he, soft and slushy.
"Fine!" I answered, pulling my coat off the chair back.
"We've got to be good friends, haven't we?"
"Pals," I said.
"Don't you think we know each other well enough for you to tell me yourname?"
"They say there's a great charm about the unknown," I answered. "And Iwant to be as charming as it's possible with the restrictions nature'sput upon me."
"You don't need any extra trimmings," said he. "You might as well tellme, for I can always find out at the Black Eagle Building."
Could he? I was Miss Morgenthau there, and today was positively my lastappearance. If I could get away from him now I was safe from his everfinding me.
The waiter brought the bill with murmurings that it was to be paid atthe desk. We rose, Mr. Ford feeling in his pocket, the waiter trying tolook listless, as if money was no treat to him. I moved across the roomand reconnoitered. The desk, with a fat gray-haired woman sitting behindit, was close by the door that led into the hall. Several people wereout there putting on coats and hats and jabbering together in a foreignlingo. I sauntered carelessly through the doorway, seeing, out of thetail of my eye, Mr. Ford put down a twenty-dollar bill on the counter.The gray-haired woman began to pull out little drawers and make change.One of the people in the hall opened the front door and they beganfiling out. I went with them, slow on their heels at first, then fast,dodging between them, then like a streak down the steps to the sidewalkand up the street.
It was an awful place to hide in--all lights and show windows; a fishmight as well try to conceal itself in a parlor aquarium. There wasn't aniche that you could have squeezed a cat into and I _had_ to getsomewhere. Suddenly I saw a narrow flight of stairs with a large set ofteeth hanging over them and up that I went, stumbling on my skirt till Ireached a landing and flattened back against the dentist's door. It waslocked or I would have gone in, so scared I was of that man--gone in,and if the price of concealment had been a set of false teeth I make nodoubt I'd have ordered them.
_It was locked or I would have gone in._]
After a while I ventured down, took a look out and stole away, dodgingalong dark side streets and round corners with my muff up against myface, till I struck a cab stand. Not a word came out of me till I wassafe inside a taxi, and then I almost whispered my address to thechauffeur.
As we sped along I quieted down and began to think--going over what he'dsaid, connecting things up. And as I thought, bouncing round in thatempty vehicle like one small pea in a pod that was too big, I saw itplainer and plainer, as if one veil after another was being lifted.Harland was in love with her--she'd not gone down in the elevator--she'dstayed there! she'd been there! She'd--
We went over a chuck hole and I bounced up nearly to the roof, but thesmothered cry that came from me wasn't because of that. It was because I_saw_--the whole thing was as clear as daylight. _She'd_ been the lurethat brought him to the Azalea Woods Estates, _she'd_ been the personthat kept him in the front office while Barker came down from the storyabove!
The Black Eagle Mystery Page 10
