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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of No Clue, by James Hay
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: No Clue
+       A Mystery Story
+
+Author: James Hay
+
+Release Date: August 23, 2008 [EBook #26396]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NO CLUE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D Alexander, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"NO CLUE!"
+
+_A Mystery Story_
+
+BY
+
+JAMES HAY, JR.
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE WINNING CLUE," "THE MELWOOD MYSTERY"
+
+
+[Illustration: Publisher's logo]
+
+
+NEW YORK
+DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
+1920
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1920
+BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.
+
+
+TO
+WILLIAM ("BUCK") HAY
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                 PAGE
+
+    I. THE GREY ENVELOPE                   1
+
+   II. THE WOMAN ON THE LAWN               8
+
+  III. THE UNEXPECTED WITNESS             20
+
+   IV. HASTINGS IS RETAINED               35
+
+    V. THE INTERVIEW WITH MRS. BRACE      48
+
+   VI. ACTION BY THE SHERIFF              62
+
+  VII. THE HOSTILITY OF MR. SLOANE        75
+
+ VIII. THE MAN WHO RAN AWAY               91
+
+   IX. THE BREAKING DOWN OF WEBSTER      103
+
+    X. THE WHISPERED CONFERENCE          122
+
+   XI. MOTIVES REVEALED                  138
+
+  XII. HENDRICKS REPORTS                 151
+
+ XIII. MRS. BRACE BEGINS                 161
+
+  XIV. MR. CROWN FORMS AN ALLIANCE       177
+
+   XV. IN ARTHUR SLOANE'S ROOM           195
+
+  XVI. THE BRIBE                         213
+
+ XVII. "THE WHOLE TRUTH"                 224
+
+XVIII. THE MAN WHO RODE AWAY             238
+
+  XIX. "PURSUIT!"                        246
+
+   XX. DENIAL OF THE CHARGE              261
+
+  XXI. "AMPLE EVIDENCE"                  273
+
+
+
+
+"NO CLUE!"
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE GREY ENVELOPE
+
+
+Catherine Brace walked slowly from the mantel-piece to the open window
+and back again. Within the last hour she had done that many times,
+always to halt before the mantel and gaze at the oblong, grey envelope
+that leaned against the clock. Evidently, she regarded it as a powerful
+agency. An observer would have perceived that she saw tremendous things
+come out of it--and that she considered them with mingled satisfaction
+and defiance.
+
+Her attitude, however, betrayed no hint of hesitation. Rather, the
+fixity of her gaze and the intensity of her mental concentration threw
+into high relief the hardness of her personality. She was singularly
+devoid of that quality which is generally called feminine softness.
+
+And she was a forceful woman. She had power. It was in her lean,
+high-shouldered, ungraceful figure. It was in her thin, mobile lips and
+her high-bridged nose with its thin, clean-cut nostrils. She impressed
+herself upon her environment. Standing there at the mantel, her hands
+clasped behind her, she was so caught up by the possibilities of the
+future that she succeeded in imparting to the grey envelope an almost
+animate quality.
+
+She became aware once more of voices in the next room: a man's light
+baritone in protest, followed by the taunt of her daughter's laugh.
+Although she left the mantel with lithe, swift step, it was with unusual
+deliberation that she opened the communicating door.
+
+Her voice was free of excitement when, ignoring her daughter's caller,
+she said:
+
+"Mildred, just a moment, please."
+
+Mildred came in and closed the door. Her mother, now near the window
+across the room, looked first at her and then at the grey envelope.
+
+"I thought," Mrs. Brace said, "you'd forgotten you were going to mail
+it."
+
+"Why didn't you mail it yourself?" The tone of that was cool insolence.
+
+Mother and daughter were strikingly alike--hair piled high in a wide
+wave above the forehead; black eyes too restless, but of that gleaming
+brilliance which heralds a refusal to grow old. So far, however, the
+daughter's features had not assumed an aspect of sharpness, like the
+mother's. One would have appraised the older woman
+vindictive--malevolent, possibly.
+
+But in the younger face the mouth greatly softened, almost concealed,
+this effect of calculating hardness. Mildred Brace's lips had a softness
+of line, a vividness of colouring that indicated emotional depths
+utterly foreign to her mother.
+
+They bore themselves now as if they commented on a decision already
+reached, a momentous step to which they had given immense consideration.
+
+"I didn't mail it," Mrs. Brace answered her daughter's query, "because I
+knew, if you mailed it, you'd do as you'd said you wanted to do."
+
+There was frank emphasis on the "said."
+
+"Your feet don't always follow your intelligence, you know."
+
+"I've been thinking about the thing," Mildred retorted, looking over her
+mother's shoulder into the summer night. "What's the use?"
+
+"What's the use!" Mrs. Brace echoed, incredulous.
+
+"Just that."
+
+"We've been all over it! You know what it means to you--to both of us."
+
+They spoke in low tones, careful that the man in the living room should
+not hear.
+
+"My dear mother," Mildred said, with a return of her cool insolence,
+"you display a confidence hardly warranted by your--and
+our--man-experience."
+
+She yawned slightly.
+
+There was a harsher note in her mother's reply.
+
+"He can't refuse. He can't!"
+
+Mildred stared at the grey envelope a full three minutes. Mrs. Brace,
+wordless, showing no uneasiness as to the outcome, waited for her to
+speak.
+
+"It's no use, mother," she said at last. "We can't manage it--him--this
+thing. It's too late."
+
+The flat finality, the dreariness, of that announcement angered the
+older woman. Calmness fell from her. She came away from the window
+slowly, her hands clasped tightly at her back, the upper part of her
+body bending forward a little, her thin nostrils expanding and
+contracting to the force of her hurried breathing like leaves shaken in
+the wind. The curl of her thin lips added a curious ferocity to the
+words that passed them. She spoke, only when her face was within a few
+inches of Mildred's.
+
+"No use!" she said contemptuously, her lowered voice explosive with
+passion. "Why? And why too late? Have you no self-respect, no will, no
+firmness? Are you all jelly and----"
+
+She got hold of herself with remarkable effectiveness, throwing off the
+signs of her wrath as suddenly as they had appeared. She retreated a
+step and laughed, without mirth.
+
+"Oh, well," she said, "it's your party, not mine, after all. But, in
+future, my dear, don't waste your time and mine in school-girl heroics."
+
+She completed her retreat and stood again at the window. Her
+self-restraint was, in a way, fiercer than her rage--and it affected her
+daughter.
+
+"You see," she concluded, "why I didn't mail it. I knew you wouldn't do
+the very thing you'd outlined."
+
+Mildred looked at the envelope again. The pause that followed was broken
+by the man in the other room.
+
+"Mildred," he called.
+
+Mrs. Brace laughed silently. Mildred, seeing that ridicule, recoiled.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" she demanded.
+
+Her mother pointed to the communicating door.
+
+"I was thinking of _that_," she said, "for life--and," she looked toward
+the grey envelope, "the other thing."
+
+"I don't see----" Mildred began, and checked herself, gazing again at
+the envelope.
+
+Her mother turned swiftly and stood looking into the night. The man
+called again and was not answered. The two women were motionless. There
+was no sound in the room, save the ticking of the clock on the mantel.
+Two minutes passed--three.
+
+Mildred went toward the mantel, put out her hand, withdrew it. She
+became conscious of the excessive heat and touched her forehead with her
+handkerchief. She glanced at her mother's motionless figure, started to
+speak, closed her parted lips. Indecision shook her. She put out her
+hand again, picked up the envelope and stood tapping it against her left
+palm.
+
+Mrs. Brace, without moving, spoke at last:
+
+"It's a few minutes of twelve. If you catch the midnight collection,
+he'll get it, out there, by five o'clock tomorrow afternoon."
+
+There was another pause.
+
+Mildred went slowly to the door leading into the living room, and once
+more she was on the point of speaking.
+
+Mrs. Brace was drumming her fingers on the window ledge. The action
+announced plainly that she had finished with the situation. Mildred put
+her hand on the knob, pulled the door half-open, closed it again.
+
+"I've changed my mind," she said, dreariness still in her voice. "He
+can't refuse."
+
+Her mother made no comment.
+
+Mildred went into the living room.
+
+"Gene," she said, with that indifference of tone which a woman employs
+toward a man she despises, "I'm going down to mail this."
+
+"Well, I'll swear!" he quarrelled sullenly. "Been in there all this time
+writing to him!"
+
+"Yes! Look at it!" she taunted viciously, and waved the envelope before
+his eyes. "Sloanehurst!"
+
+Taking up his hat, he went with her to the elevator.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE WOMAN ON THE LAWN
+
+
+Mr. Jefferson Hastings, unsuspecting that he was about to be confronted
+with the most brutal crime in all his experience, regretted having come
+to "Sloanehurst." He disapproved of himself unreservedly. Clad in an
+ample, antique night-shirt, he stood at a window of the guest-room
+assigned to him and gazed over the steel rims of his spectacles into the
+hot, rainy night. His real vision, however, made no attempt to pierce
+the outer darkness. His eyes were turned inward, upon himself, in
+derision of his behaviour during the past three hours.
+
+A kindly, reticent gentleman, who looked much older than his fifty-three
+years, he made it his habit to listen rather than talk. His wide fame as
+a criminologist and consulting detective had implanted no egotism in
+him. He abhorred the spotlight.
+
+But tonight Judge Wilton, by skilful use of query, suggestion and
+reminder, had tempted him into talking "shop." He had been lured into
+the rôle of monologuist for the benefit of his host, Arthur Sloane. He
+had talked brilliantly, at length, in detail, holding his three hearers
+in spellbound and fascinated interest while he discoursed on crimes
+which he had probed and criminals whom he had known.
+
+Not that he _thought_ he had talked brilliantly! By no means! He was
+convinced that nine-tenths of the interest manifested in his remarks had
+been dictated by politeness. Old Hastings was just that sort of person;
+he discounted himself. He was in earnest, therefore, in his present
+self-denunciation. He sighed, remembering the volume of his discourse,
+the awful length of time in which he had monopolized the conversation.
+
+But his modesty was not his only admirable characteristic. He had, also,
+a dependable sense of humour. It came to his relief now--he thought of
+his host, a chuckle throttling the beginnings of a second sigh deep down
+in his throat.
+
+This was not the first time that Arthur Broughton Sloane had provoked a
+chuckle, although, for him, life was a house of terror, a torture
+chamber constructed with fiendish ingenuity. Mr. Sloane suffered from
+"nerves." He was spending his declining years in the arduous but
+surprisingly successful task of being wretched, irritable and
+ill-at-ease.
+
+The variety of his agonies was equalled only by the alacrity with which
+he tested every cure or remedy of which he happened to hear. He agreed
+enthusiastically with his expensive physicians that he was neurasthenic,
+psychasthenic and neurotic.
+
+His eyes were weak; his voice was weak; his spirit was weak. He shivered
+all day with terror at the idea of not sleeping at night. Every evening
+he quivered with horror at the thought of not waking up next morning.
+And yet, despite these absorbing, although not entirely delightful,
+preoccupations, Mr. Sloane was not without an object in life.
+
+In fact, he had two objects in life: the happiness of his daughter,
+Lucille, and the study of crime and criminals. The latter interest had
+brought Hastings to the Sloane country home in Virginia. Judge Wilton,
+an old friend of the wrecked and wealthy Mr. Sloane, had met the
+detective on the street in Washington and urged:
+
+"Go down to Sloanehurst and spend Saturday night. I'll be there when you
+arrive. Sloane's got his mind set on seeing you; and you won't regret
+it. His library on criminology will be a revelation, even to you."
+
+And Hastings, largely because he shrank from seeming ungracious, had
+accepted Mr. Sloane's subsequent invitation.
+
+Climbing now into the old-fashioned four-poster bed, he thought again of
+his conversation-spree and longed for self-justification. He sat up,
+sheetless, reflecting:
+
+"As a week-ender, I'm a fine old chatter-box!--But young Webster got me!
+What did he say?--'The cleverer the criminal, the easier to run him
+down. The thug, acting on the spur of the moment, with a blow in the
+dark and a getaway through the night, leaves no trace behind him. Your
+"smart criminal" always overreaches himself.'--A pretty theory, but
+wild. Anyway, it made me forget myself; I talked my old fool head off."
+
+He felt himself blush.
+
+"Wish I'd let Wilton do the disproving; he was anxious enough."
+
+A mental picture of Sloane consoled him once more.
+
+"Silk socks and gingham gumption!" he thought. "But he's honest in his
+talk about being interested in crime. The man loves crime!--Good thing
+he's got plenty of money."
+
+He fell asleep, in a kind of ruminative growl:
+
+"Made a fool of myself--babbling about what _I_ remembered--what _I_
+thought! I'll go back to Washington--in the morning."
+
+Judge Wilton's unsteady voice, supplemented by a rattling of the
+doorknob, roused him. He had thrust one foot out of bed when Wilton came
+into the room.
+
+"Quick! Come on, man!" the judge instructed, and hurried into the hall.
+
+"What's wrong?" Hastings demanded, reaching for his spectacles.
+
+Wilton, on his way down the stairs, flung back:
+
+"A woman hurt--outside."
+
+From the hall below came Mr. Sloane's high-pitched, complaining tones:
+
+"Unfathomable angels! What do you say?--Who?"
+
+Drawing on shoes and trousers, the detective overtook his host on the
+front verandah and followed him down the steps and around the northeast
+corner of the house. He noticed that Sloane carried in one hand an
+electric torch and in the other a bottle of smelling salts. It was no
+longer raining.
+
+Rounding the corner, they saw, scarcely fifteen yards from the
+bay-window of the ballroom, the upturned face of a woman who lay
+prostrate on the lawn. Lights had been turned on in the house, making a
+glow which cut through the starless night.
+
+The woman did not move. Judge Wilton was in the act of kneeling beside
+her.
+
+"Hold on!" Hastings called out. "Don't disturb her--if she's dead."
+
+"She is dead!" said Wilton.
+
+"Who is she?" The detective, trying to find signs of life, put his hand
+over her heart.
+
+"I don't know," Wilton answered the question. "Do you, Sloane?"
+
+"Of course, I don't!"
+
+Hastings said afterwards that Sloane's reply expressed astonished
+resentment that he should be suspected of knowing anybody vulgar enough
+to be murdered on his lawn.
+
+The detective drew back his hand. His fingers were dark with blood.
+
+At that moment Berne Webster, Lucille Sloane's fiancé, came from the
+rear of the house, announcing breathlessly:
+
+"No 'phone connection--this time of night, judge.--It's past
+midnight.--I sent chauffeur--Lally--for the sheriff."
+
+Hastings stood up, his first, cursory examination concluded.
+
+"No doubt about it," he said. "She's dead.--Bring a blanket, somebody!"
+
+Mr. Sloane's nerves had the best of him by this time. He trembled like
+a man with a chill, rattling the bottle of smelling salts against the
+metal end of his electric torch. He had on slippers and a light dressing
+gown over his pajamas.
+
+Wilton was fully dressed, young Webster collarless but wearing a black,
+light-weight lounging jacket. Hastings was struck with the different
+degrees of their dress, or undress.
+
+"Who found her?" he asked, looking at Webster.
+
+"Judge Wilton--and I," said Webster, so short of breath that his chest
+heaved.
+
+"How long ago?"
+
+Wilton answered that:
+
+"A few minutes, hardly five minutes. I ran in to call you and Sloane."
+
+"And Mr.--you, Mr. Webster?"
+
+"The judge told me to--to get the sheriff--by telephone."
+
+Hastings knelt again over the woman's body.
+
+"Here, Mr. Sloane," he ordered, "hold that torch closer, will you?"
+
+Mr. Sloane found compliance impossible. He could not steady his hand
+sufficiently.
+
+"Hold that torch, judge," Hastings prompted.
+
+"It's knocked me out--completely," Sloane said, surrendering the torch
+to Wilton.
+
+Webster, the pallor still on his face, a look of horror in his eyes,
+stood on the side of the body opposite the detective. At brief
+intervals he raised first one foot, then the other, clear of the ground
+and set it down again. He was unconscious of making any movement at all.
+
+Hastings, thoroughly absorbed in the work before him, went about it
+swiftly, with now and then brief, murmured comment on what he did and
+saw. Although his ample night-shirt, stuffed into his equally baggy
+trousers, contributed nothing but comicality to his appearance, the
+others submitted without question to his domination. There was about him
+suddenly an atmosphere of power that impressed even the little group of
+awe-struck servants who stood a few feet away.
+
+"Stabbed," he said, after he had run his hands over the woman's figure;
+"died instantly--must have. Got her heart.--Young--not over twenty-five,
+would you say?--Not dead long.--Anybody call a doctor?"
+
+"I told Lally to stop by Dr. Garnet's house and send him--at once,"
+Webster said, his voice low, and broken. "He's the coroner, too."
+
+Hastings continued his examination. The brief pause that ensued was
+broken by a woman's voice:
+
+"Pauline! Pauline!"
+
+The call came from one of the upstairs windows. Hearing it, a woman in
+the servant group hurried into the house.
+
+Webster groaned: "My God!"
+
+"Frantic fiends! It gets worse and worse!" Sloane objected shrilly. "My
+nerves! And Lucille's annoyed--shocked!"
+
+He held the smelling bottle to his nose, breathing deeply.
+
+"Here! Take this!" Hastings directed, and put up his hand abruptly.
+
+Sloane had so gone to pieces that the movement frightened him. He
+stepped back in such obvious terror that a hoarse guffaw of involuntary
+ridicule escaped one of the servants. The detective, finding that his
+kneeling posture made it difficult to put his handkerchief back into his
+trousers pocket, had thrust it toward Sloane. That gentleman having so
+suddenly removed himself out of reach, Hastings stuck the handkerchief
+into Judge Wilton's coat-pocket.
+
+Arthur Sloane, the detective said later, never forgave him that
+unexpected wave of the handkerchief--and the servant's ridiculing laugh.
+
+Hastings looked up to Wilton.
+
+"Did you find any weapon?"
+
+"I didn't look--didn't take time."
+
+"Neither did I," young Webster added.
+
+Hastings, disregarding the wet grass, was on his hands and knees,
+searching. He accomplished a complete circuit of the body, his
+round-shouldered, stooping figure making grotesque, elephantine shadows
+under the light of the torch as he moved about slowly, not trusting his
+eyes, but feeling with his hands every inch of the smallest, half-lit
+spaces.
+
+Nobody else took part in the search. Having accepted his leadership from
+the outset, they seemed to take it for granted that he needed no help.
+Mentally benumbed by the horror of the tragedy, they stood there in the
+quiet, summer night, barren of ideas. They were like children, waiting
+to be instructed.
+
+Hastings stood erect, pulling and hauling at his trousers.
+
+"Can't find a knife or anything," he said. "Glad I can't. Hope he took
+it with him."
+
+"Why?" asked Sloane, through chattering teeth.
+
+"May help us to find him--may be a clue in the end."
+
+He was silent a moment, squinting under the rims of his spectacles,
+looking down at the figure of the dead woman. He had already covered the
+face with the hat she had worn, a black straw sailor; but neither he nor
+the others found it easy to forget the peculiar and forbidding
+expression the features wore, even in death. It was partly fear, partly
+defiance--as if her last conscious thought had been a flitting look
+into the future, an exulting recognition of the certain consequences of
+the blow that had struck her down.
+
+Put into words, it might have been: "You've murdered me, but you'll pay
+for it--terribly!"
+
+A servant handed Hastings the blanket he had ordered. He looked toward
+the sky.
+
+"I don't think it will rain any more," he said. "And it's best to leave
+things as they are until the coroner arrives.--He'll be here soon?"
+
+"Should get here in half an hour or so," Judge Wilton informed him.
+
+The detective arranged the blanket so that it covered the prone form
+completely, leaving the hat over the face as he had first placed it.
+With the exception of the hat, he had disturbed no part of the apparel.
+Even the folds of the raincoat, which fell away from the body and showed
+the rain-soaked black skirt, he left as he had found them. The white
+shirtwaist, also partly exposed now, was dry.
+
+"Anybody move her hat before I came out?" he asked; "you, judge; or you,
+Mr. Webster?"
+
+They had not touched it, they said; it was on the grass, beside her
+head, when they discovered the body, and they had left it there.
+
+Again he was silent, brows drawn together as he stood over the murdered
+woman. Finally, he raised his head swiftly and, taking each in turn,
+searched sharply the countenances of the three men before him.
+
+"Does--didn't anybody here know this woman?" he asked.
+
+Berne Webster left his place at the opposite side of the body and came
+close to Hastings.
+
+"I know who she is," he said, his voice lower even than before, as if he
+wished to keep that information from the servants.
+
+Hastings' keen scrutiny had in it no intimation of surprise. Waiting for
+Webster to continue, he was addressed by the shivering Mr. Sloane:
+
+"Mr. Hast--Mr. Hastings, take charge of--of things. Will you? You know
+about these things."
+
+The detective accepted the suggestion.
+
+"Suppose we get at what we know about it--what we all know. Let's go
+inside." He turned to the servants: "Stay here until you're called. See
+that nothing is disturbed, nothing touched."
+
+He led the way into the house. Sloane, near collapse, clung to one of
+Judge Wilton's broad shoulders. It was young Webster who, as the little
+procession passed the hatrack in the front hall, caught up a raincoat
+and threw it over the half-clad Hastings.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE UNEXPECTED WITNESS
+
+
+In the library Hastings turned first to Judge Wilton for a description
+of the discovery of the body. The judge was in better condition than the
+others for connected narrative, Arthur Sloane had sunk into a morris
+chair, where he sighed audibly and plied himself by fits and starts with
+the aroma from the bottle of smelling salts. Young Webster, still
+breathing as if he had been through exhausting physical endeavour, stood
+near the table in the centre of the room, mechanically shifting his
+weight from foot to foot.
+
+Wilton, seated half-across the room from Hastings, drew, absently, on a
+dead cigar-stump. A certain rasping note in his voice was his only
+remaining symptom of shock. He had the stern calmness of expression that
+is often seen in the broad, irregularly-featured face in early middle
+age.
+
+"I can tell you in very few words," he said, addressing the detective
+directly. "We all left this room, you'll remember, at eleven o'clock. I
+found my bedroom uncomfortable, too warm. Besides, it had stopped
+raining. When I noticed that, I decided to go out and smoke my
+good-night cigar. This is what's left of it."
+
+He put a finger to the unlighted stump still between his lips.
+
+"What time did you go out?" asked Hastings.
+
+"Probably, a quarter of an hour after I'd gone upstairs--fifteen or
+twenty minutes past eleven, I should guess."
+
+"How did you go out--by what door?"
+
+"The front door. I left it unlocked, but not open. At first I paced up
+and down, on the south side of the house, under the trees. It was
+reasonably light there then--that is to say, the clouds had thinned a
+little, and, after my eyes had got accustomed to it, I had no trouble in
+avoiding the trees and shrubbery.
+
+"Then a cloud heavier than the others came up, I suppose. Anyway, it was
+much darker. There wasn't a light in the house, except in my room and
+Berne Webster's. Yours was out, I remember. I passed by the front of the
+house then, and went around to the north side. It was darker there, I
+thought, than it had been under the trees on the south side."
+
+"How long had you been out then, altogether?"
+
+"Thirty or forty minutes." He looked at his watch. "It's a quarter past
+twelve now. Let me see. I found the body a few minutes after I changed
+over to the north side. I guess I found it about five minutes before
+midnight--certainly not more than twenty minutes ago."
+
+Hastings betrayed his impatience only by squinting under his spectacles
+and down the line of his nose, eying Wilton closely.
+
+"All right, judge! Let's have it."
+
+"I was going along slowly, very slowly, not doing much more than feeling
+my way with my feet on the close-shaven grass. It was the darkest night
+I ever saw. Literally, I couldn't have seen my hand in front of me.
+
+"I had decided to turn about and go indoors when I was conscious of some
+movement, or slight sound, directly in front of me, and downward, at my
+feet. I got that impression."
+
+"What movement? You mean the sound of a fall?"
+
+"No; not that exactly."
+
+"A footstep?"
+
+"No. I hadn't any definite idea what sort of noise it was. I did think
+that, perhaps, it was a dog or a cat. Just then my foot came in contact
+with something soft. I stooped down instinctively, immediately.
+
+"At that moment, that very second, a light flashed on in Arthur's
+bedroom. That's between this room and the big ballroom--on this floor,
+of course. That light threw a long, illuminating shaft into the murky
+darkness, the end of it coming just far enough to touch me and--what I
+found--the woman's body. I saw it by that light before I had time to
+touch it with my hand."
+
+The judge stopped and drew heavily on his dead cigar.
+
+"All right. See anything else?" Hastings urged.
+
+"Yes; I saw Berne Webster. He had made the noise which attracted my
+attention."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"He must have. He was stooping down, too, on the other side of the body,
+facing me, when the light went on----"
+
+Sloane, twisting nervously in his chair, cut into Wilton's narrative.
+
+"I can put this much straight," he said in shrill complaint: "I turned
+on the light you're talking about. I hadn't been able to sleep."
+
+"Let's have this, one at a time, if you don't mind, Mr. Sloane," the
+detective suggested, watching Webster.
+
+The young man, staring with fascinated intensity at Judge Wilton, seemed
+to experience some new horror as he listened.
+
+"He was on the other side of it," the judge continued, "and practically
+in the same position that I was. We faced each other across the body. I
+think that describes the discovery, as you call it. We immediately
+examined the woman, looking for the wound, and found it. When we saw she
+was dead, we came in to wake you--and try to get a doctor. I told Berne
+to do that."
+
+During the last few sentences Hastings had been walking slowly from his
+chair to the library door and back, his hands gouged deep into his
+trouser-pockets, folds of his night-shirt protruding from and falling
+over the waistband of the trousers, the raincoat hanging baggily from
+his shoulders. Ludicrous as the costume was, however, the old man so
+dominated them still that none of them, not even Wilton, questioned his
+authority.
+
+And yet, the thing he was doing should have appealed to them as
+noteworthy. A man of less power could not have accomplished it. Coming
+from a sound sleep to the scene of a murder, he had literally picked up
+these men who had discovered it and who must be closely touched by it,
+had overcome their agitation, had herded them into the house and, with
+amazing promptness, had set about the task of getting from them the
+stories of what they knew and what they had done.
+
+Appreciating his opportunity, he had determined to bring to light at
+once everything they knew. He devoted sudden attention now to Webster,
+whom he knew by reputation--a lawyer thirty years of age, brilliant in
+the criminal courts, and at present striving for a foothold in the more
+remunerative ranks of civil practice. He had never been introduced to
+him, however, before meeting him at Sloanehurst.
+
+"Who touched that body first--Mr. Webster?" he demanded, his slow
+promenade uninterrupted as he kept his eyes on the lawyer's.
+
+"Judge--I don't know, I believe," Webster replied uncertainly. "Who did,
+judge?"
+
+"I want your recollection," Hastings insisted, kindly in spite of the
+unmistakable command of his tone. "That's why I asked you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"For one thing, it might go far toward showing who was really first on
+the scene."
+
+"I see; but I really don't remember. I'm not sure that either of us
+touched the body--just then. I think we both drew back, instinctively,
+when the light flashed on. Afterwards, of course, we both touched
+her--looking for signs of life."
+
+The detective came to a standstill in front of Webster.
+
+"Who reached the body first? Can you say?"
+
+"No. I don't think either was first. We got there together."
+
+"Simultaneously?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But I'm overlooking something. How did you happen to be there?"
+
+"That's simple enough," Webster said, his brows drawn together, his eyes
+toward the floor, evidently making great effort to omit no detail of
+what had occurred. "I went to my room when we broke up here, at eleven.
+I read for a while. I got tired of that--it was close and hot. Besides,
+I never go to bed before one in the morning--that is, practically never.
+And I wasn't sleepy.
+
+"I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to twelve. Like the judge, I
+noticed that it had stopped raining. I thought I'd have a better night's
+sleep if I got out and cooled off thoroughly. My room, the one I have
+this time, is close to the back stairway. I went down that, and out the
+door on the north side."
+
+"Were you smoking?" Hastings put the query sharply, as if to test the
+narrator's nerves.
+
+Webster's frown deepened.
+
+"No. But I had cigarettes and matches with me. I intended to smoke--and
+walk about."
+
+"But what happened?"
+
+"It was so much darker than I had thought that I groped along with my
+feet, much as Judge Wilton did. I was making my way toward the front
+verandah. I went on, sliding my feet on the wet grass."
+
+"Any reason for doing that, do you remember? Are there any obstructions
+there, anything but smooth, open lawn?"
+
+"No. It was merely an instinctive act--in pitch dark, you know."
+
+Webster, his eyes still toward the floor, waited for another question.
+Not getting it, he resumed:
+
+"My foot struck something soft. I thought it was a wet cloak, something
+of that sort, left out in the rain. I hadn't heard a thing. And I had no
+premonition of anything wrong. I bent over, with nothing more than sheer
+idle curiosity, to put my hand on whatever the thing was. And just then
+the light went on in Mr. Sloane's bedroom. The judge and I were looking
+at each other across somebody lying on the ground, face upward."
+
+"Either of you cry out?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Say anything?"
+
+"Not much."
+
+"Well, what?"
+
+"I remember the judge said, 'Is she dead?' I said, 'How is she hurt?'
+We didn't say much while we were looking for the wound."
+
+"Did you tell Judge Wilton you knew her?"
+
+"No. There wasn't time for any explanation--specially."
+
+"But you do know her?"
+
+"I told you that, sir, outside--just now."
+
+"All right. Who is she?" Hastings put that query carelessly, in a way
+which might have meant that he had heard the most important part of the
+young lawyer's story. That impression was heightened by his beginning
+again to pace the floor.
+
+"Her name's Mildred Brace," replied Webster, moistening his lips with
+his tongue. "She was my stenographer for eight months."
+
+The detective drew up sharply.
+
+"When?"
+
+"Until two weeks ago."
+
+"She resign?"
+
+"Yes. No--I discharged her."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Incompetence."
+
+"I don't understand that exactly. You mean you employed her eight months
+although she was incompetent?"
+
+"That's pretty bald," Webster objected. "Her incompetence came, rather,
+from temperament. She was, toward the last, too nervous, excitable. She
+was more trouble than she was worth."
+
+"Ah, that's different," Hastings said, with a significance that was
+clear. "People might have thought," he elaborated, "if you had fired her
+for other reasons, this tragedy tonight would have put you in an
+unenviable position--to say the least."
+
+He had given words to the vague feeling which had depressed them all,
+ever since the discovery of the murder; that here was something vastly
+greater than the accidental finding of a person killed by an outsider,
+that the crime touched Sloanehurst personally. The foreboding had been
+patent--almost, it seemed, a tangible thing--but, until this moment,
+each had steered clear of it, in speech.
+
+Webster's response was bitter.
+
+"They'll want to say it anyway, I guess." To that he added, in frank
+resentment: "And I might as well enter a denial here: I had nothing to
+do with the--this whole lamentable affair!"
+
+The silence in which he and Hastings regarded each other was broken by
+Arthur Sloane's querulous words:
+
+"Why--why, in the name of all the inscrutable saints, this thing should
+have happened at Sloanehurst, is more than I can say! Jumping angels!
+Now, let me tell you what I----"
+
+He stopped, hearing light footfalls coming down the hall. There was the
+swish of silk, a little outcry half-repressed, and Lucille Sloane stood
+in the doorway. One hand was at her breast, the other against the
+door-frame, to steady her tall, slightly swaying figure. Her hair, a
+pyramid on her head, as if the black, heavy masses of it had been done
+by hurrying fingers, gave to her unusual beauty now an added suggestion
+of dignity.
+
+Profoundly moved as she was, there was nothing of the distracted or the
+inadequate about her. Hastings, who had admired her earlier in the
+evening, saw that her poise was far from overthrown. It seemed to him
+that she even had considered how to wear with extraordinary effect the
+brilliant, vari-coloured kimono draped about her. The only criticism of
+her possible was that, perhaps, she seemed a trifle too imperious--but,
+for his part, he liked that.
+
+"A thoroughbred!" he catalogued her, mentally.
+
+"You will excuse me, father," she said from the doorway, "but I couldn't
+help hearing." She thrust forward her chin. "Oh, I had to hear!--And
+there's something I have to tell."
+
+Her glance went at last from Sloane to Hastings as she advanced slowly
+into the room.
+
+The detective pushed forward a chair for her.
+
+"That's fine, Miss Sloane," he assured her. "I'm sure you're going to
+help us."
+
+"It isn't much," she qualified, "but I think it's important."
+
+Still she looked at neither Berne Webster nor Judge Wilton. And only a
+man trained as Hastings was to keenness of observation would have seen
+the slight but incessant tremour of her fingers and the constant,
+convulsive play of the muscles under the light covering of her black
+silk slippers.
+
+Sloane, alone, had remained seated. She was looking up to Hastings, who
+stood several feet in front of Webster and the judge.
+
+"I had gone to sleep," she said, her voice low, but musical and clear.
+"I waked up when I heard father moving about--his room is directly under
+mine; and, now that Aunt Lucy is away, I'm always more or less anxious
+about him. And I knew he had got quiet earlier, gone to sleep. It wasn't
+like him to be awake again so soon.
+
+"I sprang out of bed, really very quickly. I listened for a few seconds,
+but there was no further sound in father's room. The night was unusually
+quiet. There wasn't a sound--at first. Then I heard something. It was
+like somebody running, running very fast, outside, on the grass."
+
+She paused. Hastings was struck by her air of alertness, or of prepared
+waiting, of readiness for questions.
+
+"Which way did the footsteps go?" he asked.
+
+"From the house--down the slope, toward the little gate that opens on
+the road."
+
+"Then what?"
+
+"I wondered idly what it meant, but it made no serious impression on me.
+I listened again for sounds in father's room. There was none. Struck
+again by the heavy silence--it was almost oppressive, coming after the
+rain--I went to the window. I stood there, I don't know how long. I
+think I was day-dreaming, lazily running things over in my mind. I don't
+think it was very long.
+
+"And then father turned on the light in his room." She made a quick
+gesture with her left hand, wonderfully expressive of shock. "I shall
+never forget that! The long, narrow panel of light reached out into the
+dark like an ugly, yellow arm--reached out just far enough to touch and
+lay hold of the picture there on the grass; a woman lying on the
+drenched ground, her face up, and bending over her Judge Wilton and
+Berne--Mr. Webster.
+
+"I knew she'd been hurt dreadfully; her feet were drawn up, her knees
+high; and I could see the looks of horror on the men's faces."
+
+She paused, giving all her strength to the effort to retain her
+self-control before the assailing memory of what she had seen.
+
+"That was all, Miss Sloane?" the detective prompted, in a kindly tone.
+
+"Yes, quite," she said. "But I'd heard Berne's--what he was saying to
+you--and the judge's description of what they'd seen; and I thought you
+would like to know of the footsteps I'd heard--because they were the
+murderer's; they must have been. I knew it was important, most
+important."
+
+"You were entirely right," he agreed warmly. "Thank you, very much."
+
+He went the length of the room and halted by one of the bookcases, a
+weird, lumpy old figure among the shadows in the corner. He was scraping
+his cheek with his thumb, and looking at the ceiling, over the rims of
+his spectacles.
+
+Arthur Sloane sighed his impatience.
+
+"Those knees drawn up," Hastings said at last; "I was just thinking.
+They weren't drawn up when I saw the body. Were they?"
+
+"We'd straightened the limbs," Webster answered. "Thought I'd mentioned
+that."
+
+"No.--Then, there might have been a struggle? You think the woman had
+put up a fight--for her life?--and was overpowered?"
+
+"Well," deliberated Webster, "perhaps; even probably."
+
+"Strange," commented the detective, equally deliberate. "I hadn't
+thought so. I would have said she'd been struck down unawares--without
+the slightest warning."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+HASTINGS IS RETAINED
+
+
+Arrival of the officials, Sheriff Crown and the coroner, Dr. Garnet,
+brought the conference to an abrupt close. Hastings, seeing the look in
+the girl's eyes, left the library in advance of the other men. Lucille
+followed him immediately.
+
+"Mr. Hastings!"
+
+"Yes, Miss Sloane?"
+
+He turned and faced her.
+
+"I must talk to you, alone. Won't you come in here?"
+
+She preceded him into the parlour across the hall. When he put his hand
+on the electric switch, she objected, saying she preferred to be without
+the lights. He obeyed her. The glow from the hall was strong enough to
+show him the play of her features--which was what he wanted.
+
+They sat facing each other, directly under the chandelier in the middle
+of the spacious room. He thought she had chosen that place to avoid all
+danger of being overheard in any direction. He saw, too, that she was
+hesitant, half-regretting having brought him there. He read her doubts,
+saw how pain and anxiety mingled in her wide-open grey eyes.
+
+"Yes, I know," he said with a smile that was reassuring; "I don't look
+like a particularly helpful old party, do I?"
+
+He liked her more and more. In presence of mind, he reflected, she
+surpassed the men of the household. In spite of the agitation that still
+kept her hands trembling and gave her that odd look of fighting
+desperately to hold herself together, she had formed a plan which she
+was on the point of disclosing to him.
+
+Her courage impressed him tremendously. And, divining what her request
+would be, he made up his mind to help her.
+
+"It's not that," she said, her lips twisting to the pretence of a smile.
+"I know your reputation--how brilliant you are. I was thinking you might
+not understand what I wanted to say."
+
+"Try me," he encouraged. "I'm not that old!"
+
+It occurred to him that she referred to Berne Webster and herself,
+fearing, perhaps, his lack of sympathy for a love affair.
+
+"It's this," she began a rush of words, putting away all reluctance: "I
+think I realize more keenly than father how disagreeable this awful
+thing is going to be--the publicity, the newspapers, the questions, the
+photographs. I know, too, that Mr. Webster's in an unpleasant situation.
+I heard what he said to you in the library, every word of it.--But I
+don't have to think about him so much as about my father. He's a very
+sick man, Mr. Hastings. The shock of this, the resultant shocks lasting
+through days and weeks, may be fatal for him.
+
+"Besides," she explained, attaining greater composure, "he is so
+nervous, so impatient of discomfort and irritating things, that he may
+bring upon himself the enmity of the authorities, the investigators. He
+may easily provoke them so that they would do anything to annoy him.
+
+"I see you don't understand!" she lamented suddenly, turning her head
+away a little.
+
+He could see how her lips trembled, as if she held them together only by
+immense resolution.
+
+"I think I do," he contradicted kindly. "You want my help; isn't that
+it?"
+
+"Yes." She looked at him again, with a quick turn of her head, her eyes
+less wide-open while she searched his face. "I want to employ you. Can't
+I--what do they call it?--retain you?"
+
+"To do what, exactly?"
+
+"Oh-h-h!" The exclamation had the hint of a sob in it; she was close to
+the end of her strength. "I'm a little uncertain about that. Can't you
+help me there? I want the real criminal found soon, immediately, as soon
+as possible. I want you to work on that. And, in the meantime, I want
+you to protect us--father--do things so that we shan't be overrun by
+reporters and detectives, all the dreadful results of the discovery of a
+murder at our very front door."
+
+He was thoughtful, looking into her eyes.
+
+"The fee is of no matter, the amount of it," she added impulsively.
+
+"I wasn't thinking of that--although, of course, I don't despise fees.
+You see, the authorities, the sheriff, might not want my assistance, as
+you call it. Generally, they don't. They look upon it as interference
+and meddling."
+
+"Still, you can work independently--retained by Mr. Arthur Sloane--can't
+you?"
+
+He studied her further. For her age--hardly more than twenty-two--she
+was strikingly mature of face, and self-reliant. She had, he concluded,
+unusual strength of purpose; she was capable of large emotionalism, but
+mere feeling would never cloud her mind.
+
+"Yes," he answered her; "I can do that. I will."
+
+"Ah," she breathed, some of the tenseness going out of her, "you are
+very good!"
+
+"And you will help me, of course."
+
+"Of course."
+
+"You can do so now," he pressed this point. "Why is it that all of
+you--I noticed it in the men in the library, and when we were outside,
+on the lawn--why is it that all of you think this crime is going to hit
+you, one of you, so hard? You seem to acknowledge in advance the guilt
+of one of you."
+
+"Aren't you mistaken about that?"
+
+"No. It struck me forcibly. Didn't you feel it? Don't you, now?"
+
+"Why, no!"
+
+He was certain that she was not frank with him.
+
+"You mean," she added quickly, eyes narrowed, "I suspect--actually
+suspect some one in this house?"
+
+In his turn, he was non-committal, retorting:
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+She resented his insistence.
+
+"There is only one idea possible, I think," she declared, rising: "the
+footsteps that I heard fled from the house, not into it. The murderer is
+not here."
+
+He stood up, holding her gaze.
+
+"I'm your representative now, Miss Sloane," he said, his manner fatherly
+in its solicitude. "My duty is to save you, and yours, in every way I
+can--without breaking the law. You realize what my job is--do you?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Hastings."
+
+"And the advisability, the necessity, of utter frankness between us?"
+
+"Yes." She said that with obvious impatience.
+
+"So," he persisted, "you understand my motive in asking you now: is
+there nothing more you can tell me--of what you heard and saw, when you
+were at your window?"
+
+"Nothing--absolutely," she said, again obviously annoyed.
+
+He was close to a refusal to have anything to do with the case. He was
+sure that she did not deal openly with him. He tried again:
+
+"Nothing more, Miss Sloane? Think, please. Nothing to make you, us, more
+suspicious of Mr. Webster?"
+
+"Suspect Berne!"
+
+This time she was frank, he saw at once. The idea of the young lawyer's
+guilt struck her as out of the question. Her confidence in that was
+genuine, unalloyed. It was so emphatic that it surprised him. Why, then,
+this anxiety which had driven her to him for help? What caused the fear
+which, at the beginning of their interview, had been so apparent?
+
+He thought with great rapidity, turning the thing over in his mind as
+he stood confronting her. If she did not suspect Webster, whom did she
+suspect? Her father?
+
+That was it!--her father!
+
+The discovery astounded Hastings--and appealed to his sympathy,
+tremendously.
+
+"My poor child!" he said, on the warm impulse of his compassion.
+
+She chose to disregard the tone he had used. She took a step toward the
+door, and paused, to see that he followed her.
+
+He went nearer to her, to conclude what he had wanted to say:
+
+"I shall rely on this agreement between us: I can come to you on any
+point that occurs to me? You will give me anything, and all the things,
+that may come to your knowledge as the investigation proceeds? Is it a
+bargain, Miss Sloane?"
+
+"A bargain, Mr. Hastings," she assented. "I appreciate, as well as you
+do, the need of fair dealing between us. Anything else would be
+foolish."
+
+"Fine! That's great, Miss Sloane!" He was still sorry for her. "Now, let
+me be sure, once for all: you're concealing nothing from me, no little
+thing even, on the theory that it would be of no use to me and,
+therefore, not worth discussing? You told us all you knew--in the
+library?"
+
+She moved toward the door to the hall again.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Hastings--and I'm at your service altogether."
+
+He would have sworn that she was not telling the truth. This time,
+however, he had no thought of declining connection with the case. His
+compassion for her had grown.
+
+Besides, her fear of her father's implication in the affair--was there
+foundation for it, more foundation than the hasty thought of a daughter
+still labouring under the effects of a great shock? He thought of
+Sloane, effeminate, shrill of voice, a trembling wreck, long ago a
+self-confessed ineffective in the battle of life--he, a murderer; he,
+capable of forceful action of any kind? It seemed impossible.
+
+But the old man kept that idea to himself, and instructed Lucille.
+
+"Then," he said, "you must leave things to me. Tell your father so.
+Tomorrow, for instance--rather this morning, for it's already a new
+day--reporters will come out here, and detectives, and the sheriff. All
+of them will want to question you, your father, all the members of the
+household. Refer them to me, if you care to.
+
+"If you discuss theories and possibilities, you will only make trouble.
+To the sheriff, and anybody representing him, state the facts, the bare
+facts--that's all. May I count on you for that?"
+
+"Certainly. That's why I've em--why I want your help: to avoid all the
+unpleasantness possible."
+
+When she left him to go to her father's room, Hastings joined the group
+on the front verandah. Sheriff Crown and Dr. Garnet had already viewed
+the body.
+
+"I'll hold the inquest at ten tomorrow morning, rather this morning,"
+the coroner said. "That's hurrying things a little, but I'll have a jury
+here by then. They have to see the body before it's taken to
+Washington."
+
+"Besides," observed the sheriff, "nearly all the necessary witnesses are
+here in this house party."
+
+Aware of the Hastings fame, he drew the old man to one side.
+
+"I'm going into Washington," he announced, "to see this Mrs. Brace, the
+girl's mother. Webster says she has a flat, up on Fourteenth street
+there. Good idea, ain't it?"
+
+"Excellent," assured Hastings, and put in a suggestion: "You've heard of
+the fleeting footsteps Miss Sloane reported?"
+
+"Yes. I thought Mrs. Brace might tell me who that could have been--some
+fellow jealous of the girl, I'll bet."
+
+The sheriff, who was a tall, lanky man with a high, hooked nose and a
+pointed chin that looked like a large knuckle, had a habit of thrusting
+forward his upper lip to emphasize his words. He thrust it forward now,
+making his bristly, close-cropped red moustache stand out from his face
+like the quills of a porcupine.
+
+"I'd thought of that--all that," he continued. "Looks like a simple case
+to me--very."
+
+"It may be," said Hastings, sure now that Crown would not suggest their
+working together.
+
+"Also," the sheriff told him, "I'll take this."
+
+He held out the crude weapon with which, apparently, the murder had been
+committed. It was a dagger consisting of a sharpened nail file, about
+three inches long, driven into a roughly rounded piece of wood. This
+wooden handle was a little more than four inches in length and two
+inches thick. Hastings, giving it careful examination, commented:
+
+"He shaped that handle with a pocket-knife. Then, he drove the butt-end
+of the nail file into it. Next, he sharpened the end of the file--put a
+razor edge on it.--Where did you get this, Mr. Crown?"
+
+"A servant, one of the coloured women, picked it up as I came in. You
+were still in the library."
+
+"Where was it?"
+
+"About fifteen or twenty feet from the body. She stumbled on it, in the
+grass. Ugly thing, sure!"
+
+"Yes," Hastings said, preoccupied, and added: "Let me have it again."
+
+He took off his spectacles and, screwing into his right eye a jeweller's
+glass, studied it for several minutes. If he made an important
+discovery, he did not communicate it to Crown.
+
+"It made an ugly hole," was all he said.
+
+"You see the blood on it?" Crown prompted.
+
+"Oh, yes; lucky the rain stopped when it did."
+
+"When did it stop--out here?" Crown inquired.
+
+"About eleven; a few minutes after I'd gone up to bed."
+
+"So she was killed between eleven and midnight?"
+
+"No doubt about that. Her hat had fallen from her head and was bottom up
+beside her. The inside of the crown and all the lower brim was dry as a
+bone, while the outside, even where it did not touch the wet grass, was
+wet. That showed there wasn't any rain after she was struck down."
+
+The sheriff was impressed by the other's keenness of observation.
+
+"That's so," he said. "I hadn't noticed it."
+
+He sought the detective's opinion.
+
+"Mr. Hastings, you've just heard the stories of everybody here. Do me a
+favour, will you? Is it worth while for me to go into Washington? Tell
+me: do you think anybody here at Sloanehurst is responsible for this
+murder?"
+
+"Mr. Crown," the old man answered, "there's no proof that anybody here
+killed that woman."
+
+"Just what I thought," Mr. Crown applauded himself. "Glad you agree with
+me. It'll turn out a simple case. Wish it wouldn't. Nominating primary's
+coming on in less than a month. I'd get a lot more votes if I ran down a
+mysterious fellow, solved a tough problem."
+
+He strode down the porch steps and out to his car--for the ten-mile run
+into Washington. Hastings was strongly tempted to accompany him, even
+without being invited; it would mean much to be present when the mother
+first heard of her daughter's death.
+
+But he had other and, he thought, more important work to do. Moving so
+quietly that his footsteps made no sound, he gained the staircase in the
+hall and made his way to the second floor. If anybody had seen him and
+inquired what he intended to do, he would have explained that he was on
+his way to get his own coat in place of the one which young Webster
+had, with striking thoughtfulness, thrown over him.
+
+As a matter of fact, his real purpose was to search Webster's room.
+
+But experience had long since imbued him with contempt for the obvious.
+Secure from interruption, since his fellow-guests were still in the
+library, he did not content himself with his hawk-like scrutiny of the
+one room; he explored the back stairway which had been Webster's exit to
+the lawn, Judge Wilton's room, and his own.
+
+In the last stage of the search he encountered his greatest surprise.
+Looking under his own bed by the light of a pocket torch, he found that
+one of the six slats had been removed from its place and laid cross-ways
+upon the other five. The reason for this was apparent; it had been
+shortened by between four and five inches.
+
+"Cut off with a pocket-knife," the old man mused; "crude work, like the
+shaping of the handle of that dagger--downstairs; same wood, too. And in
+my room, from my bed----
+
+"I wonder----"
+
+With a low whistle, expressive of incredulity, he put that new theory
+from him and went down to the library.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE INTERVIEW WITH MRS. BRACE
+
+
+Gratified, and yet puzzled, by the results of his search of the upstairs
+rooms, Hastings was fully awake to the necessity of his interviewing
+Mrs. Brace as soon as possible. Lally, the chauffeur, drove him back to
+Washington early that Sunday morning. It was characteristic of the old
+man that, as they went down the driveway, he looked back at Sloanehurst
+and felt keenly the sufferings of the people under its roof.
+
+He was particularly drawn to Lucille Sloane, with whom he had had a
+second brief conference. While waiting for his coffee--nobody in the
+house had felt like breakfast--he had taken a chair at the southeast end
+of the front porch and, pulling a piece of soft wood and a knife from
+his Gargantuan coat-pockets, had fallen to whittling and
+thinking.--Whittling, he often said, enabled him to think clearly; it
+was to him what tobacco was to other men.
+
+Thus absorbed, he suddenly heard Lucille's voice, low and tense:
+
+"We'll have to leave it as it was be----"
+
+Berne Webster interrupted her, a grain of bitterness in his words:
+
+"Rather an unusual request, don't you think?"
+
+"I wanted to tell you this after the talk in the library," she
+continued, "but there----"
+
+They had approached Hastings from the south side of the house and,
+hidden from him by the verandah railing, were upon him before he could
+make his presence known. Now, however, he did so, warning them by
+standing up with a clamorous scraping of his feet on the floor.
+Instinctively, he had recoiled from overhearing their discussion of what
+was, he thought, a love-affair topic.
+
+Lucille hurried to him, not that she had additional information to give
+him, but to renew her courage. Having called upon him for aid, she had
+in the usual feminine way decided to make her reliance upon him
+complete. And, under the influence of his reassuring kindliness, her
+hesitance and misgivings disappeared.
+
+He had judged her feelings correctly during their conference in the
+parlour. At dinner, she had seen in him merely a pleasant, quiet-spoken
+old man, a typical "hick" farmer, who wore baggy, absurdly large
+clothing--"for the sake of his circulation," he said--and whose
+appearance in no way corresponded to his reputation as a learned
+psychologist and investigator of crime. Now, however, she responded
+warmly to his charm, felt the sincerity of his sympathy.
+
+Seeing that she looked up to him, he enjoyed encouraging her, was bound
+more firmly to her interests.
+
+"I think your fears are unfounded," he told her.
+
+But he did not reveal his knowledge that she suspected her father of
+some connection with the murder. In fact, he could not decide what her
+suspicion was exactly, whether it was that he had been guilty of the
+crime or that he had guilty knowledge of it.
+
+A little anxious, she had asked him to promise that he would be back by
+ten o'clock, for the inquest. He thought he could do that, although he
+had persuaded the coroner that his evidence would not be necessary--the
+judge and Webster had found the body; their stories would establish the
+essential facts.
+
+"Why do you want me here then?" he asked, not comprehending her
+uneasiness.
+
+"For one thing," she said, "I want you to talk to father--before the
+inquest. I wish you could now, but he isn't up."
+
+It was eight o'clock when Miss Davis, telephone operator in the cheap
+apartment house on Fourteenth street known as The Walman, took the old
+man's card and read the inscription, over the wire:
+
+"'Mr. Jefferson Hastings.'"
+
+After a brief pause, she told him:
+
+"She wants to know if you are a detective."
+
+"Tell her I am."
+
+"You may go up," the girl reported. "It's Number Forty-three, fourth
+floor--no elevator."
+
+After ascending the three flights of stairs, he sat down on the top
+step, to get his breath. Mr. Hastings was stout, not to say
+sebaceous--and he proposed to begin the interview unhandicapped.
+
+Mrs. Brace answered his ring. There was nobody else in the apartment.
+The moment he looked into her restless, remarkably brilliant black eyes,
+he catalogued her as cold and repellent.
+
+"One of the swift-eyed kind," he thought; "heart as hard as her head. No
+blood in her--but smart. Smart!"
+
+He relied, without question, on his ability to "size up" people at first
+glance. It was a gift with him, like the intuition of women; and to it,
+he thought, he owed his best work as a detective.
+
+Mrs. Brace, without speaking, without acknowledging his quiet "Mrs.
+Brace, I believe?" led him into the living room after waiting for him
+to close the entrance door. This room was unusually large, out of
+proportion to the rest of the apartment which included, in addition to
+the narrow entry, a bedroom, kitchen and bath--all, so far as his
+observation went, sparsely and cheaply furnished.
+
+They sat down, and still she did not speak, but studied his face. He got
+the impression that she considered all men her enemies and sought some
+intimation of what his hostility would be like.
+
+"I'm sorry to trouble you at such a time," he began. "I shall be as
+brief as possible."
+
+Her black eyebrows moved upward, in curious interrogation. They were
+almost mephistophelian, and unpleasantly noticeable, drawn thus nearer
+to the wide wave of her white hair.
+
+"You wanted to see me--about my daughter?"
+
+Her voice was harsh, metallic, free of emotion. There was nothing about
+her indicative of grief. She did not look as if she had been weeping. He
+could learn nothing from her manner; it was extremely matter-of-fact,
+and chilly. Only, in her eyes he saw suspicion--perhaps, he reflected,
+suspicion was always in her eyes.
+
+Her composure amazed him.
+
+"Yes," he replied gently; "if I don't distress you----"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+She suddenly lowered her eyebrows, drew them together until they were a
+straight line at the bottom of her forehead.
+
+Her cold self-possession made it easy, in fact necessary, for him to
+deal with facts directly. Apparently, she resented his intimated
+condolence. He could fling any statement, however sensational, against
+the wall of her indifference. She was, he decided, as free of feeling as
+she was inscrutable. She would be surprised by emotion into nothing. It
+was his brain against hers.
+
+"I want to say first," he continued, "that my only concern, outside of
+my natural and very real sympathy with such a loss as yours must be, is
+to find the man who killed her."
+
+She moved slowly to and fro on the armless, low-backed rocker, watching
+him intently.
+
+"Will you help me?"
+
+"If I can."
+
+"Thank you," he said, smiling encouragement from force of habit, not
+because he expected to arouse any spirit of cooperation in her. "I may
+ask you a few questions then?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Her thin nostrils dilated once, quickly, and somehow their motion
+suggested the beginning of a ridiculing smile. He went seriously to
+work.
+
+"Have you any idea, Mrs. Brace, as to who killed your daughter--or could
+have wanted to kill her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Who?"
+
+She got up, without the least change of expression, without a word, and,
+as she crossed the room, paused at the little table against the farther
+wall to arrange more symmetrically a pile of finger-worn periodicals.
+She went through the communicating door into the bedroom, and, from
+where he sat, he could see her go through another door--into the
+bathroom, he guessed. In a moment, he heard a glass clink against a
+faucet. She had gone for a drink of water, to moisten her throat, like
+an orator preparing to deliver an address.
+
+She came back, unhurried, imperturbable, and sat down again in the
+armless rocker before she answered his question. So far as her manner
+might indicate, there had been no interruption of the conversation.
+
+He swept her with wondering eyes. She was not playing a part, not
+concealing sorrow. The straight, hard lines of her lean figure were a
+complement to her gleaming, unrevealing eyes. There was hardness about
+her, and in her, everywhere.
+
+A slow, warm breeze brought through the curtainless window a
+disagreeable odour, sour and fetid. The apartment was at the back of the
+building; the odour came from a littered courtyard, a conglomeration of
+wet ashes, neglected garbage, little filthy pools, warmed into activity
+by the sun, high enough now to touch them. He could see the picture
+without looking--and that odour struck him as excruciatingly appropriate
+to this woman's soul.
+
+"Berne Webster killed my daughter," she said evenly, hands moveless in
+her lap. "There are several reasons for my saying so. Mildred was his
+stenographer for eight months, and he fell in love with her--that was
+the way he described his feeling, and intention, toward her. The usual
+thing happened; he discharged her two weeks ago.
+
+"He wants to marry money. You know about that, I take it--Miss Sloane,
+daughter of A. B. Sloane, Sloanehurst, where she was murdered. They're
+engaged. At least, that is--was Mildred's information, although the
+engagement hasn't been announced, formally. Fact is, he has to marry the
+Sloane girl."
+
+Her thin, mobile lips curled upward at the ends and looked a little
+thicker, giving an exaggerated impression of wetness. Hastings thought
+of some small, feline animal, creeping, anticipating prey--a sort of
+calculating ferocity.
+
+She talked like a person bent on making every statement perfectly clear
+and understandable. There was no intimation that she was so
+communicative because she thought she was obliged to talk. On the
+contrary, she welcomed the chance to give him the story.
+
+"Have you told all this to that sheriff, Mr. Crown?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes; but he seemed to attach no importance to it."
+
+She coloured her words with feeling at last--it was contempt--putting
+the sheriff beyond the pale of further consideration.
+
+"You were saying Mr. Webster had to marry Miss Sloane. What do you mean
+by that, Mrs. Brace?"
+
+"Money reasons. He had to have money. His bank balance is never more
+than a thousand dollars. He's got to produce sixty-five thousand dollars
+by the seventh of next September. This is the sixteenth of July. Where
+is he to get all that? He's got to marry it."
+
+Hastings put more intensity into his scrutiny of her smooth, untroubled
+face. It showed no sudden access of hatred, no unreasoning venom,
+except that the general cast of her features spoke generally of
+vindictiveness. She was, unmistakably, sure of what she said.
+
+"How do you know that?" he asked, hiding his surprise.
+
+"Mildred knew it--naturally, from working in his office."
+
+"Let me be exact, Mrs. Brace. Your charge is just what?"
+
+He felt the need of keen thought. He reached for his knife and piece of
+wood. Entirely unconsciously, he began to whittle, letting little
+shavings fall on the bare floor. She made no sign of seeing his new
+occupation.
+
+"It's plain enough, Mr.--I don't recall your name."
+
+"Hastings--Jefferson Hastings."
+
+"It's plain and direct, Mr. Hastings. He threw her over, threw Mildred
+over. She refused to be dealt with in that way. He wouldn't listen to
+her side, her arguments, her protests, her pleas. She pursued him; and
+last night he killed her. I understand--Mr. Crown told me--he was found
+bending over the body--it seemed to me, caught in the very commission of
+the crime."
+
+A fleeting contortion, like mirthless ridicule, touched her lips as she
+saw him, with head lowered, cut more savagely into the piece of wood.
+She noticed, and enjoyed, his dismay.
+
+"That isn't quite accurate," he said, without lifting his head. "He and
+another man, Judge Wilton, stumbled--came upon your daughter's body at
+the same moment."
+
+"Was that it?" she retorted, unbelieving.
+
+When he looked up, she was regarding him thoughtfully, the black brows
+elevated, interrogative. The old man felt the stirrings of physical
+nausea within him. But he waited for her to elaborate her story.
+
+"Do you care to ask anything more?" she inquired, impersonal as ashes.
+
+"If I may."
+
+"Why, certainly."
+
+He paused in his whittling, brought forth a huge handkerchief, passed it
+across his forehead, was aware for a moment that he was working hard
+against the woman's unnatural calmness, and feeling the heat intensely.
+She was untouched by it. He whittled again, asking her:
+
+"You a native of Washington?"
+
+"No."
+
+"How long have you been here?"
+
+"About nine months. We came from Chicago."
+
+"Any friends here--have you any friends here?"
+
+"Neither here nor elsewhere." She made that bleak declaration simply,
+as if he had suggested her possession of green diamonds. Her tone made
+friendship a myth.
+
+He felt again utterly free of the restraints and little hesitancies
+usual in situations of this nature.
+
+"And your means, resources. Any, Mrs. Brace?"
+
+"None--except my daughter's."
+
+He was unaccountably restless. Putting the knife into his pocket, he
+stood up, went to the window. His guess had been correct. The courtyard
+below was as he had pictured it. He stood there at least a full minute.
+
+Turning suddenly in the hope of catching some new expression on her
+face, he found her gazing steadily, as if in revery, at the opposite
+wall.
+
+"One thing more, Mrs. Brace: did you know your daughter intended to go
+to Sloanehurst last night?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Were you uneasy when she failed to come in--last night?"
+
+"Yes; but what could I do?"
+
+"Had she written to Mr. Webster recently?"
+
+"Yes; I think so."
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"Yes; she went out to mail a letter night before last. I recall that
+she said it was important, had to be in the box for the midnight
+collection, to reach its destination yesterday afternoon--late. I'm sure
+it was to Webster."
+
+"Did you see the address on it?"
+
+"I didn't try to."
+
+He stepped from the window, to throw the full glare of the morning sky
+on her face, which was upturned, toward him.
+
+"Was it in a grey envelope?"
+
+"Yes; an oblong, grey envelope," she said, the impassive, unwrinkled
+face unmoved to either curiosity or reticence.
+
+With surprising swiftness he took a triangular piece of paper from his
+breast pocket and held it before her.
+
+"Might that be the flap of that grey envelope?"
+
+She inspected it, while he kept hold of it.
+
+"Very possibly."
+
+Without leaving her chair, she turned and put back the lid of a rickety
+little desk in the corner immediately behind her. There, she showed him,
+was a bundle of grey envelopes, the corresponding paper beside it. He
+compared the envelope flaps with the one he had brought. They were
+identical.
+
+Here was support of her assertion that Berne Webster had been pursued by
+her daughter as late as yesterday afternoon--and, therefore, might have
+been provoked into desperate action. He had found that scrap of grey
+paper at Sloanehurst, in Webster's room.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+ACTION BY THE SHERIFF
+
+
+Mrs. Brace did not ask Hastings where he had got the fragment of grey
+envelope. She made no comment whatever.
+
+He reversed the flap in his hand and showed her the inner side on which
+were, at first sight, meaningless lines and little smears. He explained
+that the letter must have been put into the envelope when the ink was
+still undried on the part of it that came in contact with the flap, and,
+the paper being of that rough-finish, spongy kind frequently affected by
+women, the flap had absorbed the undried ink pressed against it.
+
+"Have you a hand-mirror?" he asked, breaking a long pause.
+
+She brought one from the bedroom. Holding it before the envelope flap,
+he showed her the marks thus made legible. They were, on the first line:
+"--edly de--," with the first loop or curve of an "n" or an "m"
+following the "de"; and on the second line the one word "Pursuit!" the
+whole reproduction being this:
+
+
+                                edly de
+                                Pursuit!
+
+
+"Does that writing mean anything to you, Mrs. Brace?" Hastings asked,
+keeping it in front of her.
+
+She moved her left hand, a quiet gesture indicating her lack of further
+interest in the piece of paper.
+
+"Nothing special," she said, "except that the top line seems to bear out
+what I've told you. It might be: 'repeatedly demanded'--I mean Mildred
+may have written that she had repeatedly demanded justice of him,
+something of that sort."
+
+"Is it your daughter's writing?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And the word 'Pursuit,' with an exclamation point after it? That
+suggest anything to you?"
+
+"Why, no." She showed her first curiosity: "Where did you get that piece
+of envelope?"
+
+"Not from Berne Webster," he said, smiling.
+
+"I suppose not," she agreed, and did not press him for the information.
+
+"You said," he went to another point, "that the sheriff attached no
+importance to your belief in Webster's guilt. Can you tell me why?"
+
+Her contempt was frank enough now, and visible, her lips thickening and
+assuming the abnormally humid appearance he had noticed before.
+
+"He thinks the footsteps which Miss Sloane says she heard are the
+deciding evidence. He accuses a young man named Russell, Eugene Russell,
+who's been attentive to Mildred."
+
+Hastings was relieved.
+
+"Crown's seen him, seen Russell?" he asked, not troubling to conceal his
+eagerness.
+
+On that, he saw the beginnings of wrath in her eyes. The black eyebrows
+went upward, the thin nostrils expanded, the lips set to a line no
+thicker than the edge of a knife.
+
+"You, too, will----"
+
+She broke off, checked by the ringing of the wall telephone in the
+entrance hall. She answered the call, moving without haste. It was for
+Mr. Hastings, she said, going back to her seat.
+
+He regretted the interruption; it would give her time to regain the
+self-control she had been on the point of losing.
+
+Sheriff Crown was at the other end of the wire. He was back at
+Sloanehurst, he explained, and Miss Sloane had asked him to give the
+detective certain information:
+
+He had asked the Washington police to hold Eugene Russell, or to
+persuade him to attend the inquest at Sloanehurst. Crown, going in to
+Washington, had stopped at the car barns of the electric road which
+passed Sloanehurst, and had found a conductor who had made the
+ten-thirty run last night. This conductor, Barton, had slept at the
+barns, waiting for the early-morning resumption of car service to take
+him to his home across the city.
+
+Barton remembered having seen a man leave his car at Ridgecrest, the
+next stop before Sloanehurst, at twenty-five minutes past ten last
+night. He answered Russell's description, had seemed greatly agitated,
+and was unfamiliar with the stops on the line, having questioned Barton
+as to the distance between Ridgecrest and Sloanehurst. That was all the
+conductor had to tell.
+
+"Mrs. Brace's description of Russell, a real estate salesman who had
+been attentive to her daughter," continued Crown, "tallied with Barton's
+description of the man who had been on his car. I got his address from
+her. But say! She don't fall for the idea that Russell's guilty! She
+gave me to understand, in that snaky, frozen way of hers, that I was a
+fool for thinking so.
+
+"Anyway, I'm going to put him over the jumps!" The sheriff was highly
+elated. "What was he out here for last night if he wasn't jealous of
+the girl? Wasn't he following her? And, when he came up with her on the
+Sloanehurst lawn, didn't he kill her? It looks plain to me; simple. I
+told you it was a simple case!"
+
+"Have you seen him?" Hastings was looking at his watch as he spoke--it
+was nine o'clock.
+
+"No; I went to his boarding house, waked up the place at three o'clock
+this morning. He wasn't there."
+
+Hastings asked for the number of the house. It was on Eleventh street,
+Crown informed him, and gave the number.
+
+"I searched his room," the sheriff added, his voice self-congratulatory.
+
+"Find anything?"
+
+"I should say! The nail file was missing from his dressing case."
+
+"What else?"
+
+"A pair of wet shoes--muddy and wet."
+
+"Then, he'd returned to his room, after the murder, and gone out again?"
+
+"That's it--right."
+
+"Anybody in the house hear him come in, or go out?"
+
+"Not a soul.--And I don't know where he is now."
+
+Hastings, leaving the telephone, found Mrs. Brace carefully brushing
+into a newspaper the litter made by his whittling. Her performance of
+that trivial task, the calm thoroughness with which she went about it,
+or the littleness of it, when compared with her complete indifference to
+the tragedy which should have overwhelmed her--something, he could not
+tell exactly what, made her more repugnant to him than ever.
+
+He spoke impulsively:
+
+"Did you want--didn't you feel some impulse, some desire, to go out
+there when you heard of this murder?"
+
+She paused in her brushing, looking up to him without lifting herself
+from hands and knees.
+
+"Why should I have wanted to do any such thing?" she replied. "Mildred's
+not out there. What's out there is--nothing."
+
+"Do you know about the arrangements for the removal of the body?"
+
+"The sheriff told me," she replied, cold, impersonal. "It will be
+brought to an undertaking establishment as soon as the coroner's jury
+has viewed it."
+
+"Yes--at ten o'clock this morning."
+
+She made no comment on that. He had brought up the disagreeable
+topic--one which would have been heart-breaking to any other mother he
+had ever known--in the hope of arousing some real feeling in her. And he
+had failed. Her self-control was impregnable. There was about her an
+atmosphere that was, in a sense, terrifying, something out of all
+nature.
+
+She brushed up the remaining chips and shavings while he got his hat. He
+was deliberating: was there nothing more she could tell him? What could
+he hope to get from her except that which she wanted to tell? He was
+sure that she had spoken, in reply to each of his questions, according
+to a prearranged plan, a well designed scheme to bring into high relief
+anything that might incriminate Berne Webster.
+
+And he was by no means in a mood to persuade himself of Webster's guilt.
+He knew the value of first impressions; and he did not propose to let
+her clog his thoughts with far-fetched deductions against the young
+lawyer.
+
+She got to her feet with cat-like agility, and, to his astonishment,
+burst into violent speech:
+
+"You're standing there trying to think up things to help Berne Webster!
+Like the sheriff! Now, I'll tell you what I told him: Webster's guilty.
+I know it! He killed my daughter. He's a liar and a coward--a traitor!
+He killed her!"
+
+There was no doubt of her emotion now. She stood in a strange attitude,
+leaning a little toward him in the upper part of her body, as if all her
+strength were consciously directed into her shoulders and neck. She
+seemed larger in her arms and shoulders; they, with her head and face,
+were, he thought, the most vivid part of her--an effect which she
+produced deliberately, to impress him.
+
+Her whole body was not tremulous, but, rather, vibrant, a taut mechanism
+played on by the rage that possessed her. Her eyebrows, high on her
+forehead, reminded him of things that crawled. Her eyes, brilliant like
+clear ice with sunshine on it, were darting, furtive, always in motion.
+
+She did not look him squarely in the eye, but her eyes selected and
+bored into every part of his face; her glance played on his countenance.
+He could easily have imagined that it burned him physically in many
+places.
+
+"All this talk about Gene Russell's being guilty is stuff, bosh!" she
+continued. "Gene wouldn't hurt anybody. He couldn't! Wait until you see
+him!" Her lips curled momentarily to their thickened, wet sneer.
+"There's nothing to him--nothing! Mildred hated him; he bored her to
+death. Even I laughed at him. And this sheriff talks about the boy's
+having killed her!"
+
+Suddenly, she partially controlled her fury. He saw her eyes contract to
+the gleam of a new idea. She was silent a moment, while her vibrant,
+tense body swayed in front of him almost imperceptibly.
+
+When she spoke again, it was in her flat, constrained tone. He was
+impressed anew with her capacity for making her feeling subordinate to
+her intelligence.
+
+"She's a dangerous woman," he thought again.
+
+"You're working for Webster?"
+
+Her inquiry came after so slight a pause, and it was put to him in a
+manner so different from the unrestraint of her denunciation of Webster,
+that he felt as he would have done if he had been dealing with two
+women.
+
+"I've told you already," he said, "my only interest is in finding the
+real murderer. In that sense, I'm working for Webster--if he's
+innocent."
+
+"But he didn't hire you?"
+
+"No."
+
+Seeing that he told the truth, she indulged herself in rage again. It
+was just that, Hastings thought; she took an actual, keen pleasure in
+giving vent to the anger that was in her. Relieved of the necessity of
+censoring her words and thoughts closely, she could say what she wanted
+to say.
+
+"He's guilty, and I'll prove it!" she defied the detective's disbelief.
+"I'll help to prove it. Guilty? I tell you he is--guilty as hell!"
+
+He made an abrupt departure, her shrill hatred ringing in his ears when
+he reached the street. He found it hard, too, to get her out of his
+eyes, even now--she had impressed herself so shockingly upon him. The
+picture of her floated in front of him, above the shimmering pavement,
+as if he still confronted her in all her unloveliness, the smooth, white
+face like a travesty on youth, the swift, darting eyes, the hard,
+straight lines of the lean figure, the cold deliberation of manner and
+movement.
+
+"She's incapable of grief!" he thought. "Terrible! She's terrible!"
+
+Lally drove him to his apartment on Fifteenth street, where the largest
+of three rooms served him as a combination library and office. There he
+kept his records, in a huge, old-fashioned safe; and there, also, he
+held his conferences, from time to time, with police chiefs and
+detectives from all parts of the country when they sought his help in
+their pursuit of criminals.
+
+The walls were lined with books from floor to ceiling. A large table in
+the centre of the room was stacked high with newspapers and magazines.
+Dusty papers and books were piled, too, on several chairs set against
+the bookcases, and on the floor in one corner was a pyramid of
+documents.
+
+"This place is like me," he explained to visitors; "it's loosely
+dressed."
+
+He sat down at the table and wrote instructions for one of his two
+assistants, his best man, Hendricks. Russell's room must be searched and
+Russell interviewed--work for which Hastings felt that he himself could
+not spare the time. He gave Hendricks a second task: investigation of
+the financial standing of two people: Berne Webster and Mrs. Catherine
+Brace.
+
+He noted, with his customary kindness, in his memorandum to Hendricks:
+
+"Sunday's a bad day for this sort of work, but do the best you can.
+Report tomorrow morning."
+
+That arranged, he set out for Sloanehurst, to keep his promise to
+Lucille--he would be there for the inquest.
+
+On the way he reviewed matters:
+
+"Somehow, I got the idea that the Brace woman _knew_ Russell hadn't
+killed her daughter. Funny, that is. How could she have known that? How
+can she know it now?
+
+"She's got the pivotal fact in this case. I felt it. I'm willing to bet
+she persuaded her daughter to pursue Webster. And things have gone
+'bust'--didn't come out as she thought they would. What was she after,
+money? That's exactly it! Exactly! Her daughter could hold up Webster,
+and Webster could hold up the Sloanes after his marriage."
+
+He whistled softly.
+
+"If she can prove that Webster should have married her daughter, that
+he's in need of anything like sixty-five thousand dollars--where does he
+get off? He gets off safely if the Brace woman ever sees fit to
+tell--what? I couldn't guess if my whittling hand depended on it." He
+grimaced his repugnance.
+
+"What a woman! A mania for wickedness--evil from head to foot,
+thoroughly. _She_ wouldn't stick at murder--if she thought it safe.
+She'd do anything, say anything. Every word she uttered this morning had
+been rehearsed in her mind--with gestures, even. When I beat her, I beat
+this puzzle; that's sure."
+
+That he had to do with a puzzle, he had no manner of doubt. The very
+circumstances surrounding the discovery of the girl's body--Arthur
+Sloane flashing on the light in his room at a time when his being awake
+was so unusual that it frightened his daughter; Judge Wilton stumbling
+over the dead woman; young Webster doing the same thing in the same
+instant; the light reaching out to them at the moment when they bent
+down to touch the thing which their feet had encountered--all that
+shouted mystery to his experienced mind.
+
+He thought of Webster's pronouncement: "The thug, acting on the spur of
+the moment, with a blow in the dark and a getaway through the
+night----" Here was reproduction of that in real life. Would people say
+that Webster had given himself away in advance? They might.
+
+And the weapon, what about that? It could have been manufactured in ten
+minutes. Crown had said over the wire that Russell's nail file was
+missing. What if Webster's, too, were missing? He would see--although he
+expected to uncover no such thing.
+
+He came, then, to Lucille's astounding idea, that her father must be
+"protected," because he was nervous and, being nervous, might incur the
+enmity of the authorities. He could not take that seriously. And yet the
+most fruitful imagination in the world could fabricate no motive for
+Arthur Sloane's killing a young woman he had never seen.
+
+Only Webster and Russell could be saddled with motives: Webster's,
+desperation, the savage determination to rid himself of the woman's
+pursuit; Russell's, unreasoning jealousy.
+
+So far as facts went, the crime lay between those two--and he could not
+shake off the impression that Mrs. Brace, shrilly asserting Russell's
+innocence, had known that she spoke the absolute truth.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE HOSTILITY OF MR. SLOANE
+
+
+Delayed by a punctured tire, Hastings reached Sloanehurst when the
+inquest was well under way. He went into the house by a side door and
+found Lucille Sloane waiting for him.
+
+"Won't you go to father at once?" she urged him.
+
+"What's the matter?" He saw that her anxiety had grown during his
+absence.
+
+"He's in one of his awfully nervous states. I hope you'll be very
+patient with him--make allowances. He doesn't seem to grasp the
+importance of your connection with the case; wants to ask questions.
+Won't you let me take you to him, now?"
+
+"Why, yes, if I can be of any help. What do you want me to say to him?"
+
+As a matter of fact, he was glad of the opportunity for the interview.
+He had long since discovered the futility of inquests in the uncovering
+of important evidence, and he had not intended to sit through this one.
+He wanted particularly to talk to Berne Webster, but Sloane also had to
+be questioned.
+
+"I thought you might explain," she continued hurriedly, preceding him
+down the hall toward her father's room, "that you will do exactly what I
+asked you to do--see that the mysterious part of this terrible affair,
+if there is any mystery in it--see that it's cleared up promptly. Please
+tell him you'll act for us in dealing with newspaper reporters; that
+you'll help us, not annoy us, not annoy him."
+
+She had stopped at Sloane's door.
+
+"And you?" Hastings delayed her knock. "If they want you to testify, if
+Dr. Garnet calls for you, I think you'd better testify very frankly,
+tell them about the footsteps you heard."
+
+"I've already done that." She seemed embarrassed. "Father asked me to
+'phone Mr. Southard, Mr. Jeremy Southard, his lawyer, about it. I know I
+told you I wanted your advice about everything. I would have waited to
+ask you. But you were late. I had to take Mr. Southard's advice."
+
+"That's perfectly all right," he reassured her. "Mr. Southard advised
+you wisely.--Now, I'm going to ask your help. The guest-rooms
+upstairs--have the servants straightened them up this morning?"
+
+They had not, she told him. Excitement had quite destroyed their
+efficiency for the time being; they were at the parlour windows,
+listening, or waiting to be examined by the coroner.
+
+"That's what I hoped," he said. "Won't you see that those rooms are left
+exactly as they are until I can have a look at them?" She nodded assent.
+"And say nothing about my speaking of it--absolutely nothing to anybody?
+It's vitally important."
+
+The door was opened by Sloane's man, Jarvis, who had in queer
+combination, Hastings thought, the salient aspects of an undertaker and
+an experienced pick-pocket. He was dismal of countenance and alert in
+movement, an efficient ghost, admirably appropriate to the twilit gloom
+of the room with its heavily shaded windows.
+
+Mr. Sloane was in bed, in the darkest corner.
+
+"Father," Lucille addressed him from the door-sill, "I've asked Mr.
+Hastings to talk to you about things. He's just back from Washington."
+
+"Shuddering saints!" said Mr. Sloane, not lifting his head from the
+pillows.
+
+Lucille departed. The ghostly Jarvis closed the door without so much as
+a click of the latch. Hastings advanced slowly toward the bed, his eyes
+not yet accustomed to the darkness.
+
+"Shuddering, shivering, shaking saints!" Mr. Sloane exclaimed again, the
+words coming in a slow, shrill tenor from his lips, as if with great
+exertion he reached up with something and pushed each one out of his
+mouth. "Sit down, Mr. Hastings, if I can control my nerves, and stand
+it. What is it?"
+
+His hostility to the caller was obvious. The evident and grateful
+interest with which the night before he had heard the detective's
+stories of crimes and criminals had changed now to annoyance at the very
+sight of him. As a raconteur, Mr. Hastings was quite the thing; as
+protector of the Sloane family's privacy and seclusion, he was a
+nuisance. Such was the impression Mr. Hastings received.
+
+At a loss to understand his host's frame of mind, he took a chair near
+the bed.
+
+Mr. Sloane stirred jerkily under his thin summer coverings.
+
+"A little light, Jarvis," he said peevishly. "Now, Mr. Hastings, what
+can I do for--tell you?"
+
+Jarvis put back a curtain.
+
+"Quivering and crucified martyrs!" the prostrate man burst forth. "I
+said a little, Jarvis! You drown my optic nerves in ink and, without a
+moment's warning, flood them with the glaring brilliancy of the noonday
+sun!" Jarvis half-drew the curtain. "Ah, that's better. Never more than
+an inch at a time, Jarvis. How many times have I told you that? Never
+give me a shock like that again; never more than an inch of light at a
+time. Frantic fiends! From cimmerian, abysmal darkness to Sahara-desert
+glare!"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Jarvis, as if on the point of digging a grave--for
+himself. "Beg pardon, sir."
+
+He effaced himself, in shadows, somewhere behind Hastings, who seized
+the opportunity to speak.
+
+"Miss Sloane suggested that you wanted certain information. In fact, she
+asked me to see you."
+
+"My daughter? Oh, yes!" The prone body became semi-upright, leaned on an
+elbow. "Yes! What I want to know is, why--why, in the name of all the
+jumping angels, everybody seems to think there's a lot of mystery
+connected with this brutal, vulgar, dastardly crime! It passes my
+comprehension, utterly!--Jarvis, stop clicking your finger-nails
+together!" This with a note of exaggerated pleading. "You know I'm a
+nervous wreck, a total loss physically, and yet you stand there in the
+corner and indulge yourself wickedly, wickedly, in that infernal habit
+of yours of clicking your finger-nails! Mute and mutilated Christian
+martyrs!"
+
+He fell back among the pillows, breathing heavily, the perfect picture
+of exhaustion. Jarvis came near on soundless feet and applied a wet
+cloth to his master's temples.
+
+The old man regarded them both with unconcealed amazement.
+
+"You'll have to excuse me, Mr. Hastings, really, I can't be annoyed!"
+the wreck, somewhat revived, announced feebly. "All I said to my
+daughter, Miss Sloane, is what I say to you now: I see no reason why we
+should employ you, or indeed why you should be connected with this
+affair. You were my guest, here, at Sloanehurst. Unfortunately, some
+ruffian of whom we never heard, whose existence we never
+suspected--Jarvis, take off this counterpane; you're boiling me,
+parboiling me; my nerves are seething, simmering, stewing! Athletic
+devils! Have you no discrimination, Jarvis?--as I was saying, Mr.
+Hastings, somebody stabbed somebody else to death on my lawn,
+unfortunately marring your visit. But that's all. I can't see that we
+need you--thank you, nevertheless."
+
+The dismissal was unequivocal. Hastings got to his feet, his indignation
+all the greater through realization that he had been sent for merely to
+be flouted. And yet, this man's daughter had come to him literally with
+tears in her eyes, had begged him to help her, had said that money was
+the smallest of considerations. Moreover, he had accepted her
+employment, had made the definite agreement and promise. Apparently,
+Sloane was in no condition to act independently, and his daughter had
+known it, had hoped that he, Hastings, might soothe his silly mind, do
+away with his objections to assistance which she knew he needed.
+
+There was, also, the fact that Lucille believed her father unaccountably
+interested, if not implicated, in the crime. He could not get away from
+that impression. He was sure he had interpreted correctly the girl's
+anxiety the night before. She was working to save her father--from
+something. And she believed Berne Webster innocent.
+
+These were some of the considerations which, flashing through his mind,
+prevented his giving way to righteous wrath. He most certainly would not
+allow Arthur Sloane to eliminate him from the situation. He sat down
+again.
+
+The nervous wreck made himself more understandable.
+
+"Perhaps, Jarvis," he said, shrinking to one side like a man in sudden
+pain, "the gentleman can't see how to reach that large door. A little
+more light, half an inch-not a fraction more!"
+
+"Don't bother," Hastings told Jarvis. "I'm not going quite yet."
+
+"Leaping crime!" moaned Mr. Sloane, digging deeper into the pillows,
+"Frantic imps!"
+
+"I hope I won't distress you too much," the detective apologized grimly,
+"if I ask you a few questions. Fact is, I must. I'm investigating the
+circumstances surrounding what may turn out to be a baffling crime, and,
+irrespective of your personal wishes, Mr. Sloane, I can't let go of it.
+This is a serious business----"
+
+The sick man sat up in bed with surprising abruptness.
+
+"Serious business! Serious saints!--Jarvis, the eau de cologne!--You
+think I don't know it? They make a slaughter-house of my lawn. They make
+a morgue of my house. They hold a coroner's inquest in my parlour.
+They're in there now--live people like ravens, and one dead one. They
+cheat the undertaker to plague me. They wreck me all over again. They
+give me a new exhaustion of the nerves. They frighten my daughter to
+death.--Jarvis, the smelling salts. Shattered saints, Jarvis! Hurry!
+Thanks.--They rig up lies which, Tom Wilton, my old and trusted friend,
+tells me, will incriminate Berne Webster. They sit around a corpse in my
+house and chatter by the hour. You come in here and make Jarvis nearly
+blind me.
+
+"And, then, then, by the holy, agile angels! you think you have to
+persuade me it's a serious business! Never fear! I know it!--Jarvis,
+the bromide, quick! Before I know it, they'll drive me to
+opiates.--Serious business! Shrivelled and shrinking saints!"
+
+Arms clasped around his legs, knees pressed against his chin, Mr. Sloane
+trembled and shook until Jarvis, more agile than the angels of whom his
+employer had spoken, gave him the dose of bromides.
+
+Still, Mr. Hastings did not retire.
+
+"I was going to say," he resumed, in a tone devoid of compassion, "I
+couldn't drop this thing now. I may be able to find the murderer; and
+you may be able to help me."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Isn't it Russell? He's among the ravens now, in my parlour. Wilton told
+me the sheriff was certain Russell was the man. Murdered martyrs!
+Sacrificed saints! Can't you let a guilty man hang when he comes forward
+and puts the rope around his own worthless neck?"
+
+"If Russell's guilty," Hastings said, glad of the information that the
+accused man was then at Sloanehurst, "I hope we can develop the
+necessary evidence against him. But----"
+
+"The necessary----"
+
+"Let me finish, Mr. Sloane, if you please!" The old man was determined
+to disregard the other's signs of suffering. He did not believe that
+they were anything but assumed, the exaggerated camouflage which he
+usually employed as an excuse for idleness. "But, if Russell isn't
+guilty, there are facts which may help me to find the murderer. And you
+may have valuable information concerning them."
+
+"Sobbing, sorrowing saints!" lamented Mr. Sloane, but his trembling
+ceased; he was closely attentive. "A cigarette, Jarvis, a cigarette!
+Nerves will be served.--I suppose the easiest way is to submit. Go on."
+
+"I shall ask you only two or three questions," Hastings said.
+
+The jackknife-like figure in the bed shuddered its repugnance.
+
+"I've been told, Mr. Sloane, that Mr. Webster has been in great need of
+money, as much as sixty-five thousand dollars. In fact, according to my
+information, he needs it now."
+
+"Well, did he kill the woman, expecting to find it in her stocking?"
+
+"The significance of his being hard-pressed, for so large an amount,"
+the old man went on, ignoring the sarcasm, "is in the further charge
+that Miss Brace was trying to make him marry her, that he should have
+married her, that he killed her in order to be free to marry your
+daughter--for money."
+
+"My daughter! For money!" shrilled Sloane, neck elongated, head thrust
+forward, eyes bulging. "Leaping and whistling cherubim!" For all his
+outward agitation, he seemed to Hastings in thorough command of his
+logical faculties; it was more than possible, the detective thought,
+that the expletives were time-killers, until he could decide what to
+say. "It's ridiculous, absurd! Why, sir, you reason as loosely as you
+dress! Are you trying to prostrate me further with impossible theories?
+Webster marry my daughter for money, for sixty-five thousand dollars? He
+knows I'd let him have any amount he wanted. I'd give him the money if
+it meant his peace of mind and Lucille's happiness.--Dumb and dancing
+devils! Jarvis, a little whiskey! I'm worn out, worn out!"
+
+"Did you ever tell Mr. Webster of the extent of your generous feeling
+toward him, Mr. Sloane--in dollars and cents?"
+
+"No; it wasn't necessary. He knows how fond of him I am."
+
+"And you would let him have sixty-five thousand dollars--if he had to
+have it?"
+
+"I would, sir!--today, this morning."
+
+"Now, one other thing, Mr. Sloane, and I'm through. It's barely possible
+that there was some connection between this murder and a letter which
+came to Sloanehurst yesterday afternoon, a letter in an oblong grey
+envelope. Did----"
+
+The nervous man went to pieces again, beat with his open palms on the
+bed covering.
+
+"Starved and stoned evangels, Jarvis! Quit balling your feet! You stand
+there and see me harassed to the point of extinction by a lot of crazy
+queries, and you indulge yourself in that infernal weakness of yours of
+balling your feet! Leaping angels! You know how acute my hearing is; you
+know the noise of your sock against the sole of your shoe when you ball
+your feet is the most exquisite torture to me! A little whiskey, Jarvis!
+Quick!" He spoke now in a weak, almost inaudible voice to Hastings: "No;
+I got no such letter. I saw no such letter." He sank slowly back to a
+prone posture.
+
+"I was going to remind you," the detective continued, "that I brought
+the five o'clock mail in. Getting off the car, I met the rural carrier;
+he asked me to bring in the mail, saving him the few steps to your box.
+All there was consisted of a newspaper and one letter. I recall the
+shape and colour of the envelope--oblong, grey. I did not, of course,
+look at the address. I handed the mail to you when you met me on the
+porch."
+
+Mr. Sloane, raising himself on one elbow to take the restoring drink
+from Jarvis, looked across the glass at his cross-examiner.
+
+"I put the mail in the basket on the hall table," he said in high-keyed
+endeavour to express withering contempt. "If it had been for me, Jarvis
+would have brought it to me later. I seldom carry my reading glasses
+about the house with me."
+
+Hastings, subjecting the pallid Jarvis to severe scrutiny, asked him:
+
+"Was that grey letter addressed to--whom?"
+
+"I didn't see it," replied Jarvis, scarcely polite.
+
+"And yet, it's your business to inspect and deliver the household's
+mail?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"What became of it, then--the grey envelope?"
+
+"I'm sure I can't say, sir, unless some one got it before I reached the
+mail basket."
+
+Hastings stood up. Interrogation of both master and man had given him
+nothing save the inescapable conviction that both of them resented his
+questioning and would do nothing to help him. The reason for this
+opposition he could not grasp, but it was a fact, challenging his
+analysis. Arthur Sloane rejected his proffered help in the pursuit of
+the man who had brought murder to the doors of Sloanehurst. Why? Was
+this his method of hiding facts in his possession?
+
+Hastings questioned him again:
+
+"Your waking up at that unusual hour last night--was it because of a
+noise outside?"
+
+The neurasthenic, once more recumbent, succeeded in voicing faint denial
+of having heard any noises, outside or inside. Nor had he been aware of
+the murder until called by Judge Wilton. He had turned on his light to
+find the smelling-salts which, for the first time in six years, Jarvis
+had failed to leave on his bed-table,--terrible and ill-trained apes!
+Couldn't he be left in peace?
+
+The hall door opened, admitting Judge Wilton. The newcomer, with a word
+of greeting to Hastings, sat down on the bedside and put a hand on
+Sloane's shoulder.
+
+Hastings turned to leave the room.
+
+"Any news?" the judge asked him.
+
+"I've just been asking Mr. Sloane that," Hastings said, in a tone that
+made Wilton look swiftly at his friend's face.
+
+"I told Arthur this morning," he said, "how lucky he was that you'd
+promised Lucille to go into this thing."
+
+"Apparently," Hastings retorted drily, "he's unconvinced of the extent
+of his good fortune."
+
+Mr. Sloane, quivering from head to foot, mourned softly: "Unfathomable
+fate!"
+
+Wilton, his rugged features softening to frank amusement, stared a
+moment in silence at Sloane's thin face, at the deeply lined forehead
+topped by stringy grey hair.
+
+"See here, Arthur," he protested, nodding Hastings an invitation to
+remain; "you know as much about crime as Hastings and I. If you've
+thought about this murder at all, you must see what it is. If Russell
+isn't guilty--if he's not the man, that crime was committed shrewdly,
+with forethought. And it was a devilish thing--devilish!"
+
+"Well, what of it?" Sloane protested shrilly, not opening his eyes.
+
+"Take my advice. Quit antagonizing Mr. Hastings. Be thankful that he's
+here, that he's promised to run down the guilty man."
+
+Mr. Sloane turned his face to the wall.
+
+"A little whiskey, Jarvis," he said softly. "I'm exhausted, Tom. Leave
+me alone."
+
+Wilton waved his hand, indicative of the futility of further argument.
+
+"Judge," announced Hastings, at the door, "I'll ask you a question I put
+to Mr. Sloane. Did you receive, or see, a letter in an oblong, grey
+envelope in yesterday afternoon's mail?"
+
+"No. I never get any mail while I'm here for a week-end."
+
+Wilton followed the detective into the hall.
+
+"I hope you're not going to give up the case, Hastings. You won't pay
+any attention to Arthur's unreasonable attitude, will you?"
+
+"I don't know," Hastings said, still indignant. "I made my bargain with
+his daughter. I'll see her."
+
+"If you can't manage any other way, I--or she--will get any information
+you want from Arthur."
+
+"I hope to keep on. It's a big thing, I think." The old man was again
+intent on solving the problem. "Tell me, judge; do you think Berne
+Webster's guilty?" Seeing the judge's hesitance, he supplemented: "I
+mean, did you notice anything last night, in his conduct, that would
+indicate guilt--or fear?"
+
+Later, when other developments gave this scene immense importance,
+Hastings, in reviewing it, remembered the curious little flicker of the
+judge's eyelids preceding his reply.
+
+"Absolutely not," he declared, with emphasis. "Are you working on
+that"--he hesitated hardly perceptibly--"idea?"
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE MAN WHO RAN AWAY
+
+
+Ancestors of the old family from whom Arthur Sloane had purchased this
+colonial mansion eight years ago still looked out of their gilded frames
+on the parlour walls, their high-bred calm undisturbed, their
+aristocratic eyes unwidened, by the chatter and clatter of the strangers
+within their gates. Hastings noticed that even the mob and mouthing of a
+coroner's inquest failed to destroy the ancient atmosphere and charm of
+the great room. He smiled. The pictured grandeur of a bygone age, the
+brocaded mahogany chairs, the tall French mirrors--all these made an
+incongruous setting for the harsh machinery of crime-inquiry.
+
+The detective had completed his second and more detailed search of the
+guest-rooms in time to hear the words and study the face of the last
+witness on Dr. Garnet's list. That was Eugene Russell.
+
+"One of life's persimmons--long before frost!" Hastings thought, making
+swift appraisal. "A boneless spine--chin like a sheep--brave as a
+lamb."
+
+Russell could not conceal his agitation. In fact, he referred to it.
+Fear, he explained in a low, husky voice to the coroner and the jury,
+was not a part of his emotions. His only feeling was sorrow, varied now
+and then by the embarrassment he felt as a result of the purely personal
+and very intimate facts which he had to reveal.
+
+His one desire was to be frank, he declared, his pale blue eyes roving
+from place to place, his nervous fingers incessantly playing with his
+thin, uncertain lips. This mania for truthfulness, he asserted, was
+natural, in that it offered him the one sure path to freedom and the
+establishment of his innocence of all connection with the murder of the
+woman he had loved.
+
+He was, he testified, thirty-one years old, a clerk in a real-estate
+dealer's office and a native of Washington. Mildred Brace had been
+employed for a few weeks by the same firm for which he worked, and it
+was there that he had met her. Although she had refused to marry him on
+the ground that his salary was inadequate for the needs of two people,
+she had encouraged his attentions. Sometimes, they had quarrelled.
+
+"Speak up, Mr. Russell!" Dr. Garnet directed. "And take your time. Let
+the jury hear every word you utter."
+
+After that, the witness abandoned his attempt to exclude the family
+portraits from his confidence, but his voice shook.
+
+"Conductor Barton is right," he said, responding to the coroner's
+interrogation. "I did come out on his car, the car that gets to the
+Sloanehurst stop at ten-thirty, and I did leave the car at the
+Ridgecrest stop, a quarter of a mile from here. I was following
+Mil--Miss Brace. I saw her leave her apartment house, the Walman. I
+followed her to the transfer station at the bridge, and I saw her take
+the car there. I followed on the next car. I knew where she was going,
+knew she was going to Sloanehurst."
+
+"How did you know that, Mr. Russell?"
+
+"I mean I was certain of it. She'd told me Mr. Berne Webster, the lawyer
+she'd been working for, was out here spending the week-end; and I knew
+she was coming out to meet him."
+
+"Why did she do that?"
+
+Mr. Russell displayed pathetic embarrassment and confusion before he
+answered that. He plucked at his lower lip with spasmodic fingers. His
+eyes were downcast. He attempted a self-deprecatory smile which ended in
+an unpleasant grimace.
+
+"She wouldn't say. But it was because she was in love with him."
+
+"And you were jealous of Mr. Webster?"
+
+"We-ell--yes, sir; that's about it, I guess."
+
+"Did Miss Brace tell you she was coming to Sloanehurst?"
+
+"No, sir. I suspected it."
+
+"And watched her movements?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And followed her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why did you think she was in love with Mr. Webster, Mr. Russell? And
+please give us a direct answer. You can understand the importance of
+what you're about to say."
+
+"I do. I thought so because she had told me that he was in love with
+her, and because of her grief and anger when he dismissed her from his
+office. And she did everything to make me think so, except declaring it
+outright. She did that because she knew I hated to think she was in love
+with him."
+
+"All right, Mr. Russell. Now, tell us what happened during
+your--ah--shadowing Miss Brace the night she was killed."
+
+"I got off the car at Ridgecrest and walked toward Sloanehurst. It was
+raining then, pretty hard. I thought she had made an appointment to
+meet Mr. Webster somewhere in the grounds here. It was a quarter to
+eleven when I got to the little side-gate that opens on the lawn out
+there on the north side of the house."
+
+"How did you know that?"
+
+"I looked at my watch then. It's got a luminous dial."
+
+"You were then at the gate near where she was found, dead?"
+
+"Yes. And she was at the gate."
+
+"Oh! So you saw her?"
+
+"I saw her. When I lifted the latch of the gate, she came toward me.
+There was a heavy drizzle then. I thought she had been leaning on the
+fence a few feet away. She whispered, sharp and quick, 'Who's that?' I
+knew who she was, right off. I said, 'Gene.'
+
+"She caught hold of my arm and shook it. She told me, still whispering,
+if I didn't get away from there, if I didn't go back to town, she'd
+raise an alarm, accuse me of trying to kill her--or she'd kill me. She
+pressed something against my cheek. It felt like a knife, although I
+couldn't see, for the darkness."
+
+The witness paused and licked his dry lips. He was breathing fast, and
+his restless eyes had a hunted look. The people in the room leaned
+farther toward him, some believing, some doubting him.
+
+Hastings thought: "He's scared stiff, but telling the truth--so far."
+
+"All right; what next?" asked Dr. Garnet, involuntarily lowering his
+voice to Russell's tone.
+
+"I accused her of having an appointment to meet Webster there. I got
+mad. I hate to have to tell all this, gentlemen; but I want to tell the
+truth. I told her she was a fool to run after a man who'd thrown her
+over.
+
+"'It's none of your look-out what I do!' she told me. 'You get away from
+here, now--this minute! You'll be sorry if you don't!' There was
+something about her that frightened me, mad as I was. I'd never seen her
+like that before."
+
+"What do you mean?" Garnet urged him.
+
+"I thought she would kill me, or somebody else would, and she knew it. I
+got the idea that she was like a crazy woman, out of her head about
+Webster, ready to do anything desperate, anything wild. I can't explain
+it any better than that."
+
+"And did you leave her?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"At once?"
+
+"Practically. A sort of panic got hold of me. I can't explain it,
+really."
+
+Russell, seeking an illuminative phrase, gave vent to a long-drawn,
+anxious sigh. He appeared to feel no shame for his flight. His fear was
+that he would not be believed.
+
+"Just as she told me a second time to leave her, I thought I heard
+somebody coming toward us, a slushy, dull sound, like heavy footsteps on
+the wet grass. Mildred's manner, her voice, had already scared me.
+
+"When I heard those footsteps, I turned and ran. My heart was in my
+mouth. I ran out to the road and back toward Washington. I ran as fast
+as I could. Twice I fell on my hands and knees. I can't tell you exactly
+how it was, why it was. I just knew something terrible would happen if I
+stayed there. I never had a feeling like that before. I was more afraid
+of her than I was of the man coming toward us."
+
+Members of the jury pushed back their chairs, were audible with subdued
+exclamations and long breaths, relieved of the nervous tension to which
+Russell's story of the encounter at the gate had lifted them. They were,
+however, prejudiced against him, a fact which he grasped.
+
+One of them asked him:
+
+"Can you tell us why you followed her out here?"
+
+"Why?" Russell echoed, like a man seeking time for deliberation.
+
+"Yes. What did you think you'd do after you'd overtaken her?"
+
+"Persuade her to go back home with me. I wanted to save her from doing
+anything foolish--anything like that, you know."
+
+"But, from what you've told us here this morning, it seems you never had
+much influence on her behaviour. Isn't that true?"
+
+"I suppose it is.--But," Russell added eagerly, "I can prove I had no
+idea of hurting her, if that's what you're hinting at. I can prove I
+never struck her. At twenty minutes past eleven last night I was four
+miles from here. Mr. Otis, a Washington commission merchant, picked me
+up in his automobile, six miles outside of Washington and took me into
+town. I couldn't have made that four miles on foot, no matter how I ran,
+in approximately fifteen or twenty minutes.
+
+"It's been proved that she was struck down after eleven anyway.--You
+said the condition of the body showed that, doctor.--You see, I would
+have had to make the four miles in less than twenty minutes--an
+impossibility. You see?"
+
+His eagerness to win their confidence put a disagreeable note, almost a
+whimper, into his voice. It grated on Dr. Garnet.
+
+It affected Hastings more definitely.
+
+"Now," he decided, "he's lying--about something. But what?" He noted a
+change in Russell's face, a suggestion of craftiness, the merest shadow
+of slyness over his general attitude of anxiety. And yet, this part of
+his story seemed straight enough.
+
+Dr. Garnet's next question brought out the fact that it would be
+corroborated.
+
+"This Mr. Otis, Mr. Russell; where is he?"
+
+"Right there, by the window," the witness answered, with a smug smile
+which gave him a still more unprepossessing look.
+
+Jury and spectators turned toward the man at the window. They saw a
+clean-shaven, alert-looking person of middle age, who nodded slightly in
+Russell's direction as if endorsing his testimony. There seemed no
+possible grounds for doubting whatever Otis might say. Hastings at once
+accepted him as genuine, an opinion which, it was obvious, was shared by
+the rest of the assemblage.
+
+Russell sensed the change of sentiment toward himself. Until now, it had
+been a certainty that he would be held for the murder. But his producing
+an outsider, incontestably a trustworthy man, to establish the truth of
+his statement that he had been four miles away from the scene of the
+crime a quarter of an hour after it had been committed--that was
+something in his favour which could not be gainsaid.
+
+Granting even that he had had an automobile at his disposal--a
+supposition for which there was no foundation--his alibi would still
+have been good, in view of the rain and the fact that one of the four
+miles in question was "dirt road."
+
+With the realization of this, the jury swung back to the animus it had
+felt against Webster, the incredulity with which it had received his
+statement that there had been between him and the dead woman no closer
+relationship than that of employer and employe.
+
+Webster, seated near the wall furthest from the jury, felt the inquiry
+of many eyes upon him, but he was unmoved, kept his gaze on Russell.
+
+Dr. Garnet, announcing that he would ask Mr. Otis to testify a little
+later, handed Russell the weapon with which Mildred Brace had been
+murdered.
+
+"Have you ever seen that dagger before?" he asked.
+
+Russell said he had not. Reminded that Sheriff Crown had testified to
+searching the witness's room and had discovered that a nail file was
+missing from his dressing case, a file which, judging by other articles
+in the case, must have been the same size as the one used in making the
+amateur dagger, Russell declared that his file had been lost for three
+years. He had left it in a hotel room on the only trip he had ever taken
+to New York.
+
+He gave way to Mr. Otis, who described himself as a commission merchant
+of Washington. Returning from a tour to Lynchburg, Virginia, he said, he
+had been hailed last night by a man in the road and had agreed to take
+him into town, a ride of six miles. Reaching Washington shortly before
+midnight, he had dropped his passenger at Eleventh and F streets.
+
+"Who was this passenger?" inquired Garnet.
+
+"He told me," said Otis, "his name was Eugene Russell. I gave him my
+name. That explains how he was able to find me this morning. When he
+told me how he was situated, I agreed to come over here and give you
+gentlemen the facts."
+
+"Notice anything peculiar about Mr. Russell last night?"
+
+"No; I think not."
+
+"Was he agitated, disturbed?"
+
+"He was out of breath. And he commented on that himself, said he'd been
+walking fast. Oh, yes! He was bareheaded; and he explained that--said
+the rain had ruined a cheap straw hat he had been wearing; the glue had
+run out of the straw and down his neck, he had thrown the hat away."
+
+"And the time? When did you pick him up?"
+
+"It was twenty minutes past eleven o'clock. When I stopped, I glanced at
+my machine clock; I carry a clock just above my speedometer."
+
+Mr. Otis was positive in his statements. He realized, he said, that his
+words might relieve one man of suspicion and bring it upon another.
+Unless he had been absolutely certain of his facts, he would not have
+stated them. He was sure, beyond the possibility of doubt, that he had
+made no mistake when he looked at his automobile clock; it was running
+when he stopped and when he reached Washington; yes, it was an accurate
+timepiece.
+
+Russell's alibi was established. His defence appealed to the jurymen as
+unassailable. When, after a conference of less than half an hour, they
+brought in a verdict that Mildred Brace had been murdered by a thrust of
+the "nail-file dagger" in the hands of a person unknown, nobody in the
+room was surprised.
+
+And nobody was blind to the fact that the freeing of Eugene Russell
+seriously questioned the innocence of Berne Webster.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE BREAKING DOWN OF WEBSTER
+
+
+Hastings, sprawling comfortably in a low chair by the south window in
+the music room, stopped his whittling when Berne Webster came in with
+Judge Wilton. "Meddlesome Mike!" thought the detective. "I sent for
+Webster."
+
+"Berne asked me to come with him," the judge explained his presence at
+once. "We've talked things over; he thought I might help him bring out
+every detail--jog his memory, if necessary."
+
+Hastings did not protest the arrangement. He saw, almost immediately,
+that Webster had come with no intention of giving him hearty
+cooperation. The motive for this lack of frankness he could not
+determine. It was enough that he felt the younger man's veiled
+antagonism and appreciated the fact that Wilton accompanied him in the
+rôle of protector.
+
+"If I'm to get anything worth while out of this talk," he decided, "I've
+got to mix up my delivery, shuffle the cards, spring first one thing and
+then another at him--bewilder him."
+
+He proceeded with that definite design: at an opportune time, he would
+guide the narrative, take it out of Webster's hands, and find out what
+he wanted to know, not merely what the young lawyer wanted to tell. He
+recognized the necessity of breaking down the shell of self-control that
+overlaid the suspected man's uneasiness.
+
+That it was only a shell, he felt sure. Webster, leaning an elbow
+lightly on the piano, looked down at him out of anxious eyes, and
+continually passed his right hand over his smooth, dark-brown hair from
+forehead to crown, a mechanical gesture of his when perplexed.
+
+His smile, too, was forced, hardly more than a slight, fixed twist of
+the lips, as if he strove to advertise his ability to laugh at danger.
+His customary dash, a pleasing levity of manner, was gone, giving place
+to a suggestion of strain, so that he seemed always on the alert against
+himself, determined to edit in advance his answer to every question.
+
+Wilton had chosen a chair which placed him directly opposite Hastings
+and at the same time enabled him to watch Webster. He was smoking a
+cigar, and, through the haze that floated up just then from his lips, he
+gave the detective a long, searching look, to which Hastings paid no
+attention.
+
+Webster talked nearly twenty minutes, explaining his eagerness to be
+"thoroughly frank as to every detail," reviewing the evidence brought
+out by the inquest, and criticising the action of the jury, but
+producing nothing new. Occasionally he left the piano and paced the
+floor, smoking interminably, lighting the fresh cigarette from the stub
+of the old, obviously strung to the limit of his nervous strength.
+Hastings detected a little twitching of the muscles at the corners of
+his mouth, and the too frequent winking of his eyes.
+
+Judge Wilton had told him, Webster continued, of Mrs. Brace's charge
+that he wanted to marry Miss Sloane because of financial pressure; there
+was not a word of truth in it; he had already arranged for a loan to
+make that payment when it fell due. He was, however, aware of his
+unenviable position, and he wanted to give the detective every
+assistance possible, in that way assuring his own prompt relief from
+embarrassment.
+
+By this time, Hastings had mapped out his line of questioning, his
+assault on Webster's reticence.
+
+"That's the right idea!" he said, getting to his feet. "Let's go to
+work."
+
+They saw the change in him. Instead of the genial, drawling, slow-moving
+old fellow who had seemed thankful for anything he might chance to
+hear, they were confronted now by an aroused, quick-thinking man whose
+words came from him with a sharp, clipped-off effect, and whose
+questions scouted the whole field of their possible and probable
+information. He stood leaning his elbows on the other end of the piano,
+facing Webster across the polished length of its broad top. His
+dominance of the night before, in the library, had returned.
+
+"Now, Mr. Webster," he began, innocent of threat, "as things stack up at
+present, only two people had the semblance of a motive for killing
+Mildred Brace--either Eugene Russell killed her out of jealousy of you;
+or you killed her to silence her demands. Do you see that?"
+
+He had put back his head a little and was peering at Webster under his
+spectacle-rims, down the line of his nose. He saw how the other fought
+down the impulse to deny, hesitating before answering, with a laugh on a
+high note, like derision:
+
+"I suppose that's what a lot of people will say."
+
+"Precisely. Now, I've just had a talk with this Russell--caught him
+after the inquest. I believe there's something rotten about that alibi
+of his; but I couldn't shake him; and the Otis testimony's sound. So
+we'll have to quit counting on Russell's proving his own guilt. We've
+got that little job on our hands, and the best way to handle it is to
+prove your innocence. See that?"
+
+The bow with which Webster acknowledged this statement was a curious
+mingling of grace and mockery. The detective ignored it.
+
+"And," he continued, "there's only one way for you to come whole out of
+this muddle--frankness. I'm working for you; you know that. Tell me
+everything you know, and we've got a chance to win. The innocent man who
+tries to twist black into white is an innocent fool." He looked swiftly
+to Wilton, who was leaning far back in his chair, head lolling slowly
+from side to side, the picture of indifference. "Isn't that so, judge?"
+
+"Quite," Wilton agreed, pausing to remove his cigar from his mouth.
+
+"Of course, it's so," Webster said curtly. "I've just told you so.
+That's why I've decided--the judge and I have talked it over--to give
+you something in confidence."
+
+"One moment!" Hastings warned him. "Maybe, I won't take it in
+confidence--if it's something incriminating you."
+
+"Yes; you've phrased that unfortunately, Berne," the judge put in,
+tilting his head on the chair-back to meet the detective's look.
+
+Webster was nonplussed. Apparently, his surprise came from the judge's
+remark rather than from the detective's refusal to assume the rôle of
+confidant. Hastings inferred that Wilton, agreeing beforehand to the
+proposal being advanced, had changed his mind after entering the room.
+
+"Hastings is right," the judge concluded; "even if he's on your side,
+you can't expect him to be tied up blind that way by a suspected
+man--and you're just that, Berne."
+
+Seeing Webster's uncertainty, Hastings took another course.
+
+"I think I know what you're talking about, Mr. Webster," he said,
+matter-of-fact. "Your nail-file's missing from your dressing
+case--disappeared since yesterday morning."
+
+"You know that!" Berne flashed, suddenly angry. "And you're holding it
+over me!"
+
+Open hostility was in every feature of his face; his lips twitched to
+the sharp intake of his breath.
+
+"Why don't you look at it another way?" the old man countered quickly.
+"If I'd told the coroner about it--if I'd told him also that the size of
+that nail-file, judging from the rest of the dressing case, matched that
+of the one used for the blade of the dagger, matched it as well as
+Russell's--what then?"
+
+"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 high-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."
+
+"It didn't matter at all," Hastings matched Wilton's cordial tone; "and
+I appreciate your offer, judge. Suppose you tell me anything that occurs
+to you, anything that will throw light on this case any time; and I'll
+act as go-between for you with the authorities--if necessary."
+
+"You mean----?"
+
+"I'd like to do the talking for this family and its friends. I can work
+better if I can handle things myself. The half of my job is to save the
+Sloanes from as many wild rumours as I can."
+
+Wilton nodded approval.
+
+"How about Arthur? You want me to take any questions to him for you?"
+
+"No; thanks.--But," Hastings added, "you might make him see the
+necessity of telling me what he saw last night. If he doesn't come out
+with it, he'll make it all the harder on Webster."
+
+"I don't think he saw anything."
+
+"Didn't he? Why'd he refuse to testify before the coroner, then?"
+
+Sheriff Crown's car came whirling up the driveway; and Hastings spoke
+hurriedly:
+
+"You know he's not as sick as he makes out. He's got to tell me what he
+knows, judge! He's holding back something. That's why he wants to make
+me so mad I'll quit the case. Who's he shielding? That's what people
+will want to know."
+
+Wilton pondered that.
+
+"I'll see what I can do," he finally agreed. "According to you, it may
+appear--people may suspect--that Webster's guilty or shielding somebody
+else; and Arthur's guilty or shielding Webster!"
+
+When Mr. Crown reached the porch, they were discussing Webster's
+condition, and Hastings, with the aid of the judge's penknife, was
+tightening a screw in his big barlowesque blade. They were careful to
+say nothing that might arouse the sheriff's suspicion of their
+compact--an agreement whereby a private detective, and not the law's
+representative, was to have the benefit of all the judge's information
+bearing on the murder.
+
+Mr. Crown, however, was dissatisfied.
+
+"I'm tied up!" he complained, nursing with forefinger and thumb his
+knuckle-like chin. "The only place I can get information is at the wrong
+end--Russell!"
+
+"What's the matter with me?" the detective asked amiably. "I'll be glad
+to help--if you think I can."
+
+"What good's that to me?" He wore his best politician's smile, but there
+was resentment in his voice. "Your job is keeping things quiet--for
+Sloanehurst. Mr. Sloane's ill, too ill to see me without endangering his
+life, so his funeral-faced valet tells me. Miss Lucille says, politely
+enough, she's told all she knows, told it on the stand, and I'm to go to
+you if I want anything more from her. The judge here knows nothing about
+the inside relationships of the family and Webster, or of Webster and
+the Brace girl. And Webster's down and out, thoroughly and
+conveniently! If all that don't catch your uncle Robert where the hair's
+short, I'll quit!"
+
+"What do you want to know?" Hastings countered. "You've had access to
+everything, far as I can see."
+
+Reply to that was delayed by the appearance of Jarvis, summoning the
+judge to Arthur Sloane's room.
+
+"I want to get at Webster," Crown told Hastings. "And here's why: if
+Russell didn't kill her, Webster did."
+
+"Why, you've weakened!" the old man guyed head bent over his whittling.
+"You had Russell's goose cooked this morning--roasted to a rich, dark
+brown!"
+
+"Yes; and if I could break down his alibi, I'd still have him cooked!"
+
+"You accept the alibi, then?"
+
+"Sure, I accept it."
+
+"I don't."
+
+"Why don't you?" objected Crown. "He didn't have an aeroplane in his hip
+pocket, did he? That's the only way he could have covered those four
+miles in fifteen minutes.--Or does his alibi have to fall in order to
+save Miss Sloane's fiancé?"
+
+He slapped his thigh and thrust out his bristly moustache. "You're paid
+to fasten the thing on Russell," he said, clearly pugnacious. "I don't
+expect you to help me work against Webster! I'm not that simple!"
+
+The old man, with a gesture no more arresting than to point at the
+sheriff with the piece of wood in his left hand, made the official jaw
+drop almost to the official chest.
+
+"Mr. Crown," he said, "get this, once and for all: a man ain't
+necessarily a crook because he's once worked for the government. I'm as
+anxious to find the guilty man now, every time, as when I was in the
+Department of Justice. And I intend to. From now on, you'll give me
+credit for that!--Won't you, Mr. Sheriff?"
+
+Crown apologized. "I'm worried; that's what. I'm up a gum stump and
+can't get down."
+
+"All right, but don't try to make a ladder out of me! Why don't you look
+into that alibi?"
+
+Crown was irritated again. "What do you stick to that for?"
+
+"Because," Hastings declared, "I'm ready to swear-and-cross-my-heart he
+lied when he said he ran that four miles. I'm ready to swear he was here
+when the murder was done. When a man's got as good an alibi as he said
+he had, his adam's-apple don't play 'Yankee Doodle' on his windpipe."
+
+"Is that so!"
+
+"It is--and here's another thing: when's Mrs. Brace going to break
+loose?"
+
+"Now, you're talking!" agreed Crown, with momentary enthusiasm. "She
+told me this morning she'd help me show up Webster--she wouldn't have it
+that Russell killed the girl. Foxy business! Mixed up in it herself, she
+runs to the rescue of the man she----"
+
+The sheriff paused, unable to bring that reasoning to its logical
+conclusion.
+
+"No," he said, dejected; "I can't believe she put him up to murdering
+her daughter."
+
+"That woman," Hastings said, "is capable of anything--anything! We're
+going to find she's terrible, I tell you, Crown. She's mixed up in the
+murder somehow--and, if you don't find out how, I will!"
+
+"How can we get her?" Crown argued. "She was in her flat when the
+killing was done. We've searched these grounds, and found nothing to
+incriminate anybody. All we've got is a strong suspicion against two
+men. She's out and away."
+
+"Not if we watch her. She's promised to make trouble--she'll be lucky if
+she makes none for herself. Let's keep after her."
+
+"I'm on! But," the sheriff reminded, again half-hearted, "that won't get
+us anything soon. She won't leave her flat before the funeral."
+
+"That won't keep her quiet very long," Hastings contended. "She told me
+the funeral would be at nine o'clock tomorrow morning--from an
+undertaker's.--Anyway, I've instructed one of my assistants to keep
+track of her. I'm not counting on her grief absorbing her, even for
+today."
+
+But he saw that Crown was not greatly impressed with the possibility of
+finding the murderer through Mrs. Brace. The sheriff was engrossed in
+mental precautions against being misled by "the Sloanehurst detective."
+
+He was still in that mood when Miss Sloane sent for Hastings.
+
+The detective found her in the music room. She had taken the chair which
+Judge Wilton had occupied an hour before, and was leaning one elbow on
+an arm of it, her chin resting in the cup of her hand. Her dress--a
+filmy lavender so light that it shaded almost to pink, and magically
+made to bring out the grace of her figure--drew his attention to the
+slight sag of her shoulders, suggestive of great weariness.
+
+But he was captivated anew by her grave loveliness, and by her
+fortitude. She betrayed her agitation only in the fine tremour in her
+hands and a certain slowness in her words.
+
+On the porch, talking to Judge Wilton, he had wondered, in a moment of
+irritation, why he continued on the case against so much apparent
+opposition in the very household which he sought to help. He knew now
+that neither his sense of duty nor his fee was the deciding influence.
+He stayed because this girl needed him, because he had seen in her eyes
+last night the haggard look of an unspeakable suspicion.
+
+"You wanted to see me--is there anything special?" she asked him,
+immediately alert.
+
+"Yes; there is, Miss Sloane," he said, careful to put into his voice all
+the sympathy he felt for her.
+
+"Yes?" She was looking at him with steady eyes.
+
+"It's this, and I want you to bear in mind that I wouldn't bring it up
+but for my desire to put an end to your uncertainty: I'm afraid you
+haven't told me everything you know, everything you saw last night
+in----"
+
+When she would have spoken, he put up a warning hand.
+
+"Let me explain, please. Don't commit yourself until you see what I
+mean. Judge Wilton and Mr. Webster seem to think I'm not needed here. It
+may be a natural attitude--for them. They're both lawyers, and to
+lawyers a mere detective doesn't amount to much."
+
+"Oh, I'm sure it isn't that," she flashed out, apologizing.
+
+"Oh, I don't mind, personally," he said, with a smile for which she
+felt grateful. "As I say, it's natural for them to think that way,
+perhaps. Your father, however, is not a lawyer; and, when I went into
+his room at your request, he took pains to offend me, insult me, several
+times." That brought a faint flush to her face. "So, that leaves only
+you to give me facts which I must have--if they exist."
+
+He became more urgent.
+
+"And you employed me, Miss Sloane; you appealed to me when you were at a
+loss where to turn. I'm only fair to myself as well as to you when I
+tell you that your distress, far more than financial considerations,
+persuaded me to undertake this work without first consulting your
+father."
+
+She leaned toward him, bending from the waist, her eyes slightly
+widened, so that their effect was to give her a startled air.
+
+"You don't mean you'll give it up!" she said, plainly entreating. "You
+won't give it up!"
+
+"Are you quite sure you don't want me to give it up? Judge Wilton has
+asked me twice, out of politeness, not to give it up. Are you merely
+being polite?"
+
+She smiled, looking tired, and shook her head.
+
+"Really, Mr. Hastings, if you were to desert us now, I should be
+desperate--altogether. Desperate! Just that."
+
+"I can't desert you," he said gently. "As I told Mr. Webster, I know too
+little and I suspect too much to do that."
+
+Before she spoke again, she looked at him intently, drawing in her under
+lip a little against her teeth.
+
+"What, Mr. Hastings?" she asked, then. "What do you suspect?"
+
+"Let me answer that with a question," he suggested. "Last night, your
+one idea was that I could protect you and your father, everybody in the
+house here, by acting as your spokesman. I think you wanted to set me up
+as a buffer between all of you on the one side and the authorities and
+the reporters on the other. You wanted things kept down, nothing to get
+out beyond that which was unavoidable. Wasn't that it?"
+
+"Yes; it was," she admitted, not seeing where his question led.
+
+"You were afraid, then, that something incriminating might be divulged,
+weren't you?"
+
+"Oh, no!" she denied instantly.
+
+"I mean something which might seem incriminating. You trusted the person
+whom it would seem to incriminate; and you wanted time for the murderer
+to be found without, in the meantime, having the adverse circumstance
+made public. Isn't that it, Miss Sloane?"
+
+"Yes--practically."
+
+"Let's be clear on that. Your fear was that too much questioning of you
+or the other person might result in a slip-up--might make you or him
+mention the apparently damaging incident, with disastrous effect. Wasn't
+that it?"
+
+"Yes; that was it."
+
+"Now, what was that apparently incriminating incident?"
+
+She started. He had brought her so directly to the confession that she
+saw now the impossibility of withholding what he sought.
+
+"It may be," he tried to lighten her responsibility, "the very thing
+that Webster and the judge have concealed--for I'm sure they're keeping
+something back. Perhaps, if I knew it, things would be easier. People
+closely affected by a crime are the last to judge such things
+accurately."
+
+She gave a long breath of relief, looking at him with perplexity
+nevertheless.
+
+"Yes--I know. That was why I came to you--last night--in the beginning."
+
+"And it was about them, Webster and Wilton," he drew the conclusion for
+her, still encouraging her with his smile, regarding her over the rims
+of his spectacles with a fatherly kindness.
+
+She turned from him and looked out of the window. It was the middle of a
+hot, still day, no breeze stirring, and wonderfully quiet. For the
+moment, there was no sound, in the house or outside.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, her voice a revelation of the extent to which her
+doubts had oppressed her. "It was like that, out there--quiet, still! If
+you could only understand!"
+
+"My dear child," he said, "rely on me. The sheriff is bound to assert
+himself, to keep in the front of things; he's that kind of a man. He'll
+make an arrest any time, or announce that he will. Don't you see the
+danger?" He leaned forward and took her hand, a move to which she seemed
+oblivious. "Don't you see I must have facts to go on--if I'm to help
+you?"
+
+At that, she disengaged her hand, and sat very straight, her face again
+a little turned from him. A twitch, like a shudder cut short, moved her
+whole body, so that the heel of her slipper rapped smartly on the floor.
+
+"I wish," she whispered dully, "I wish I knew what to do!"
+
+"Tell me," he urged, as if he spoke to a child.
+
+She showed him her face, very white, with sudden shadows under the
+eyes.
+
+"I must, I think; I must tell you," she said, not much louder than the
+previous whisper. "You were right. I didn't tell the whole story of what
+I saw. Believe me, I didn't think it mattered. I thought, really, things
+would right themselves and explanations be unnecessary. But you
+knew--didn't you?"
+
+"Yes. I knew." He realized her ordeal, helping her through it. "What
+were they doing?"
+
+She held her chin high.
+
+"It was all true, what I told you in the library, my being waked up by
+father's moving about, my going to the window, my seeing Berne and the
+judge facing each other across--her--there at the end of the awful
+yellow arm of light. But that wasn't all. The moment the light flashed
+on, the judge threw back his head a little, like a man about to cry out,
+shout for help. I am sure that was it.
+
+"But Berne was too quick for that. Berne put out his hand; his arm shot
+across her; and his hand closed the judge's mouth. The judge made no
+noise whatever, but he shook his head from side to side two or three
+times--I'm not certain how many--while Berne leant over the body and
+whispered to him. It seemed to me I could almost hear the words, but I
+didn't.
+
+"Then Berne took his hand from the judge's mouth. I think, before that,
+the judge made a sign, tried to nod his head up and down, to show he
+would do as Berne said. Then, when they saw she was dead, they both
+hurried around the corner to the front of the house, and I heard them
+come in; I heard the judge call to father and run up to your room."
+
+She was alarmed then by the amazement and disapproval in his face.
+
+"Oh!" she said, and this time she took his hand. "You see! You see! You
+don't understand! You think Berne killed her!"
+
+"I don't know," he said, wondering. "I must think." For the moment,
+indignation swept him. "Wilton! A judge, a judge!--keeping quiet on a
+thing like that! I must think."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+MOTIVES REVEALED
+
+
+She let go his hand and, still leaning toward him, waited for him to
+speak. A confusion of misgivings assailed her--she regretted having
+confided in him. If his anger embraced Berne as well as Judge Wilton,
+she had done nothing but harm!
+
+Seeing her dismay, he tried again to reassure her.
+
+"But no matter!" he minimized his own sense of shock. "I'm sure I'll
+understand if you'll tell me more--your explanation."
+
+Obviously, the only inference he could draw from her story as she had
+told it was that Webster had killed the woman and, found bending over
+her body, had sprung forward to silence the man who had discovered him.
+Nevertheless, it was equally evident that she was sincere in attributing
+to Webster a different motive for preventing the judge's outcry.
+Consideration of that persuaded Hastings that she could give him facts
+which would change the whole aspect of the crime.
+
+Her hesitance now made him uneasy; he recognized the necessity of
+increasing her reliance upon him. If she told him only a part of what
+she knew, he would be scarcely in a better position than before.
+
+"Naturally," he added, "you can throw light on the whole incident--light
+by which I must be guided, to a great degree."
+
+"If Berne were not ill," she responded to that, "I wouldn't tell.--It's
+because he's lying up there, his lips closed, unable to keep a look-out
+for developments, at the mercy of what the sheriff may do or
+say!--That's why I feel so dreadfully the need of help, Mr. Hastings!"
+
+She slid back in her chair, moving farther from him, as if his kindly
+gaze disconcerted her.
+
+"If he hadn't suffered this collapse, I should have left the matter to
+him, I think. But now--now I can't!" She straightened again, her chin
+up, the signal with her of final decision. "He acted on his impulsive
+desire to prevent my being shocked by that discovery--that horror out
+there on the lawn. Things had happened to convince him that such a
+thing, shouted through the night, would be a terrific blow to me. I'm
+sure that that was the only idea he had when he put his hand over Judge
+Wilton's mouth."
+
+"I can believe that," he said. "Tell me why you believe it."
+
+"Oh!" she protested, hands clenched on her knees; "if it affected only
+him and me!"
+
+Her suspicion of her father recurred to him. It was, he thought, back of
+the terror he saw in her eyes now.
+
+"But it does affect only him and me, after all!" she continued fiercely,
+as much to strengthen herself in what she wanted to believe as to force
+him to that belief. "Let me tell you the whole affair, from beginning to
+end."
+
+She proceeded in a low tone, the words slower, as if she laboured for
+precision and clarity.
+
+"I must go back to Friday--the night before last--it seems months ago! I
+had heard that Berne had become involved in some sort of relationship
+with his stenographer--that she had been dismissed from his office and
+refused to accept the dismissal as final. I mean, of course, I heard she
+was in love with him, and he'd been in love with her--or should have
+been.
+
+"It was told me by a friend of mine in Washington, Lucy Carnly. It seems
+another stenographer overheard the conversation between Berne and
+Miss--Miss Brace. It got out that way. It was very circumstantial; I
+couldn't help believing it, some of it; Lucy wouldn't have brought me
+idle gossip--I thought."
+
+She drew in her under lip, to hide its momentary tremour, and shook her
+head from side to side once.
+
+"All that, Mr. Hastings, came up, as a matter of course, when Berne
+reached here evening before last for the week-end. I'd just heard it
+that day. He denied it, said there had been nothing remotely resembling
+a love affair.--He was indignant, and very hurt!--He said she'd
+misconstrued some of his kindnesses to her. He couldn't explain how she
+had misconstrued them. At any rate, the result was that I broke our
+engagement. I----"
+
+"Friday night!" Hastings exclaimed involuntarily.
+
+He grasped on the instant how grossly Webster, by withholding all this,
+had deceived him, left him in the dark.
+
+"Yes; and I told father about it," she hurried her words here, the
+effect of her manner being the impression that she hoped this fact would
+not bulk too large in the detective's thoughts. "The three of us had a
+talk about it Friday night. Father's wonderfully fond of Berne and tried
+to persuade me I was foolishly ruining my life. I refused to change my
+mind. When I went upstairs, they stayed a long time in the library,
+talking.
+
+"I think they decided the best thing for Berne was to stay on here,
+through yesterday and today, in the hope that he and father might change
+my mind. Father tried to, yesterday morning. He was awfully upset.
+That's one reason he's so worn out and sick today.--I love my father so,
+Mr. Hastings!" She held her lips tight-shut a moment, a sob struggling
+in her throat. "But my distress, my own hurt pride----"
+
+"What did your father say about Mildred Brace?" Hastings asked, when she
+did not finish that sentence.
+
+She looked at him, again with widened eyes, a startled air, putting both
+her hands to her throat.
+
+"There!" she said, voice falling to a whisper.
+
+Then, turning her face half from him, she whispered so low that he heard
+her with difficulty: "I wish I were dead!"
+
+Her words frightened him, they had so clearly the ring of truth, as if
+she would in sober fact have preferred death to the thought which was
+breaking her heart--suspicion of her father.
+
+"That was why Berne stopped the judge's outcry," she said at last,
+turning her white face to him; "he had the sudden wild idea that I'm
+afraid you have--that father might have killed her. And Berne did not
+want that awful fact screamed through the night at me. Oh, can't you
+see--can't you see that, Mr. Hastings?"
+
+"It's entirely possible; Mr. Webster may have thought that.--But let's
+keep the story straight. What had your father said about Mildred
+Brace--to arouse any such suspicion?"
+
+"He was angry, terribly indignant. You know I made no secret to you of
+his high temper. His rages are fierce.--Once, when he was that way, I
+saw him kill a dog. If it had--but I think all men who're unstrung
+nervously, as he is, have high tempers. He felt so indignant because she
+had come between Berne and myself. He blamed neither Berne nor me. He
+seemed to concentrate all his anger upon her.
+
+"He said--you see, Mr. Hastings, I tell you everything!--he threatened
+to go to her and---- He had, of course, no definite idea what he would
+do. Finally, he did say he would buy her off, pay her to leave this part
+of the country. After that, he said, he knew I would 'see things
+clearly,' and Berne and I would be reconciled."
+
+Hastings remembered Russell's assertion that Mildred had her ticket to
+Chicago.
+
+"Did he buy her off?" he asked quickly.
+
+"Oh, no; he was merely wishing that he could, I think."
+
+"But he made no attempt to get in touch with her yesterday? You're
+sure?"
+
+"Quite," she said. "But don't you see. Mr. Hastings? Father was so
+intense in his hatred of her that Berne thought of him the moment he
+found that body--out there. He thought father must have encountered her
+on the lawn in some way, or she must have come after him, and he, in a
+fit of rage, struck her down."
+
+"Has Webster told you this?"
+
+"No--but it's true; it is!"
+
+"But, if your supposition is to hold good, how did your father happen to
+be in possession of that dagger, which evidently was made with malice
+aforethought, as the lawyers say?"
+
+"Exactly," she said, her lips quivering, hands gripping spasmodically at
+her knees. "He didn't do it! He didn't do it! Berne's idea was a
+mistake!"
+
+"Who, then?" he pressed her, realizing now that she was so unstrung she
+would give him her thoughts unguarded.
+
+"Why, that man Russell," she said, her voice so low and the words so
+slow that he thought her at the limit of her endurance. "But I've said
+all this to show you why Berne put his hand over the judge's mouth. I
+want to make it very clear that he feared father--think of it, Mr.
+Hastings!--had killed her! At first, I thought----"
+
+She bowed her face in both her hands and wept unrestrainedly, without
+sobs, the tears streaming between her fingers and down her wrists.
+
+The old man put one hand on her hair, and with the other brought forth
+his handkerchief, being bothered by the sudden mistiness of his
+spectacles.
+
+"A brave girl," he said, his own voice insecure. "What a woman! I know
+what you mean. At first, you feared your father might have been
+concerned in the murder. I saw it in your eyes last night. You had the
+same thought that young Webster had--rather, that you say he had."
+
+Her weeping ceased as suddenly as it had begun. She looked at him
+through tears.
+
+"And I've only injured Berne in your eyes; I think, irreparably! This
+morning I thought you heard me when I asked him not to let it be known
+that our engagement was broken? Don't you remember? You were on the
+porch as we came around the corner."
+
+For the first time since its utterance, he recalled her statement then,
+"We'll have to leave it as it was," and Webster's significant rejoinder.
+He despised his own stupidity. Had he magnified Webster's desire to keep
+that promise into guilty knowledge of the crime itself? And had not the
+mistake driven him into false and valueless interpretations of his
+entire interview with Webster?
+
+"He promised," Lucille pursued, "for the same reason I had in asking
+it--to prevent discovery of the fact that father might have had a motive
+for wishing her dead! It was a mistake, I see now, a terrible mistake!"
+
+"Can you tell me why you didn't have the same thoughts about Berne?" He
+was sorry he had to make that inquiry. If he could, he would have spared
+her further distress. "Why wouldn't he have had the same motive, hatred
+of Mildred Brace, a thousand times stronger?"
+
+"I don't know," she said. "I simply never thought of it--not once."
+
+Fine psychologist that he was, Hastings knew why that view had not
+occurred to her. Her love for Webster was an idealizing sentiment,
+putting him beyond even the possibility of wrong-doing. Her love for her
+father, unusual in its devotion as it was, recognized his weaknesses
+nevertheless.
+
+And, while seeking to protect the two, she had told a story which, so
+far as bald facts went, incriminated the lover far more than the father.
+She had attributed to Sloane, in her uneasiness, the motive which would
+have been most natural to the discarded Webster. Even now, she could not
+suspect Berne; her only fear was that others, not understanding him as
+she did, might suspect him! Although she had broken with him, she still
+loved him. More than that: his illness and consequent helplessness
+increased her devotion for him, brought to the surface the maternal
+phase of it.
+
+"If she had to choose between the two," Hastings thought, "she'd save
+Webster--every time!"
+
+"I know--I tell you, Mr. Hastings, I _know_ neither Berne nor father is
+at all responsible for this crime. I tell you," she repeated, rising to
+her feet, as if by mere physical height she hoped to impress her
+knowledge upon him, "I _know_ they're innocent.--Don't _you_ know it?"
+
+She stood looking down at him, her whole body tense, arms held close
+against her sides, the knuckles of her fingers white as ivory. Her eyes
+now were dry, and brilliant.
+
+He evaded the flat statement to which she pressed him.
+
+"But your knowledge, Miss Sloane, and what we must prove," he said, also
+standing, "are two different things just now. The authorities will
+demand proofs."
+
+"I know. That's why I've told you these things." Somehow, her manner
+reproached him. "You said you had to have them in order to handle
+this--this situation properly. Now that you know them, I'm sure you'll
+feel safe in devoting all your time to proving Russell's guilt." She
+moved her head forward, to study him more closely. "You know he's
+guilty, don't you?"
+
+"I'm certain Mrs. Brace figured in her daughter's murder," he said. "She
+was concerned in it somehow. If that's true, and if your father
+approached neither her nor her daughter yesterday, it does seem highly
+possible that Russell's guilty."
+
+He turned from her and stood at the window, his back to her a few long
+moments. When he faced her again, he looked old.
+
+"But the facts--if we could only break down Russell's alibi!"
+
+"Oh!" she whispered, in new alarm. "I'd forgotten that!"
+
+All the tenseness went out of her limbs. She sank into her chair, and
+sat there, looking up to him, her eyes frankly confessing a panic fear.
+
+"I think I'm sorry I told you," she said, desperately. "I can't make you
+understand!" Another consideration forced itself upon her. "You won't
+have to tell anybody--anybody at all--about this, will you--now?"
+
+He was prepared for that.
+
+"I'll have to ask Judge Wilton why he acted on Mr. Webster's advice--and
+what that advice was, what they whispered to each other when you saw
+them."
+
+"Why, that's perfectly fair," she assented, relieved. "That will stop
+all the secrecy between them and me. It's the very thing I want. If
+that's assured, everything else will work itself out."
+
+Her faith surprised him. He had not realized how unqualified it was.
+
+"Did you ask the judge about it?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes; just before I came in here--after Berne's collapse. I felt so
+helpless! But he tried to persuade me my imagination had deceived me; he
+said they had had no such scene. You know how gruff and hard Judge
+Wilton can be at times. I shouldn't choose him for a confidant."
+
+"No; I reckon not. But we'll ask him now--if you don't mind."
+
+Willis, the butler, answered the bell, and gave information: Judge
+Wilton had left Sloanehurst half an hour ago and had gone to the
+Randalls'. He had asked for Miss Sloane, but, learning that she was
+engaged, had left his regrets, saying he would come in tomorrow, after
+the adjournment of court.
+
+"He's on the bench tomorrow at the county-seat," Lucille explained the
+message. "He always divides his time between us and the Randalls when
+he comes down from Fairfax for his court terms. He told me this morning
+he'd come back to us later in the week."
+
+"On second thought," Hastings said, "that's better. I'll talk to him
+alone tomorrow--about this thing, this inexplicable thing: a judge
+taking it upon himself to deceive the sheriff even! But," he softened
+the sternness of his tone, "he must have a reason, a better one than I
+can think of now." He smiled. "And I'll report to you, when he's told
+me."
+
+"I'm glad it's tomorrow," she said wearily. "I--I'm tired out."
+
+On his way back to Washington, the old man reflected: "Now, she'll
+persuade Sloane to do the sensible thing--talk." Then, to bolster that
+hope, he added a stern truth: "He's got to. He can't gag himself with a
+pretended illness forever!"
+
+At the same time the girl he had left in the music room wept again,
+saying over and over to herself, in a despair of doubt: "Not that! Not
+that! I couldn't tell him that. I told him enough. I know I did. He
+wouldn't have understood!"
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+HENDRICKS REPORTS
+
+
+In his book-lined, "loosely furnished" apartment Sunday afternoon
+Hastings whittled prodigiously, staring frequently at the flap of the
+grey envelope with the intensity of a crystal-gazer. Once or twice he
+pronounced aloud possible meanings of the symbols imprinted on the scrap
+of paper.
+
+"'--edly de--,'" he worried. "That might stand for 'repeatedly demanded'
+or 'repeatedly denied' or 'undoubtedly denoted' or a hundred---- But
+that 'Pursuit!' is the core of the trouble. They put the pursuit on him,
+sure as you're knee-high to a hope of heaven!"
+
+The belief grew in him that out of those pieces of words would come
+solution of his problem. The idea was born of his remarkable instinct.
+Its positiveness partook of superstition--almost. He could not shake it
+off. Once he chuckled, appreciating the apparent absurdity of trying to
+guess the criminal meaning, the criminal intent, back of that writing.
+But he kept to his conjecturing.
+
+He had many interruptions. Newspaper reporters, instantly impressed by
+the dramatic possibilities, the inherent sensationalism, of the murder,
+flocked to him. Referred to him by the people at Sloanehurst, they asked
+for not only his narration of what had occurred but also for his opinion
+as to the probability of running down the guilty man.
+
+He would make no predictions, he told them, confining himself to a
+simple statement of facts. When one young sleuth suggested that both
+Sloane and Webster feared arrest on the charge of murder and had relied
+on his reputation to prevent prompt action against them by the sheriff,
+the old man laughed. He knew the futility of trying to prevent
+publication of intimations of that sort.
+
+But he took advantage of the opportunity to put a different
+interpretation on his employment by the Sloanes.
+
+"Seems to me," he contributed, "it's more logical to say that their
+calling in a detective goes a long way to show their innocence of all
+connection with the crime. They wouldn't pay out real money to have
+themselves hunted, if they were guilty, would they?"
+
+Afterwards, he was glad he had emphasized this point. In the light of
+subsequent events, it looked like actual foresight of Mrs. Brace's
+tactics.
+
+Soon after five Hendricks came in, to report. He was a young man,
+stockily built, with eyes that were always on the verge of laughter and
+lips that sloped inward as if biting down on the threatened mirth. The
+shape of his lips was symbolical of his habit of discourse; he was of
+few words.
+
+"Webster," he said, standing across the table from his employer and
+shooting out his words like a memorized speech, "been overplaying his
+hand financially. That's the rumour; nothing tangible yet. Gone into
+real estate and building projects; associated with a crowd that has the
+name of operating on a shoestring. Nobody'd be surprised if they all
+blew up."
+
+"As a real-estate man, I take it," Hastings commented, slowly shaving
+off thin slivers of chips from his piece of pine, "he's a brilliant
+young lawyer. That's it?"
+
+"Yes, sir," Hendricks agreed, the slope of his lips accentuated.
+
+"Keep after that, tomorrow.--What about Mrs. Brace?"
+
+"Destitute, practically; in debt; threatened with eviction; no
+resources."
+
+"So money, lack of it, is bothering her as well as Webster!--How much is
+she in debt?"
+
+"Enough to be denied all credit by the stores; between five and seven
+hundred, I should say. That's about the top mark for that class of
+trade."
+
+"All right, Hendricks; thanks," the old man commended warmly. "That's
+great work, for Sunday.--Now, Russell's room?"
+
+"Yes, sir; I went over it."
+
+"Find any steel on the floor?"
+
+Hendricks took from his pocket a little paper parcel about the size of a
+man's thumb.
+
+"Not sure, sir. Here's what I got."
+
+He unfolded the paper and put it down on the table, displaying a small
+mass of what looked like dust and lint.
+
+"Wonderful what a magnet will pick up, ain't it?" mused his employer: "I
+got the same sort of stuff at Sloanehurst this morning.--I'll go over
+this, look for the steel particles, right away."
+
+"Anything else, sir--special?"
+
+The assistant was already half-way to the door. He knew that a floor an
+inch deep in chips from his employer's whittling indicated laborious
+mental gropings by the old man. It was no time for superfluous words.
+
+"After dinner," Hastings instructed, "relieve Gore--at the Walman.
+Thanks."
+
+As Hendricks went out, there was another telephone call, this time from
+Crown, to make amends for coolness he had shown Hastings at
+Sloanehurst.
+
+"I was wrong, and you were right," he conceded, handsomely; "I mean
+about that Brace woman. Better keep your man on her trail."
+
+"What's up?" Hastings asked amicably.
+
+"That's what I want to know! I've seen her again. I couldn't get
+anything more from her except threats. She's going on the warpath. She
+told me: 'Tomorrow I'll look into things for myself. I'll not sit here
+idle and leave everything to a sheriff who wants campaign contributions
+and a detective who's paid to hush things up!' You can see her saying
+that, can't you? Wow!"
+
+"That all?"
+
+"That's all, right now. But I've got a suspicion she knows more than we
+think. When she makes up her mind to talk, she'll say something!--Mr.
+Hastings," Crown added, as if he imparted a tremendous fact, "that
+woman's smart! I tell you, she's got brains, a head full of 'em!"
+
+"So I judged," the detective agreed, drily. "By the way, have you seen
+Russell again?"
+
+"Yes. There's another thing. I don't see where you get that stuff about
+his weak alibi. It's copper-riveted!"
+
+"He says so, you mean."
+
+"Yes; and the way he says it. But I followed your advice. I've
+advertised, through the police here and up and down the Atlantic coast,
+for any automobile party or parties who went along that Sloanehurst road
+last night between ten-thirty and eleven-thirty."
+
+"Fine!" Hastings congratulated. "But get me straight on that: I don't
+say any of them saw him; I say there's a chance that he was seen."
+
+The old man went back, not to examination of Hendricks' parcel, but to
+further consideration of the possible contents of the letter that had
+been in the grey envelope. Russell, he reflected, had been present when
+Mildred Brace mailed it, and, what was more important, when Mildred
+started out of the apartment with it.
+
+He made sudden decision: he would question Russell again. Carefully
+placing Hendricks' package of dust and lint in a drawer of the table, he
+set out for the Eleventh street boarding house.
+
+It was, however, not Russell who figured most prominently in the
+accounts of the murder published by the Monday morning newspapers. The
+reporters, resenting the reticence they had encountered at Sloanehurst,
+and making much of Mrs. Brace's threats, put in the forefront of their
+stories an appealing picture of a bereaved mother's one-sided fight for
+justice against the baffling combination of the Sloanehurst
+secretiveness and indifference and the mysterious circumstances of the
+daughter's death. Not one of them questioned the validity of Russell's
+alibi.
+
+"With the innocence of the dead girl's fiancé established," said one
+account, "Sheriff Crown last night made no secret of his chagrin that
+Berne Webster had collapsed at the very moment when the sheriff was on
+the point of putting him through a rigid cross-examination. The young
+lawyer's retirement from the scene, coupled with the Sloane family's
+retaining the celebrated detective, Jefferson Hastings, as a buffer
+against any questioning of the Sloanehurst people, has given Society,
+here and in Virginia, a topic for discussion of more than ordinary
+interest."
+
+Another paragraph that caught Hastings' attention, as he read between
+mouthfuls of his breakfast, was this:
+
+"Mrs. Brace, discussing the tragedy with a reporter last night, showed a
+surprising knowledge of all its incidents. Although she had not left her
+apartment in the Walman all day, she had been questioned by both Sheriff
+Crown and Mr. Hastings, not to mention the unusually large number of
+newspaper writers who besieged her for interviews.
+
+"And it seemed that, in addition to answering the queries put to her by
+the investigators, she had accomplished a vast amount of keen inquiry on
+her own account. When talking to her, it is impossible for one to escape
+the impression that this extraordinarily intelligent woman believes she
+can prove the guilt of the man who struck down her daughter."
+
+"Just what I was afraid of," thought the detective. "Nearly every paper
+siding with her!"
+
+His face brightened.
+
+"All the better," he consoled himself. "More chance of her overreaching
+herself--as long as she don't know what I suspect. I'll get the meaning
+of that grey letter yet!"
+
+But he was worried. Berne Webster's collapse, he knew, was too
+convenient for Webster--it looked like pretence. Ninety-nine out of
+every hundred newspaper readers would consider his illness a fake, the
+obvious trick to escape the work of explaining what seemed to be
+inexplicable circumstances.
+
+To Hastings the situation was particularly annoying because he had
+brought it about; his own questioning had turned out to be the straw
+that broke the suspected man's endurance.
+
+"Always blundering!" he upbraided himself. "Trying to be so all-shot
+smart, I overplayed my hand."
+
+He got Dr. Garnet on the wire.
+
+"Doctor," he said, in a tone that implored, "I'm obliged to see Webster
+today."
+
+"Sorry, Mr. Hastings," came the instant refusal; "but it can't be done."
+
+"For one question," qualified Hastings; "less than a minute's talk--one
+word, 'yes' or 'no'? It's almost a matter of life and death."
+
+"If that man's excited about anything," Garnet retorted, "it will be
+entirely a matter of death. Frankly, I couldn't see my way clear to
+letting you question him if his escaping arrest depended on it. I called
+in Dr. Welles last night; and I'm giving you his opinion as well as my
+own."
+
+"When can I see him, then?"
+
+"I can't answer that. It may be a week; it may be a month. All I can
+tell you today is that you can't question him now."
+
+With that information, Hastings decided to interview Judge Wilton.
+
+"He's the next best," he thought. "That whispering across the woman's
+body--it's got to be explained, and explained right!"
+
+As a matter of fact, he had refrained from this inquiry the day before,
+so that his mind might not be clouded by anger. His deception by the
+judge had greatly provoked him.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+MRS. BRACE BEGINS
+
+
+Court had recessed for lunch when Hastings, going down a second-story
+corridor of the Alexandria county courthouse, entered Judge Wilton's
+anteroom. His hand was raised to knock on the door of the inner office
+when he heard the murmur of voices on the other side. He took off his
+hat and sat down, welcoming the breeze that swept through the room, a
+refreshing contrast to the forenoon's heat and smother downstairs.
+
+He reached for his knife and piece of pine, checked the motion and
+glanced swiftly toward the closed door. A high note of a woman's voice
+touched his memory, for a moment confusing him. But it was for a moment
+only. While the sound was still in his ears, he remembered where he had
+heard it before--from Mrs. Brace when, toward the close of his interview
+with her, she had shrilly denounced Berne Webster.
+
+Mrs. Brace, her daughter's funeral barely three hours old, had started
+to make her threats good.
+
+While he was considering that, the door of the private office swung
+inward, Judge Wilton's hand on the knob. It opened on the middle of a
+sentence spoken by Mrs. Brace:
+
+"--tell you, you're a fool if you think you can put me off with that!"
+
+Her gleaming eyes were so furtive and so quick that they traversed the
+whole of Wilton's countenance many times, a fiery probe of each separate
+feature. The inflections of her voice invested her words with ugliness;
+but she did not shriek.
+
+"You bully everybody else, but not me! They don't call you 'Hard Tom
+Wilton' for nothing, do they? I know you! I know you, I tell you! I was
+down there in the courtroom when you sentenced that man! You had cruelty
+in your mind, cruelty on your face. Ugh! And you're cruel to me--and
+taking an ungodly pleasure in it! Well, let me tell you, I won't be
+broken by it. I want fair dealing, and I'll have it!"
+
+At that moment, facing full toward Hastings, she caught sight of him.
+But his presence seemed a matter of no importance to her; it did not
+break the stream of her fierce invective. She did not even pause.
+
+He saw at once that her anger of yesterday was as nothing to the
+storming rage which shook her now. Every line of her face revealed
+malignity. The eyebrows were drawn higher on her forehead, nearer to the
+wave of white hair that showed under her black hat. The nostrils dilated
+and contracted with indescribable rapidity. The lips, thickened and
+rolling back at intervals from her teeth, revealed more distinctly that
+animal, exaggerated wetness which had so repelled him.
+
+"You were out there on that lawn!" she pursued, her glance flashing back
+to the judge. "You were out there when she was killed! If you try to
+tell me you----"
+
+"Stop it! Stop it!" Wilton commanded, and, as he did so, turned his head
+to an angle that put Hastings within his field of vision.
+
+The judge, with one hand on the doorknob, had been pressing with the
+other against the woman's shoulders, trying to thrust her out of the
+room--a move which she resisted by a hanging-back posture that threw her
+weight on his arm. He put more strength now into his effort and
+succeeded in forcing her clear of the threshold. His eyes were blazing
+under the shadow of his heavy, overhanging brows; but there was about
+him no suggestion of a loss of self-control.
+
+"I'm glad to see you!" he told Hastings, speaking over Mrs. Brace's
+head, and smiling a deprecatory recognition of the hopelessness of
+contending with an infuriated woman.
+
+She addressed them both.
+
+"Smile all you please, now!" she threatened. "But the accounts aren't
+balanced yet! Wait for what I choose to tell--what I intend to do!"
+
+Suddenly she got herself in hand. It was as unexpected and thorough a
+transformation as the one Hastings had seen twenty-four hours before
+during her declaration of Webster's guilt. She had the same appearance
+now as then, the same tautness of body, the same flat, constrained tone.
+
+She turned to Wilton:
+
+"I ask you again, will you help me as I asked you? Are you going to deny
+me fair play?"
+
+He looked at her in amazement, scowling.
+
+"What fair play?" he exclaimed, and, without waiting for her reply, said
+to Hastings: "She insists that I know young Webster killed her daughter,
+that I can produce the evidence to prove it. Can you disabuse her mind?"
+
+She surprised them by going, slowly and with apparent composure, toward
+the corridor door. There she paused, looking at first one and then the
+other with an evil smile so openly contemptuous that it affected them
+strongly. There was something in it that made it flagrantly insulting.
+Hastings turned away from her. Judge Wilton gave her look for look, but
+his already flushed face coloured more darkly.
+
+"Very well, Judge Wilton!" she gave him insolent good-bye, in which
+there was also unmistakable threat. "You'll do the right thing sooner or
+later--and as I tell you. You're--get this straight--you're not through
+with me yet!"
+
+She laughed, one low note, and, impossible as it seemed, proclaimed with
+the harsh sound an absolute confidence in what she said.
+
+"Nor you, Mr. Hastings!" she continued, taking her time with her words,
+and waiting until the detective faced her again, before she concluded:
+"You'll sing a different tune when you find I've got this affair in my
+hands--tight!"
+
+Still smiling her contempt, as if she enjoyed a feeling of superiority,
+she left the room. When her footsteps died down the corridor, the two
+men drew long breaths of relief.
+
+Wilton broke the ensuing silence.
+
+"Is she sane?"
+
+"Yes," Hastings said, "so far as sanity can be said to exist in a mind
+consecrated to evil."
+
+The judge was surprised by the solemnity of the other's manner. "Why do
+you say that?" he asked. "Do you know that much about her?"
+
+"Who wouldn't?" Hastings retorted. "It's written all over her."
+
+Wilton led the way into his private office and closed the door.
+
+"I'm glad it happened at just this time," he said, "when everybody's
+out of the building." He struck the desk with his fist. "By God!" he
+ground out through gritted teeth. "How I hate these wild, unbridled
+women!"
+
+"Yes," agreed Hastings, taking the chair Wilton rolled forward for him.
+"She worries me. Wonder if she's going to Sloanehurst."
+
+"That would be the logical sequel to this visit," Wilton said. "But
+pardon my show of temper. You came to see me?"
+
+"Yes; and, like her, for information. But," the detective said, smiling,
+"not for rough-house purposes."
+
+The judge had not entirely regained his equanimity; his face still wore
+a heightened colour; his whole bearing was that of a man mentally
+reviewing the results of an unpleasant incident. Instead of replying
+promptly to Hastings, he sat looking out of the window, obviously
+troubled.
+
+"Her game is blackmail," he declared at last.
+
+"On whom?" the detective queried.
+
+"Arthur Sloane, of course. She calculates that he'll play to have her
+cease annoying his daughter's fiancé. And she'll impress Arthur, if
+Jarvis ever lets her get to him. Somehow, she strangely compels
+credence."
+
+"Not for me," Hastings objected, and did not point out that Wilton's
+words might be taken as an admission of Webster's guilt.
+
+The judge himself might have seen that.
+
+"I mean," he qualified, "she seems too smart a woman to put herself in a
+position where ridicule will be sure to overtake her. And yet, that's
+what she's doing--isn't she?"
+
+The detective was whittling, dropping the chips into the waste-basket.
+He spoke with a deliberateness unusual even in him, framing each
+sentence in his mind before giving it utterance.
+
+"I reckon, judge, you and I have had some four or five talks--that is,
+not counting Saturday evening and yesterday at Sloanehurst. That's about
+the extent of our acquaintance. That right?"
+
+"Why, yes," Wilton said, surprised by the change of topic.
+
+"I mention it," Hastings explained, "to show how I've felt toward
+you--you interested me. Excuse me if I speak plainly--you'll see why
+later on--but you struck me as worth studying, deep. And I thought you
+must have sized me up, catalogued me one way or the other. You're like
+me: waste no time with men who bore you. I felt certain, if you'd been
+asked, you'd have checked me off as reliable. Would you?"
+
+"Unquestionably."
+
+"And, if I was reliable then, I'm reliable now. That's a fair
+assumption, ain't it?"
+
+"Certainly." The judge laughed shortly, a little embarrassed.
+
+"That brings me to my point. You'll believe me when I tell you my only
+interest in this murder is to find the murderer, and, while I'm doing
+it, to save the Sloanes as much as possible from annoyance. You'll
+believe me, also, when I say I've got to have all the facts if I'm to
+work surely and fast. You recognize the force of that, don't you?"
+
+"Why, yes, Hastings." Wilton spoke impatiently this time.
+
+"Fine!" The old man shot him a genial glance over the steel-rimmed
+spectacles. "That's the introduction. Here's the real thing: I've an
+idea you could tell me more about what happened on the lawn Saturday
+night."
+
+After his involuntary, immediate start of surprise, Wilton tilted his
+head, slowly blowing the cigar smoke from his pursed lips. He had a fine
+air of reflection, careful thought.
+
+"I can elaborate what I've already told you," he said, finally, "if
+that's what you mean--go into greater detail."
+
+He watched closely the edge of the detective's face unhidden by his
+bending over the wood he was cutting.
+
+"I don't think elaboration could do much good," Hastings objected. "I
+referred to new stuff--some fact or facts you might have omitted,
+unconsciously."
+
+"Unconsciously?" Wilton echoed the word, as a man does when his mind is
+overtaxed.
+
+Hastings took it up.
+
+"Or consciously, even," he said quickly, meeting the other's eyes.
+
+The judge moved sharply, bracing himself against the back of the chair.
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"Skilled in the law yourself, thoroughly familiar, with the rules of
+evidence, it's more than possible that you might have reviewed matters
+and decided that there were things which, if they were known, would do
+harm instead of good--obscure the truth, perhaps; or hinder the hunt for
+the guilty man instead of helping it on. That's clear enough, isn't it?
+You might have thought that?"
+
+The look of sullen resentment in the judge's face was unmistakable.
+
+"Oh, say what you mean!" he retorted warmly. "What you're insinuating is
+that I've lied!"
+
+"It don't have to be called that."
+
+"Well, then, that I, a judge, sworn to uphold the law and punish crime,
+have elected to thwart the law and to cheat its officials of the facts
+they should have. Is that what you mean?"
+
+"I'll be honest with you," Hastings admitted, unmoved by the other's
+grand manner. "I've wondered about that--whether you thought a judge had
+a right to do a thing of that sort."
+
+Wilton's hand, clenched on the edge of the desk, shook perceptibly.
+
+"Did you think that, judge?" the detective persisted.
+
+The judge hesitated.
+
+"It's a point I've never gone into," he said finally, with intentional
+sarcasm.
+
+Hastings snapped his knife-blade shut and thrust the piece of wood into
+his pocket.
+
+"Let's get away from this beating about the bush," he suggested, voice
+on a sterner note. "I don't want to irritate you unnecessarily, judge. I
+came here for information--stuff I'm more than anxious to get. And I go
+back to that now: won't you tell me anything more about the discovery of
+the woman's body by the two of you--you and Webster?"
+
+"No; I won't! I've covered the whole thing--several times."
+
+"Is there anything that you haven't told--anything you've decided to
+suppress?"
+
+Wilton got up from his chair and struck the desk with his fist.
+
+"See here, Hastings! You're getting beside yourself. Representing Miss
+Sloane doesn't warrant your insulting her friends. Suppose we consider
+this interview at an end. Some other time, perhaps----"
+
+Hastings also had risen.
+
+"Just a minute, judge!" he interrupted, all at once assuming the
+authoritative air that had so amazed Wilton the night of the murder.
+"You're suppressing something--and I know it!"
+
+"That's a lie!" Wilton retorted, the flush deepening to crimson on his
+face.
+
+"It ain't a lie," Hastings contradicted, holding his self-control. "And
+you watch yourself! Don't you call me a liar again--not as long as you
+live! You can't afford the insult."
+
+"Then, don't provoke it. Don't----"
+
+"What did Webster whisper to you, across that corpse?" Hastings
+demanded, going nearer to Wilton.
+
+"What's this?" Wilton's tone was one of consternation; the words might
+have been spoken by a man stumbling on an unsuspected horror in a dark
+room.
+
+They stared at each other for several dragging seconds. The detective
+waved a hand toward the judge's chair.
+
+"Sit down," he said, resuming his own seat.
+
+There followed another pause, longer than the first. The judge's
+breathing was laboured, audible. He lowered his eyes and passed his hand
+across their thick lids. When he looked up again, Hastings commanded him
+with unwavering, expectant gaze.
+
+"I've made a mistake," Wilton began huskily, and stopped.
+
+"Yes?" Hastings said, unbending. "How?"
+
+"I see it now. It was a matter of no importance, in itself. I've
+exaggerated it, by my silence, into disproportionate significance." His
+tone changed to curiosity. "Who told you about--the whispering?"
+
+The detective was implacable, emphasizing his dominance.
+
+"First, what was it?" When Wilton still hesitated, he repeated: "What
+did Webster say when he put his hand over your mouth--to prevent your
+outcry?"
+
+The judge threw up his head, as if in sudden resolve to be frank. He
+spoke more readily, with a clumsy semblance of amiability.
+
+"He said, 'Don't do that! You'll frighten Lucille!' I tried to nod my
+head, agreeing. But he misunderstood the movement, I think. He thought
+I meant to shout anyway; he tightened his grip. 'Keep quiet! Will you
+keep quiet?' he repeated two or three times. When I made my meaning
+clear, he took his hand away. He explained later what had occurred to
+him the moment Arthur's light flashed on. He said it came to him before
+he clearly realized who I was. It----
+
+"I swear, Hastings, I hate to tell you this. It suggests unjust
+suspicions. Of what value are the wild ideas of a nervous man, all to
+pieces anyway, when he stumbles on a dead woman in the middle of the
+night?"
+
+"They were valuable enough," Hastings flicked him, "for you to cover
+them up--for some reason. What were they?"
+
+Wilton was puzzled by the detective's tone, its abstruse insinuation.
+But he answered the question.
+
+"He said his first idea, the one that made him think of Lucille, was
+that Arthur might have had something to do with the murder."
+
+"Why? Why did he think Sloane had killed Mildred Brace?"
+
+"Because she had been the cause of Lucille's breaking her engagement
+with Berne--and Arthur knew that. Arthur had been in a rage----"
+
+"All right!" Hastings checked him suddenly, and, getting to his feet,
+fell to pacing the room, his eyes, always on Wilton. "I'm acquainted
+with that part of it."
+
+He paid no attention to Wilton's evident surprise at that statement. He
+had a surprise of his own to deal with: the unexpected similarity of the
+judge's story with Lucille Sloane's theorizing as to what Webster had
+whispered across the body in the moment of its discovery. The two
+statements were identical--a coincidence that defied credulity.
+
+He caught himself doubting Lucille. Had she been theorizing, after all?
+Or had she relayed to him words that Wilton had put into her mouth?
+Then, remembering her grief, her desperate appeals to him for aid, he
+dismissed the suspicion.
+
+"I'd stake my life on her honesty," he decided. "Her intuition gave her
+the correct solution--if Wilton's not lying now!"
+
+He put the obvious question: "Judge, am I the first one to hear
+this--from you?" and received the obvious answer: "You are. I didn't
+volunteer it to you, did I?"
+
+"All right. Now, did you believe Webster? Wait a minute! Did you believe
+his fear wasn't for himself when he gagged you that way?"
+
+"Yes; I did," replied Wilton, in a tone that lacked sincerity.
+
+"Do you believe it now?"
+
+"If I didn't, do you think I'd have tried for a moment to conceal what
+he said to me?"
+
+"Why did you conceal it?"
+
+"Because Arthur Sloane was my friend, and his daughter's happiness would
+have been ruined if I'd thrown further suspicion on him. Besides, what I
+did conceal could have been of no value to any detective or sheriff on
+earth. It meant nothing, so long as I knew the boy's sincerity--and his
+innocence as well as Arthur's."
+
+"But," Hastings persisted, "why all this concern for Webster, after his
+engagement had been broken?"
+
+"How's that?" Wilton countered. "Oh, I see! The break wasn't permanent.
+Arthur and I had decided on that. We knew they'd get together again."
+
+Hastings halted in front of the judge's chair.
+
+"Have you kept back anything else?" he demanded.
+
+"Nothing," Wilton said, with a return of his former sullenness. "And,"
+he forced himself to the avowal, "I'm sorry I kept that back. It's
+nothing."
+
+Hastings' manner changed on the instant. He was once more cordial.
+
+"All right, judge!" he said heartily, consulting his ponderous watch.
+"This is all between us. I take it, you wouldn't want it known by the
+sheriff, even now?" Wilton shook his head in quick negation. "All right!
+He needn't--if things go well. And the person I got it from won't spread
+it around.--That satisfactory?"
+
+The judge's smile, in spite of his best effort, was devoid of
+friendliness. The dark flush that persisted in his countenance told how
+hardly he kept down his anger.
+
+Hastings put on his hat and ambled toward the door.
+
+"By the way," he proclaimed an afterthought, "I've got to ask one more
+favour, judge. If Mrs. Brace troubles you again, will you let me know
+about it, at the earliest possible moment?"
+
+He went out, chuckling.
+
+But the judge was as mystified as he was resentful. He had detected in
+Hastings' manner, he thought, the same self-satisfaction, the same quiet
+elation, which he and Berne had observed at the close of the music-room
+interview. Going to the window, he addressed the summer sky:
+
+"Who the devil does the old fool suspect--Arthur or Berne?"
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+MR. CROWN FORMS AN ALLIANCE
+
+
+"If you've as much as five hundred dollars at your disposal--pin-money
+savings, perhaps--anything you can check on without the knowledge of
+others, you can do it," Hastings urged, ending a long argument.
+
+"I! Take it to her myself?" Lucille still protested, although she could
+not refute his reasonings.
+
+"It's the only way that would be effective--and it wouldn't be so
+difficult. I had counted on your courage--your unusual courage."
+
+"But what will it accomplish? If I could only see that, clearly!"
+
+She was beginning to yield to his insistence.
+
+They were in the rose garden, in the shade of a little arbor from whose
+roof the great red flowers drooped almost to the girl's hair. He was
+acutely aware of the pathetic contrast between her white, ravaged face
+and the surrounding scene, the fragrance, the roses of every colour
+swaying to the slow breeze of late afternoon, the long, cool shadows. He
+found it hard to force her to the plan, and would have abandoned it but
+for the possibilities it presented to his mind.
+
+"I've already touched on that," he applied himself to her doubts. "I
+want you to trust me there, to accept my solemn assurance that, if Mrs.
+Brace accepts this money from you on our terms, it will hasten my
+capture of the murderer. I'll say more than that: you are my only
+possible help in the matter. Won't you believe me?"
+
+She sat quite still, a long time, looking steadily at him with unseeing
+eyes.
+
+"I shall have to go to that dreadful woman's apartment, be alone with
+her, make a secret bargain," she enumerated the various parts of her
+task, wonder and repugnance mingling in her voice. "That horrible woman!
+You say, yourself, Mr. Hastings, she's horrible."
+
+"Still," he repeated, "you can do it."
+
+A little while ago she had cried out, both hands clenched on the arm of
+the rustic bench, her eyes opening wide in the startled look he had come
+to know: "If I could do something, _anything_, for Berne! Dr. Welles
+said only an hour ago he had no more than an even chance for his life.
+Half the time he can't speak! And I'm responsible. I am! I know it. I
+try to think I'm not. But I am!"
+
+He recurred to that.
+
+"Dr. Welles said the ending of Mr. Webster's suspense would be the best
+medicine for him. And I think Webster would see that nobody but you
+could do this--in the very nature of things. The absolute secrecy
+required, the fact that you buy her silence, pay her to cease her
+accusations against Berne--don't you see? He'd want you to do it."
+
+That finished her resistance. She made him repeat all his directions,
+precautions for secrecy.
+
+"I wish I could tell you how important it is," he said. "And keep this
+in mind always: I rely on your paying her the money without even a
+suspicion of it getting abroad. If accidents happen and you're seen
+entering the Walman, what more natural than that you want to ask this
+woman the meaning of her vague threats against--against
+Sloanehurst?--But of money, your real object, not a word! Nobody's to
+have a hint of it."
+
+"Oh, yes; I see the necessity of that." But she was distressed. "Suppose
+she refuses?"
+
+Her altered frame of mind, an eagerness now to succeed with the plan she
+had at first refused, brought him again his thought of yesterday: "If
+she were put to it--if she could save only one and had to choose between
+father and fiancé, her choice would be for the fiancé."
+
+He answered her question. "She won't refuse," he declared, with a
+confidence she could not doubt. "If I thought she would, I'd almost be
+willing to say we'd never find the man who killed her daughter."
+
+"When I think of Russell's alibi----"
+
+"Have we mentioned Russell?" he protested, laughing away her fears.
+"Anyway, his old alibi's no good--if that's what's troubling you. Wait
+and see!"
+
+He was in high good humour.
+
+
+In that same hour the woman for whom he had planned this trap was busy
+with a scheme of her own. Her object was to form an alliance with
+Sheriff Crown. That gentleman, to use his expressive phrase, had been
+"putting her over the jumps" for the past forty minutes, bringing to the
+work of cross-questioning her all the intelligence, craftiness and logic
+at his command. The net result of his fusillade of interrogatories,
+however, was exceedingly meagre.
+
+As he sat, caressing his chin and thrusting forward his bristly
+moustache, Mrs. Brace perceived in his eyes a confession of failure.
+Although he was far from suspecting it, he presented to her keen
+scrutiny an amusing figure. She observed that his shoulders drooped, and
+that, as he slowly produced a handkerchief and mopped his forehead, his
+movements were eloquent of gloom.
+
+In fact, Mr. Crown felt himself at a loss. He had come to the end of his
+resourcefulness in the art of probing for facts. He was about to take
+his departure, with the secret realization that he had learned nothing
+new--unless an increased admiration of Mrs. Brace's sharpness of wit
+might be catalogued as knowledge.
+
+She put his thought into language.
+
+"You see, Mr. Crown, you're wasting your time shouting at me, bullying
+me, accusing me of protecting the murderer of my own daughter."
+
+There was a new note in her voice, a hint, ever so slight, of a
+willingness to be friendly. He was not insensible to it. Hearing it, he
+put himself on guard, wondering what it portended.
+
+"I didn't say that," he contradicted, far from graciousness. "I said you
+knew a whole lot more about the murder than you'd tell--tell me anyway."
+
+"But why should I want to conceal anything that might bring the man to
+justice?"
+
+"Blessed if I know!" he conceded, not without signs of irritation.
+
+So far as he could see, not a feature of her face changed. The lifted
+eyebrows were still high upon her forehead, interrogative and mocking;
+the restless, gleaming eyes still drilled into various parts of his
+person and attire; the thin lips continued their moving pictures of
+contempt. And yet, he saw, too, that she presented to him now another
+countenance.
+
+The change was no more than a shadow; and the shadow was so light that
+he could not be sure of its meaning. He thought it was friendliness, but
+that opinion was dulled by recurrence of his admiration of her
+"smartness." He feared some imposition.
+
+"You've adopted Mr. Hastings' absurd theory," she said, as if she
+wondered. "You've subscribed to it without question."
+
+"What theory?"
+
+"That I know who the guilty man is."
+
+"Well?" He was still on guard.
+
+"It surprises me--that's all--a man of your intellect, your
+originality."
+
+She sighed, marvelling at this addition to life's conundrums.
+
+"Why?" he asked, bluntly.
+
+"I should never have thought you'd put yourself in that position before
+the public. I mean, letting him lead you around by the
+nose--figuratively."
+
+Mr. Crown started forward in his chair, eyes popped. He was indignant
+and surprised.
+
+"Is that what they're saying?" he demanded.
+
+"Naturally," she said, and with the one word laid it down as an
+impossibility that "they" could have said anything else. "That's what
+the reporters tell me."
+
+"Well, I'll be--dog-goned!" The knuckle-like chin dropped. "They're
+saying that, are they?"
+
+Disturbed as he was, he noticed that she regarded him with apparently
+genuine interest--that, perhaps, she added to her interest a regret that
+he had displayed no originality in the investigation, a man of his
+intellect!
+
+"They couldn't understand why you were playing Hastings' game," she
+proceeded, "playing it to his smallest instructions."
+
+"Hastings' game! What the thunder are they talking about? What do they
+mean, his game?"
+
+"His desire to keep suspicion away from the Sloanes and Mr. Webster.
+That's what they hired him for--isn't it?"
+
+"I guess it is--by gravy!" Mr. Crown's long-drawn sigh was distinctly
+tremulous.
+
+"That old man pockets his fee when he throws Gene Russell into jail.
+Why, then, isn't it his game to convince you of Gene's guilt? Why isn't
+it his game to persuade you of my secret knowledge of Gene's guilt?
+Why----"
+
+"So, that's----"
+
+"Let me say what I started," she in turn interrupted him. "As one of
+the reporters pointed out, why isn't it his game to try to make a fool
+of you?"
+
+The smile with which she recommended that rumour to his attention
+incensed him further. It patronized him. It said, as openly as if she
+had spoken the words: "I'm really very sorry for you."
+
+He dropped his hands to his widespread knees, slid forward to the edge
+of his chair, thrust his face closer to hers, peered into her hard face
+for her meaning.
+
+"Making a fool of me, is he?" he said in the brutal key of unrepressed
+rage.
+
+A quick motion of her lifted brows, a curve of her lower
+lip--indubitably, a new significance of expression--stopped his
+outburst.
+
+"By George!" he said, taken aback. "By George!" he repeated, this time
+in a coarse exultation. He thrust himself still closer to her, certain
+now of her meaning.
+
+"What do you know?" He lowered his voice and asked again: "Mrs. Brace,
+what do you know?"
+
+She moved back, farther from him. She was not to be rushed
+into--anything. She made him appreciate the difficulty of "getting next"
+to her. He no longer felt fear of her imposing on him--she had just
+exposed, for his benefit, how Hastings had played on his credulity! He
+felt grateful to her for that. His only anxiety now was that she might
+change her mind, might refuse him the assistance which that new and
+subtle expression had promised a moment ago.
+
+"If I thought you'd use----" she began, broke off, and looked past his
+shoulder at the opposite wall, the pupils of her eyes sharp points of
+light, lips drawn to a line almost invisible.
+
+Her evident prudence fired his eagerness.
+
+"If I'd do what?" he asked. "If you thought I'd--what?"
+
+"Let me think," she requested.
+
+He changed his posture, with a great show of watching the sunset sky,
+and stole little glances at her smooth, untroubled face. He believed now
+that she could put him on the trail of the murderer. He confessed to
+himself, unreservedly, that Hastings had tricked him, held him up to
+ridicule--to the ridicule of a nation, for this crime held the interest
+of the entire country. But here was his chance for revenge! With this
+"smart" woman's help, he would outwit Hastings!
+
+"If you'd use my ideas confidentially," she said at last, eying him as
+if she speculated on his honesty; "if I were sure that----"
+
+"Why can't you be sure of it?" he broke in. "My job is to catch the man
+who killed your daughter. I've got two jobs. The other is to show up
+old Hastings! Why wouldn't I do as you ask--exactly as you ask?"
+
+She tantalized him.
+
+"And remember that what I say is ideas only, not knowledge?"
+
+"Sure! Certainly, Mrs. Brace."
+
+"And, even when you arrest the right man, say nothing of what you owe me
+for my suggestions? You're the kind of man to want to do that sort of
+thing--give me credit for helping you."
+
+Even that pleased him.
+
+"If you specify silence, I give you my word on it," he said, with a
+fragment of the pompous manner he had brought into the apartment more
+than an hour ago.
+
+"You'll take my ideas, my theory, work on it and never bring me into
+it--in any way? If you make that promise, I'll tell you what I think,
+what I'm certain is the answer to this puzzle."
+
+"Win or lose, right or wrong idea, you have my oath on it."
+
+"Very well!" She said that with the air of one embarking on a tremendous
+venture and scorning all its possibilities of harm. "I shall trust you
+fully.--First, let me sketch all the known facts, everything connected
+with the tragedy, and everything I know concerning the conduct of the
+affected individuals since."
+
+He was leaning far toward her once more, a child-like impatience stamped
+on his face. As she proceeded, his admiration grew.
+
+For this, there was ample ground. The newspaper paragraph Hastings had
+read that morning commenting on her mastery of all the details of the
+crime had scarcely done her justice. Before she concluded, Crown had
+heard from her lips little incidents that had gone over his head. She
+put new and accurate meaning into facts time and time again, speaking
+with the particularity and vividness of an eye-witness.
+
+"Now," she said, having reconstructed the crime and described the
+subsequent behaviour of the tragedy's principal actors; "now who's
+guilty?"
+
+"Exactly," echoed Crown, with a click in his throat. "Who's guilty?
+What's your theory?"
+
+She was silent, eyes downcast, her hands smoothing the black, much-worn
+skirt over her lean knees. Recital of the gruesome story, the death of
+her only child, had left her unmoved, had not quickened her breathing.
+
+"In telling you that," she resumed, her restless eyes striking his at
+rapid intervals, "I think I'll put you in a position to get the right
+man--if you'll act."
+
+"Oh, I'll act!" he declared, largely. "Don't bother your head about
+that!"
+
+"Of course, it's only a theory----"
+
+"Yes; I know! And I'll keep it to myself."
+
+"Very well. Arthur Sloane is prostrated, can't be interviewed. He can't
+be interviewed, for the simple reason that he's afraid he'll tell what
+he knows. Why is he afraid of that? Because he knows too much, for his
+own comfort, and too much for his daughter's comfort. How does he know
+it? Because he saw enough night before last to leave him sure of the
+murderer's identity.
+
+"He was the man who turned on the light, showing Webster and Judge
+Wilton bending over Mildred's body. It occurred at a time when usually
+he is in his first sound sleep--from bromides. Something must have
+happened to awake him, an outcry, something. And yet, he says he didn't
+see them--Wilton and Webster."
+
+"By gravy!" exclaimed the sheriff, awe-struck.
+
+"Either," she continued, "Arthur Sloane saw the murder done, or he
+looked out in time to see who the murderer was. The facts substantiate
+that. They are corroborated by his subsequent behaviour. Immediately
+after the murder he was in a condition that couldn't be explained by
+the mere fact that he's a sufferer from chronic nervousness. When
+Hastings asked him to take a handkerchief, he would have fallen to the
+ground but for the judge's help. He couldn't hold an electric torch.
+And, ever since, he's been in bed, afraid to talk. Why, he even refused
+to talk to Hastings, the man he's retained for the family's protection!"
+
+"He did, did he! How do you know that, Mrs. Brace?"
+
+"Isn't it enough that I know it--or advance it as a theory?"
+
+"Did--I thought, possibly, Jarvis, the valet, told you."
+
+She ignored that.
+
+"Now, as to the daughter of the house. There was only one possible
+reason for Lucille Sloane's hiring Hastings: she was afraid somebody in
+the house, Webster, of course, would be arrested. Being in love with
+him, she never would have suspected him unless there had been concrete,
+undeniable evidence of his guilt. Do you grasp that reasoning?"
+
+"Sure, I do!" Mr. Crown condemned himself. "What I'm wondering is why I
+didn't see it long ago."
+
+"She, too, you recall, was looking out of a window--on that side of the
+house--scarcely fifteen yards from where the crime was done. It's not
+hard to believe that she saw what her father saw: the murder or the
+murderer.
+
+"Mr. Crown, if you can make her or her father talk, you'll get the truth
+of this thing, the truth and the murderer.
+
+"And look at Judge Wilton's part. You asked me why I went to his office
+this morning. I went because I'm sure he knows the truth. Didn't he stay
+right at Webster's side when old Hastings interviewed Webster yesterday?
+Why? To keep Webster from letting out, in his panic, a secret which both
+of them knew."
+
+The sheriff's admiration by this time was boundless. He felt driven to
+give it expression.
+
+"Mrs. Brace, you're a loo-loo! A loo-loo, by gravy! Sure, that was his
+reason. He couldn't have had any other!"
+
+"As for Webster himself," she carried on her exposition, without
+emotion, without the slightest recognition of her pupil's praise, "he
+proves the correctness of everything we've said, so far. That secret
+which the judge feared he would reveal, that secret which old Hastings
+was blundering after--that secret, Mr. Crown, was such a danger to him
+that, to escape the questioning of even stupid old Hastings, he could do
+nothing but crumple up on the floor and feign illness, prostration. Why,
+don't you see, he was afraid to talk!"
+
+"Everything you say hits the mark!" agreed Crown, smiling happily.
+"Centre-shots! Centre-shots! You've been right from the very beginning.
+You tried to tell me all this yesterday morning, and, fool that I
+was--fool that Hastings was!" He switched to a summary of what she had
+put into his mind: "It's right! Webster killed her, and Sloane and his
+daughter saw him at it. Even Wilton knows it--and he a judge! It seems
+impossible. By gravy! he ought to be impeached."
+
+A new idea struck him. Mrs. Brace, imperturbable, exhibiting no elation,
+was watching him closely. She saw his sudden change of countenance. He
+had thought: "She didn't reason this out. Russell saw the murder--the
+coward--and he's told her. He ran away from----"
+
+Another suspicion attacked him: "But that was Jarvis' night off. Has she
+seen Jarvis?"
+
+Impelled to put this fresh bewilderment into words, he was stayed by the
+restless, brilliant eyes with which she seemed to penetrate his
+lumbering mind. He was afraid of losing her cooperation. She was too
+valuable an ally to affront. He kept quiet.
+
+She brought him back to her purpose.
+
+"Then, you agree with me? You think Webster's guilty?"
+
+"Think!" He almost shouted his contempt of the inadequate word. "Think!
+I know! Guilty? The man's black with guilt."
+
+"I'm sure of it," she said, curiously skilful in surrendering to him all
+credit for that vital discovery. "What are you going to do--now that you
+know?"
+
+"Make him talk, turn him inside out! Playing sick, is he! I'm going back
+to Sloanehurst this evening. I'm going to start something. You can take
+this from me: Webster'll loosen that tongue of his before another sun
+rises!"
+
+But that was not her design.
+
+"You can't do it," she objected, her voice heavy with disappointment.
+"Dr. Garnet, your own coroner, says questioning will kill him. Dr.
+Garnet's as thoroughly fooled as Hastings, and," she prodded him with
+suddenly sharp tone, "you."
+
+"That's right." He was crestfallen, plucking at his chin. "That's hard
+to get around. But I've got to get around it! I've got to show results,
+Mrs. Brace. People, some of the papers even, are already hinting that
+I'm too easy on a rich man and his friend."
+
+"Yes," she said, evenly. "And you told--I understood you'd act, on our
+theory."
+
+"I've got to! I've got to act!"
+
+His confusion was manifest. He did not know what to do, and he was
+silent, hoping for a suggestion from her. She let him wait. The pause
+added to his embarrassment.
+
+"What would--that is," he forced himself to the appeal, "I was
+wondering--anything occur to you? See any way out of it?"
+
+"Of course, I know nothing about such procedure," she replied to that,
+slowly, as if she groped for a new idea. "But, if you got the proof from
+somewhere else, enough to warrant the arrest of Webster----" Her smile
+deprecated her probable ineptness. "If Arthur Sloane----"
+
+He fairly fell upon the idea.
+
+"Right!" he said, clapping his hands together. "Sloane's no dying man,
+is he? And he knows the whole story. Right you are, Mrs. Brace! He can
+shake and tremble and whine all he pleases, but tonight he's my meat--my
+meat, right! Talk? You bet he'll talk!"
+
+She considered, looking at the opposite wall. He was convinced that she
+examined the project, viewing it from the standpoint of his interest,
+seeking possible dangers of failure. Nevertheless, he hurried her
+decision.
+
+"It's the thing to do, isn't it?"
+
+"I should think so," she said at last. "You, with your mental
+forcefulness, your ability as a questioner--why, I don't see how you can
+fail to get at what he knows. Beside, you have the element of surprise
+on your side. That will go far toward sweeping him off his feet."
+
+He was again conscious of his debt of gratitude to this woman, and tried
+to voice it.
+
+"This is the first time," he declared, big with confidence, "I've felt
+that I had the right end of this case."
+
+When she had closed the door on him, she went back to the living room
+and set back in its customary place the chair he had occupied. Her own
+was where it always belonged. From there she went into the bathroom and,
+as Hastings had seen her do before, drew a glass of water which she
+drank slowly.
+
+Then, examining her hard, smooth face in the bedroom mirror, she said
+aloud:
+
+"Pretty soon, now, somebody will talk business--with me."
+
+There was no elation in her voice. But her lips were, for a moment,
+thick and wet, changing her countenance into a picture of inordinate
+greed.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+IN ARTHUR SLOANE'S ROOM
+
+
+Hastings went back to Sloanehurst that evening for another and more
+forceful attempt to argue Arthur Sloane into frankness. Like Mrs. Brace,
+he could not get away from the definite conclusion that Lucille's father
+was silent from fear of telling what he knew. Moreover, he realized
+that, without a closer connection with Sloane, his own handling of the
+case was seriously impeded.
+
+Lucille was on the front porch, evidently waiting for him, although he
+had not notified her in advance of his visit. She went hurriedly down
+the steps and met him on the walk. When he began an apology for having
+to annoy her so frequently, she cut short his excuses.
+
+"Oh, but I'm glad you're here--so glad! We need your help. The sheriff's
+here."
+
+She put her hand on his coat sleeve; he could feel the tremour of it as
+she pulled, unconsciously, on the cloth. She turned toward the verandah
+steps.
+
+"What's he doing?" he asked, detaining her.
+
+"He's in father's room," she said in feverish haste, "asking him all
+sorts of questions, saying ridiculous things. Really, I'm afraid--for
+father's health! Can't you go in now?"
+
+"Couldn't Judge Wilton manage him? Isn't the judge here?"
+
+"No. He came over at dinner time; but he went back to the Randalls'.
+Father didn't feel up to talking to him."
+
+Crown, she explained, had literally forced his way into the bedroom,
+disregarding her protests and paying no attention to the pretence of
+physical resistance displayed by Jarvis.
+
+"The man seems insane!" she said. "I want you to make him leave father's
+room--please!"
+
+She halted near the library door, leaving the matter in Hastings' hands.
+Since entering the house he had heard Crown's voice, raised to the key
+of altercation; and now, when he stepped into Sloane's room, the rush of
+words continued.
+
+The sheriff, unaware of the newcomer, stood near the bed, emphasizing
+his speech with restless arms and violent motions of his head, as if to
+galvanize into response the still and prostrate form before him. On the
+opposite side of the bed stood the sepulchral Jarvis, flashing malign
+looks at Crown, but chiefly busy, with unshaking hands, preparing a
+beverage of some sort for the sick man.
+
+Sloane lay on his back, eyes closed, face under the full glare of the
+reading light. His expression indicated both boredom and physical
+suffering.
+
+"--have to make an arrest!" Crown was saying. "You're making me take
+that action--ain't you? I come in here, considerate as I know how to be,
+and I ask you for a few facts. Do you give 'em to me? Not by a long
+shot! You lie there in that bed, and talk about leaping angels, and say
+I bore you! Well, Mr. Sloane, that won't get you a thing! You're where I
+said you were: it's either Webster that will be arrested--or yourself!
+Now, I'm giving you another chance. I'm asking you what you saw; and you
+can tell me--or take the consequences!"
+
+Hastings thought: "He's up that gum stump of his again, and don't know
+how to quit talking."
+
+Sloane made no answer.
+
+"Well," thundered Crown. "I'm asking you!"
+
+"Moaning martyrs!" Sloane protested in a thin, querulous tone. "Jarvis,
+the bromide."
+
+"All right!" the sheriff delivered his ultimatum. "I'll stick to what I
+said. Webster may be too sick to talk, but not too sick to have a
+warrant served on him. He'll be arrested because you won't tell me----"
+
+Hastings spoke then.
+
+"Gentlemen!" he greeted pleasantly. "Mr. Sloane, good evening. Mr.
+Sheriff--am I interrupting a private conference?"
+
+"Fiery fiends!" wailed Sloane. "Another!"
+
+Hastings gave his attention to Crown. He was certain that the man,
+balked by Sloane's refusal to "talk," would welcome an excuse for
+leaving the room.
+
+"Let me see you a moment, will you?" He put a hand on the sheriff's
+shoulder, persuading: "It's important, right now."
+
+"But I want to know what Mr. Sloane's going to say," Crown blustered.
+"If he'll tell----"
+
+Hastings stopped him with a whisper: "That's exactly what he'll
+do--soon!"
+
+He led the sheriff into the hall. They went into the parlour.
+
+"Now," Hastings began, in genial tone; "did you get anything from him?"
+
+"Not a dad-blamed thing!" Crown was still blustery. "But he'll talk
+before I'm through! You can put your little bets down on that!"
+
+"All right. You've had your chance at him. Better let me see him."
+
+Crown looked his distrust. He was thinking of Mrs. Brace's warning that
+this man had made a fool of him.
+
+"I'm not trying to put anything over on you," the detective assured
+him. "Fact is, I'm out here for the newspaper men. They've had nothing
+from him; they've asked me to get his story. I'll give it to you before
+I see them. What do you say?"
+
+Crown still hesitated.
+
+"If, after you've heard it," Hastings added, "you want to question him
+further, you can do it, of course. But this way we take two shots at
+it."
+
+To that, the other finally agreed.
+
+Hastings found Sloane smoking a cigarette, his eyes still closed. Jarvis
+was behind a screen near the door, now and then clinking glass against
+glass as he worked.
+
+The old man took a chair near the bed and waited for Sloane to speak. He
+waited a long time. Finally, the invalid looked at him from under
+lowered lids, slyly, like a child peeping. Hastings returned the look
+with a pleasant smile, his shrewd eyes sparkling over the rims of his
+spectacles.
+
+"Well!" Sloane said at last, in a whiney tone. "What do you want?"
+
+"First," Hastings apologized, "I want to say how sorry I am I didn't
+make myself clearly understood night before last when I told Miss Sloane
+I'd act as mouthpiece for this household. I didn't mean I could invent
+a statement for each of you, or for any of you. What I did mean amounts
+to this: if you, for instance, would tell me what you know--all you
+know--about this murder, I could relay it to the reporters--and to the
+sheriff, who's been annoying you so this evening. As----"
+
+"Flat-headed fiends!" Sloane cut in, writhing under the light coverlet.
+"Another harangue!"
+
+Hastings kept his temper.
+
+"No harangue about it. But it's to come to this, Mr. Sloane: you're
+handicapping me, and the reporters and the sheriff don't trust you."
+
+"Why? Why don't they trust me?" shrilled Sloane, writhing again.
+
+"Ill tell you in a very few words: because you refused to testify at the
+inquest yesterday, giving illness as an excuse. That's one reason.
+The----"
+
+"Howling helions! Wasn't I ill? Didn't I have enough to make me
+ill?--Jarvis, a little whiskey!"
+
+"Dr. Garnet hasn't told them so--the reporters. He won't tell them so.
+In fact," Hastings said, with less show of cordiality, "from all he said
+to me, I gather he doesn't think you an ill man--that is, dangerously
+ill."
+
+"And because of that, they say what, these reporters, this sheriff?
+What?"
+
+"They're in ugly mood, Mr. Sloane. They're saying you're trying to
+protect--somebody--by keeping still about a thing which you should be
+the first to haul into daylight. That's it--in a nutshell."
+
+Sloane had stopped trembling. He sat up in the bed and stared at the
+detective out of steady, hard eyes. He waved away the whiskey Jarvis
+held toward him.
+
+"And you want what, Mr. Hastings?" he inquired, a curiously effective
+sarcasm in his voice.
+
+"A statement covering every second from the time you waked up Saturday
+night until you saw the body."
+
+"A statement!--Reporters!" He was snarling on that. "What's got into
+you, anyway? What are you trying to do--make people suspect me of the
+murder-make 'em suspect Berne?"
+
+He threw away the cigarette and shook his fist at Hastings. He gulped
+twice before he could speak again; he seemed on the point of choking.
+
+"In an ugly mood, are they? Well, they can stay in an ugly mood. You,
+too! And that hydrophobiac sheriff! Quivering and crucified saints! I've
+had enough of all of you--all of you, understand! Get out of here! Get
+out!"
+
+Although his voice was shrill, there was no sound of weakness in it.
+The trembling that attacked him was the result of anger, not of
+nervousness.
+
+Hastings rose, astounded by the outbreak.
+
+"I'm afraid you don't realize the seriousness of----"
+
+"Oh, get out of here!" Sloane interrupted again. "You've imposed on my
+daughter with your talk of being helpful, and all that rot, but you
+can't hoodwink me. What the devil do you mean by letting that sheriff
+come in here and subject me to all this annoyance and shock? You'd save
+us from unpleasantness!"
+
+He spoke more slowly now, as if he cudgelled his brain for the most
+biting sarcasm, the most unbearable insolence.
+
+"Don't realize the seriousness!--Flat-headed fiends!--Are you any nearer
+the truth now than you were at the start?--Try to understand this, Mr.
+Hastings: you're discharged, fired! From now on, I'm in charge of what
+goes on in this house. If there's any trouble to be avoided, I'll attend
+to it. Get that!--and get out!"
+
+Hastings, opening his mouth for angry retort, checked himself. He stood
+a moment silent, shaken by the effort it cost him to maintain his
+self-control.
+
+"Humph!" Sloane's nasal, twangy exclamation was clearly intended to
+provoke him further.
+
+But, without a word, he turned and left the room. Passing the screen
+near the door, he heard Jarvis snicker, a discreet echo of Sloane's
+goading ridicule.
+
+On his way back to the parlour, the old man made up his mind to discount
+Sloane's behaviour.
+
+"I've got to take a chance," he counselled himself, "but I know I'm
+right in doing it. A big responsibility--but I'm right!"
+
+Then he submitted this report:
+
+"He says nothing new, Crown. Far as I can make out, nothing unusual
+waked him up that night--except chronic nervousness; he turned on that
+light to find some medicine; he knew nothing of the murder until Judge
+Wilton called him."
+
+"Humph!" growled Crown. "And you fall for that!"
+
+Hastings eyed him sternly. "It's the statement I'm going to give to the
+reporters."
+
+The sheriff was silent, irresolute. Hastings congratulated himself on
+his earlier deduction: that Crown, unable to frighten Sloane into
+communicativeness, was thankful for an excuse to withdraw.
+
+Hendricks had reported the two-hour conference between Crown and Mrs.
+Brace late that afternoon. Hastings decided now: "The man's in cahoots
+with her. His ally! And he won't act until he's had another session with
+her.--And she won't advise an arrest for a day or two anyway. Her game
+is to make him play on Sloane's nerves for a while. She advises threats,
+not arrests--which suits me, to a T!"
+
+He fought down a chuckle, thinking of that alliance.
+
+Crown corroborated his reasoning.
+
+"All right, Hastings," he said doggedly. "I'm not going back to his
+room. I gave him his chance. He can take the consequences."
+
+"What consequences?"
+
+"I'd hardly describe 'em to his personal representative, would I? But
+you can take this from me: they'll come soon enough--and rough enough!"
+
+Hastings made no reference to having been dismissed by Sloane. He was
+glad when Crown changed the subject.
+
+"Hastings, you saw the reporters this afternoon--I've been
+wondering--they asked me--did they ask you whether you suspected the
+valet--Jarvis?"
+
+"Of what?"
+
+"Killing her."
+
+"No; they didn't ask me."
+
+"Funny," said Crown, ill at ease. "They asked me."
+
+"So you said," Hastings reminded, looking hard at him.
+
+"Well!" Crown blurted it out. "Do you suspect him? Are you working on
+that line--at all?"
+
+Hastings paused. He had no desire to mislead him. And yet, there was no
+reason for confiding in him--and delay was at present the Hastings plan.
+
+"I'll tell you, Crown," he said, finally; "I'll work on any line that
+can lead to the guilty man.--What do you know?"
+
+"Who? Me?" Crown's tone indicated the absurdity of suspecting Jarvis.
+"Not a thing."
+
+But it gave Hastings food for thought. Was Mrs. Brace in communication
+with Jarvis? And did Crown know that? Was it possible that Crown wanted
+to find out whether Hastings was having Jarvis shadowed? How much of a
+fool was the woman making of the sheriff, anyway?
+
+Another thing puzzled him: why did Mrs. Brace suspect Arthur Sloane of
+withholding the true story of what he had seen the night of the murder?
+Hastings' suspicion, amounting to certainty, came from his knowledge
+that the man's own daughter thought him deeply involved in the crime.
+But Mrs. Brace--was she clever enough to make that deduction from the
+known facts? Or did she have more direct information from Sloanehurst
+than he had thought possible?
+
+He decided not to leave the sheriff entirely subject to her schemes and
+suggestions. He would give Mr. Crown something along another line--a
+brake, as it were, on impulsive action.
+
+"You talk about arresting Webster right away--or Sloane," he began,
+suddenly confiding. "You wouldn't want to make a mistake--would you?"
+
+Crown rose to that. "Why? What do you know--specially?"
+
+"Well, not so much, maybe. But it's worth thinking about. I'll give you
+the facts--confidentially, of course.--Hub Hill's about a hundred yards
+from this house, on the road to Washington. When automobiles sink into
+it hub-deep, they come out with a lot of mud on their wheels--black,
+loamy mud. Ain't any other mud like that Hub Hill mud anywhere near
+here. It's just special and peculiar to Hub Hill. That so?"
+
+"Yes," agreed Crown, absorbed.
+
+"All right. How, then, did Eugene Russell keep black, Hub Hill mud on
+his shoes that night if he went the four miles on foot to where Otis
+picked him up?"
+
+"Eh?" said Crown, chin fallen.
+
+"By the time he'd run four miles, his shoes would have been covered with
+the red mud of that mile of 'dirt road' or the thin, grey mud of the
+three miles of pike--wouldn't they? They'd have thrown off that Hub Hill
+mud pretty quick, wouldn't they?"
+
+"Thunder!" marvelled Crown. "That's right! And those shoes were in his
+room; I saw 'em." He gurgled, far back in his throat. "Say! How did he
+get from Hub Hill to where Otis picked him up?"
+
+"That's what I say," declared Hastings, very bland. "How?"
+
+To Lucille, after Crown's departure, the detective declared his
+intention to "stand by" her, to stay on the case. He repeated his
+statement of yesterday: he suspected too much, and knew too little, to
+give it up.
+
+He told her of the responsibility he had assumed in giving the sheriff
+the fictitious Sloane statement. "That is, it's not fictitious, in
+itself; it's what your father has been saying. But I told Crown, and I'm
+going to tell the newspaper men, that he says it's all he knows, really.
+And I hate to do it--because, honestly, Miss Sloane, I don't think it
+is all. I'm afraid he's deceiving us."
+
+She did not contradict that; it was her own opinion.
+
+"However," the old man made excuse, "I had to do it--in view of things
+as they are. And he's got to stick to it, now that I've made it
+'official,' so to speak. Do you think he will?"
+
+She did not see why not. She would explain to him the importance, the
+necessity, of that course.
+
+"He's so mistaken in what he's doing!" she said. "I don't understand
+him--really. You know how devoted to me he is. He called me into his
+room again an hour or two ago and tried to comfort me. He said he had
+reason to know everything would come out as it should. But he looked
+so--so uncertain!--Oh, Mr. Hastings, who did kill that woman?"
+
+"I think I'll be able to prove who did it--let's see," he spoke with a
+light cheerfulness, and at the same time with sincerity; "I'll be able
+to prove it in less than a week after Mrs. Brace takes that money from
+you."
+
+She said nothing to that, and he leaned forward sharply, peering at her
+face, illegible to him in the darkness of the verandah.
+
+"So much depends on that, on you," he added. "You won't fail
+me--tomorrow?"
+
+"I'll do my best," she said, earnestly, struggling against depression.
+
+"She must take that money," he declared with great emphasis. "She must!"
+
+"And you think she will?"
+
+"Miss Sloane, I know she will," he said, a fatherly encouragement in his
+voice. "I'm seldom mistaken in people; and I know I've judged this woman
+correctly. Money's her weakness. Love of it has destroyed her already.
+Offering this bribe to anybody else situated as she is would be
+ridiculous--but she--she'll take it."
+
+Lucille sat a long time on the verandah after Hastings had gone. She was
+far more depressed than he had suspected; she had to endure so much, she
+thought--the suspense, which grew heavier as time went by; the
+notoriety; Berne Webster still in danger of his life; her father's
+inexplicable pose of indifference toward everything; the suspicions of
+the newspapers and the public of both her father and Berne; and the
+waiting, waiting, waiting--for what?
+
+A little moan escaped her.
+
+What if Mrs. Brace did take the marked money? What would that show? That
+she was acting with criminal intent, Hastings had said. But he had
+another and more definite object in urging her to this undertaking; he
+expected from it a vital development which he had not explained--she was
+sure. She worried with that idea.
+
+Her confidence in Hastings had been without qualification. But what was
+he doing? Anything? Judge Wilton was forever saying, "Trust Hastings;
+he's the man for this case." And that was his reputation; people
+declared that, if anybody could get to the bottom of all this mystery,
+he could. Yet, two whole days had passed since the murder, and he had
+just said another week might be required to work out his plan of
+detection--whatever that plan was.
+
+Another week of this! She put her hot palms to her hotter temples,
+striving for clarity of thought. But she was dazed by her terror--her
+isolated terror, for some of her thoughts were such that she could share
+them with nobody--not even Hastings.
+
+"If the sheriff makes no arrest within the next few days, I'll be out of
+the woods," he had told her. "Delay is what I want."
+
+There, again, was discouragement, for here was the sheriff threatening
+to serve a warrant on Berne within the next twenty-four hours! She had
+heard Crown make the threat, and to her it had seemed absolutely final:
+unless her father revealed something which Crown wanted, whether her
+father knew it or not, Berne was to be subjected to this humiliation,
+this added blow to his chance for recovery!
+
+She sprang up, throwing her hands wide and staring blindly at the stars.
+
+The woman whom she was to bribe cast a deep shadow on her imagination.
+Sharing the feeling of many others, she had reached the reluctant
+conclusion that Mrs. Brace in some way knew more than anybody else about
+the murder and its motives. It was, she told herself, a horrid feeling,
+and without reason. But she could not shake it off. To her, Mrs. Brace
+was a figure of sinister power, an agent of ugliness, waiting to do
+evil--waiting for what?
+
+By a great effort, she steadied her jangled nerves. Hastings was
+counting on her. And work--even work in the dark--was preferable to this
+idleness, this everlasting summing-up of frightful possibilities without
+a ray of hope. She would do her best to make that woman take the money!
+
+Tomorrow she would be of real service to Berne Webster--she would atone,
+in some small measure, for the sorrow she had brought upon him,
+discarding him because of empty gossip!--Would he continue to love
+her?--Perhaps, if she had not discarded him, Mildred Brace would not
+have been murdered.
+
+A groan escaped her. She fled into the house, away from her thoughts.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE BRIBE
+
+
+It was nine o'clock the following evening when Lucille Sloane, sure that
+she had entered the Walman unobserved, rang the bell of Mrs. Brace's
+apartment. Her body felt remarkably light and facile, as if she moved in
+a tenuous, half-real atmosphere. There were moments when she had the
+sensation of floating. Her brain worked with extraordinary rapidity. She
+was conscious of an unusually resourceful intelligence, and performed a
+series of mental gymnastics, framing in advance the sentences she would
+use in the interview confronting her.
+
+The constant thought at the back of her brain was that she would
+succeed; she would speak and act in such a way that Mrs. Brace would
+take the money. She was buoyed by a fierce determination to be repaid
+for all the suspense, all the agony of heart, that had weighed her down
+throughout this long, leaden-footed day--the past twenty-four hours
+unproductive of a single enlightening incident.
+
+Mrs. Brace opened the door and, with a scarcely perceptible nod of the
+head, motioned her into the living room. Neither of them spoke until
+they had seated themselves on the chairs by the window. Even then, the
+silence was prolonged, until Lucille realized that her tongue was dry
+and uncomfortably large for her mouth. An access of trembling shook her.
+She tried to smile and knew that her lips were twisting in a ghastly
+grin.
+
+Mrs. Brace moved slowly to and fro on the armless rocker, her swift,
+appraising eyes taking in her visitor's distress. The smooth face wore
+its customary, inexpressive calm. Lucille, striving desperately to
+arrive at some opinion of what the woman thought, saw that she might as
+well try to find emotion in a statue.
+
+"I--I," the girl finally attained a quick, flurried utterance, "want to
+thank you for--for having this--this talk with me."
+
+"What do you want to talk about, Miss Sloane?"
+
+The low, metallic voice was neither friendly nor hostile. It expressed,
+more than anything else, a sardonic, bullying self-sufficiency.
+
+It both angered and encouraged Lucille. She perceived the futility of
+polite, introductory phrases here; she could go straight to her purpose,
+be brutally frank. She gave Mrs. Brace a brilliant, disarming smile, a
+proclamation of fellowship. Her confidence was restored.
+
+"I'm sure we can talk sensibly together, Mrs. Brace," she explained,
+dissembling her indignation. "We can get down to business, at once."
+
+"What business?" inquired the older woman, with some of the manner
+Hastings had seen, an air of lying in wait.
+
+"I said, on the 'phone, it was something of advantage to you--didn't I?"
+
+"Yes; you said that."
+
+"And, of course, I want something from you."
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"I'll tell you what it is." Lucille spoke now with cool precision, as
+yet untouched by the horror she had expected to feel. "It's a matter of
+money."
+
+Mrs. Brace's tongue came out to the edge of the thin line of her lips.
+Her nostrils quivered, once, to the sharply indrawn breath. Her eyes
+were more furtive.
+
+"Money?" she echoed. "For what?"
+
+"There's no good of my making long explanations, Mrs. Brace," Lucille
+said. "I've read the newspapers, every line of them, about--our trouble.
+And I saw the references to your finances, your lack of money."
+
+"Yes?" Mrs. Brace's right hand lay on her lap; the thumb of it began to
+move against the forefinger rapidly, the motion a woman makes in
+feeling the texture of cloth--or the trick of a bank clerk separating
+paper money.
+
+"Yes. I read, also, what you said about the tragedy. Today I noticed
+that the only note of newness in the articles in the papers came from
+you--from your saying that 'in a few days, three or four at the
+outside'--that was your language, I'm quite sure--you'd produce evidence
+on which an arrest would be made. I've intelligence enough to see that
+the public's interest in you is so great, the sympathy for you is so
+great, that your threats--I mean, predictions, or opinions--colour
+everything that's written by the reporters. You see?"
+
+"Do I see what?"
+
+Despite her excellent pose of waiting with nothing more than a polite
+interest, Lucille saw in her a pronounced alteration. That was not so
+much in her face as in her body. Her limbs had a look of rigidity.
+
+"Don't you see what I mean?" Lucille insisted. "I see that you can make
+endless trouble for us--for all of us at Sloanehurst. You can make
+people believe Mr. Webster guilty, and that father and I are shielding
+him. People listen to what you say. They seem to be on your side."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I wondered if you wouldn't stop your interviews--your accusations?"
+
+The younger woman's eagerness, evident now in the variety of her
+gestures and the rapid procession of pallour and flush across her
+cheeks, persuaded Mrs. Brace that Lucille was acting on an impulse of
+her own, not as an agent to carry out another's well designed scheme.
+The older woman, at that idea, felt safe. She asked:
+
+"And you want--what?"
+
+"I've come here to ask you to tell me all you know, or to be quiet
+altogether."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't understand--fully," returned Mrs. Brace, with an
+exaggerated bewilderment. "Tell all I know?"
+
+"That is, if you do know anything you haven't told!" Lucille urged her.
+"Oh, don't you see? I'm saying to you that I want to put an end to this
+dreadful suspense!"
+
+Mrs. Brace laughed disagreeably; her face was harder, less human. "You
+mean I'm amusing myself, exerting myself needlessly, as a matter of
+spite? Do you mean to tell me that?"
+
+"No! No!" Lucille denied, impatient with herself for lack of clearness.
+"I mean I'm sure you're attacking an innocent man. And I'm willing, I'm
+anxious--oh, I hope so much, Mrs. Brace--to make an agreement with
+you--a financial arrangement----" She paused the fractional part of a
+second on that; and, seeing that the other did not resent the term, she
+added: "to pay you to stop it. Isn't that clear?"
+
+"Yes; that's clear."
+
+"Understand me, please. What I ask is that you say nothing more to the
+reporters, the sheriff or the Washington police, that will have the
+effect of hounding them on against Mr. Webster. I want to eliminate from
+the situation all the influence you've exerted to make Mr. Crown believe
+Mr. Webster's guilty and my father's protecting him."
+
+"Let me think," Mrs. Brace said, coolly.
+
+Lucille exulted inwardly, "She'll do it! She'll do it!" The hard eyes
+dissected her eager face. The girl drew back in her chair, thinking now:
+"She suspects who sent me!"
+
+At last, the older woman spoke:
+
+"The detective, Hastings, would never have allowed you to come here,
+Miss Sloane.--Excuse my frankness," she interjected, with a smile she
+meant to be friendly; "but you're frank with me; we're not mincing
+matters; and I have to be careful.--He'd have warned you that your
+errand's practical confession of your knowledge of something
+incriminating Berne Webster. If you didn't suspect the man even more
+strongly than I do, you'd never have been driven to--this."
+
+She leaned the rocker back and crossed her knees, the movement throwing
+into high relief the hard lankness of her figure. She gazed at the wall,
+over Lucille's head, as she dealt with the possibilities that presented
+themselves to her analysis. Her manner was that of a certain gloating
+enjoyment, a thinly covered, semi-orderly greediness.
+
+"She's not even thinking of her daughter," Lucille thought, and went
+pale a moment. "She's as bad as Mr. Hastings said--worse!"
+
+"Then, too," Mrs. Brace continued, "your father discharged him last
+night."
+
+Lucille remembered the detective's misgivings about Jarvis; how else had
+this woman found that out?
+
+"And you've taken matters into your own hands.--Did your father send you
+here--to me?"
+
+"Why, no!"
+
+The other smiled slyly, the tip of her tongue again visible, her
+eyebrows high in interrogation. "Of course," she said; "you wouldn't
+tell me if he had. He would have warned you against that admission."
+
+"It's Mr. Webster about whom I am most concerned," Lucille reminded,
+sharpness in her vibrant young voice. "My father's being annoyed is
+merely incidental."
+
+"Oh, of course! Of course," Mrs. Brace grinned, with broad sarcasm.
+
+Lucille started. The meaning of that could not be misunderstood; she
+charged that the money was offered at Arthur Sloane's instigation and
+that the concern for Berne Webster was merely pretence.
+
+Mrs. Brace saw her anger, and placated it:
+
+"Don't mind me, Miss Sloane. A woman who's had to endure what I
+have--well, she doesn't always think clearly."
+
+"Perhaps not," Lucille assented; but she was aware of a sudden longing
+to be done with the degrading work. "Now that we understand each other,
+Mrs. Brace, what do you say?"
+
+Mrs. Brace thought again.
+
+"How much?" she asked at last, her lips thickening. "How much, Miss
+Sloane, do you think my silence is worth?"
+
+Lucille took a roll of bills from her handbag. The woman's chair slid
+forward, answering to the forward--leaning weight of her new posture.
+She was lightly rubbing her palms together, as, with head a little
+bowed, she stared at the money in the younger woman's hand.
+
+"I have here five hundred dollars," Lucille began.
+
+"What!"
+
+Mrs. Brace said that roughly; and, in violent anger, drew back, the
+legs of her chair grating on the floor.
+
+For a moment Lucille gazed at her, uncomprehending.
+
+"Oh!" she said, uncertainly. "You mean--it isn't enough?"
+
+"Enough!" Mrs. Brace's rage and disappointment grew, her lowered brows a
+straight line close down to her eyes.
+
+"But I could get more!" Lucille exclaimed, struggling with disgust.
+"This," she added, with ready invention, "can serve as a part payment, a
+promise of----"
+
+"Ah-h!" the older woman exclaimed. "That's different. I misunderstood."
+
+She put down the signals of her wrath, succeeding in that readjustment
+so promptly that Lucille stared at her in undisguised amazement.
+
+"You must pardon me, Miss Sloane. I thought you were making me the
+victim of your ridicule, some heartless joke."
+
+"Then, we can come to an agreement? That is, if this money is the
+first----"
+
+She broke the sentence. Mrs. Brace had put up her hand, and now held her
+head to one side, listening.
+
+There was a step clearly audible outside, in the main hall. The next
+moment the doorbell rang. They sat motionless. When the bell rang
+again, Mrs. Brace informed her with a look that she would not answer it.
+
+But the ringing continued, became a prolonged jangle. It got on
+Lucille's already strained nerves.
+
+"Suppose you slip into the bedroom," Mrs. Brace whispered.
+
+"Oh, no!" Lucille whispered back.
+
+She was weighed down by black premonition; she hoped Mrs. Brace would
+not open the door.
+
+The bell rang again.
+
+"You'll have to!" Mrs. Brace said at last. "I won't let anybody in. I
+have to answer it!"
+
+"You'll send them away--whoever it is--at once?"
+
+"At once. I don't want you seen here, any more than you want to be
+seen!"
+
+Lucille started toward the bedroom. At the first step she took, Mrs.
+Brace put a hand on her arm.
+
+"That money!" she demanded, in a low whisper. "I'll take it."
+
+"And do what I asked--stop attacking us?"
+
+"Yes. Yes!"
+
+Lucille gave her the money.
+
+There were no lights in the bedroom. Lucille, for fear of stumbling or
+making a noise, stood to one side of the door-frame, close to the wall.
+
+Mrs. Brace's footsteps stopped. There was the click of the opening
+door. Then, there came to Lucille the high-pitched, querulous voice
+which she had been afraid she would hear.
+
+It was her father's.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+"THE WHOLE TRUTH"
+
+
+"Mrs. Brace, good evening.--May I come in?"
+
+Then followed the sound of footsteps, and the closing of the door.
+
+"I shan't detain you long, Mrs. Brace." They were still in the hall.
+"May I come in?"
+
+"Certainly." The tardy assent was the perfection of indifference.
+
+They entered the living room. Lucille, without using her eyes, knew that
+her father was standing just within the doorway, glancing around with
+his slight squint, working his lips nervously, his head thrust forward.
+
+"Ah-h!" his shrill drawl, although he kept it low, carried back to
+Lucille. "All alone--may I ask?" He went toward the chairs by the
+window. "That is, I hope to have--well--rather a confidential little
+talk with you."
+
+Mrs. Brace resumed her place on the armless rocker after she had moved a
+chair forward for him. Lucille heard it grate on the floor. Certain that
+he had taken it, she looked into the room. Her intuition was correct;
+Mrs. Brace had placed it so that his back was turned to both the bedroom
+door and the door into the entry. This made her escape possible.
+
+The relief she got from the thought was of a violent nature. It came to
+her like a blow, almost forcing a gasp from her constricted throat. If
+she could tiptoe without sound a distance of eighteen feet, a matter of
+six or seven steps, she could leave the apartment without his knowledge.
+
+To that she was doubly urged. In the first place, Hastings' warning
+drummed upon her brain; he had specified the importance of keeping even
+her father in ignorance of her errand.
+
+Upon that came another reason for flight, her fear of hearing what her
+father would say. A wave of nausea weakened her. She bowed down, there
+in the dark, under the burden of her suspicion: he had come to do, for
+quite a different reason, what she had done! She kept away from definite
+analysis of his motive. Fear for Berne, or fear for himself, it was
+equally horrible to her consideration.
+
+"I admire your spirit, Mrs. Brace," he was saying, in ingratiating tone;
+"and your shrewdness. I've followed all you said, in the papers. And I'm
+in hopes that we may----"
+
+He stopped, and Lucille, judging from the thin edges of sounds that she
+caught, had a mental picture of his peering over his shoulder. He
+resumed:
+
+"I must apologize, I'm sure. But you'll realize my concern for
+secrecy--after I've explained. May I--ah-h-h--do you mind if I look
+about, for possible hearers?"
+
+"It's unnecessary," came the calm, metallic assurance. "I've no
+objection to your searching my apartment, if you insist." She laughed, a
+mirthless deprecation of his timidity, and coolly put herself at his
+disposal in another sentence: "I've sense enough to form an idea of what
+you'll propose; and I'd scarcely want others to hear it--would I?"
+
+"Ah-h-h!" he drawled, expressing a grudging disposition to accept her
+assurance. "Certainly not.--Well, that's very reasonable--and obliging,
+I'm sure."
+
+Again by the thin fringes of sound, Lucille got information of his
+settling into his chair.
+
+"Why," he began; "why, in the name of all the unfathomable, inscrutable
+angels----"
+
+"First, Mr. Sloane," Mrs. Brace interrupted him--and Lucille heard the
+rattle of a newspaper; "as a preface to our--shall we say
+conference?--our conference, then, let me read you this summary of my
+position.--That is, if you care to understand my position thoroughly."
+
+She was far from her habitual quietness, rattling the newspaper
+incessantly. The noise, Lucille realized, would hang as a curtain
+between her father's ears and the possible sounds of her progress from
+the bedroom door to the entry.
+
+Stealing a glance into the living room, she saw his back and, over his
+stooped shoulders, Mrs. Brace's calm face. In that instant, the
+newspaper shook more violently--enough, she thought, to signal
+cooperation.
+
+She sickened again at sight of that woman about to dispense bought
+favours to her father. The impulse to step forth and proclaim her
+presence rose strongly within her; but she was turned from it by fear
+that her interruption might produce disastrous results. After all, she
+was not certain of his intention.
+
+She knew, however, that at any moment he might insist on satisfying
+himself, by a tour of inspection, that he was safe from being overheard.
+She hesitated no longer. She would try to get away.
+
+"Look at this, Mr. Sloane, if you please," Mrs. Brace was saying;
+"notice how the items are made to stand out, each in a paragraph of
+large type."
+
+She held the paper so that Sloane bent forward, and, against his will,
+was held to joint perusal while she read aloud. The curtain of
+protecting noise thus was thickened.
+
+"'That Mrs. Brace has knowledge of the following facts,'" the harsh,
+colourless voice was reading.
+
+Lucille began her escape. She moved with an agony of precaution, taking
+steps only a few inches long, her arms held out from her sides to avoid
+unnecessary rustling of her clothing. She went on the balls of her feet,
+keeping the heels of her shoes always free of the floor, each step a
+slow torture.
+
+Her breathing stopped--a hysterical contraction of her chest prevented
+breathing. Her face burned like fire. Her head felt crowded, as if the
+blood tried to ooze through the confining scalp. There was a great
+roaring in her ears. The pulse in her temples was like the blows of
+sledges.
+
+Once, midway of the distance, as she stood lightly balanced, with arms
+outstretched, something went wrong with her equilibrium. She started
+forward as she had often done when a child, with the sensation of
+falling on her face. Her skirt billowed out in front of her. If she had
+had any breath in her, she would have cried out.
+
+But the automatisms of her body worked better than her overtaxed brain.
+Her right foot went out easily and softly--she marvelled at that
+independent motion of her leg--and, taking up the falling weight of her
+body, restored her balance.
+
+Mrs. Brace's voice had not faltered, although she must have seen the
+misstep. Arthur Sloane's bowed shoulders had not stirred. Mrs. Brace
+continued the printed enumeration of her stores of knowledge.
+
+Lucille took another step. She was safe!--almost. There remained but a
+yard of her painful progress. One more step, she comforted herself,
+would put her on the threshold of the entry door, and from there to the
+corridor door, shielded by the entry wall from possible observation by
+her father, would be an easy business.
+
+She completed that last step. On the threshold, she had to turn her body
+through an arc of ninety degrees, unless she backed out of the door.
+This she was afraid to do; her heel might meet an obstruction; a raised
+plank of the flooring, even, would mean an alarming noise.
+
+She began to turn. The reading continued. The whole journey from door to
+door, in spite of the anguished care of every step, had consumed
+scarcely a minute. She was turning, the balancing arms outstretched.
+Deep down in her chest there was the beginning of a sensation, muscles
+relaxing, the promise of a long breath of relief.
+
+Her left hand--or, perhaps, her elbow; in the blinding, benumbing flash
+of consternation, she did not know which--touched the pile of magazines
+on the table that was set against the door-frame. The magazines did not
+fall to the floor, but the fluttering of the loose cover of the one on
+top made a noise.
+
+She fled, taking with her the flashing memory of the first stirring of
+her father's figure and the crackle of the paper in Mrs. Brace's hand.
+In two light steps she was at the corridor door. Her hands found the
+latch and turned it. She ran down the stairs with rapid, skimming steps,
+the door clicking softly shut as she made the turn on the next landing.
+
+Her exit had been wonderfully quiet. She knew this, in spite of the fact
+that her straining senses had exaggerated the flutter of the magazine
+cover and the click of the door into a terrifying volume of sound. It
+was entirely possible that Mrs. Brace had been able to persuade her
+father that he had heard nothing more than some outside noise. She was
+certain that he had not seen her.
+
+She crossed the dim, narrow lobby of the Walman so quickly, and so
+quietly, that the girl at the telephone board did not look in her
+direction.
+
+Once in the street, she was seized by desire to confide to Hastings the
+story of her experience. She decided to act on the impulse.
+
+
+He was at first more concerned with her physical condition than with
+what she had to tell. He saw how near she was to the breaking point.
+
+"My dear child!" he said, in the tone of fatherly solicitude which she
+had learned to like. "Comfort before conference! Here, this chair by the
+window--so--and this wreck of a fan, can you use it? Fine! Now, cool
+your flushed face in this thin, very thin stream of a breeze--feel it? A
+glass of water?--just for the tinkling of ice? That's better, isn't it?"
+
+The only light in the room was the reading lamp, under a dark-green
+shade, and from this little island of illumination there ran out a
+chaotic sea of shadows, huge waves of them, mounting the height of the
+book-shelves and breaking irregularly on the ceiling.
+
+In the dimness, as he walked back and forth hunting for the fan or
+bringing her the water, he looked weirdly large--like, she thought
+dully, a fairy giant curiously draped. But the serenity of his
+expression touched her. She was glad she had come.
+
+While she told her story, he stood in front of her, encouraging her
+with a smile or a nod now and then, or ambled with soft step among the
+shadows, always keeping his eyes upon her. For the moment, her tired
+spirit was freshened by his lavish praise of the manner in which she had
+accomplished her undertaking. Following that, his ready sympathy made it
+easier for her to discuss her fear that her father had planned to bribe
+Mrs. Brace.
+
+Nevertheless, the effort taxed her severely. At the end of it, she
+leaned back and closed her eyes, only to open them with a start of
+fright at the resultant dizziness. The sensation of bodily lightness had
+left her. Her limbs felt sheathed in metal. An acute, throbbing pain
+racked her head. She was too weary to combat the depression which was
+like a cold, freezing hand at her heart.
+
+"You don't say anything!" she complained weakly.
+
+He stood near her chair, gazing thoughtfully before him.
+
+"I'm trying to understand it," he said; "why your father did that.
+You're right, of course. He went there to pay her to keep quiet. But
+why?"
+
+He looked at her closely.
+
+"Could it be possible," he put the inquiry at last, "that he knew her
+before the murder?"
+
+"I've asked him," she said. "No; he never had heard of her--neither he
+nor Judge Wilton. I even persuaded him to question Jarvis about that. It
+was the same; Jarvis never had--until last Sunday morning."
+
+"You think of everything!" he congratulated her.
+
+"No! Oh, no!"
+
+Some quick and overmastering emotion broke down the last of her
+endurance. Whether it was a new and finer appreciation of his
+persistent, untiring search for the guilty man, or the realization of
+how sincerely he liked her, giving her credit for a frankness she had
+not exercised--whatever the pivotal consideration was, she felt that she
+could no longer deceive him.
+
+She closed her lips tightly, to keep back the rising sobs, and regarded
+him with questioning, fearful eyes.
+
+"What is it?" he asked gently, reading her appealing look.
+
+"I've a confession to make," she said miserably.
+
+He refused to treat it as a tragedy.
+
+"But it can't be very bad!" he exclaimed pleasantly. "When we're
+overwrought, imagination's like a lantern swinging in the wind, changing
+the size of everything every second."
+
+"But it is bad!" she insisted. "I haven't been fair. I couldn't bring
+myself to tell you this. I tried to think you'd get along without it!"
+
+"And now?"
+
+She answered him with an outward calmness which was, in reality,
+emotional dullness. She had suffered so much that to feel vividly was
+beyond her strength.
+
+"You have the right to know it," she said, looking at him out of
+brilliant, unwinking eyes. "It's about father. He was out there--on the
+lawn--before he turned on the light in his room. I heard him come in, a
+minute before Berne went down the back stairs and out to the lawn. And I
+heard him go to his window and stand there, looking out, at least five
+long minutes before he flashed on his light."
+
+He waited, thinking she might have more to tell. Construing his silence
+as reproof, she said, without changing either her expression or her
+voice:
+
+"I know--it's awful. I should have told you. Perhaps, I've done great
+harm."
+
+"You've been very brave," he consoled her, with infinite tenderness.
+"But it happens that I'd already satisfied myself on that point. I knew
+he'd been out there."
+
+She was dumb, incapable of reacting to his words. Even the fact that he
+was smiling, with genuine amusement, did not affect her.
+
+"Here comes the grotesque element, the comical, that's involved in so
+many tragedies," he explained. "Your father's weakness for 'cure' of
+nervousness, and his shrinking from the ridicule he's suffered because
+of it--there's the explanation of why he was out there that night."
+
+She could not see significance in that, but neither could she summon
+energy to say so. She wondered vaguely why he thought it funny.
+
+"That night--rather, the early morning hours following--while the rest
+of you were in the library, I looked through his room, and I found a
+pair of straw sandals in the closet--such as a man could slip on and off
+without having to bend down to adjust them. And they were wet, inside
+and out.
+
+"Sunday morning, when Judge Wilton and I were at his bedside, I saw on
+the table a 'quack' pamphlet on the 'dew' treatment for nervousness, the
+benefit of the 'wet, cooling grass' upon the feet at night. You know the
+kind of thing. So----"
+
+"Oh-h-h!" she breathed, tremulous and weak. "So that's why he was out
+there! Why didn't I think? Oh, how I've suspected him of----"
+
+"But remember," he warned; "that's why he went out. We still don't know
+what he--what happened after he got out there--or why he's refused to
+say that he ever was out there. When we think of this, and other things,
+and, too, his call tonight on Mrs. Brace, for bribery--leaving what we
+thought was a sickbed--"
+
+"But he's been up all day!" she corrected.
+
+"And yet," he said, and stopped, reflecting.
+
+"Tell me," she implored; "tell me, Mr. Hastings, do you suspect my
+father--or not--of the----?"
+
+He answered her unfinished question with a solemn, painstaking care:
+
+"Miss Sloane, you're not one who would want to be misled. You can bear
+the truth. I'd be foolish to say that he's not under suspicion. He is.
+Any one of the men there that night may have committed the murder.
+Webster, your father, Wilton--only there, suspicion seems totally
+gratuitous--Eugene Russell, Jarvis--I've heard things about him--any one
+of them may have struck that blow--may have."
+
+"And father," she said, in a grieved bewilderment, "has paid Mrs. Brace
+to stop saying she suspects Berne," she shuddered, facing the
+alternative, "or himself!"
+
+"You see," he framed the conclusion for her, "how hard he makes it for
+us to keep him out of trouble--if that gets out. He's put his hand on
+the live wire of circumstantial evidence, a wire that too often
+thrashes about, striking the wrong man."
+
+"And Berne?" she cried out. "I think I could stand anything if only I
+knew----"
+
+But this time the mutinous sobs came crowding past her lips. She could
+not finish the inquiry she had begun.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+THE MAN WHO RODE AWAY
+
+
+It was early in the afternoon of Wednesday when Mr. Hastings, responding
+to the prolonged ringing of his telephone, took the receiver off the
+hook and found himself in communication with the sheriff of Alexandria
+county. This was not the vacillating, veering sheriff who had spent
+nearly four days accepting the hints of a detective or sitting,
+chameleon-minded, at the feet of a designing woman. Here was an
+impressive and self-appreciative gentleman, one who delighted in his own
+deductive powers and relished their results.
+
+He said so. His confidence fairly rattled the wire. His words
+annihilated space grandly and leaped into the old man's receptive ear
+with sizzling and electric effect. Mr. Crown, triumphant, was glad to
+inform others that he was making a hit with himself.
+
+"Hello! That you, Hastings? Well, old fellow, I don't like to annoy you
+with an up-to-date rendition of 'I told you so!'--but it's come out, to
+the last syllable, exactly as I said it would--from the very first!"
+
+Ensued a pause, for dramatic effect. The detective did not break it.
+
+"Waiting, are you? Well, here she goes; Russell's alibi's been knocked
+into a thousand pieces! It's blown up! It's gone glimmering!--What do
+you think of that?"
+
+Hastings refrained from replying that he had regarded such an event as
+highly probable. Instead, he inquired:
+
+"And that simplifies things?"
+
+"Does it!" exploded Mr. Crown. "I'm getting to you a few minutes ahead
+of the afternoon papers. You'll see it all there." An apologetic laugh
+came over the wire. "You'll excuse me, I know; I had to do this thing up
+right, put on the finishing touches before you even guessed what was
+going on. I've wound up the whole business. The Washington police nabbed
+Russell an hour ago, on my orders.
+
+"'Simplifies things?' I should say so! I guess you can call 'em
+'simplified' when a murder's been committed and the murderer's waiting
+to step into my little ring-tum-fi-diddle-dee of a country jail! 'No
+clue to this mystery,' the papers have been saying! What's the use of a
+clue when you _know_ a guy's guilty? That's what I've been whistling all
+along!"
+
+"But the alibi?" Hastings prompted. "You say it's blown up?"
+
+"Blown! Gone! Result of my sending out those circulars asking if any
+automobile parties passed along the Sloanehurst road the murder night.
+Remember?"
+
+"Yes." The old man recalled having made that suggestion, but did not say
+so.
+
+"This morning the chief of police of York--York, Pennsylvania--wired me.
+I got him by long-distance right away. He gave me the story, details
+absolutely right and straight, all verified--and everything. A York man,
+named Stevens, saw a newspaper account, for the first time this morning,
+of the murder. He and four other fellows were in a car that went up Hub
+Hill that night a little after eleven--a few minutes after.--Hear that?"
+
+"Yes. Go on."
+
+"Stevens was on the back seat. They went up the hill on low--terrible
+piece of road, he calls it--they were no more than crawling. He says he
+was the only sober man in the crowd--been out on a jollification tour of
+ten days. He saw a man slide on to the running board on his side of the
+car as they were creeping up the hill. The rest of the party was
+singing, having a high old time.
+
+"Stevens said he never said a word, just watched the guy on the running
+board, and planned to crack him on the head with an empty beer bottle
+when they got on the straight road and were hitting up a good clip--just
+playing, you understand.
+
+"After he'd watched the guy a while and was trying to fish up a beer
+bottle from the bottom of the car, the chauffeur slowed down and
+hollered back to him on the back seat that he wanted to stop and look at
+his radiator--it was about to blow up, too hot. He'd been burning the
+dust on that stretch of good road.
+
+"When he slowed down, the guy on the running board slipped off. Stevens
+says he rolled down a bank."
+
+The jubilant Mr. Crown stopped, for breath.
+
+"That's all right, far as it goes," Hastings said; "but does he identify
+that man as Russell?"
+
+"To the last hair on his head!" replied the sheriff. "Stevens'
+description of the fellow is Russell all over--all over! Just to show
+you how good it is, take this: Stevens describe the clothes Russell
+wore, and says what Otis said: he'd lost his hat."
+
+"Stevens got a good look at him?"
+
+"Says the headlights were full on him as he stood on one side of the
+road, there on Hub Hill, waiting to slide on the running board.--And
+this Stevens is a shrewd guy, the York chief says. I guess his story
+plugs Russell's lies, shoots that alibi so full of holes it makes a
+sifter look like a piece of sheet-iron!
+
+"That car went up Hub Hill at seven minutes past eleven--that means
+Russell had plenty of time to kill the girl after the rain stopped and
+to get out on the road and slip on to that running board. And the car
+slowed up, where he rolled off the running board, at eighteen minutes
+past eleven.
+
+"Time's right, location's right, identification's right!--Pretty sweet,
+ain't it, old fellow? Congratulate me, don't you? Congratulate me, even
+if it does step on all those mysterious theories of yours--that right?"
+
+Hastings bestowed the desired felicitations upon the exuberant conqueror
+of crime.
+
+Turning from the telephone, he gazed a long time at the piece of grey
+envelope on the table before him. He had clung to his belief that, in
+those fragments of words, was to be found a clue to the solution of the
+mystery. He picked up his knife and fell to whittling.
+
+Outside in the street a newsboy set up an abrupt, blaring din, shouting
+sensational headlines:
+
+
+  "SLOANEHURST MYSTERY SOLVED!--RUSSELL THE MURDERER!--ALIBI A FAKE!"
+
+
+The old man considered grimly, the various effects of this development
+in the case--Lucille Sloane's unbounded relief mingled with censure of
+him for having added to her fears, and especially for having subjected
+her to the ordeal of last night's experience with Mrs. Brace--the
+adverse criticism from both press and public because of his refusal to
+join in the first attacks upon Russell, Arthur Sloane's complacency at
+never having treated him with common courtesy.
+
+His thoughts went to Mrs. Brace and her blackmail schemes, as he had
+interpreted or suspected them.
+
+"If I'd had a little more time," he reflected, "I might have put my hand
+on----"
+
+His eyes rested on the envelope flap. His mind flashed to another and
+new idea. His muscles stiffened; he put his hands on the arms of his
+chair and slowly lifted himself up, the knife dropping from his fingers
+and clattering on the floor. He stood erect and held both hands aloft, a
+gesture of wide and growing wonder.
+
+"Cripes!" he said aloud.
+
+He picked up the grey paper with a hand that trembled. His pendent
+cheeks puffed out like those of a man blowing a horn. He stared at the
+paper again, before restoring it to its envelope, which he put back into
+one of his pockets.
+
+"Cripes!" he said again. "It's a place! Pursuit! That's where the----"
+
+He became a whirlwind of action, covered the floor with springy step.
+Taking a book of colossal size from a shelf, he whirled the pages,
+running his finger down a column while he murmured,
+"Pursuit--P-u-r--P-u--P-u----"
+
+But there was no such name in the postal directory. He went back to
+older directories. He began to worry. Was there no such postoffice as
+Pursuit? He went to other books, whirling the pages, running down column
+after column. And at last he got the information he sought.
+
+Consulting a railroad folder, he found a train schedule that caused him
+to look at his watch.
+
+"Twenty-five minutes," he figured. "I'm going!"
+
+He telephoned for a cab.
+
+Then, seating himself at the table, he tore a sheet from a scratch-pad
+and wrote:
+
+"Don't lose sight of Mrs. Brace. Disregard Russell's arrest.
+
+"Hendricks: the Sloanehurst people are members of the Arlington Golf
+Club. Get a look at golf bags there. Did one, or two, contain piece or
+pieces of a bed-slat?
+
+"Gore: check up on Mrs. B.'s use of money.
+
+"I'll be back Sunday."
+
+He sealed the envelope into which he put that, and, addressing it to
+Hendricks, left it lying on the table.
+
+At the station he bought the afternoon newspapers and turned to Eugene
+Russell's statement, made to the reporters immediately after his arrest.
+It ran:
+
+"I repeat that I'm innocent of the murder. Of course, I made a mistake
+in omitting all mention of my having ridden the first four miles from
+Sloanehurst. But, being innocent and knowing the weight of the
+circumstantial evidence against me, I could not resist the temptation to
+make my alibi good. I neither committed that murder nor witnessed it.
+The story I told at the inquest of what happened to me and what I did at
+Sloanehurst stands. It is the truth."
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+"PURSUIT!"
+
+
+Returning from his trip Sunday morning, the detective, after a brief
+conference with Hendricks, had gone immediately to Mrs. Brace's
+apartment. She sat now, still and watchful, on the armless rocker by the
+window, waiting for him to disclose the object of his visit. Except the
+lifted, faintly interrogating eyebrows, there was nothing in her face
+indicative of what she thought.
+
+He caught himself comparing her to a statue, forever seated on the
+low-backed, uncomfortable chair, awaiting without emotion or alteration
+of feature the outcome of her evil scheming. Her hardness gave him the
+impression of something hammered on, beaten into an ugly pattern.
+
+Having that imperturbability to overcome, he struck his first blow with
+surprising directness.
+
+"I'm just back from Pursuit," he said.
+
+That was the first speech by either of them since the monosyllabic
+greeting at the door. He saw that she had prepared herself for such an
+announcement; but the way she took it reminded him of a door shaken by
+the impact of a terrific blow. A little shiver, for all her force of
+repression, moved her from head to foot.
+
+"You are?" she responded, her voice controlled, the hard face untouched
+by the shock to which her body had responded.
+
+"Yes; I got back half an hour ago, and, except for one of my assistants,
+you're the first person I've seen." When that drew no comment from her,
+he added: "I want you to remember that--later on."
+
+He began to whittle.
+
+"Why?" she asked with genuine curiosity, after a pause.
+
+"Because it may be well for you to know that I'm dealing with you alone,
+and fairly.--I got all the facts concerning you."
+
+"Concerning me?" Her tone intimated doubt.
+
+"Now, Mrs. Brace!" he exclaimed, disapproving her apparent intention.
+"You're surely not going to pretend ignorance--or innocence!"
+
+She crossed her knees, and, putting her left forearm across her body,
+rested her right elbow in that hand. She began to rock very gently, her
+posture causing her to lean forward and giving her a look of continual
+but polite questioning.
+
+"If you want to talk to me," she said, her voice free of all feeling,
+"you'll have to tell me what it's about."
+
+"All right; I will," he returned. "You'll remember, I take it, my asking
+you to tell me the meaning of the marks on the flap of the grey
+envelope. I'll admit I was slow, criminally slow, in coming to the
+conclusion that 'Pursuit!' referred to a place rather than an act. But I
+got it finally--and I found Pursuit--not much left of it now; it's not
+even a postoffice.
+
+"But it's discoverable," he continued on a sterner note, and began to
+shave long, slender chips from his block of wood. "I'll give you the
+high lights: young Dalton was killed--his murderer made a run for
+it--but you, a young widow then, in whose presence the thing was done,
+smoothed matters out. You swore it was a matter of self-defence. The
+result was that, after a few half-hearted attempts to locate the
+fugitive, the pursuit was given up."
+
+"Very well. But why bring that story here--now? What's its
+significance?"
+
+He stared at her in amazement. Her thin, sensitive lips were drawn back
+at the corners, enough to make her mouth look a trifle wider--and enough
+to suggest dimly that their motion was the start of a vindictive
+grimace. Otherwise, she was unmoved, unresponsive to the open threat of
+what he had said.
+
+"Let me finish," he retorted. "An unfortunate feature, for you, was
+that you seemed to have made money out of the tragedy. In straitened
+circumstances previously, you began to spend freely--comparatively
+speaking--a few days after the murderer's disappearance. In fact,
+bribery was hinted; you had to leave the village. See any significance
+in that?" he concluded, with irony.
+
+"Suppose you explain it," she said, still cool.
+
+"The significance is in the strengthening of the theory I've had
+throughout the whole week that's passed since your daughter was killed
+at Sloanehurst."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+She stopped rocking; her eyes played a fiery tattoo on every feature of
+his face.
+
+"Your daughter's death was the unexpected result of your attempts to
+blackmail young Dalton's murderer. You, being afraid of him, and not
+confessing that timidity to Mildred, persuaded her to approach him--in
+person."
+
+"I! Afraid of him!" she objected, aroused at last.
+
+Her brows were lowered, a heavy line above her furtive, swift eyes; her
+nostrils fluttered nervously.
+
+"Granting your absurd theory," she continued, "why should I have feared
+him? What had he done--except strike to save his own life?"
+
+"You forget, Mrs. Brace," he corrected. "That body showed twenty-nine
+wounds, twenty-eight of them unnecessary--if the first was inflicted in
+mere self-defence. It was horrible mutilation."
+
+"So!" she ridiculed, with obvious effort. "You picture him as a
+butcher."
+
+"Precisely. And you, having seen to what lengths his murderous fury
+could take him, were afraid to face him--even after your long, long
+search had located him again. Let's be sensible, Mrs. Brace. Let's give
+the facts of this business a hearing.
+
+"You had come to Washington and located him at last. But, after
+receiving several demands from you, he'd stopped reading your
+letters--sent them back unopened. Consequently, in order for you to make
+an appointment with him, he had to be communicated with in a handwriting
+he didn't know. Hence, your daughter had to write the letter making that
+appointment a week ago last night. Then, however----"
+
+"What makes you think----"
+
+"Then, however," he concluded, overbearing her with his voice, "you
+hadn't the courage to face him--out there, in the dark, alone. You
+persuaded Mildred to go--in your place. And he killed her."
+
+"Ha!" The mocking exclamation sounded as though it had been pounded out
+of her by a blow upon her back. "What makes you say that? Where do you
+get that? Who put that into your head?"
+
+She volleyed those questions at him with indescribable rapidity, her
+lips drawn back from her teeth, her brows straining far up toward the
+line of her hair. The profound disgust with which he viewed her did not
+affect her. She darted to and fro in her mind, running about in the
+waste and tumult of her momentary confusion, seeking the best thing to
+say, the best policy to adopt, for her own ends.
+
+He had had time to determine that much when her gift of self-possession
+reasserted itself. She forced her lips back to their thin line, and
+steadied herself. He could see the vibrant tautness of her whole body,
+exemplified in the rigidity with which she held her crossed knees, one
+crushed upon the other.
+
+"I know, I think, what misled you," she answered her own question.
+"You've talked to Gene Russell, of course. He may have heard--I think he
+did hear--Mildred and me discussing the mailing of a letter that Friday
+night."
+
+"He did," Hastings said, firmly.
+
+"But he couldn't have heard anything to warrant your theory, Mr.
+Hastings. I merely made fun of her wavering after she'd once said she'd
+confront Berne Webster again with her appeal for fair play."
+
+He inspected her with an emotion that was a mingling of incredulity and
+repugnant wonder.
+
+"It's no use, Mrs. Brace," he told her. "Russell didn't see the name of
+the man to whom the letter was addressed. I saw him last Sunday
+afternoon. He told me he took the name for granted, because Mildred had
+taunted him, saying it went to Webster. As a matter of fact, he wanted
+to see if Webster was at Sloanehurst and fastened his eyes for a
+fleeting glimpse on that word--and on that alone. Besides, there are
+facts to prove that the letter did not go to Webster.--Do you see how
+your fancied security falls away?"
+
+"Let me think," she said, her tone flat and impersonal.
+
+She was silent, her restless eyes gazing at the wall over his head. He
+watched her, and glanced only at intervals at the wood he was aimlessly
+shaving.
+
+"Of course," she said, after a while, looking at him with a speculative,
+deliberating air, "you've deduced and pieced this together. You've a
+woman's intuition--comprehension of motives, feelings."
+
+She was silent again.
+
+"Pieced what together?" he asked.
+
+"It's plain enough, isn't it? You began with your suspicion that my need
+of money was heavier in my mind than grief at Mildred's death. On that,
+you built up--well, all you've just said."
+
+"It was more than a suspicion," he corrected. "It was knowledge--that
+everything you did, after her death, was intended to help along your
+scheme to--we'll say, to get money."
+
+"Still," she persisted shrewdly, "you felt the necessity of proving I'd
+blackmail--if that's the word you want to use."
+
+"How?" he put in quickly. "Prove it, how?"
+
+"That's why you sent that girl here with the five hundred. I see it now;
+although, at the time, I didn't." She laughed, a short, bitter note.
+"Perhaps, the money, or my need of it, kept me from thinking straight."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Of course," she made the admission calmly, "as soon as I took the hush
+money, your theory seemed sound--the whole of it: my motives and
+identity of the murderer."
+
+She was thinking with a concentration so intense that the signs of it
+resembled physical exertion. Moisture beaded the upper part of her
+forehead. He could see the muscles of her face respond to the locking of
+her jaws.
+
+"But there's nothing against me," she began again, and, moved by his
+expression, qualified: "nothing that I can be held for, in the courts."
+
+"You've decided that, have you?"
+
+"You'll admit it," she said. "There's nothing--there can be nothing--to
+disprove my statement that Dalton's death was provoked. I hold the key
+to that--I alone. That being true, I couldn't be prosecuted in Pursuit
+as 'accessory after the fact.'"
+
+"Yes," he agreed. "That's true."
+
+"And here," she concluded, without a hint of triumph, even without a
+special show of interest, "I can't be proceeded against for blackmail.
+That money, from both of them, was a gift. I hadn't asked for it, much
+less demanded it. I," she said with an assured arrogance, "hadn't got
+that far.--So, you see, Mr. Hastings, I'm far from frightened."
+
+He found nothing to say to that shameless but unassailable declaration.
+Also, he was aware that she entertained, and sought solution of, a
+problem, the question of how best to satisfy her implacable
+determination to make the man pay. That purpose occupied all her mind,
+now that her money greed was frustrated.
+
+It was on this that he had calculated. It explained his going to her
+before confronting the murderer. He had felt certain that her perverted
+desire to "get even" would force her into the strange position of
+helping him.
+
+He broke the silence with a careful attempt to guide her thoughts:
+
+"But don't fool yourself, Mrs. Brace. You've got out of this all you'll
+ever get, financially--every cent. And you're in an unpleasant
+situation--an outcast, perhaps. People don't stand for your line of
+stuff, your behaviour."
+
+She did not resent that. Making a desperate mental search for the best
+way to serve her hard self-interest, he thought, she was impervious to
+insult.
+
+"I know," she said, to his immense relief. "I've been considering the
+only remaining point."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"The sure way to make him suffer as horribly as possible."
+
+He pretended absorption in his carving.
+
+"Why shouldn't he have provided me with money when I asked it?" she
+demanded, at last.
+
+The new quality of her speech brought his head up with a jerk. Instead
+of colourless harshness, it had a warm fury. It was not that she spoke
+loudly or on a high key; but it had an unbridled, self-indulgent sound.
+He got the impression that she put off all censorship from either her
+feeling or her expression.
+
+"That wasn't much to ask--as long as he continued his life of ease, of
+luxury, of safety--as long as I left out of consideration the debt he
+couldn't pay, the debt that was impossible of payment."
+
+Alien as the thing seemed in connection with her, he grasped it. She
+thought that she had once loved the man.
+
+"The matter of personal feeling?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. When he left Pursuit, he destroyed the better part of me--what you
+would call the good part."
+
+She said that without sentimentalism, without making it a plea for
+sympathy; she had better sense, he saw, than to imagine that she could
+arouse sympathy on that ground.
+
+"And," she continued, with intense malignity, "what was so monstrous in
+my asking him for money? I asked him for no payment of what he really
+owes me. That's a debt he can't pay! My beauty, destroyed, withered and
+covered over with the hard mask of the features you see now; my
+capacity for happiness, dead, swallowed up in my long, long devotion to
+my purpose to find him again--those things, man as you are, you realize
+are beyond the scope of payment or repayment!"
+
+Without rising to a standing position, she leaned so far forward that
+her weight was all on her feet, and, although her figure retained the
+posture of one seated on a chair, she was in fact independent of support
+from it, and held herself crouching in front of him, taut, a tremor in
+her limbs because of the strain.
+
+Her hands were held out toward him, the tips of her stiffened,
+half-closed fingers less than a foot from his face. Her brows were drawn
+so high that the skin of her forehead twitched, as if pulled upward by
+another's hand. It was with difficulty that he compelled himself to
+witness the climax of her rage. Only his need of what she knew kept him
+still.
+
+"Money!" she said, her lean arms in continual motion before him. "You're
+right, there. I wanted money. I made up my mind I'd have it. It was such
+a purpose of mine, so strongly grown into my whole being, that even
+Mildred's death couldn't lessen or dislodge it. And there was more than
+the want of money in my never letting loose of my intention to find
+him. He couldn't strip me bare and get away! You've understood me pretty
+well. You know it was written, on the books, that he and I should come
+together again--no matter how far he went, or how cleverly!
+
+"And I see now!" she gave him her decision, and, as she did so, rose to
+an upright position, her hands at her sides going half-shut and open,
+half-shut and open, as if she made mental pictures of the closing in of
+her long pursuit. "I'll say what you want me to say. Confront him; put
+me face to face with him, and I'll say the letter went to him. Oh, never
+fear! I'll say the appropriate thing, and the convincing
+thing--appropriately convincing!"
+
+Her eyes glittered, countering his searching glance, as she stood over
+him, her body flung a little forward from the waist, her arms busy with
+their quick, angular gesticulation.
+
+"When?" he asked. "When will you do that?"
+
+"Now," she answered instantly. "Now!--Now!--Oh, don't look surprised.
+I've thought of this possibility. My God!" she said with a bitterness
+that startled him. "I've thought of every possibility, every possible
+crook and quirk of this business."
+
+She was struck by his slowness in responding to her offer.
+
+"But you," she asked; "are you sure--have you the proof?"
+
+"Thanks," he said drily. "You needn't be uneasy about that.--Now, if I
+may do a little telephoning, we'll start."
+
+He went a step from her and turned back.
+
+"By the way," he stipulated, "that little matter of the five
+hundred--you needn't refer to it. I mean it will have to be left out.
+It's not necessary."
+
+"No; it isn't," she agreed, with perfect indifference. "And it's spent."
+
+When he had telephoned to Sloanehurst and the sheriff's office, he found
+her with her hat on, ready to accompany him.
+
+As they stepped out of the Walman, she saw the automobile waiting for
+them. She stopped, a new rage darting from her eyes. He thought she
+would go back. After a brief hesitation, however, she gave a short, ugly
+laugh.
+
+"You were as sure as that, were you!" she belittled herself. "Had the
+car wait--to take me there!"
+
+"By no means," he denied. "I hoped you'd go--that's all."
+
+"That's better," she said, determined to assert her individuality of
+action. "You're not forcing me into this, you know. I'm doing it, after
+thinking it out to the last detail--for my own satisfaction."
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+DENIAL OF THE CHARGE
+
+
+Hastings, fully appreciating the value of surprise, had instructed Mrs.
+Brace to communicate none of the new developments to anybody until he
+asked for them. Reaching Sloanehurst, he went alone to the library,
+leaving her in the parlour to battle as best she might with the
+sheriff's anxious curiosity.
+
+Arthur Sloane and Judge Wilton gave him cool welcome, parading for his
+benefit an obvious and insolent boredom. Although uninvited to sit down,
+he caught up a chair and swung it lightly into such position that, when
+he seated himself, he faced them across the table. He was smiling,
+enough to indicate a general satisfaction with the world.
+
+There was in his bearing, however, that which carried them back to their
+midnight session with him immediately following the discovery of Mildred
+Brace's body. The smile did not lessen his look of unquestionable power;
+his words were sharp, clipped-off.
+
+"I take it," he said briskly, untouched by their demeanour of
+indifference, "you gentlemen will be interested in the fact that I've
+cleared up this mystery."
+
+"Ah-h-h!" drawled Sloane. "Again?"
+
+"What do you mean by 'again'?" he asked, good-naturedly.
+
+"Crown, the sheriff, accomplished it four days ago, I'm credibly
+informed."
+
+"He made a mistake."
+
+"Ah?" Sloane ridiculed.
+
+"Yes. 'Ah!'" Hastings took him up curtly, and, with a quick turn of his
+head, addressed himself to Wilton: "Judge, I've been to Pursuit."
+
+When he said that, his head was thrown back so that he squinted at
+Wilton down the line of his nose, under the rims of his spectacles.
+
+"Pursuit!"
+
+Wilton's echo of the word was explosive. He had been leaning back in his
+chair, eying the detective from under lowered lids, and drawing deep,
+prolonged puffs from his cigar. But, with the response to Hastings'
+announcement, he sat up and leaned forward, putting his elbows on the
+rim of the table. It was an awkward attitude, compelling him to extend
+his neck and turn his face upward in order to meet the other's glance.
+
+"Yes," Hastings said, after a measurable pause. "Interested in that?"
+
+"Not at all," Wilton replied, plainly alarmed, and fubbed out his cigar
+with forefinger and thumb, oblivious to the fact that he dropped a
+little shower of fire on the table cover.
+
+"I'll trouble you to observe, Mr. Sloane," Hastings put in, "that, being
+excited, the judge's first impulse is to extinguish his cigar: it's a
+habit of his.--Now, judge, in Pursuit I heard a lot about you--a lot."
+
+"All right--what?"
+
+He made the inquiry reluctantly, as if under compulsion of the
+detective's glance.
+
+"The Dalton case--and your part in it."
+
+"You know about that, do you?"
+
+"All about it," Hastings said, in a way that made doubt impossible;
+Sloane, even, bewildered as he was, got the impression of his ruthless
+certainty.
+
+Wilton did not contest it.
+
+"I struck in self-defence," he excused himself wearily, like a man
+taking up a task against his will. "It would be ridiculous to call that
+murder. No jury would have convicted me--none would now, if given the
+truth."
+
+"But the body showed twenty-nine wounds," Hastings pressed him, "the
+marks of twenty-nine separate thrusts of that knife."
+
+"Yes; that's true.--Yes, I'll tell you about that, you and Arthur--if
+you'd care to hear?"
+
+"That's what I'm here for," Hastings said, settling in his chair. He was
+thinking: "He didn't expect this. He's unprepared!"
+
+Sloane, who had been on the point of resenting this unbelievable attack
+on his friend, was struck dumb by Wilton's calm acknowledgment of the
+charge. From long habit, he took the cap off the smelling-salts with
+which he had been toying when Hastings came in, but his shaking hand
+could not lift the bottle to his nose. Wilton guilty of a murder, years
+ago! He drew a long, shuddering breath and huddled in his chair.
+
+Wilton rose clumsily and walked heavily to the door opening into the
+hall. He put his hand on the knob but did not turn it. He repeated the
+performance at the door opening into Sloane's room. In all this he was
+unconscionably slow, moving in the manner of a blind man, feeling his
+way about and fumbling both knobs.
+
+When he came back to the table, his shoulders were hunched to the front
+and downward, crowding his chest. His face looked larger, each separate
+feature of it throbbing coarsely to the pumping of his heart. Pink
+threads stood out on the white of his eyeballs. When the back of his
+neck pressed against his collar, the effect was to give the lower half
+of the back of his head an odd appearance of inflation or puffiness.
+
+Hastings had never seen a man struggle so to contain himself.
+
+"Suffering angels!" Sloane sympathized shrilly. "What's the matter,
+Tom?"
+
+"All right--it's all right," he assured, his voice still low, but so
+resonant and harsh that it sounded like the thrumming of a viol string.
+
+He seated himself, moving his chair several times, adjusting it to a
+proper angle to the table. In the end, he sat close to the table rim,
+hunched heavily on his elbows, and looked straight at Hastings.
+
+"But, since you've been to Pursuit, what do you imply, or say?" he
+asked, the words scraping, as though his throat had been roughened with
+a file.
+
+"That you killed Mildred Brace," Hastings answered, also leaning
+forward, to give the accusation weight.
+
+"I! I killed her!" Wilton's teeth went together with a sharp click; the
+table sagged under his weight. "I deny it. I deny it!" He ripped out an
+oath. "This man's crazy, Arthur! He's dragged up a mistake, a tragedy,
+of my youth, and now has the effrontery to use it as a reason for
+suspecting me of murder!"
+
+"Exactly!" chimed Sloane, in tremulous relief. "Shivering saints! Why
+haven't you said so long ago, Tom?"
+
+"I didn't give him credit for the wild insanity he's showing," said
+Wilton thickly.
+
+Whatever had been his first impulse, however near he had been to trying
+to explain away all blame in the Dalton murder, it was clear to Hastings
+now that he intended to rely on flat denial of his connection with the
+death of Mildred Brace. He had, perhaps, decided that explanation was
+too difficult.
+
+Seeing his indecision, Hastings turned on Sloane.
+
+"You've been exceedingly offensive to me on several occasions, Mr.
+Sloane. And I've had enough of it. Now, I've got the facts to show that
+you're as foolish in the selection of your friends as in making enemies.
+I'm about to charge this man Wilton with murder. He killed Mildred
+Brace, and I can prove it. If you want to hear the facts back of this
+mystery; if you want the stuff that will enable you to decide whether
+you'll stand by him or against him, you can have it!"
+
+Before Sloane could recover from his surprise at the old man's hot
+resentment, Wilton said, with an air of careless contempt:
+
+"Oh, we've got to deal with what he says, Arthur. I'd rather answer it
+here than with an audience."
+
+"The reading public, for instance?" Hastings retorted, and added: "It
+may interest you, Mr. Sloane, to know that you gave me my first
+suspicion of him. When you stepped back from the handkerchief I held out
+to you--remember, as I was kneeling over the body, and the servant
+laughed at you?--I jammed it into Wilton's right-hand coat-pocket.
+
+"Later, when I got it back from him, I saw clinging to it a few cigar
+ashes and two small particles of wet tobacco. He had had in that pocket
+a cigar stump wet from his saliva.
+
+"When he began then his story of finding the body, he said, 'I'd been
+smoking my good-night cigar; this is what's left of it.' As he said
+that, he pointed to the unlit--remember that, unlit--cigar stump between
+his teeth. He made it a point to emphasize the fact that so little time
+had elapsed between his finding the body and his giving the alarm that
+he hadn't smoked up the cigar, and also he hadn't taken time to put his
+hand to his mouth, take out the cigar and throw it away.
+
+"It was one of the over-fine little touches that a guilty man tries to
+pile on his scheme for appearing innocent. But what are the facts?
+
+"Just now, as soon as he got excited, he mechanically fubbed out his
+cigar. It's a habit of his--whenever he's in a close corner. He did it
+during the interview I had with him and Webster in the music room last
+Sunday morning--when, in fact, something dangerous to him came up. He
+did it again when I was talking to him in his office, following a visit
+from Mrs. Brace.
+
+"There you have the beginning of my suspicion. Why had he gone out of
+his way to put a cigar stump into his pocket that night, and to explain
+that he had had it in his mouth all the time? When he came into my room,
+to wake me up, he had no cigar in his mouth. But, when you and I rounded
+the corner of the porch and first saw him kneeling over the body, he had
+one hand in his right-hand coat-pocket. And, when we stood beside him,
+he had put a half-smoked, unlit cigar into his mouth.
+
+"You see my point, clearly? Instead of having had the cigar in his mouth
+and having kept it there while he found the body and reported the
+discovery to us, the truth is this: he had fubbed out the cigar when he
+met Mildred Brace on the lawn, and it had occurred to his calculating
+mind that it would be well, when he chose to give the alarm, to use the
+cigar stunt as evidence that he hadn't been engaged in quarrelling with
+and murdering a woman.
+
+"He was right in his opinion that the average man doesn't go on calmly
+smoking while engaged in such activities. He was wrong in letting us
+discover where he'd carried the stump until he needed it.
+
+"He had put it into that pocket, but, after committing the murder, he
+wasn't quite as calm as he'd expected to be--something had gone wrong;
+Webster had appeared on the scene--and the cigar wasn't restored to his
+mouth until you and I first reached the body.
+
+"Here's my handkerchief, showing the ashes and the pieces of cigar
+tobacco on it, just as it was when he handed it back to me."
+
+He took from one of his pockets a tissue-paper parcel, and, unwrapping
+it, handed it to Sloane.
+
+"Ah-h-h-that's what it shows," Sloane admitted, bending over the
+handkerchief.
+
+Wilton welcomed that with a laugh which he meant to be lightly
+contemptuous.
+
+"See here, Arthur!" he objected. "I'm perfectly willing to listen to any
+sane statement this man may make, but----"
+
+"You said you wanted to hear this!" Hasting stopped him. "I'm fair about
+it. I've told you why I began to watch you. I've got more."
+
+"You need it," Sloane complained. "If it's all that thin----"
+
+"Don't shout too soon," Hastings interrupted again. "Mr. Sloane, this
+man's been working against me from the start. Think a moment, and you'll
+realize it. While he was telling your daughter and a whole lot of other
+people that I was the only man to handle the case, he was slipping you
+the quiet instruction to avoid me, not to confide in me, not to tell me
+a single thing. Isn't that true?"
+
+"We-ell, he did say the best way for me to avoid all possibility of
+being involved in the thing was not to talk to anybody."
+
+"I knew it!" Hastings declared, giving his contempt full play. "And he
+persuaded you that you might have seen--_might_, mind you--and he gave
+you the suggestion skilfully, more by indirection than by flat
+statement--that you might have seen Berne Webster out there on the lawn
+that night, when you were uncertain, when you feared it yourself--a
+little. Isn't that true?"
+
+Sloane looked at him with widening eyes, his lips trembling.
+
+"Come, Mr. Sloane! Let's play fair, didn't he?"
+
+"We-ell, yes."
+
+"And," Hastings continued, thumping the table with a heavy hand to drive
+home the points of his statement, "he persuaded you to offer that money
+to Mrs. Brace--last Tuesday night.--Didn't he?--And that matches his
+slippery cunning in pretending he was saving Webster by hiding the fact
+that Webster's hand had gagged him when they found the body. He figured
+his willingness to help somebody else would keep suspicion away from
+him. I----"
+
+"Rot! All rot!" Wilton broke in. "Where do you think you are, Arthur, on
+the witness stand? He'll have you saying white's black in a minute."
+
+"Mr. Sloane," the detective said, getting to his feet, "he induced you
+to pay money to Mrs. Brace--while it's the colour of blackmail, it won't
+be a matter for prosecution; you gave it to her, in a sense,
+unsolicited--but he induced you to do that because he knew she was out
+for blackmail. He hoped that, if you bought her off, she wouldn't pursue
+him farther."
+
+"Farther!" echoed Sloane. "What do you mean by that?"
+
+"Why, man! Don't you see? Money was back of all that tragedy. He
+murdered the girl because she had come here to renew her mother's
+attempts at blackmail on him! Not content with duping you, with handling
+you as if you'd been a baby, he put you up to buying off the woman who
+was after him--and he did it by fooling you into thinking that you were
+saving the name, if not the very life, of your daughter's fiancé!
+He----"
+
+"Lies! Wild lie!" thundered Wilton, pushing back from the table. "I'm
+through with----"
+
+"No! No!" shrilled Sloane. "Wait! Prove that, Hastings! Prove it--if you
+can! Shuddering saints! Have I----?"
+
+He looked once at Wilton's contorted face, and recoiled, the movement
+confessing at last his lack of faith in the man.
+
+"I will," Hastings answered him, and moved toward the door; "I'll prove
+it--by the girl's mother."
+
+He threw open the door, and, sure now of holding Sloane's attention,
+went in search of Mrs. Brace and the sheriff.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+"AMPLE EVIDENCE"
+
+
+The two men in the library waited a long time for his return. Wilton,
+elbows on the table, stared straight in front of him, giving no sign of
+knowledge of the other's presence. Sloane fidgeted with the
+smelling-salts, emitting now and then long-drawn, tremulous sighs that
+were his own special vocabulary of dissatisfaction. He spoke once.
+
+"Mute and cringing martyrs!" he said, in suspicious remonstrance. "If
+he'd say something we could deny! So far, Tom, you're mixed up in----"
+
+"Why can't you wait until he's through?" Wilton objected roughly.
+
+They heard people coming down the hall. Lucille, following Mrs. Brace
+into the room, went to her father. They could see, from her look of
+grieved wonder, that Hastings had told her of the charge against Wilton.
+The sheriff's expression confirmed the supposition. His mouth hung open,
+so that the unsteady fingers with which he plucked at his knuckle like
+chin appeared also to support his fallen jaw. He made a weak-kneed
+progress from the door to a chair near the screened fireplace.
+
+For a full half-minute Hastings was silent, as if to let the doubts and
+suspense of each member of the group emphasize his dominance of the
+situation. He reviewed swiftly some of the little things he had used to
+build up in his own mind the certainty of Wilton's guilt: the man's
+agitation in the music room at the discovery, not that a part of the
+grey envelope had been found, but that it contained some of the words of
+the letter--his obvious alarm when found quarrelling with Mrs. Brace in
+his office--his hardly controlled impulses: once, outside Sloane's
+bedroom, to accuse Berne Webster without proof, and, on the Sloanehurst
+porch last Sunday, to suggest that Sloane was guilty.
+
+The detective observed now that he absolutely ignored Mrs. Brace, not
+even looking in her direction. He perceived also how she reacted to that
+assumed indifference. The tightening of her lips, the flutter of her
+mobile nostrils, left him no longer any doubt that she was in the mood
+to give him the cooperation she had so bitterly promised.
+
+"To be dragged down by such a woman!" he thought.
+
+"Mrs. Brace," he said, "I've charged Judge Wilton with the murder of
+your daughter. I say now he killed her, with premeditation, having
+planned it after receiving a letter from her."
+
+"Yes?" she responded, a certain tenseness in her voice.
+
+She had gone to a chair by the window; and, like the sheriff, she faced
+the trio at the table: Wilton, Sloane, and Lucille, who stood behind her
+father, a hand on his shoulder.
+
+Hastings slowly paced the floor as he talked, his hands clasped behind
+him and now and then moving the tail of his coat up and down. He glanced
+at Mrs. Brace over the rims of his spectacles, his eyes shrewd and keen.
+He showed an unmistakable self-satisfaction, like the elation Wilton had
+detected in his bearing on two former occasions.
+
+"Now," he asked her, "what can you tell us about that letter?"
+
+Wilton, his chest pressed so hard against the edge of the table that his
+breathing moved his body, turned his swollen face upon her at last, his
+eyes flaming under the thatch of his down-drawn brows.
+
+Mrs. Brace, her high-shouldered, lean frame silhouetted against the
+window, began, in a colourless, unemotioned tone:
+
+"As you know, Mr. Hastings, I thought this man Wilton owed me money,
+more than money. I'd looked for him for twenty-six years. Less than a
+year ago I located him here in Virginia, and I came to Washington. He
+refused my requests. Then, he stopped reading my letters--sent them back
+unopened at first; later, he destroyed them unread, I suppose."
+
+She cleared her throat lightly, and spoke more rapidly. The intensity of
+her hate, in spite of her power of suppression, held them in a
+disagreeable fascination.
+
+"I was afraid of him, afraid to confront him alone. I'd seen him kill a
+man. But I was in desperate need. I thought, if my daughter could talk
+to him, he would be brought to do the right thing. I suppose," she said
+with a wintry smile, "you'd call it an attempt to blackmail--if he had
+let it go far enough.
+
+"She wrote him a letter, on grey paper, and sent it, in an oblong, grey
+envelope, to him here at Sloanehurst last Friday night. He got it
+Saturday afternoon. If he hadn't received it, he'd never have been out
+on the lawn--with a dagger he'd made for the occasion--at eleven or
+eleven-fifteen, which was the time Mildred said in her letter she'd see
+him there. She had added that, if he did not keep the appointment, she'd
+expose him--his crime in Pursuit."
+
+"I see," Hastings said, on the end of her cold, metallic utterance, and
+took from his pocket the flap of grey envelope. "Is this the flap of
+that envelope; or, better still, are these fragments of words and the
+word 'Pursuit' in your daughter's handwriting?"
+
+"I've examined them already," she said. "They are my daughter's
+writing."
+
+Her lips were suddenly thick, taking on that appearance of abnormal
+wetness which had so revolted him before.
+
+"And I say what you've just said!" she supplemented, her eyebrows high
+upon her forehead. "Tom Wilton killed my daughter. And, when I went to
+his office--I was sure then that he'd be afraid to harm me so soon after
+Mildred's death--I accused him of the murder. He took it with a laugh.
+He said I could look at it as a warning that----"
+
+"Wait!"
+
+The interruption came from Wilton.
+
+"I'm going to make a statement about this thing!" he ground out, his
+voice coarse and rasping.
+
+Hastings hung upon him with relentless gaze.
+
+"What have you got to say?"
+
+"Much!" returned Wilton. "I'm not going to let myself be ruined on this
+charge because of a mistake of my youth--mistake, I say! I'm about to
+tell you the story of such suffering, such misfortune, as no man has
+ever had to endure. It explains that tragedy in Pursuit; it explains my
+life; it explains everything. I didn't murder that boy Dalton. I struck
+in self-defence. But the twenty-nine wounds on his body----"
+
+He paused, preoccupied; he was thinking less of his hearers than of
+himself. It was at that point, Hastings thought afterwards, that he
+began to lose himself in the ugly enjoyment of describing his cruelty.
+It was as if the horrors to which he gave voice subjected him to a
+specious and irresistible charm, equipped him with a spurious courage, a
+sincere indifference to common opinion.
+
+"There is," he said, "a shadow on my soul. My greatest enemy is hidden
+in my own mind.
+
+"But I've fought it, fought it all my life. You may say the makeshifts
+I've adopted, the strategy of my resistance, my tactics to outwit this
+thing, do me little credit. I shall leave it to you to decide. Results
+speak for themselves. I have broken no law; there is against me nothing
+that would bring upon me the penalty of man's laws."
+
+He wedged himself more closely against the edge of the table, and struck
+his left palm with his clenched right hand.
+
+"I tell you, Hastings, to have fought this thing, in whatever way, has
+been a task that called for every ounce of strength I had. I've lived in
+hell and walked with devils, against my will. Not a day, not a night,
+have I been free of this curse, or my fear of it. There have been times
+when, every night for months, my slumbers were broken or impossible! The
+devilish thing reached down into the depths of sleep and with its foul
+and muddy grasp poisoned even those clear, white pools--clear and white
+for other men! But no matter----
+
+"You've heard of obsessions--of men seized every six months with an
+irresistible desire to drink--of kleptomaniacs who, having all they need
+or wish, must steal or go mad--of others driven by inexplicable impulse,
+mania, to set fire to buildings, for the thrill they get out of seeing
+the flames burst forth. Well, from my earliest childhood until that
+moment when Roy Dalton attacked me, I had fought an impulse even more
+terrible than those. God, what a tyranny! It drove me, drove me, that
+obsession, at times amounting to mental compulsion, to strike, to stab,
+to make the blood flow!"
+
+He rose, getting to his feet slowly, so that his burly bulk gained in
+size, like the slow upheaval of a hillside. Swollen as his face had
+been, it expanded now a trifle more. His nostrils coarsened more
+perceptibly. The puffiness that had been in the back of his neck
+extended entirely around his throat. He hung forward over the table,
+giving all his attention to Hastings, who was unmoved, incredulous.
+
+"The Brace woman will tell you I had to kill him," he proceeded more
+swiftly, displaying a questionable ardour, like a man foreseeing defeat.
+"The mistake I made was in running away--a bitter mistake! But those
+unnecessary wounds, twenty-eight that need not have been made! The
+obsession to see the blood flow drove me to acts which a jury, I
+thought, would not understand. And, if you don't see the force of my
+explanation, Hastings, if you don't understand, I shall be in little
+better plight--after all these years!"
+
+He put, there, a sorrowful appeal into his voice; but a sly
+contradiction of it showed faintly in his face, a hint that he took a
+crafty pleasure in dragging into the light the depravity he had kept in
+darkness for a lifetime.
+
+"I got away. I drifted to Virginia, working hard, studying much. I
+became a lawyer. But always I had that affliction to combat; all my
+life, man!--always! There were periods months long when devils came up
+from the ugly corners of my soul to torture and tempt me.
+
+"It wasn't the ordinary temptation, not a weak, pale idea of 'I'd like
+to kill and see the blood!'--but an uproar, an imperial voice, an
+endless command: 'Kill! Draw blood! Kill!'--What it did to me----
+
+"But to this day I've beaten it! I've been a good citizen. I've observed
+the law. I've refused to let that involuntary lust for blood ruin me or
+cast me out.
+
+"Let me tell you how. I decided that, if I had a hand in awarding just
+punishments, my affliction would be abated enough for me to live in some
+measure of security. There you have the explanation of my being on the
+bench. I cheated the obsession to murder by helping to imprison or
+execute those who did murder!
+
+"That's why I can tell you of my innocence of the Brace murder. Do you
+think I'd tell it unless I knew there could be not even an excuse for
+suspecting me? On the other hand, if I had kept silent as to the true
+motive that drove my hand to those unnecessary mutilations of young
+Dalton--the only time, remember, that my weakness ever got the better,
+or the worse, of me!--if I had kept silent on that, you would have had
+ground for suspecting me of a barbarous murder then, and, arguing from
+that, of the Brace murder now.
+
+"Do I make myself clear?--Do you want me to go into further detail?"
+
+He sank slowly back to his chair, spent by the strain of supreme effort.
+His breathing was laboured, stertorous.
+
+"That, Crown," Hastings denounced, "is a confession! Knowing he's
+caught, he's got the insolence to whine for mercy because of his
+'sufferings'! Think of it! The thing of which he boasts is the thing for
+which he deserves death--since death is supposed to be the supreme
+punishment. He tells us, in self-congratulatory terms, that he curbed
+his inhuman longings, satisfied his lust for blood, by going on the
+bench and helping to 'punish those who did murder!'
+
+"Too cowardly to strike a blow, he skulked behind the protection of his
+position. He made of the judicial robe an assassin's disguise. On the
+bench, he was free to sate his thirst for others' sufferings--adding to
+a sentence five undeserved years here, ten there; slipping into his
+instructions to juries a phrase that would mean the death penalty!
+
+"He revelled in judicial murders. He gloated over the helpless people
+who, looking to him for justice, were merely the victims of his
+abhorrent cruelty. He loved the look of sick surprise in their starting
+eyes. He got a filthy joy out of seeing a man turn pale. He rubbed his
+hands in glee when a woman swooned. He----"
+
+"I can't stand that--can't stand it!" Sloane protested, hands over his
+eyes.
+
+"What more do you want, to prove his guilt, his abominable guilt?"
+Hastings swept on. "You have the motive, hatred of this woman here and
+her daughter--you have the proof of the letter sent to him making the
+compulsory appointment--you have his own crazy explanation of his
+homicidal impulse, from which, by the way, he never sought relief, a
+queer 'impulse' since it gave him time, hours, to plan the crime and
+manufacture the weapon with which he killed!"
+
+"I said at the start," Wilton put in hoarsely, "this man Hastings was
+only theorizing. If he had anything to connect me with----"
+
+"I have!" Hastings told him, and came to a standstill in front of the
+sheriff, bending over him, as if to drive each statement into Crown's
+reluctant mind.
+
+"He got that letter a little after five in the afternoon. He left me
+here, in this room, with Sloane and Webster, and was gone three-quarters
+of an hour. That was just before dinner. He had the second floor, on
+that side of the house, entirely to himself. He took a nail-file from
+Webster's dressing case, and in Webster's room put a sharper point on it
+by filing it roughly with the file-blade of his own pen knife.
+
+"That's doubly proved: first, my magnet, with which I went over the
+floor in Webster's room, picked up small particles of steel. Here they
+are."
+
+He produced a small packet and, without unwrapping it, handed it to
+Crown.
+
+"Again: you'll find that the file-blade of his knife retained particles
+of the steel in the little furrows of its corrugated surface. I know,
+because last Sunday, as your car came up the driveway, I borrowed his
+knife, on the pretext of tightening a screw in the blade of mine. And I
+examined it."
+
+He put up a silencing hand as Wilton forced a jeering laugh.
+
+"But there's more to prove his manufacture and ownership of the weapon
+that killed the woman. He made the handle from the end of a slat on the
+bed in the room which I occupied that night. The inference is obvious:
+he didn't care to risk going outside the house to hunt for the wood he
+needed; he wouldn't take it from an easily visible place; and, having
+stolen something from one room, he paid his attention to mine. All this
+is the supercaution of the so-called 'smart criminal.' It matches the
+risk he took in returning to the body to hunt for the weapon. That was
+why he was there when Webster found the body.
+
+"The handle of the dagger matches the wood of the slat I've just
+mentioned. You won't find that particular slat upstairs now. It was
+taken out of the house the next day, broken into sections and packed in
+his bag of golf-sticks. But there is proof in this room of the fact that
+he and he only made the dagger.
+
+"You'll find in the edge of the large blade of his penknife a nick,
+triangular in shape, which left an unmistakable groove in the wood every
+time he cut into it. That little groove shows, to the naked eye, on the
+end of the shortened slat and on the handle of the dagger. If you doubt
+it----"
+
+"Thunder!" Crown interrupted, in an awed tone. "You're right!"
+
+He had taken the dagger from his pocket and given it minute scrutiny. He
+handed it now to Sloane.
+
+Wilton, watching the scene with flaming eyes, sat motionless, his chin
+thrust down hard upon his collar, his face shining as if it had been
+polished with a cloth.
+
+Sloane gave the dagger back to Crown before he spoke, in a wheezy,
+shrill key: "They're there, the marks, the grooves!"
+
+He did not look at Wilton.
+
+Hastings straightened to his full stature, and looked toward Wilton.
+
+"Now, Judge Wilton," he challenged, "you said you preferred to answer
+the accusation here and now. Do you, still?"
+
+Wilton, slowly raising the heavy lids of his eyes, like a man coming out
+of a trance, presented to him and to the others a face which, in spite
+of its flushed and swollen aspect, looked singularly bleak.
+
+"It's not an accusation," he said in his roughened, grating voice. "It's
+a network of suppositions, of theories, of impossibilities--a crazy
+structure, all built on the rotten foundation of a previous misfortune."
+
+"Arrest him, Crown!" Hastings commanded sharply.
+
+Wilton tried to laugh, but his heavy lips merely worked in a crazy
+barrenness of sound. With a vague, clumsy idea of covering up his
+confusion, he started to light a cigar.
+
+He stopped, hands in mid-air, when Crown, shambling to his feet, said:
+
+"Judge, I've got to act. He's proved his case."
+
+"Proved it!" Wilton made weak protest.
+
+"If he hasn't, let's see your penknife."
+
+Wilton put his hand into his trousers pocket, began the motion that
+would have drawn out the knife, checked it, and withdrew his hand empty.
+He managed a mirthless, dreary laugh, a rattling sound that fell, dead
+of any feeling, from his grimacing lips.
+
+"No, by God!" he refused. "I'll give it to neither of you. I don't have
+to!"
+
+In that moment, he fell to pieces. With his thick shoulders dropping
+forward, he became an inert mass bundled against the table edge. The
+blood went out of his face, so that his cheeks hollowed, and shadows
+formed under his eyes. He was like the victim of a quick consumption.
+
+Crown's eyes were on Hastings.
+
+"That's enough," the old man said shortly.
+
+"Too much," agreed Crown. "Judge, there's no bail--on a murder charge."
+
+"I'm very glad," Mrs. Brace commented, a terrible satisfaction in her
+voice. "He pays me--at last."
+
+
+In the music room Dr. Garnet had just given Lucille and Hastings a
+favourable report on Berne Webster's condition.
+
+"I should so like to tell him," she said, her glance entreating; "if
+you'll let me! Wouldn't he get well much faster if he knew it--knew the
+suspense was all over--that neither he nor father's suspected any more?"
+
+"I think," the doctor gave his opinion with exaggerated deliberation,
+"it might--in fact, it really will be his best medicine."
+
+She thanked him, stars swimming in her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of No Clue, by James Hay
+
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of "No Clue!", by James Hay, Jr.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of No Clue, by James Hay
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: No Clue
+       A Mystery Story
+
+Author: James Hay
+
+Release Date: August 23, 2008 [EBook #26396]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NO CLUE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D Alexander, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>"NO CLUE!"</h1>
+
+<h2><i>A Mystery Story</i></h2>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>JAMES HAY, <span class="smcap">Jr.</span></h2>
+
+<h4>AUTHOR OF "THE WINNING CLUE,"<br />"THE MELWOOD MYSTERY"</h4>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="center"><img src="images/logo.jpg" width='100' height='92' alt="Publisher's logo" /></div>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4>NEW YORK<br />
+DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY<br />1920</h4>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1920<br />
+<span class="smcap">By</span> DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, <span class="smcap">Inc.</span></h4>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>TO<br />WILLIAM ("BUCK") HAY</h3>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class="index">
+<ul>
+<li><span class="mono">CHAPTER</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#I">I.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">The Grey Envelope</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#II">II.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">The Woman on the Lawn</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#III">III.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">The Unexpected Witness</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#IV">IV.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">Hastings Is Retained</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#V">V.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">The Interview with Mrs. Brace</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#VI">VI.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">Action by the Sheriff</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#VII">VII.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">The Hostility of Mr. Sloane</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#VIII">VIII.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">The Man Who Ran Away</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#IX">IX.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">The Breaking Down of Webster</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#X">X.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">The Whispered Conference</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XI">XI.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">Motives Revealed</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XII">XII.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">Hendricks Reports</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XIII">XIII.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">Mrs. Brace Begins</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XIV">XIV.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">Mr. Crown Forms an Alliance</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XV">XV.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">In Arthur Sloane's Room</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XVI">XVI.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">The Bribe</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XVII">XVII.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">"The Whole Truth"</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XVIII">XVIII.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">The Man Who Rode Away</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XIX">XIX.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">"Pursuit!"</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XX">XX.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">Denial of the Charge</span></li>
+<li><span class="mono">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="#XXI">XXI.</a></span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">"Ample Evidence"</span></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>"NO CLUE!"</h1>
+
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2>
+
+<h3>THE GREY ENVELOPE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Catherine Brace walked slowly from the mantel-piece to the open window
+and back again. Within the last hour she had done that many times,
+always to halt before the mantel and gaze at the oblong, grey envelope
+that leaned against the clock. Evidently, she regarded it as a powerful
+agency. An observer would have perceived that she saw tremendous things
+come out of it&mdash;and that she considered them with mingled satisfaction
+and defiance.</p>
+
+<p>Her attitude, however, betrayed no hint of hesitation. Rather, the
+fixity of her gaze and the intensity of her mental concentration threw
+into high relief the hardness of her personality. She was singularly
+devoid of that quality which is generally called feminine softness.</p>
+
+<p>And she was a forceful woman. She had power. It was in her lean,
+high-shouldered, ungraceful figure. It was in her thin, mobile lips<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> and
+her high-bridged nose with its thin, clean-cut nostrils. She impressed
+herself upon her environment. Standing there at the mantel, her hands
+clasped behind her, she was so caught up by the possibilities of the
+future that she succeeded in imparting to the grey envelope an almost
+animate quality.</p>
+
+<p>She became aware once more of voices in the next room: a man's light
+baritone in protest, followed by the taunt of her daughter's laugh.
+Although she left the mantel with lithe, swift step, it was with unusual
+deliberation that she opened the communicating door.</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was free of excitement when, ignoring her daughter's caller,
+she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Mildred, just a moment, please."</p>
+
+<p>Mildred came in and closed the door. Her mother, now near the window
+across the room, looked first at her and then at the grey envelope.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought," Mrs. Brace said, "you'd forgotten you were going to mail
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you mail it yourself?" The tone of that was cool insolence.</p>
+
+<p>Mother and daughter were strikingly alike&mdash;hair piled high in a wide
+wave above the forehead; black eyes too restless, but of that gleaming
+brilliance which heralds a refusal to grow old. So far, however, the
+daughter's features had not assumed an aspect of sharpness, like the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+mother's. One would have appraised the older woman
+vindictive&mdash;malevolent, possibly.</p>
+
+<p>But in the younger face the mouth greatly softened, almost concealed,
+this effect of calculating hardness. Mildred Brace's lips had a softness
+of line, a vividness of colouring that indicated emotional depths
+utterly foreign to her mother.</p>
+
+<p>They bore themselves now as if they commented on a decision already
+reached, a momentous step to which they had given immense consideration.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't mail it," Mrs. Brace answered her daughter's query, "because I
+knew, if you mailed it, you'd do as you'd said you wanted to do."</p>
+
+<p>There was frank emphasis on the "said."</p>
+
+<p>"Your feet don't always follow your intelligence, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"I've been thinking about the thing," Mildred retorted, looking over her
+mother's shoulder into the summer night. "What's the use?"</p>
+
+<p>"What's the use!" Mrs. Brace echoed, incredulous.</p>
+
+<p>"Just that."</p>
+
+<p>"We've been all over it! You know what it means to you&mdash;to both of us."</p>
+
+<p>They spoke in low tones, careful that the man in the living room should
+not hear.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p><p>"My dear mother," Mildred said, with a return of her cool insolence,
+"you display a confidence hardly warranted by your&mdash;and
+our&mdash;man-experience."</p>
+
+<p>She yawned slightly.</p>
+
+<p>There was a harsher note in her mother's reply.</p>
+
+<p>"He can't refuse. He can't!"</p>
+
+<p>Mildred stared at the grey envelope a full three minutes. Mrs. Brace,
+wordless, showing no uneasiness as to the outcome, waited for her to
+speak.</p>
+
+<p>"It's no use, mother," she said at last. "We can't manage it&mdash;him&mdash;this
+thing. It's too late."</p>
+
+<p>The flat finality, the dreariness, of that announcement angered the
+older woman. Calmness fell from her. She came away from the window
+slowly, her hands clasped tightly at her back, the upper part of her
+body bending forward a little, her thin nostrils expanding and
+contracting to the force of her hurried breathing like leaves shaken in
+the wind. The curl of her thin lips added a curious ferocity to the
+words that passed them. She spoke, only when her face was within a few
+inches of Mildred's.</p>
+
+<p>"No use!" she said contemptuously, her lowered voice explosive with
+passion. "Why? And why too late? Have you no self-respect, no will, no
+firmness? Are you all jelly and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p><p>She got hold of herself with remarkable effectiveness, throwing off the
+signs of her wrath as suddenly as they had appeared. She retreated a
+step and laughed, without mirth.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well," she said, "it's your party, not mine, after all. But, in
+future, my dear, don't waste your time and mine in school-girl heroics."</p>
+
+<p>She completed her retreat and stood again at the window. Her
+self-restraint was, in a way, fiercer than her rage&mdash;and it affected her
+daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," she concluded, "why I didn't mail it. I knew you wouldn't do
+the very thing you'd outlined."</p>
+
+<p>Mildred looked at the envelope again. The pause that followed was broken
+by the man in the other room.</p>
+
+<p>"Mildred," he called.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brace laughed silently. Mildred, seeing that ridicule, recoiled.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you laughing at?" she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Her mother pointed to the communicating door.</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking of <i>that</i>," she said, "for life&mdash;and," she looked toward
+the grey envelope, "the other thing."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see&mdash;&mdash;" Mildred began, and checked herself, gazing again at
+the envelope.</p>
+
+<p>Her mother turned swiftly and stood looking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> into the night. The man
+called again and was not answered. The two women were motionless. There
+was no sound in the room, save the ticking of the clock on the mantel.
+Two minutes passed&mdash;three.</p>
+
+<p>Mildred went toward the mantel, put out her hand, withdrew it. She
+became conscious of the excessive heat and touched her forehead with her
+handkerchief. She glanced at her mother's motionless figure, started to
+speak, closed her parted lips. Indecision shook her. She put out her
+hand again, picked up the envelope and stood tapping it against her left
+palm.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brace, without moving, spoke at last:</p>
+
+<p>"It's a few minutes of twelve. If you catch the midnight collection,
+he'll get it, out there, by five o'clock tomorrow afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>There was another pause.</p>
+
+<p>Mildred went slowly to the door leading into the living room, and once
+more she was on the point of speaking.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brace was drumming her fingers on the window ledge. The action
+announced plainly that she had finished with the situation. Mildred put
+her hand on the knob, pulled the door half-open, closed it again.</p>
+
+<p>"I've changed my mind," she said, dreariness still in her voice. "He
+can't refuse."</p>
+
+<p>Her mother made no comment.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p><p>Mildred went into the living room.</p>
+
+<p>"Gene," she said, with that indifference of tone which a woman employs
+toward a man she despises, "I'm going down to mail this."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll swear!" he quarrelled sullenly. "Been in there all this time
+writing to him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! Look at it!" she taunted viciously, and waved the envelope before
+his eyes. "Sloanehurst!"</p>
+
+<p>Taking up his hat, he went with her to the elevator.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+<h3>THE WOMAN ON THE LAWN</h3>
+
+<p>Mr. Jefferson Hastings, unsuspecting that he was about to be confronted
+with the most brutal crime in all his experience, regretted having come
+to "Sloanehurst." He disapproved of himself unreservedly. Clad in an
+ample, antique night-shirt, he stood at a window of the guest-room
+assigned to him and gazed over the steel rims of his spectacles into the
+hot, rainy night. His real vision, however, made no attempt to pierce
+the outer darkness. His eyes were turned inward, upon himself, in
+derision of his behaviour during the past three hours.</p>
+
+<p>A kindly, reticent gentleman, who looked much older than his fifty-three
+years, he made it his habit to listen rather than talk. His wide fame as
+a criminologist and consulting detective had implanted no egotism in
+him. He abhorred the spotlight.</p>
+
+<p>But tonight Judge Wilton, by skilful use of query, suggestion and
+reminder, had tempted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> him into talking "shop." He had been lured into
+the r&ocirc;le of monologuist for the benefit of his host, Arthur Sloane. He
+had talked brilliantly, at length, in detail, holding his three hearers
+in spellbound and fascinated interest while he discoursed on crimes
+which he had probed and criminals whom he had known.</p>
+
+<p>Not that he <i>thought</i> he had talked brilliantly! By no means! He was
+convinced that nine-tenths of the interest manifested in his remarks had
+been dictated by politeness. Old Hastings was just that sort of person;
+he discounted himself. He was in earnest, therefore, in his present
+self-denunciation. He sighed, remembering the volume of his discourse,
+the awful length of time in which he had monopolized the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>But his modesty was not his only admirable characteristic. He had, also,
+a dependable sense of humour. It came to his relief now&mdash;he thought of
+his host, a chuckle throttling the beginnings of a second sigh deep down
+in his throat.</p>
+
+<p>This was not the first time that Arthur Broughton Sloane had provoked a
+chuckle, although, for him, life was a house of terror, a torture
+chamber constructed with fiendish ingenuity. Mr. Sloane suffered from
+"nerves." He was spending his declining years in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>arduous but
+surprisingly successful task of being wretched, irritable and
+ill-at-ease.</p>
+
+<p>The variety of his agonies was equalled only by the alacrity with which
+he tested every cure or remedy of which he happened to hear. He agreed
+enthusiastically with his expensive physicians that he was neurasthenic,
+psychasthenic and neurotic.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes were weak; his voice was weak; his spirit was weak. He shivered
+all day with terror at the idea of not sleeping at night. Every evening
+he quivered with horror at the thought of not waking up next morning.
+And yet, despite these absorbing, although not entirely delightful,
+preoccupations, Mr. Sloane was not without an object in life.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, he had two objects in life: the happiness of his daughter,
+Lucille, and the study of crime and criminals. The latter interest had
+brought Hastings to the Sloane country home in Virginia. Judge Wilton,
+an old friend of the wrecked and wealthy Mr. Sloane, had met the
+detective on the street in Washington and urged:</p>
+
+<p>"Go down to Sloanehurst and spend Saturday night. I'll be there when you
+arrive. Sloane's got his mind set on seeing you; and you won't regret
+it. His library on criminology will be a revelation, even to you."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p><p>And Hastings, largely because he shrank from seeming ungracious, had
+accepted Mr. Sloane's subsequent invitation.</p>
+
+<p>Climbing now into the old-fashioned four-poster bed, he thought again of
+his conversation-spree and longed for self-justification. He sat up,
+sheetless, reflecting:</p>
+
+<p>"As a week-ender, I'm a fine old chatter-box!&mdash;But young Webster got me!
+What did he say?&mdash;'The cleverer the criminal, the easier to run him
+down. The thug, acting on the spur of the moment, with a blow in the
+dark and a getaway through the night, leaves no trace behind him. Your
+"smart criminal" always overreaches himself.'&mdash;A pretty theory, but
+wild. Anyway, it made me forget myself; I talked my old fool head off."</p>
+
+<p>He felt himself blush.</p>
+
+<p>"Wish I'd let Wilton do the disproving; he was anxious enough."</p>
+
+<p>A mental picture of Sloane consoled him once more.</p>
+
+<p>"Silk socks and gingham gumption!" he thought. "But he's honest in his
+talk about being interested in crime. The man loves crime!&mdash;Good thing
+he's got plenty of money."</p>
+
+<p>He fell asleep, in a kind of ruminative growl:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p><p>"Made a fool of myself&mdash;babbling about what <i>I</i> remembered&mdash;what <i>I</i>
+thought! I'll go back to Washington&mdash;in the morning."</p>
+
+<p>Judge Wilton's unsteady voice, supplemented by a rattling of the
+doorknob, roused him. He had thrust one foot out of bed when Wilton came
+into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Quick! Come on, man!" the judge instructed, and hurried into the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"What's wrong?" Hastings demanded, reaching for his spectacles.</p>
+
+<p>Wilton, on his way down the stairs, flung back:</p>
+
+<p>"A woman hurt&mdash;outside."</p>
+
+<p>From the hall below came Mr. Sloane's high-pitched, complaining tones:</p>
+
+<p>"Unfathomable angels! What do you say?&mdash;Who?"</p>
+
+<p>Drawing on shoes and trousers, the detective overtook his host on the
+front verandah and followed him down the steps and around the northeast
+corner of the house. He noticed that Sloane carried in one hand an
+electric torch and in the other a bottle of smelling salts. It was no
+longer raining.</p>
+
+<p>Rounding the corner, they saw, scarcely fifteen yards from the
+bay-window of the ballroom, the upturned face of a woman who lay
+prostrate on the lawn. Lights had been turned on in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> house, making a
+glow which cut through the starless night.</p>
+
+<p>The woman did not move. Judge Wilton was in the act of kneeling beside
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on!" Hastings called out. "Don't disturb her&mdash;if she's dead."</p>
+
+<p>"She is dead!" said Wilton.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is she?" The detective, trying to find signs of life, put his hand
+over her heart.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," Wilton answered the question. "Do you, Sloane?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, I don't!"</p>
+
+<p>Hastings said afterwards that Sloane's reply expressed astonished
+resentment that he should be suspected of knowing anybody vulgar enough
+to be murdered on his lawn.</p>
+
+<p>The detective drew back his hand. His fingers were dark with blood.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment Berne Webster, Lucille Sloane's fianc&eacute;, came from the
+rear of the house, announcing breathlessly:</p>
+
+<p>"No 'phone connection&mdash;this time of night, judge.&mdash;It's past
+midnight.&mdash;I sent chauffeur&mdash;Lally&mdash;for the sheriff."</p>
+
+<p>Hastings stood up, his first, cursory examination concluded.</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt about it," he said. "She's dead.&mdash;Bring a blanket, somebody!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sloane's nerves had the best of him by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> this time. He trembled like
+a man with a chill, rattling the bottle of smelling salts against the
+metal end of his electric torch. He had on slippers and a light dressing
+gown over his pajamas.</p>
+
+<p>Wilton was fully dressed, young Webster collarless but wearing a black,
+light-weight lounging jacket. Hastings was struck with the different
+degrees of their dress, or undress.</p>
+
+<p>"Who found her?" he asked, looking at Webster.</p>
+
+<p>"Judge Wilton&mdash;and I," said Webster, so short of breath that his chest
+heaved.</p>
+
+<p>"How long ago?"</p>
+
+<p>Wilton answered that:</p>
+
+<p>"A few minutes, hardly five minutes. I ran in to call you and Sloane."</p>
+
+<p>"And Mr.&mdash;you, Mr. Webster?"</p>
+
+<p>"The judge told me to&mdash;to get the sheriff&mdash;by telephone."</p>
+
+<p>Hastings knelt again over the woman's body.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, Mr. Sloane," he ordered, "hold that torch closer, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sloane found compliance impossible. He could not steady his hand
+sufficiently.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold that torch, judge," Hastings prompted.</p>
+
+<p>"It's knocked me out&mdash;completely," Sloane said, surrendering the torch
+to Wilton.</p>
+
+<p>Webster, the pallor still on his face, a look of horror in his eyes,
+stood on the side of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> body opposite the detective. At brief
+intervals he raised first one foot, then the other, clear of the ground
+and set it down again. He was unconscious of making any movement at all.</p>
+
+<p>Hastings, thoroughly absorbed in the work before him, went about it
+swiftly, with now and then brief, murmured comment on what he did and
+saw. Although his ample night-shirt, stuffed into his equally baggy
+trousers, contributed nothing but comicality to his appearance, the
+others submitted without question to his domination. There was about him
+suddenly an atmosphere of power that impressed even the little group of
+awe-struck servants who stood a few feet away.</p>
+
+<p>"Stabbed," he said, after he had run his hands over the woman's figure;
+"died instantly&mdash;must have. Got her heart.&mdash;Young&mdash;not over twenty-five,
+would you say?&mdash;Not dead long.&mdash;Anybody call a doctor?"</p>
+
+<p>"I told Lally to stop by Dr. Garnet's house and send him&mdash;at once,"
+Webster said, his voice low, and broken. "He's the coroner, too."</p>
+
+<p>Hastings continued his examination. The brief pause that ensued was
+broken by a woman's voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Pauline! Pauline!"</p>
+
+<p>The call came from one of the upstairs <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>windows. Hearing it, a woman in
+the servant group hurried into the house.</p>
+
+<p>Webster groaned: "My God!"</p>
+
+<p>"Frantic fiends! It gets worse and worse!" Sloane objected shrilly. "My
+nerves! And Lucille's annoyed&mdash;shocked!"</p>
+
+<p>He held the smelling bottle to his nose, breathing deeply.</p>
+
+<p>"Here! Take this!" Hastings directed, and put up his hand abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>Sloane had so gone to pieces that the movement frightened him. He
+stepped back in such obvious terror that a hoarse guffaw of involuntary
+ridicule escaped one of the servants. The detective, finding that his
+kneeling posture made it difficult to put his handkerchief back into his
+trousers pocket, had thrust it toward Sloane. That gentleman having so
+suddenly removed himself out of reach, Hastings stuck the handkerchief
+into Judge Wilton's coat-pocket.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur Sloane, the detective said later, never forgave him that
+unexpected wave of the handkerchief&mdash;and the servant's ridiculing laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Hastings looked up to Wilton.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you find any weapon?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't look&mdash;didn't take time."</p>
+
+<p>"Neither did I," young Webster added.</p>
+
+<p>Hastings, disregarding the wet grass, was on his hands and knees,
+searching. He <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>accomplished a complete circuit of the body, his
+round-shouldered, stooping figure making grotesque, elephantine shadows
+under the light of the torch as he moved about slowly, not trusting his
+eyes, but feeling with his hands every inch of the smallest, half-lit
+spaces.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody else took part in the search. Having accepted his leadership from
+the outset, they seemed to take it for granted that he needed no help.
+Mentally benumbed by the horror of the tragedy, they stood there in the
+quiet, summer night, barren of ideas. They were like children, waiting
+to be instructed.</p>
+
+<p>Hastings stood erect, pulling and hauling at his trousers.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't find a knife or anything," he said. "Glad I can't. Hope he took
+it with him."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" asked Sloane, through chattering teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"May help us to find him&mdash;may be a clue in the end."</p>
+
+<p>He was silent a moment, squinting under the rims of his spectacles,
+looking down at the figure of the dead woman. He had already covered the
+face with the hat she had worn, a black straw sailor; but neither he nor
+the others found it easy to forget the peculiar and forbidding
+expression the features wore, even in death. It was partly fear, partly
+defiance&mdash;as if her last<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> conscious thought had been a flitting look
+into the future, an exulting recognition of the certain consequences of
+the blow that had struck her down.</p>
+
+<p>Put into words, it might have been: "You've murdered me, but you'll pay
+for it&mdash;terribly!"</p>
+
+<p>A servant handed Hastings the blanket he had ordered. He looked toward
+the sky.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think it will rain any more," he said. "And it's best to leave
+things as they are until the coroner arrives.&mdash;He'll be here soon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Should get here in half an hour or so," Judge Wilton informed him.</p>
+
+<p>The detective arranged the blanket so that it covered the prone form
+completely, leaving the hat over the face as he had first placed it.
+With the exception of the hat, he had disturbed no part of the apparel.
+Even the folds of the raincoat, which fell away from the body and showed
+the rain-soaked black skirt, he left as he had found them. The white
+shirtwaist, also partly exposed now, was dry.</p>
+
+<p>"Anybody move her hat before I came out?" he asked; "you, judge; or you,
+Mr. Webster?"</p>
+
+<p>They had not touched it, they said; it was on the grass, beside her
+head, when they discovered the body, and they had left it there.</p>
+
+<p>Again he was silent, brows drawn together as he stood over the murdered
+woman. Finally,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> he raised his head swiftly and, taking each in turn,
+searched sharply the countenances of the three men before him.</p>
+
+<p>"Does&mdash;didn't anybody here know this woman?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Berne Webster left his place at the opposite side of the body and came
+close to Hastings.</p>
+
+<p>"I know who she is," he said, his voice lower even than before, as if he
+wished to keep that information from the servants.</p>
+
+<p>Hastings' keen scrutiny had in it no intimation of surprise. Waiting for
+Webster to continue, he was addressed by the shivering Mr. Sloane:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Hast&mdash;Mr. Hastings, take charge of&mdash;of things. Will you? You know
+about these things."</p>
+
+<p>The detective accepted the suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose we get at what we know about it&mdash;what we all know. Let's go
+inside." He turned to the servants: "Stay here until you're called. See
+that nothing is disturbed, nothing touched."</p>
+
+<p>He led the way into the house. Sloane, near collapse, clung to one of
+Judge Wilton's broad shoulders. It was young Webster who, as the little
+procession passed the hatrack in the front hall, caught up a raincoat
+and threw it over the half-clad Hastings.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+<h3>THE UNEXPECTED WITNESS</h3>
+
+<p>In the library Hastings turned first to Judge Wilton for a description
+of the discovery of the body. The judge was in better condition than the
+others for connected narrative, Arthur Sloane had sunk into a morris
+chair, where he sighed audibly and plied himself by fits and starts with
+the aroma from the bottle of smelling salts. Young Webster, still
+breathing as if he had been through exhausting physical endeavour, stood
+near the table in the centre of the room, mechanically shifting his
+weight from foot to foot.</p>
+
+<p>Wilton, seated half-across the room from Hastings, drew, absently, on a
+dead cigar-stump. A certain rasping note in his voice was his only
+remaining symptom of shock. He had the stern calmness of expression that
+is often seen in the broad, irregularly-featured face in early middle
+age.</p>
+
+<p>"I can tell you in very few words," he said, addressing the detective
+directly. "We all left this room, you'll remember, at eleven o'clock.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> I
+found my bedroom uncomfortable, too warm. Besides, it had stopped
+raining. When I noticed that, I decided to go out and smoke my
+good-night cigar. This is what's left of it."</p>
+
+<p>He put a finger to the unlighted stump still between his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"What time did you go out?" asked Hastings.</p>
+
+<p>"Probably, a quarter of an hour after I'd gone upstairs&mdash;fifteen or
+twenty minutes past eleven, I should guess."</p>
+
+<p>"How did you go out&mdash;by what door?"</p>
+
+<p>"The front door. I left it unlocked, but not open. At first I paced up
+and down, on the south side of the house, under the trees. It was
+reasonably light there then&mdash;that is to say, the clouds had thinned a
+little, and, after my eyes had got accustomed to it, I had no trouble in
+avoiding the trees and shrubbery.</p>
+
+<p>"Then a cloud heavier than the others came up, I suppose. Anyway, it was
+much darker. There wasn't a light in the house, except in my room and
+Berne Webster's. Yours was out, I remember. I passed by the front of the
+house then, and went around to the north side. It was darker there, I
+thought, than it had been under the trees on the south side."</p>
+
+<p>"How long had you been out then, altogether?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thirty or forty minutes." He looked at his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> watch. "It's a quarter past
+twelve now. Let me see. I found the body a few minutes after I changed
+over to the north side. I guess I found it about five minutes before
+midnight&mdash;certainly not more than twenty minutes ago."</p>
+
+<p>Hastings betrayed his impatience only by squinting under his spectacles
+and down the line of his nose, eying Wilton closely.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, judge! Let's have it."</p>
+
+<p>"I was going along slowly, very slowly, not doing much more than feeling
+my way with my feet on the close-shaven grass. It was the darkest night
+I ever saw. Literally, I couldn't have seen my hand in front of me.</p>
+
+<p>"I had decided to turn about and go indoors when I was conscious of some
+movement, or slight sound, directly in front of me, and downward, at my
+feet. I got that impression."</p>
+
+<p>"What movement? You mean the sound of a fall?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; not that exactly."</p>
+
+<p>"A footstep?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I hadn't any definite idea what sort of noise it was. I did think
+that, perhaps, it was a dog or a cat. Just then my foot came in contact
+with something soft. I stooped down instinctively, immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"At that moment, that very second, a light flashed on in Arthur's
+bedroom. That's between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> this room and the big ballroom&mdash;on this floor,
+of course. That light threw a long, illuminating shaft into the murky
+darkness, the end of it coming just far enough to touch me and&mdash;what I
+found&mdash;the woman's body. I saw it by that light before I had time to
+touch it with my hand."</p>
+
+<p>The judge stopped and drew heavily on his dead cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"All right. See anything else?" Hastings urged.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I saw Berne Webster. He had made the noise which attracted my
+attention."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know that?"</p>
+
+<p>"He must have. He was stooping down, too, on the other side of the body,
+facing me, when the light went on&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Sloane, twisting nervously in his chair, cut into Wilton's narrative.</p>
+
+<p>"I can put this much straight," he said in shrill complaint: "I turned
+on the light you're talking about. I hadn't been able to sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's have this, one at a time, if you don't mind, Mr. Sloane," the
+detective suggested, watching Webster.</p>
+
+<p>The young man, staring with fascinated intensity at Judge Wilton, seemed
+to experience some new horror as he listened.</p>
+
+<p>"He was on the other side of it," the judge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> continued, "and practically
+in the same position that I was. We faced each other across the body. I
+think that describes the discovery, as you call it. We immediately
+examined the woman, looking for the wound, and found it. When we saw she
+was dead, we came in to wake you&mdash;and try to get a doctor. I told Berne
+to do that."</p>
+
+<p>During the last few sentences Hastings had been walking slowly from his
+chair to the library door and back, his hands gouged deep into his
+trouser-pockets, folds of his night-shirt protruding from and falling
+over the waistband of the trousers, the raincoat hanging baggily from
+his shoulders. Ludicrous as the costume was, however, the old man so
+dominated them still that none of them, not even Wilton, questioned his
+authority.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, the thing he was doing should have appealed to them as
+noteworthy. A man of less power could not have accomplished it. Coming
+from a sound sleep to the scene of a murder, he had literally picked up
+these men who had discovered it and who must be closely touched by it,
+had overcome their agitation, had herded them into the house and, with
+amazing promptness, had set about the task of getting from them the
+stories of what they knew and what they had done.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p><p>Appreciating his opportunity, he had determined to bring to light at
+once everything they knew. He devoted sudden attention now to Webster,
+whom he knew by reputation&mdash;a lawyer thirty years of age, brilliant in
+the criminal courts, and at present striving for a foothold in the more
+remunerative ranks of civil practice. He had never been introduced to
+him, however, before meeting him at Sloanehurst.</p>
+
+<p>"Who touched that body first&mdash;Mr. Webster?" he demanded, his slow
+promenade uninterrupted as he kept his eyes on the lawyer's.</p>
+
+<p>"Judge&mdash;I don't know, I believe," Webster replied uncertainly. "Who did,
+judge?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want your recollection," Hastings insisted, kindly in spite of the
+unmistakable command of his tone. "That's why I asked you."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"For one thing, it might go far toward showing who was really first on
+the scene."</p>
+
+<p>"I see; but I really don't remember. I'm not sure that either of us
+touched the body&mdash;just then. I think we both drew back, instinctively,
+when the light flashed on. Afterwards, of course, we both touched
+her&mdash;looking for signs of life."</p>
+
+<p>The detective came to a standstill in front of Webster.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p><p>"Who reached the body first? Can you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I don't think either was first. We got there together."</p>
+
+<p>"Simultaneously?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm overlooking something. How did you happen to be there?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's simple enough," Webster said, his brows drawn together, his eyes
+toward the floor, evidently making great effort to omit no detail of
+what had occurred. "I went to my room when we broke up here, at eleven.
+I read for a while. I got tired of that&mdash;it was close and hot. Besides,
+I never go to bed before one in the morning&mdash;that is, practically never.
+And I wasn't sleepy.</p>
+
+<p>"I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to twelve. Like the judge, I
+noticed that it had stopped raining. I thought I'd have a better night's
+sleep if I got out and cooled off thoroughly. My room, the one I have
+this time, is close to the back stairway. I went down that, and out the
+door on the north side."</p>
+
+<p>"Were you smoking?" Hastings put the query sharply, as if to test the
+narrator's nerves.</p>
+
+<p>Webster's frown deepened.</p>
+
+<p>"No. But I had cigarettes and matches with me. I intended to smoke&mdash;and
+walk about."</p>
+
+<p>"But what happened?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p><p>"It was so much darker than I had thought that I groped along with my
+feet, much as Judge Wilton did. I was making my way toward the front
+verandah. I went on, sliding my feet on the wet grass."</p>
+
+<p>"Any reason for doing that, do you remember? Are there any obstructions
+there, anything but smooth, open lawn?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. It was merely an instinctive act&mdash;in pitch dark, you know."</p>
+
+<p>Webster, his eyes still toward the floor, waited for another question.
+Not getting it, he resumed:</p>
+
+<p>"My foot struck something soft. I thought it was a wet cloak, something
+of that sort, left out in the rain. I hadn't heard a thing. And I had no
+premonition of anything wrong. I bent over, with nothing more than sheer
+idle curiosity, to put my hand on whatever the thing was. And just then
+the light went on in Mr. Sloane's bedroom. The judge and I were looking
+at each other across somebody lying on the ground, face upward."</p>
+
+<p>"Either of you cry out?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Say anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not much."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what?"</p>
+
+<p>"I remember the judge said, 'Is she dead?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> I said, 'How is she hurt?'
+We didn't say much while we were looking for the wound."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you tell Judge Wilton you knew her?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. There wasn't time for any explanation&mdash;specially."</p>
+
+<p>"But you do know her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I told you that, sir, outside&mdash;just now."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. Who is she?" Hastings put that query carelessly, in a way
+which might have meant that he had heard the most important part of the
+young lawyer's story. That impression was heightened by his beginning
+again to pace the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Her name's Mildred Brace," replied Webster, moistening his lips with
+his tongue. "She was my stenographer for eight months."</p>
+
+<p>The detective drew up sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"When?"</p>
+
+<p>"Until two weeks ago."</p>
+
+<p>"She resign?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. No&mdash;I discharged her."</p>
+
+<p>"What for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Incompetence."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand that exactly. You mean you employed her eight months
+although she was incompetent?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's pretty bald," Webster objected. "Her incompetence came, rather,
+from temperament. She was, toward the last, too nervous,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> excitable. She
+was more trouble than she was worth."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that's different," Hastings said, with a significance that was
+clear. "People might have thought," he elaborated, "if you had fired her
+for other reasons, this tragedy tonight would have put you in an
+unenviable position&mdash;to say the least."</p>
+
+<p>He had given words to the vague feeling which had depressed them all,
+ever since the discovery of the murder; that here was something vastly
+greater than the accidental finding of a person killed by an outsider,
+that the crime touched Sloanehurst personally. The foreboding had been
+patent&mdash;almost, it seemed, a tangible thing&mdash;but, until this moment,
+each had steered clear of it, in speech.</p>
+
+<p>Webster's response was bitter.</p>
+
+<p>"They'll want to say it anyway, I guess." To that he added, in frank
+resentment: "And I might as well enter a denial here: I had nothing to
+do with the&mdash;this whole lamentable affair!"</p>
+
+<p>The silence in which he and Hastings regarded each other was broken by
+Arthur Sloane's querulous words:</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;why, in the name of all the inscrutable saints, this thing should
+have happened at Sloanehurst, is more than I can say! Jumping angels!
+Now, let me tell you what I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p><p>He stopped, hearing light footfalls coming down the hall. There was the
+swish of silk, a little outcry half-repressed, and Lucille Sloane stood
+in the doorway. One hand was at her breast, the other against the
+door-frame, to steady her tall, slightly swaying figure. Her hair, a
+pyramid on her head, as if the black, heavy masses of it had been done
+by hurrying fingers, gave to her unusual beauty now an added suggestion
+of dignity.</p>
+
+<p>Profoundly moved as she was, there was nothing of the distracted or the
+inadequate about her. Hastings, who had admired her earlier in the
+evening, saw that her poise was far from overthrown. It seemed to him
+that she even had considered how to wear with extraordinary effect the
+brilliant, vari-coloured kimono draped about her. The only criticism of
+her possible was that, perhaps, she seemed a trifle too imperious&mdash;but,
+for his part, he liked that.</p>
+
+<p>"A thoroughbred!" he catalogued her, mentally.</p>
+
+<p>"You will excuse me, father," she said from the doorway, "but I couldn't
+help hearing." She thrust forward her chin. "Oh, I had to hear!&mdash;And
+there's something I have to tell."</p>
+
+<p>Her glance went at last from Sloane to Hastings as she advanced slowly
+into the room.</p>
+
+<p>The detective pushed forward a chair for her.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p><p>"That's fine, Miss Sloane," he assured her. "I'm sure you're going to
+help us."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't much," she qualified, "but I think it's important."</p>
+
+<p>Still she looked at neither Berne Webster nor Judge Wilton. And only a
+man trained as Hastings was to keenness of observation would have seen
+the slight but incessant tremour of her fingers and the constant,
+convulsive play of the muscles under the light covering of her black
+silk slippers.</p>
+
+<p>Sloane, alone, had remained seated. She was looking up to Hastings, who
+stood several feet in front of Webster and the judge.</p>
+
+<p>"I had gone to sleep," she said, her voice low, but musical and clear.
+"I waked up when I heard father moving about&mdash;his room is directly under
+mine; and, now that Aunt Lucy is away, I'm always more or less anxious
+about him. And I knew he had got quiet earlier, gone to sleep. It wasn't
+like him to be awake again so soon.</p>
+
+<p>"I sprang out of bed, really very quickly. I listened for a few seconds,
+but there was no further sound in father's room. The night was unusually
+quiet. There wasn't a sound&mdash;at first. Then I heard something. It was
+like somebody running, running very fast, outside, on the grass."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p><p>She paused. Hastings was struck by her air of alertness, or of prepared
+waiting, of readiness for questions.</p>
+
+<p>"Which way did the footsteps go?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"From the house&mdash;down the slope, toward the little gate that opens on
+the road."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wondered idly what it meant, but it made no serious impression on me.
+I listened again for sounds in father's room. There was none. Struck
+again by the heavy silence&mdash;it was almost oppressive, coming after the
+rain&mdash;I went to the window. I stood there, I don't know how long. I
+think I was day-dreaming, lazily running things over in my mind. I don't
+think it was very long.</p>
+
+<p>"And then father turned on the light in his room." She made a quick
+gesture with her left hand, wonderfully expressive of shock. "I shall
+never forget that! The long, narrow panel of light reached out into the
+dark like an ugly, yellow arm&mdash;reached out just far enough to touch and
+lay hold of the picture there on the grass; a woman lying on the
+drenched ground, her face up, and bending over her Judge Wilton and
+Berne&mdash;Mr. Webster.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew she'd been hurt dreadfully; her feet were drawn up, her knees
+high; and I could see the looks of horror on the men's faces."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p><p>She paused, giving all her strength to the effort to retain her
+self-control before the assailing memory of what she had seen.</p>
+
+<p>"That was all, Miss Sloane?" the detective prompted, in a kindly tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, quite," she said. "But I'd heard Berne's&mdash;what he was saying to
+you&mdash;and the judge's description of what they'd seen; and I thought you
+would like to know of the footsteps I'd heard&mdash;because they were the
+murderer's; they must have been. I knew it was important, most
+important."</p>
+
+<p>"You were entirely right," he agreed warmly. "Thank you, very much."</p>
+
+<p>He went the length of the room and halted by one of the bookcases, a
+weird, lumpy old figure among the shadows in the corner. He was scraping
+his cheek with his thumb, and looking at the ceiling, over the rims of
+his spectacles.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur Sloane sighed his impatience.</p>
+
+<p>"Those knees drawn up," Hastings said at last; "I was just thinking.
+They weren't drawn up when I saw the body. Were they?"</p>
+
+<p>"We'd straightened the limbs," Webster answered. "Thought I'd mentioned
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"No.&mdash;Then, there might have been a struggle? You think the woman had
+put up a fight&mdash;for her life?&mdash;and was overpowered?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p><p>"Well," deliberated Webster, "perhaps; even probably."</p>
+
+<p>"Strange," commented the detective, equally deliberate. "I hadn't
+thought so. I would have said she'd been struck down unawares&mdash;without
+the slightest warning."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+<h3>HASTINGS IS RETAINED</h3>
+
+<p>Arrival of the officials, Sheriff Crown and the coroner, Dr. Garnet,
+brought the conference to an abrupt close. Hastings, seeing the look in
+the girl's eyes, left the library in advance of the other men. Lucille
+followed him immediately.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Hastings!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Miss Sloane?"</p>
+
+<p>He turned and faced her.</p>
+
+<p>"I must talk to you, alone. Won't you come in here?"</p>
+
+<p>She preceded him into the parlour across the hall. When he put his hand
+on the electric switch, she objected, saying she preferred to be without
+the lights. He obeyed her. The glow from the hall was strong enough to
+show him the play of her features&mdash;which was what he wanted.</p>
+
+<p>They sat facing each other, directly under the chandelier in the middle
+of the spacious room. He thought she had chosen that place to avoid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> all
+danger of being overheard in any direction. He saw, too, that she was
+hesitant, half-regretting having brought him there. He read her doubts,
+saw how pain and anxiety mingled in her wide-open grey eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know," he said with a smile that was reassuring; "I don't look
+like a particularly helpful old party, do I?"</p>
+
+<p>He liked her more and more. In presence of mind, he reflected, she
+surpassed the men of the household. In spite of the agitation that still
+kept her hands trembling and gave her that odd look of fighting
+desperately to hold herself together, she had formed a plan which she
+was on the point of disclosing to him.</p>
+
+<p>Her courage impressed him tremendously. And, divining what her request
+would be, he made up his mind to help her.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not that," she said, her lips twisting to the pretence of a smile.
+"I know your reputation&mdash;how brilliant you are. I was thinking you might
+not understand what I wanted to say."</p>
+
+<p>"Try me," he encouraged. "I'm not that old!"</p>
+
+<p>It occurred to him that she referred to Berne Webster and herself,
+fearing, perhaps, his lack of sympathy for a love affair.</p>
+
+<p>"It's this," she began a rush of words, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>putting away all reluctance: "I
+think I realize more keenly than father how disagreeable this awful
+thing is going to be&mdash;the publicity, the newspapers, the questions, the
+photographs. I know, too, that Mr. Webster's in an unpleasant situation.
+I heard what he said to you in the library, every word of it.&mdash;But I
+don't have to think about him so much as about my father. He's a very
+sick man, Mr. Hastings. The shock of this, the resultant shocks lasting
+through days and weeks, may be fatal for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," she explained, attaining greater composure, "he is so
+nervous, so impatient of discomfort and irritating things, that he may
+bring upon himself the enmity of the authorities, the investigators. He
+may easily provoke them so that they would do anything to annoy him.</p>
+
+<p>"I see you don't understand!" she lamented suddenly, turning her head
+away a little.</p>
+
+<p>He could see how her lips trembled, as if she held them together only by
+immense resolution.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I do," he contradicted kindly. "You want my help; isn't that
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." She looked at him again, with a quick turn of her head, her eyes
+less wide-open while she searched his face. "I want to employ you. Can't
+I&mdash;what do they call it?&mdash;retain you?"</p>
+
+<p>"To do what, exactly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh-h-h!" The exclamation had the hint of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> a sob in it; she was close to
+the end of her strength. "I'm a little uncertain about that. Can't you
+help me there? I want the real criminal found soon, immediately, as soon
+as possible. I want you to work on that. And, in the meantime, I want
+you to protect us&mdash;father&mdash;do things so that we shan't be overrun by
+reporters and detectives, all the dreadful results of the discovery of a
+murder at our very front door."</p>
+
+<p>He was thoughtful, looking into her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"The fee is of no matter, the amount of it," she added impulsively.</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't thinking of that&mdash;although, of course, I don't despise fees.
+You see, the authorities, the sheriff, might not want my assistance, as
+you call it. Generally, they don't. They look upon it as interference
+and meddling."</p>
+
+<p>"Still, you can work independently&mdash;retained by Mr. Arthur Sloane&mdash;can't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>He studied her further. For her age&mdash;hardly more than twenty-two&mdash;she
+was strikingly mature of face, and self-reliant. She had, he concluded,
+unusual strength of purpose; she was capable of large emotionalism, but
+mere feeling would never cloud her mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he answered her; "I can do that. I will."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," she breathed, some of the tenseness going out of her, "you are
+very good!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p><p>"And you will help me, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>"You can do so now," he pressed this point. "Why is it that all of
+you&mdash;I noticed it in the men in the library, and when we were outside,
+on the lawn&mdash;why is it that all of you think this crime is going to hit
+you, one of you, so hard? You seem to acknowledge in advance the guilt
+of one of you."</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you mistaken about that?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. It struck me forcibly. Didn't you feel it? Don't you, now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no!"</p>
+
+<p>He was certain that she was not frank with him.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean," she added quickly, eyes narrowed, "I suspect&mdash;actually
+suspect some one in this house?"</p>
+
+<p>In his turn, he was non-committal, retorting:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>She resented his insistence.</p>
+
+<p>"There is only one idea possible, I think," she declared, rising: "the
+footsteps that I heard fled from the house, not into it. The murderer is
+not here."</p>
+
+<p>He stood up, holding her gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm your representative now, Miss Sloane," he said, his manner fatherly
+in its solicitude. "My duty is to save you, and yours, in every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> way I
+can&mdash;without breaking the law. You realize what my job is&mdash;do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mr. Hastings."</p>
+
+<p>"And the advisability, the necessity, of utter frankness between us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." She said that with obvious impatience.</p>
+
+<p>"So," he persisted, "you understand my motive in asking you now: is
+there nothing more you can tell me&mdash;of what you heard and saw, when you
+were at your window?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing&mdash;absolutely," she said, again obviously annoyed.</p>
+
+<p>He was close to a refusal to have anything to do with the case. He was
+sure that she did not deal openly with him. He tried again:</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing more, Miss Sloane? Think, please. Nothing to make you, us, more
+suspicious of Mr. Webster?"</p>
+
+<p>"Suspect Berne!"</p>
+
+<p>This time she was frank, he saw at once. The idea of the young lawyer's
+guilt struck her as out of the question. Her confidence in that was
+genuine, unalloyed. It was so emphatic that it surprised him. Why, then,
+this anxiety which had driven her to him for help? What caused the fear
+which, at the beginning of their interview, had been so apparent?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p><p>He thought with great rapidity, turning the thing over in his mind as
+he stood confronting her. If she did not suspect Webster, whom did she
+suspect? Her father?</p>
+
+<p>That was it!&mdash;her father!</p>
+
+<p>The discovery astounded Hastings&mdash;and appealed to his sympathy,
+tremendously.</p>
+
+<p>"My poor child!" he said, on the warm impulse of his compassion.</p>
+
+<p>She chose to disregard the tone he had used. She took a step toward the
+door, and paused, to see that he followed her.</p>
+
+<p>He went nearer to her, to conclude what he had wanted to say:</p>
+
+<p>"I shall rely on this agreement between us: I can come to you on any
+point that occurs to me? You will give me anything, and all the things,
+that may come to your knowledge as the investigation proceeds? Is it a
+bargain, Miss Sloane?"</p>
+
+<p>"A bargain, Mr. Hastings," she assented. "I appreciate, as well as you
+do, the need of fair dealing between us. Anything else would be
+foolish."</p>
+
+<p>"Fine! That's great, Miss Sloane!" He was still sorry for her. "Now, let
+me be sure, once for all: you're concealing nothing from me, no little
+thing even, on the theory that it would be of no use to me and,
+therefore, not worth <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>discussing? You told us all you knew&mdash;in the
+library?"</p>
+
+<p>She moved toward the door to the hall again.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mr. Hastings&mdash;and I'm at your service altogether."</p>
+
+<p>He would have sworn that she was not telling the truth. This time,
+however, he had no thought of declining connection with the case. His
+compassion for her had grown.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, her fear of her father's implication in the affair&mdash;was there
+foundation for it, more foundation than the hasty thought of a daughter
+still labouring under the effects of a great shock? He thought of
+Sloane, effeminate, shrill of voice, a trembling wreck, long ago a
+self-confessed ineffective in the battle of life&mdash;he, a murderer; he,
+capable of forceful action of any kind? It seemed impossible.</p>
+
+<p>But the old man kept that idea to himself, and instructed Lucille.</p>
+
+<p>"Then," he said, "you must leave things to me. Tell your father so.
+Tomorrow, for instance&mdash;rather this morning, for it's already a new
+day&mdash;reporters will come out here, and detectives, and the sheriff. All
+of them will want to question you, your father, all the members of the
+household. Refer them to me, if you care to.</p>
+
+<p>"If you discuss theories and possibilities, you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> will only make trouble.
+To the sheriff, and anybody representing him, state the facts, the bare
+facts&mdash;that's all. May I count on you for that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. That's why I've em&mdash;why I want your help: to avoid all the
+unpleasantness possible."</p>
+
+<p>When she left him to go to her father's room, Hastings joined the group
+on the front verandah. Sheriff Crown and Dr. Garnet had already viewed
+the body.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll hold the inquest at ten tomorrow morning, rather this morning,"
+the coroner said. "That's hurrying things a little, but I'll have a jury
+here by then. They have to see the body before it's taken to
+Washington."</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," observed the sheriff, "nearly all the necessary witnesses are
+here in this house party."</p>
+
+<p>Aware of the Hastings fame, he drew the old man to one side.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going into Washington," he announced, "to see this Mrs. Brace, the
+girl's mother. Webster says she has a flat, up on Fourteenth street
+there. Good idea, ain't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Excellent," assured Hastings, and put in a suggestion: "You've heard of
+the fleeting footsteps Miss Sloane reported?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I thought Mrs. Brace might tell me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> who that could have been&mdash;some
+fellow jealous of the girl, I'll bet."</p>
+
+<p>The sheriff, who was a tall, lanky man with a high, hooked nose and a
+pointed chin that looked like a large knuckle, had a habit of thrusting
+forward his upper lip to emphasize his words. He thrust it forward now,
+making his bristly, close-cropped red moustache stand out from his face
+like the quills of a porcupine.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd thought of that&mdash;all that," he continued. "Looks like a simple case
+to me&mdash;very."</p>
+
+<p>"It may be," said Hastings, sure now that Crown would not suggest their
+working together.</p>
+
+<p>"Also," the sheriff told him, "I'll take this."</p>
+
+<p>He held out the crude weapon with which, apparently, the murder had been
+committed. It was a dagger consisting of a sharpened nail file, about
+three inches long, driven into a roughly rounded piece of wood. This
+wooden handle was a little more than four inches in length and two
+inches thick. Hastings, giving it careful examination, commented:</p>
+
+<p>"He shaped that handle with a pocket-knife. Then, he drove the butt-end
+of the nail file into it. Next, he sharpened the end of the file&mdash;put a
+razor edge on it.&mdash;Where did you get this, Mr. Crown?"</p>
+
+<p>"A servant, one of the coloured women, picked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> it up as I came in. You
+were still in the library."</p>
+
+<p>"Where was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"About fifteen or twenty feet from the body. She stumbled on it, in the
+grass. Ugly thing, sure!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Hastings said, preoccupied, and added: "Let me have it again."</p>
+
+<p>He took off his spectacles and, screwing into his right eye a jeweller's
+glass, studied it for several minutes. If he made an important
+discovery, he did not communicate it to Crown.</p>
+
+<p>"It made an ugly hole," was all he said.</p>
+
+<p>"You see the blood on it?" Crown prompted.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes; lucky the rain stopped when it did."</p>
+
+<p>"When did it stop&mdash;out here?" Crown inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"About eleven; a few minutes after I'd gone up to bed."</p>
+
+<p>"So she was killed between eleven and midnight?"</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt about that. Her hat had fallen from her head and was bottom up
+beside her. The inside of the crown and all the lower brim was dry as a
+bone, while the outside, even where it did not touch the wet grass, was
+wet. That showed there wasn't any rain after she was struck down."</p>
+
+<p>The sheriff was impressed by the other's keenness of observation.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p><p>"That's so," he said. "I hadn't noticed it."</p>
+
+<p>He sought the detective's opinion.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Hastings, you've just heard the stories of everybody here. Do me a
+favour, will you? Is it worth while for me to go into Washington? Tell
+me: do you think anybody here at Sloanehurst is responsible for this
+murder?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Crown," the old man answered, "there's no proof that anybody here
+killed that woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Just what I thought," Mr. Crown applauded himself. "Glad you agree with
+me. It'll turn out a simple case. Wish it wouldn't. Nominating primary's
+coming on in less than a month. I'd get a lot more votes if I ran down a
+mysterious fellow, solved a tough problem."</p>
+
+<p>He strode down the porch steps and out to his car&mdash;for the ten-mile run
+into Washington. Hastings was strongly tempted to accompany him, even
+without being invited; it would mean much to be present when the mother
+first heard of her daughter's death.</p>
+
+<p>But he had other and, he thought, more important work to do. Moving so
+quietly that his footsteps made no sound, he gained the staircase in the
+hall and made his way to the second floor. If anybody had seen him and
+inquired what he intended to do, he would have explained that he was on
+his way to get his own coat in place of the one which young Webster<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+had, with striking thoughtfulness, thrown over him.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, his real purpose was to search Webster's room.</p>
+
+<p>But experience had long since imbued him with contempt for the obvious.
+Secure from interruption, since his fellow-guests were still in the
+library, he did not content himself with his hawk-like scrutiny of the
+one room; he explored the back stairway which had been Webster's exit to
+the lawn, Judge Wilton's room, and his own.</p>
+
+<p>In the last stage of the search he encountered his greatest surprise.
+Looking under his own bed by the light of a pocket torch, he found that
+one of the six slats had been removed from its place and laid cross-ways
+upon the other five. The reason for this was apparent; it had been
+shortened by between four and five inches.</p>
+
+<p>"Cut off with a pocket-knife," the old man mused; "crude work, like the
+shaping of the handle of that dagger&mdash;downstairs; same wood, too. And in
+my room, from my bed&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>With a low whistle, expressive of incredulity, he put that new theory
+from him and went down to the library.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+
+<h3>THE INTERVIEW WITH MRS. BRACE</h3>
+
+<p>Gratified, and yet puzzled, by the results of his search of the upstairs
+rooms, Hastings was fully awake to the necessity of his interviewing
+Mrs. Brace as soon as possible. Lally, the chauffeur, drove him back to
+Washington early that Sunday morning. It was characteristic of the old
+man that, as they went down the driveway, he looked back at Sloanehurst
+and felt keenly the sufferings of the people under its roof.</p>
+
+<p>He was particularly drawn to Lucille Sloane, with whom he had had a
+second brief conference. While waiting for his coffee&mdash;nobody in the
+house had felt like breakfast&mdash;he had taken a chair at the southeast end
+of the front porch and, pulling a piece of soft wood and a knife from
+his Gargantuan coat-pockets, had fallen to whittling and
+thinking.&mdash;Whittling, he often said, enabled him to think clearly; it
+was to him what tobacco was to other men.</p>
+
+<p>Thus absorbed, he suddenly heard Lucille's voice, low and tense:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p><p>"We'll have to leave it as it was be&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Berne Webster interrupted her, a grain of bitterness in his words:</p>
+
+<p>"Rather an unusual request, don't you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to tell you this after the talk in the library," she
+continued, "but there&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>They had approached Hastings from the south side of the house and,
+hidden from him by the verandah railing, were upon him before he could
+make his presence known. Now, however, he did so, warning them by
+standing up with a clamorous scraping of his feet on the floor.
+Instinctively, he had recoiled from overhearing their discussion of what
+was, he thought, a love-affair topic.</p>
+
+<p>Lucille hurried to him, not that she had additional information to give
+him, but to renew her courage. Having called upon him for aid, she had
+in the usual feminine way decided to make her reliance upon him
+complete. And, under the influence of his reassuring kindliness, her
+hesitance and misgivings disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>He had judged her feelings correctly during their conference in the
+parlour. At dinner, she had seen in him merely a pleasant, quiet-spoken
+old man, a typical "hick" farmer, who wore baggy, absurdly large
+clothing&mdash;"for the sake of his circulation," he said&mdash;and whose
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>appearance in no way corresponded to his reputation as a learned
+psychologist and investigator of crime. Now, however, she responded
+warmly to his charm, felt the sincerity of his sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing that she looked up to him, he enjoyed encouraging her, was bound
+more firmly to her interests.</p>
+
+<p>"I think your fears are unfounded," he told her.</p>
+
+<p>But he did not reveal his knowledge that she suspected her father of
+some connection with the murder. In fact, he could not decide what her
+suspicion was exactly, whether it was that he had been guilty of the
+crime or that he had guilty knowledge of it.</p>
+
+<p>A little anxious, she had asked him to promise that he would be back by
+ten o'clock, for the inquest. He thought he could do that, although he
+had persuaded the coroner that his evidence would not be necessary&mdash;the
+judge and Webster had found the body; their stories would establish the
+essential facts.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you want me here then?" he asked, not comprehending her
+uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>"For one thing," she said, "I want you to talk to father&mdash;before the
+inquest. I wish you could now, but he isn't up."</p>
+
+<p>It was eight o'clock when Miss Davis, telephone operator in the cheap
+apartment house<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> on Fourteenth street known as The Walman, took the old
+man's card and read the inscription, over the wire:</p>
+
+<p>"'Mr. Jefferson Hastings.'"</p>
+
+<p>After a brief pause, she told him:</p>
+
+<p>"She wants to know if you are a detective."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell her I am."</p>
+
+<p>"You may go up," the girl reported. "It's Number Forty-three, fourth
+floor&mdash;no elevator."</p>
+
+<p>After ascending the three flights of stairs, he sat down on the top
+step, to get his breath. Mr. Hastings was stout, not to say
+sebaceous&mdash;and he proposed to begin the interview unhandicapped.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brace answered his ring. There was nobody else in the apartment.
+The moment he looked into her restless, remarkably brilliant black eyes,
+he catalogued her as cold and repellent.</p>
+
+<p>"One of the swift-eyed kind," he thought; "heart as hard as her head. No
+blood in her&mdash;but smart. Smart!"</p>
+
+<p>He relied, without question, on his ability to "size up" people at first
+glance. It was a gift with him, like the intuition of women; and to it,
+he thought, he owed his best work as a detective.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brace, without speaking, without acknowledging his quiet "Mrs.
+Brace, I believe?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> led him into the living room after waiting for him
+to close the entrance door. This room was unusually large, out of
+proportion to the rest of the apartment which included, in addition to
+the narrow entry, a bedroom, kitchen and bath&mdash;all, so far as his
+observation went, sparsely and cheaply furnished.</p>
+
+<p>They sat down, and still she did not speak, but studied his face. He got
+the impression that she considered all men her enemies and sought some
+intimation of what his hostility would be like.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry to trouble you at such a time," he began. "I shall be as
+brief as possible."</p>
+
+<p>Her black eyebrows moved upward, in curious interrogation. They were
+almost mephistophelian, and unpleasantly noticeable, drawn thus nearer
+to the wide wave of her white hair.</p>
+
+<p>"You wanted to see me&mdash;about my daughter?"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was harsh, metallic, free of emotion. There was nothing about
+her indicative of grief. She did not look as if she had been weeping. He
+could learn nothing from her manner; it was extremely matter-of-fact,
+and chilly. Only, in her eyes he saw suspicion&mdash;perhaps, he reflected,
+suspicion was always in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Her composure amazed him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p><p>"Yes," he replied gently; "if I don't distress you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>She suddenly lowered her eyebrows, drew them together until they were a
+straight line at the bottom of her forehead.</p>
+
+<p>Her cold self-possession made it easy, in fact necessary, for him to
+deal with facts directly. Apparently, she resented his intimated
+condolence. He could fling any statement, however sensational, against
+the wall of her indifference. She was, he decided, as free of feeling as
+she was inscrutable. She would be surprised by emotion into nothing. It
+was his brain against hers.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to say first," he continued, "that my only concern, outside of
+my natural and very real sympathy with such a loss as yours must be, is
+to find the man who killed her."</p>
+
+<p>She moved slowly to and fro on the armless, low-backed rocker, watching
+him intently.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you help me?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I can."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," he said, smiling encouragement from force of habit, not
+because he expected to arouse any spirit of cooperation in her. "I may
+ask you a few questions then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>Her thin nostrils dilated once, quickly, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> somehow their motion
+suggested the beginning of a ridiculing smile. He went seriously to
+work.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you any idea, Mrs. Brace, as to who killed your daughter&mdash;or could
+have wanted to kill her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Who?"</p>
+
+<p>She got up, without the least change of expression, without a word, and,
+as she crossed the room, paused at the little table against the farther
+wall to arrange more symmetrically a pile of finger-worn periodicals.
+She went through the communicating door into the bedroom, and, from
+where he sat, he could see her go through another door&mdash;into the
+bathroom, he guessed. In a moment, he heard a glass clink against a
+faucet. She had gone for a drink of water, to moisten her throat, like
+an orator preparing to deliver an address.</p>
+
+<p>She came back, unhurried, imperturbable, and sat down again in the
+armless rocker before she answered his question. So far as her manner
+might indicate, there had been no interruption of the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>He swept her with wondering eyes. She was not playing a part, not
+concealing sorrow. The straight, hard lines of her lean figure were a
+complement to her gleaming, unrevealing eyes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> There was hardness about
+her, and in her, everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>A slow, warm breeze brought through the curtainless window a
+disagreeable odour, sour and fetid. The apartment was at the back of the
+building; the odour came from a littered courtyard, a conglomeration of
+wet ashes, neglected garbage, little filthy pools, warmed into activity
+by the sun, high enough now to touch them. He could see the picture
+without looking&mdash;and that odour struck him as excruciatingly appropriate
+to this woman's soul.</p>
+
+<p>"Berne Webster killed my daughter," she said evenly, hands moveless in
+her lap. "There are several reasons for my saying so. Mildred was his
+stenographer for eight months, and he fell in love with her&mdash;that was
+the way he described his feeling, and intention, toward her. The usual
+thing happened; he discharged her two weeks ago.</p>
+
+<p>"He wants to marry money. You know about that, I take it&mdash;Miss Sloane,
+daughter of A. B. Sloane, Sloanehurst, where she was murdered. They're
+engaged. At least, that is&mdash;was Mildred's information, although the
+engagement hasn't been announced, formally. Fact is, he has to marry the
+Sloane girl."</p>
+
+<p>Her thin, mobile lips curled upward at the ends and looked a little
+thicker, giving an <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>exaggerated impression of wetness. Hastings thought
+of some small, feline animal, creeping, anticipating prey&mdash;a sort of
+calculating ferocity.</p>
+
+<p>She talked like a person bent on making every statement perfectly clear
+and understandable. There was no intimation that she was so
+communicative because she thought she was obliged to talk. On the
+contrary, she welcomed the chance to give him the story.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you told all this to that sheriff, Mr. Crown?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but he seemed to attach no importance to it."</p>
+
+<p>She coloured her words with feeling at last&mdash;it was contempt&mdash;putting
+the sheriff beyond the pale of further consideration.</p>
+
+<p>"You were saying Mr. Webster had to marry Miss Sloane. What do you mean
+by that, Mrs. Brace?"</p>
+
+<p>"Money reasons. He had to have money. His bank balance is never more
+than a thousand dollars. He's got to produce sixty-five thousand dollars
+by the seventh of next September. This is the sixteenth of July. Where
+is he to get all that? He's got to marry it."</p>
+
+<p>Hastings put more intensity into his scrutiny of her smooth, untroubled
+face. It showed no sudden access of hatred, no unreasoning venom,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+except that the general cast of her features spoke generally of
+vindictiveness. She was, unmistakably, sure of what she said.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know that?" he asked, hiding his surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Mildred knew it&mdash;naturally, from working in his office."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me be exact, Mrs. Brace. Your charge is just what?"</p>
+
+<p>He felt the need of keen thought. He reached for his knife and piece of
+wood. Entirely unconsciously, he began to whittle, letting little
+shavings fall on the bare floor. She made no sign of seeing his new
+occupation.</p>
+
+<p>"It's plain enough, Mr.&mdash;I don't recall your name."</p>
+
+<p>"Hastings&mdash;Jefferson Hastings."</p>
+
+<p>"It's plain and direct, Mr. Hastings. He threw her over, threw Mildred
+over. She refused to be dealt with in that way. He wouldn't listen to
+her side, her arguments, her protests, her pleas. She pursued him; and
+last night he killed her. I understand&mdash;Mr. Crown told me&mdash;he was found
+bending over the body&mdash;it seemed to me, caught in the very commission of
+the crime."</p>
+
+<p>A fleeting contortion, like mirthless ridicule, touched her lips as she
+saw him, with head lowered, cut more savagely into the piece of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> wood.
+She noticed, and enjoyed, his dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"That isn't quite accurate," he said, without lifting his head. "He and
+another man, Judge Wilton, stumbled&mdash;came upon your daughter's body at
+the same moment."</p>
+
+<p>"Was that it?" she retorted, unbelieving.</p>
+
+<p>When he looked up, she was regarding him thoughtfully, the black brows
+elevated, interrogative. The old man felt the stirrings of physical
+nausea within him. But he waited for her to elaborate her story.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you care to ask anything more?" she inquired, impersonal as ashes.</p>
+
+<p>"If I may."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, certainly."</p>
+
+<p>He paused in his whittling, brought forth a huge handkerchief, passed it
+across his forehead, was aware for a moment that he was working hard
+against the woman's unnatural calmness, and feeling the heat intensely.
+She was untouched by it. He whittled again, asking her:</p>
+
+<p>"You a native of Washington?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"How long have you been here?"</p>
+
+<p>"About nine months. We came from Chicago."</p>
+
+<p>"Any friends here&mdash;have you any friends here?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p><p>"Neither here nor elsewhere." She made that bleak declaration simply,
+as if he had suggested her possession of green diamonds. Her tone made
+friendship a myth.</p>
+
+<p>He felt again utterly free of the restraints and little hesitancies
+usual in situations of this nature.</p>
+
+<p>"And your means, resources. Any, Mrs. Brace?"</p>
+
+<p>"None&mdash;except my daughter's."</p>
+
+<p>He was unaccountably restless. Putting the knife into his pocket, he
+stood up, went to the window. His guess had been correct. The courtyard
+below was as he had pictured it. He stood there at least a full minute.</p>
+
+<p>Turning suddenly in the hope of catching some new expression on her
+face, he found her gazing steadily, as if in revery, at the opposite
+wall.</p>
+
+<p>"One thing more, Mrs. Brace: did you know your daughter intended to go
+to Sloanehurst last night?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Were you uneasy when she failed to come in&mdash;last night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but what could I do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Had she written to Mr. Webster recently?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I think so."</p>
+
+<p>"You think so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; she went out to mail a letter night<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> before last. I recall that
+she said it was important, had to be in the box for the midnight
+collection, to reach its destination yesterday afternoon&mdash;late. I'm sure
+it was to Webster."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see the address on it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't try to."</p>
+
+<p>He stepped from the window, to throw the full glare of the morning sky
+on her face, which was upturned, toward him.</p>
+
+<p>"Was it in a grey envelope?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; an oblong, grey envelope," she said, the impassive, unwrinkled
+face unmoved to either curiosity or reticence.</p>
+
+<p>With surprising swiftness he took a triangular piece of paper from his
+breast pocket and held it before her.</p>
+
+<p>"Might that be the flap of that grey envelope?"</p>
+
+<p>She inspected it, while he kept hold of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Very possibly."</p>
+
+<p>Without leaving her chair, she turned and put back the lid of a rickety
+little desk in the corner immediately behind her. There, she showed him,
+was a bundle of grey envelopes, the corresponding paper beside it. He
+compared the envelope flaps with the one he had brought. They were
+identical.</p>
+
+<p>Here was support of her assertion that Berne Webster had been pursued by
+her daughter as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> late as yesterday afternoon&mdash;and, therefore, might have
+been provoked into desperate action. He had found that scrap of grey
+paper at Sloanehurst, in Webster's room.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+
+<h3>ACTION BY THE SHERIFF</h3>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brace did not ask Hastings where he had got the fragment of grey
+envelope. She made no comment whatever.</p>
+
+<p>He reversed the flap in his hand and showed her the inner side on which
+were, at first sight, meaningless lines and little smears. He explained
+that the letter must have been put into the envelope when the ink was
+still undried on the part of it that came in contact with the flap, and,
+the paper being of that rough-finish, spongy kind frequently affected by
+women, the flap had absorbed the undried ink pressed against it.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you a hand-mirror?" he asked, breaking a long pause.</p>
+
+<p>She brought one from the bedroom. Holding it before the envelope flap,
+he showed her the marks thus made legible. They were, on the first line:
+"&mdash;edly de&mdash;," with the first loop or curve of an "n" or an "m"
+following the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> "de"; and on the second line the one word "Pursuit!" the
+whole reproduction being this:</p>
+
+<p class="center">edly de<br />Pursuit!</p>
+
+<p>"Does that writing mean anything to you, Mrs. Brace?" Hastings asked,
+keeping it in front of her.</p>
+
+<p>She moved her left hand, a quiet gesture indicating her lack of further
+interest in the piece of paper.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing special," she said, "except that the top line seems to bear out
+what I've told you. It might be: 'repeatedly demanded'&mdash;I mean Mildred
+may have written that she had repeatedly demanded justice of him,
+something of that sort."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it your daughter's writing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And the word 'Pursuit,' with an exclamation point after it? That
+suggest anything to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no." She showed her first curiosity: "Where did you get that piece
+of envelope?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not from Berne Webster," he said, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose not," she agreed, and did not press him for the information.</p>
+
+<p>"You said," he went to another point, "that the sheriff attached no
+importance to your <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>belief in Webster's guilt. Can you tell me why?"</p>
+
+<p>Her contempt was frank enough now, and visible, her lips thickening and
+assuming the abnormally humid appearance he had noticed before.</p>
+
+<p>"He thinks the footsteps which Miss Sloane says she heard are the
+deciding evidence. He accuses a young man named Russell, Eugene Russell,
+who's been attentive to Mildred."</p>
+
+<p>Hastings was relieved.</p>
+
+<p>"Crown's seen him, seen Russell?" he asked, not troubling to conceal his
+eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>On that, he saw the beginnings of wrath in her eyes. The black eyebrows
+went upward, the thin nostrils expanded, the lips set to a line no
+thicker than the edge of a knife.</p>
+
+<p>"You, too, will&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She broke off, checked by the ringing of the wall telephone in the
+entrance hall. She answered the call, moving without haste. It was for
+Mr. Hastings, she said, going back to her seat.</p>
+
+<p>He regretted the interruption; it would give her time to regain the
+self-control she had been on the point of losing.</p>
+
+<p>Sheriff Crown was at the other end of the wire. He was back at
+Sloanehurst, he explained, and Miss Sloane had asked him to give the
+detective certain information:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p><p>He had asked the Washington police to hold Eugene Russell, or to
+persuade him to attend the inquest at Sloanehurst. Crown, going in to
+Washington, had stopped at the car barns of the electric road which
+passed Sloanehurst, and had found a conductor who had made the
+ten-thirty run last night. This conductor, Barton, had slept at the
+barns, waiting for the early-morning resumption of car service to take
+him to his home across the city.</p>
+
+<p>Barton remembered having seen a man leave his car at Ridgecrest, the
+next stop before Sloanehurst, at twenty-five minutes past ten last
+night. He answered Russell's description, had seemed greatly agitated,
+and was unfamiliar with the stops on the line, having questioned Barton
+as to the distance between Ridgecrest and Sloanehurst. That was all the
+conductor had to tell.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Brace's description of Russell, a real estate salesman who had
+been attentive to her daughter," continued Crown, "tallied with Barton's
+description of the man who had been on his car. I got his address from
+her. But say! She don't fall for the idea that Russell's guilty! She
+gave me to understand, in that snaky, frozen way of hers, that I was a
+fool for thinking so.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyway, I'm going to put him over the jumps!" The sheriff was highly
+elated. "What was he out here for last night if he wasn't jealous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> of
+the girl? Wasn't he following her? And, when he came up with her on the
+Sloanehurst lawn, didn't he kill her? It looks plain to me; simple. I
+told you it was a simple case!"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen him?" Hastings was looking at his watch as he spoke&mdash;it
+was nine o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>"No; I went to his boarding house, waked up the place at three o'clock
+this morning. He wasn't there."</p>
+
+<p>Hastings asked for the number of the house. It was on Eleventh street,
+Crown informed him, and gave the number.</p>
+
+<p>"I searched his room," the sheriff added, his voice self-congratulatory.</p>
+
+<p>"Find anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should say! The nail file was missing from his dressing case."</p>
+
+<p>"What else?"</p>
+
+<p>"A pair of wet shoes&mdash;muddy and wet."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, he'd returned to his room, after the murder, and gone out again?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's it&mdash;right."</p>
+
+<p>"Anybody in the house hear him come in, or go out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a soul.&mdash;And I don't know where he is now."</p>
+
+<p>Hastings, leaving the telephone, found Mrs. Brace carefully brushing
+into a newspaper the litter made by his whittling. Her performance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> of
+that trivial task, the calm thoroughness with which she went about it,
+or the littleness of it, when compared with her complete indifference to
+the tragedy which should have overwhelmed her&mdash;something, he could not
+tell exactly what, made her more repugnant to him than ever.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke impulsively:</p>
+
+<p>"Did you want&mdash;didn't you feel some impulse, some desire, to go out
+there when you heard of this murder?"</p>
+
+<p>She paused in her brushing, looking up to him without lifting herself
+from hands and knees.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I have wanted to do any such thing?" she replied. "Mildred's
+not out there. What's out there is&mdash;nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know about the arrangements for the removal of the body?"</p>
+
+<p>"The sheriff told me," she replied, cold, impersonal. "It will be
+brought to an undertaking establishment as soon as the coroner's jury
+has viewed it."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;at ten o'clock this morning."</p>
+
+<p>She made no comment on that. He had brought up the disagreeable
+topic&mdash;one which would have been heart-breaking to any other mother he
+had ever known&mdash;in the hope of arousing some real feeling in her. And he
+had failed. Her self-control was impregnable. There was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> about her an
+atmosphere that was, in a sense, terrifying, something out of all
+nature.</p>
+
+<p>She brushed up the remaining chips and shavings while he got his hat. He
+was deliberating: was there nothing more she could tell him? What could
+he hope to get from her except that which she wanted to tell? He was
+sure that she had spoken, in reply to each of his questions, according
+to a prearranged plan, a well designed scheme to bring into high relief
+anything that might incriminate Berne Webster.</p>
+
+<p>And he was by no means in a mood to persuade himself of Webster's guilt.
+He knew the value of first impressions; and he did not propose to let
+her clog his thoughts with far-fetched deductions against the young
+lawyer.</p>
+
+<p>She got to her feet with cat-like agility, and, to his astonishment,
+burst into violent speech:</p>
+
+<p>"You're standing there trying to think up things to help Berne Webster!
+Like the sheriff! Now, I'll tell you what I told him: Webster's guilty.
+I know it! He killed my daughter. He's a liar and a coward&mdash;a traitor!
+He killed her!"</p>
+
+<p>There was no doubt of her emotion now. She stood in a strange attitude,
+leaning a little toward him in the upper part of her body, as if all her
+strength were consciously directed into her shoulders and neck. She
+seemed larger in her arms and shoulders; they, with her head and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> face,
+were, he thought, the most vivid part of her&mdash;an effect which she
+produced deliberately, to impress him.</p>
+
+<p>Her whole body was not tremulous, but, rather, vibrant, a taut mechanism
+played on by the rage that possessed her. Her eyebrows, high on her
+forehead, reminded him of things that crawled. Her eyes, brilliant like
+clear ice with sunshine on it, were darting, furtive, always in motion.</p>
+
+<p>She did not look him squarely in the eye, but her eyes selected and
+bored into every part of his face; her glance played on his countenance.
+He could easily have imagined that it burned him physically in many
+places.</p>
+
+<p>"All this talk about Gene Russell's being guilty is stuff, bosh!" she
+continued. "Gene wouldn't hurt anybody. He couldn't! Wait until you see
+him!" Her lips curled momentarily to their thickened, wet sneer.
+"There's nothing to him&mdash;nothing! Mildred hated him; he bored her to
+death. Even I laughed at him. And this sheriff talks about the boy's
+having killed her!"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, she partially controlled her fury. He saw her eyes contract to
+the gleam of a new idea. She was silent a moment, while her vibrant,
+tense body swayed in front of him almost imperceptibly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p><p>When she spoke again, it was in her flat, constrained tone. He was
+impressed anew with her capacity for making her feeling subordinate to
+her intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>"She's a dangerous woman," he thought again.</p>
+
+<p>"You're working for Webster?"</p>
+
+<p>Her inquiry came after so slight a pause, and it was put to him in a
+manner so different from the unrestraint of her denunciation of Webster,
+that he felt as he would have done if he had been dealing with two
+women.</p>
+
+<p>"I've told you already," he said, "my only interest is in finding the
+real murderer. In that sense, I'm working for Webster&mdash;if he's
+innocent."</p>
+
+<p>"But he didn't hire you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>Seeing that he told the truth, she indulged herself in rage again. It
+was just that, Hastings thought; she took an actual, keen pleasure in
+giving vent to the anger that was in her. Relieved of the necessity of
+censoring her words and thoughts closely, she could say what she wanted
+to say.</p>
+
+<p>"He's guilty, and I'll prove it!" she defied the detective's disbelief.
+"I'll help to prove it. Guilty? I tell you he is&mdash;guilty as hell!"</p>
+
+<p>He made an abrupt departure, her shrill hatred ringing in his ears when
+he reached the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> street. He found it hard, too, to get her out of his
+eyes, even now&mdash;she had impressed herself so shockingly upon him. The
+picture of her floated in front of him, above the shimmering pavement,
+as if he still confronted her in all her unloveliness, the smooth, white
+face like a travesty on youth, the swift, darting eyes, the hard,
+straight lines of the lean figure, the cold deliberation of manner and
+movement.</p>
+
+<p>"She's incapable of grief!" he thought. "Terrible! She's terrible!"</p>
+
+<p>Lally drove him to his apartment on Fifteenth street, where the largest
+of three rooms served him as a combination library and office. There he
+kept his records, in a huge, old-fashioned safe; and there, also, he
+held his conferences, from time to time, with police chiefs and
+detectives from all parts of the country when they sought his help in
+their pursuit of criminals.</p>
+
+<p>The walls were lined with books from floor to ceiling. A large table in
+the centre of the room was stacked high with newspapers and magazines.
+Dusty papers and books were piled, too, on several chairs set against
+the bookcases, and on the floor in one corner was a pyramid of
+documents.</p>
+
+<p>"This place is like me," he explained to visitors; "it's loosely
+dressed."</p>
+
+<p>He sat down at the table and wrote <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>instructions for one of his two
+assistants, his best man, Hendricks. Russell's room must be searched and
+Russell interviewed&mdash;work for which Hastings felt that he himself could
+not spare the time. He gave Hendricks a second task: investigation of
+the financial standing of two people: Berne Webster and Mrs. Catherine
+Brace.</p>
+
+<p>He noted, with his customary kindness, in his memorandum to Hendricks:</p>
+
+<p>"Sunday's a bad day for this sort of work, but do the best you can.
+Report tomorrow morning."</p>
+
+<p>That arranged, he set out for Sloanehurst, to keep his promise to
+Lucille&mdash;he would be there for the inquest.</p>
+
+<p>On the way he reviewed matters:</p>
+
+<p>"Somehow, I got the idea that the Brace woman <i>knew</i> Russell hadn't
+killed her daughter. Funny, that is. How could she have known that? How
+can she know it now?</p>
+
+<p>"She's got the pivotal fact in this case. I felt it. I'm willing to bet
+she persuaded her daughter to pursue Webster. And things have gone
+'bust'&mdash;didn't come out as she thought they would. What was she after,
+money? That's exactly it! Exactly! Her daughter could hold up Webster,
+and Webster could hold up the Sloanes after his marriage."</p>
+
+<p>He whistled softly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p><p>"If she can prove that Webster should have married her daughter, that
+he's in need of anything like sixty-five thousand dollars&mdash;where does he
+get off? He gets off safely if the Brace woman ever sees fit to
+tell&mdash;what? I couldn't guess if my whittling hand depended on it." He
+grimaced his repugnance.</p>
+
+<p>"What a woman! A mania for wickedness&mdash;evil from head to foot,
+thoroughly. <i>She</i> wouldn't stick at murder&mdash;if she thought it safe.
+She'd do anything, say anything. Every word she uttered this morning had
+been rehearsed in her mind&mdash;with gestures, even. When I beat her, I beat
+this puzzle; that's sure."</p>
+
+<p>That he had to do with a puzzle, he had no manner of doubt. The very
+circumstances surrounding the discovery of the girl's body&mdash;Arthur
+Sloane flashing on the light in his room at a time when his being awake
+was so unusual that it frightened his daughter; Judge Wilton stumbling
+over the dead woman; young Webster doing the same thing in the same
+instant; the light reaching out to them at the moment when they bent
+down to touch the thing which their feet had encountered&mdash;all that
+shouted mystery to his experienced mind.</p>
+
+<p>He thought of Webster's pronouncement: "The thug, acting on the spur of
+the moment, with a blow in the dark and a getaway through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> the
+night&mdash;&mdash;" Here was reproduction of that in real life. Would people say
+that Webster had given himself away in advance? They might.</p>
+
+<p>And the weapon, what about that? It could have been manufactured in ten
+minutes. Crown had said over the wire that Russell's nail file was
+missing. What if Webster's, too, were missing? He would see&mdash;although he
+expected to uncover no such thing.</p>
+
+<p>He came, then, to Lucille's astounding idea, that her father must be
+"protected," because he was nervous and, being nervous, might incur the
+enmity of the authorities. He could not take that seriously. And yet the
+most fruitful imagination in the world could fabricate no motive for
+Arthur Sloane's killing a young woman he had never seen.</p>
+
+<p>Only Webster and Russell could be saddled with motives: Webster's,
+desperation, the savage determination to rid himself of the woman's
+pursuit; Russell's, unreasoning jealousy.</p>
+
+<p>So far as facts went, the crime lay between those two&mdash;and he could not
+shake off the impression that Mrs. Brace, shrilly asserting Russell's
+innocence, had known that she spoke the absolute truth.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE HOSTILITY OF MR. SLOANE</h3>
+
+<p>Delayed by a punctured tire, Hastings reached Sloanehurst when the
+inquest was well under way. He went into the house by a side door and
+found Lucille Sloane waiting for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you go to father at once?" she urged him.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" He saw that her anxiety had grown during his
+absence.</p>
+
+<p>"He's in one of his awfully nervous states. I hope you'll be very
+patient with him&mdash;make allowances. He doesn't seem to grasp the
+importance of your connection with the case; wants to ask questions.
+Won't you let me take you to him, now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, if I can be of any help. What do you want me to say to him?"</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, he was glad of the opportunity for the interview.
+He had long since discovered the futility of inquests in the uncovering
+of important evidence, and he had not intended to sit through this one.
+He wanted particularly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> to talk to Berne Webster, but Sloane also had to
+be questioned.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you might explain," she continued hurriedly, preceding him
+down the hall toward her father's room, "that you will do exactly what I
+asked you to do&mdash;see that the mysterious part of this terrible affair,
+if there is any mystery in it&mdash;see that it's cleared up promptly. Please
+tell him you'll act for us in dealing with newspaper reporters; that
+you'll help us, not annoy us, not annoy him."</p>
+
+<p>She had stopped at Sloane's door.</p>
+
+<p>"And you?" Hastings delayed her knock. "If they want you to testify, if
+Dr. Garnet calls for you, I think you'd better testify very frankly,
+tell them about the footsteps you heard."</p>
+
+<p>"I've already done that." She seemed embarrassed. "Father asked me to
+'phone Mr. Southard, Mr. Jeremy Southard, his lawyer, about it. I know I
+told you I wanted your advice about everything. I would have waited to
+ask you. But you were late. I had to take Mr. Southard's advice."</p>
+
+<p>"That's perfectly all right," he reassured her. "Mr. Southard advised
+you wisely.&mdash;Now, I'm going to ask your help. The guest-rooms
+upstairs&mdash;have the servants straightened them up this morning?"</p>
+
+<p>They had not, she told him. Excitement had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> quite destroyed their
+efficiency for the time being; they were at the parlour windows,
+listening, or waiting to be examined by the coroner.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I hoped," he said. "Won't you see that those rooms are left
+exactly as they are until I can have a look at them?" She nodded assent.
+"And say nothing about my speaking of it&mdash;absolutely nothing to anybody?
+It's vitally important."</p>
+
+<p>The door was opened by Sloane's man, Jarvis, who had in queer
+combination, Hastings thought, the salient aspects of an undertaker and
+an experienced pick-pocket. He was dismal of countenance and alert in
+movement, an efficient ghost, admirably appropriate to the twilit gloom
+of the room with its heavily shaded windows.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sloane was in bed, in the darkest corner.</p>
+
+<p>"Father," Lucille addressed him from the door-sill, "I've asked Mr.
+Hastings to talk to you about things. He's just back from Washington."</p>
+
+<p>"Shuddering saints!" said Mr. Sloane, not lifting his head from the
+pillows.</p>
+
+<p>Lucille departed. The ghostly Jarvis closed the door without so much as
+a click of the latch. Hastings advanced slowly toward the bed, his eyes
+not yet accustomed to the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"Shuddering, shivering, shaking saints!" Mr. Sloane exclaimed again, the
+words coming in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> slow, shrill tenor from his lips, as if with great
+exertion he reached up with something and pushed each one out of his
+mouth. "Sit down, Mr. Hastings, if I can control my nerves, and stand
+it. What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>His hostility to the caller was obvious. The evident and grateful
+interest with which the night before he had heard the detective's
+stories of crimes and criminals had changed now to annoyance at the very
+sight of him. As a raconteur, Mr. Hastings was quite the thing; as
+protector of the Sloane family's privacy and seclusion, he was a
+nuisance. Such was the impression Mr. Hastings received.</p>
+
+<p>At a loss to understand his host's frame of mind, he took a chair near
+the bed.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sloane stirred jerkily under his thin summer coverings.</p>
+
+<p>"A little light, Jarvis," he said peevishly. "Now, Mr. Hastings, what
+can I do for&mdash;tell you?"</p>
+
+<p>Jarvis put back a curtain.</p>
+
+<p>"Quivering and crucified martyrs!" the prostrate man burst forth. "I
+said a little, Jarvis! You drown my optic nerves in ink and, without a
+moment's warning, flood them with the glaring brilliancy of the noonday
+sun!" Jarvis half-drew the curtain. "Ah, that's better. Never more than
+an inch at a time, Jarvis. How many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> times have I told you that? Never
+give me a shock like that again; never more than an inch of light at a
+time. Frantic fiends! From cimmerian, abysmal darkness to Sahara-desert
+glare!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," said Jarvis, as if on the point of digging a grave&mdash;for
+himself. "Beg pardon, sir."</p>
+
+<p>He effaced himself, in shadows, somewhere behind Hastings, who seized
+the opportunity to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Sloane suggested that you wanted certain information. In fact, she
+asked me to see you."</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter? Oh, yes!" The prone body became semi-upright, leaned on an
+elbow. "Yes! What I want to know is, why&mdash;why, in the name of all the
+jumping angels, everybody seems to think there's a lot of mystery
+connected with this brutal, vulgar, dastardly crime! It passes my
+comprehension, utterly!&mdash;Jarvis, stop clicking your finger-nails
+together!" This with a note of exaggerated pleading. "You know I'm a
+nervous wreck, a total loss physically, and yet you stand there in the
+corner and indulge yourself wickedly, wickedly, in that infernal habit
+of yours of clicking your finger-nails! Mute and mutilated Christian
+martyrs!"</p>
+
+<p>He fell back among the pillows, breathing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> heavily, the perfect picture
+of exhaustion. Jarvis came near on soundless feet and applied a wet
+cloth to his master's temples.</p>
+
+<p>The old man regarded them both with unconcealed amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have to excuse me, Mr. Hastings, really, I can't be annoyed!"
+the wreck, somewhat revived, announced feebly. "All I said to my
+daughter, Miss Sloane, is what I say to you now: I see no reason why we
+should employ you, or indeed why you should be connected with this
+affair. You were my guest, here, at Sloanehurst. Unfortunately, some
+ruffian of whom we never heard, whose existence we never
+suspected&mdash;Jarvis, take off this counterpane; you're boiling me,
+parboiling me; my nerves are seething, simmering, stewing! Athletic
+devils! Have you no discrimination, Jarvis?&mdash;as I was saying, Mr.
+Hastings, somebody stabbed somebody else to death on my lawn,
+unfortunately marring your visit. But that's all. I can't see that we
+need you&mdash;thank you, nevertheless."</p>
+
+<p>The dismissal was unequivocal. Hastings got to his feet, his indignation
+all the greater through realization that he had been sent for merely to
+be flouted. And yet, this man's daughter had come to him literally with
+tears in her eyes, had begged him to help her, had said that money was
+the smallest of considerations. Moreover,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> he had accepted her
+employment, had made the definite agreement and promise. Apparently,
+Sloane was in no condition to act independently, and his daughter had
+known it, had hoped that he, Hastings, might soothe his silly mind, do
+away with his objections to assistance which she knew he needed.</p>
+
+<p>There was, also, the fact that Lucille believed her father unaccountably
+interested, if not implicated, in the crime. He could not get away from
+that impression. He was sure he had interpreted correctly the girl's
+anxiety the night before. She was working to save her father&mdash;from
+something. And she believed Berne Webster innocent.</p>
+
+<p>These were some of the considerations which, flashing through his mind,
+prevented his giving way to righteous wrath. He most certainly would not
+allow Arthur Sloane to eliminate him from the situation. He sat down
+again.</p>
+
+<p>The nervous wreck made himself more understandable.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps, Jarvis," he said, shrinking to one side like a man in sudden
+pain, "the gentleman can't see how to reach that large door. A little
+more light, half an inch-not a fraction more!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't bother," Hastings told Jarvis. "I'm not going quite yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Leaping crime!" moaned Mr. Sloane, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>digging deeper into the pillows,
+"Frantic imps!"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope I won't distress you too much," the detective apologized grimly,
+"if I ask you a few questions. Fact is, I must. I'm investigating the
+circumstances surrounding what may turn out to be a baffling crime, and,
+irrespective of your personal wishes, Mr. Sloane, I can't let go of it.
+This is a serious business&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The sick man sat up in bed with surprising abruptness.</p>
+
+<p>"Serious business! Serious saints!&mdash;Jarvis, the eau de cologne!&mdash;You
+think I don't know it? They make a slaughter-house of my lawn. They make
+a morgue of my house. They hold a coroner's inquest in my parlour.
+They're in there now&mdash;live people like ravens, and one dead one. They
+cheat the undertaker to plague me. They wreck me all over again. They
+give me a new exhaustion of the nerves. They frighten my daughter to
+death.&mdash;Jarvis, the smelling salts. Shattered saints, Jarvis! Hurry!
+Thanks.&mdash;They rig up lies which, Tom Wilton, my old and trusted friend,
+tells me, will incriminate Berne Webster. They sit around a corpse in my
+house and chatter by the hour. You come in here and make Jarvis nearly
+blind me.</p>
+
+<p>"And, then, then, by the holy, agile angels! you think you have to
+persuade me it's a serious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> business! Never fear! I know it!&mdash;Jarvis,
+the bromide, quick! Before I know it, they'll drive me to
+opiates.&mdash;Serious business! Shrivelled and shrinking saints!"</p>
+
+<p>Arms clasped around his legs, knees pressed against his chin, Mr. Sloane
+trembled and shook until Jarvis, more agile than the angels of whom his
+employer had spoken, gave him the dose of bromides.</p>
+
+<p>Still, Mr. Hastings did not retire.</p>
+
+<p>"I was going to say," he resumed, in a tone devoid of compassion, "I
+couldn't drop this thing now. I may be able to find the murderer; and
+you may be able to help me."</p>
+
+<p>"I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it Russell? He's among the ravens now, in my parlour. Wilton told
+me the sheriff was certain Russell was the man. Murdered martyrs!
+Sacrificed saints! Can't you let a guilty man hang when he comes forward
+and puts the rope around his own worthless neck?"</p>
+
+<p>"If Russell's guilty," Hastings said, glad of the information that the
+accused man was then at Sloanehurst, "I hope we can develop the
+necessary evidence against him. But&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The necessary&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me finish, Mr. Sloane, if you please!" The old man was determined
+to disregard the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> other's signs of suffering. He did not believe that
+they were anything but assumed, the exaggerated camouflage which he
+usually employed as an excuse for idleness. "But, if Russell isn't
+guilty, there are facts which may help me to find the murderer. And you
+may have valuable information concerning them."</p>
+
+<p>"Sobbing, sorrowing saints!" lamented Mr. Sloane, but his trembling
+ceased; he was closely attentive. "A cigarette, Jarvis, a cigarette!
+Nerves will be served.&mdash;I suppose the easiest way is to submit. Go on."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall ask you only two or three questions," Hastings said.</p>
+
+<p>The jackknife-like figure in the bed shuddered its repugnance.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been told, Mr. Sloane, that Mr. Webster has been in great need of
+money, as much as sixty-five thousand dollars. In fact, according to my
+information, he needs it now."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, did he kill the woman, expecting to find it in her stocking?"</p>
+
+<p>"The significance of his being hard-pressed, for so large an amount,"
+the old man went on, ignoring the sarcasm, "is in the further charge
+that Miss Brace was trying to make him marry her, that he should have
+married her, that he killed her in order to be free to marry your
+daughter&mdash;for money."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p><p>"My daughter! For money!" shrilled Sloane, neck elongated, head thrust
+forward, eyes bulging. "Leaping and whistling cherubim!" For all his
+outward agitation, he seemed to Hastings in thorough command of his
+logical faculties; it was more than possible, the detective thought,
+that the expletives were time-killers, until he could decide what to
+say. "It's ridiculous, absurd! Why, sir, you reason as loosely as you
+dress! Are you trying to prostrate me further with impossible theories?
+Webster marry my daughter for money, for sixty-five thousand dollars? He
+knows I'd let him have any amount he wanted. I'd give him the money if
+it meant his peace of mind and Lucille's happiness.&mdash;Dumb and dancing
+devils! Jarvis, a little whiskey! I'm worn out, worn out!"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ever tell Mr. Webster of the extent of your generous feeling
+toward him, Mr. Sloane&mdash;in dollars and cents?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; it wasn't necessary. He knows how fond of him I am."</p>
+
+<p>"And you would let him have sixty-five thousand dollars&mdash;if he had to
+have it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would, sir!&mdash;today, this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, one other thing, Mr. Sloane, and I'm through. It's barely possible
+that there was some connection between this murder and a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>letter which
+came to Sloanehurst yesterday afternoon, a letter in an oblong grey
+envelope. Did&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The nervous man went to pieces again, beat with his open palms on the
+bed covering.</p>
+
+<p>"Starved and stoned evangels, Jarvis! Quit balling your feet! You stand
+there and see me harassed to the point of extinction by a lot of crazy
+queries, and you indulge yourself in that infernal weakness of yours of
+balling your feet! Leaping angels! You know how acute my hearing is; you
+know the noise of your sock against the sole of your shoe when you ball
+your feet is the most exquisite torture to me! A little whiskey, Jarvis!
+Quick!" He spoke now in a weak, almost inaudible voice to Hastings: "No;
+I got no such letter. I saw no such letter." He sank slowly back to a
+prone posture.</p>
+
+<p>"I was going to remind you," the detective continued, "that I brought
+the five o'clock mail in. Getting off the car, I met the rural carrier;
+he asked me to bring in the mail, saving him the few steps to your box.
+All there was consisted of a newspaper and one letter. I recall the
+shape and colour of the envelope&mdash;oblong, grey. I did not, of course,
+look at the address. I handed the mail to you when you met me on the
+porch."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sloane, raising himself on one elbow to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> take the restoring drink
+from Jarvis, looked across the glass at his cross-examiner.</p>
+
+<p>"I put the mail in the basket on the hall table," he said in high-keyed
+endeavour to express withering contempt. "If it had been for me, Jarvis
+would have brought it to me later. I seldom carry my reading glasses
+about the house with me."</p>
+
+<p>Hastings, subjecting the pallid Jarvis to severe scrutiny, asked him:</p>
+
+<p>"Was that grey letter addressed to&mdash;whom?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't see it," replied Jarvis, scarcely polite.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet, it's your business to inspect and deliver the household's
+mail?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"What became of it, then&mdash;the grey envelope?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure I can't say, sir, unless some one got it before I reached the
+mail basket."</p>
+
+<p>Hastings stood up. Interrogation of both master and man had given him
+nothing save the inescapable conviction that both of them resented his
+questioning and would do nothing to help him. The reason for this
+opposition he could not grasp, but it was a fact, challenging his
+analysis. Arthur Sloane rejected his proffered help in the pursuit of
+the man who had brought murder to the doors of Sloanehurst.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> Why? Was
+this his method of hiding facts in his possession?</p>
+
+<p>Hastings questioned him again:</p>
+
+<p>"Your waking up at that unusual hour last night&mdash;was it because of a
+noise outside?"</p>
+
+<p>The neurasthenic, once more recumbent, succeeded in voicing faint denial
+of having heard any noises, outside or inside. Nor had he been aware of
+the murder until called by Judge Wilton. He had turned on his light to
+find the smelling-salts which, for the first time in six years, Jarvis
+had failed to leave on his bed-table,&mdash;terrible and ill-trained apes!
+Couldn't he be left in peace?</p>
+
+<p>The hall door opened, admitting Judge Wilton. The newcomer, with a word
+of greeting to Hastings, sat down on the bedside and put a hand on
+Sloane's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Hastings turned to leave the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Any news?" the judge asked him.</p>
+
+<p>"I've just been asking Mr. Sloane that," Hastings said, in a tone that
+made Wilton look swiftly at his friend's face.</p>
+
+<p>"I told Arthur this morning," he said, "how lucky he was that you'd
+promised Lucille to go into this thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Apparently," Hastings retorted drily, "he's unconvinced of the extent
+of his good fortune."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p><p>Mr. Sloane, quivering from head to foot, mourned softly: "Unfathomable
+fate!"</p>
+
+<p>Wilton, his rugged features softening to frank amusement, stared a
+moment in silence at Sloane's thin face, at the deeply lined forehead
+topped by stringy grey hair.</p>
+
+<p>"See here, Arthur," he protested, nodding Hastings an invitation to
+remain; "you know as much about crime as Hastings and I. If you've
+thought about this murder at all, you must see what it is. If Russell
+isn't guilty&mdash;if he's not the man, that crime was committed shrewdly,
+with forethought. And it was a devilish thing&mdash;devilish!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what of it?" Sloane protested shrilly, not opening his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Take my advice. Quit antagonizing Mr. Hastings. Be thankful that he's
+here, that he's promised to run down the guilty man."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sloane turned his face to the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"A little whiskey, Jarvis," he said softly. "I'm exhausted, Tom. Leave
+me alone."</p>
+
+<p>Wilton waved his hand, indicative of the futility of further argument.</p>
+
+<p>"Judge," announced Hastings, at the door, "I'll ask you a question I put
+to Mr. Sloane. Did you receive, or see, a letter in an oblong, grey
+envelope in yesterday afternoon's mail?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p><p>"No. I never get any mail while I'm here for a week-end."</p>
+
+<p>Wilton followed the detective into the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you're not going to give up the case, Hastings. You won't pay
+any attention to Arthur's unreasonable attitude, will you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," Hastings said, still indignant. "I made my bargain with
+his daughter. I'll see her."</p>
+
+<p>"If you can't manage any other way, I&mdash;or she&mdash;will get any information
+you want from Arthur."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope to keep on. It's a big thing, I think." The old man was again
+intent on solving the problem. "Tell me, judge; do you think Berne
+Webster's guilty?" Seeing the judge's hesitance, he supplemented: "I
+mean, did you notice anything last night, in his conduct, that would
+indicate guilt&mdash;or fear?"</p>
+
+<p>Later, when other developments gave this scene immense importance,
+Hastings, in reviewing it, remembered the curious little flicker of the
+judge's eyelids preceding his reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Absolutely not," he declared, with emphasis. "Are you working on
+that"&mdash;he hesitated hardly perceptibly&mdash;"idea?"</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MAN WHO RAN AWAY</h3>
+
+<p>Ancestors of the old family from whom Arthur Sloane had purchased this
+colonial mansion eight years ago still looked out of their gilded frames
+on the parlour walls, their high-bred calm undisturbed, their
+aristocratic eyes unwidened, by the chatter and clatter of the strangers
+within their gates. Hastings noticed that even the mob and mouthing of a
+coroner's inquest failed to destroy the ancient atmosphere and charm of
+the great room. He smiled. The pictured grandeur of a bygone age, the
+brocaded mahogany chairs, the tall French mirrors&mdash;all these made an
+incongruous setting for the harsh machinery of crime-inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>The detective had completed his second and more detailed search of the
+guest-rooms in time to hear the words and study the face of the last
+witness on Dr. Garnet's list. That was Eugene Russell.</p>
+
+<p>"One of life's persimmons&mdash;long before frost!" Hastings thought, making
+swift <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>appraisal. "A boneless spine&mdash;chin like a sheep&mdash;brave as a
+lamb."</p>
+
+<p>Russell could not conceal his agitation. In fact, he referred to it.
+Fear, he explained in a low, husky voice to the coroner and the jury,
+was not a part of his emotions. His only feeling was sorrow, varied now
+and then by the embarrassment he felt as a result of the purely personal
+and very intimate facts which he had to reveal.</p>
+
+<p>His one desire was to be frank, he declared, his pale blue eyes roving
+from place to place, his nervous fingers incessantly playing with his
+thin, uncertain lips. This mania for truthfulness, he asserted, was
+natural, in that it offered him the one sure path to freedom and the
+establishment of his innocence of all connection with the murder of the
+woman he had loved.</p>
+
+<p>He was, he testified, thirty-one years old, a clerk in a real-estate
+dealer's office and a native of Washington. Mildred Brace had been
+employed for a few weeks by the same firm for which he worked, and it
+was there that he had met her. Although she had refused to marry him on
+the ground that his salary was inadequate for the needs of two people,
+she had encouraged his attentions. Sometimes, they had quarrelled.</p>
+
+<p>"Speak up, Mr. Russell!" Dr. Garnet <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>directed. "And take your time. Let
+the jury hear every word you utter."</p>
+
+<p>After that, the witness abandoned his attempt to exclude the family
+portraits from his confidence, but his voice shook.</p>
+
+<p>"Conductor Barton is right," he said, responding to the coroner's
+interrogation. "I did come out on his car, the car that gets to the
+Sloanehurst stop at ten-thirty, and I did leave the car at the
+Ridgecrest stop, a quarter of a mile from here. I was following
+Mil&mdash;Miss Brace. I saw her leave her apartment house, the Walman. I
+followed her to the transfer station at the bridge, and I saw her take
+the car there. I followed on the next car. I knew where she was going,
+knew she was going to Sloanehurst."</p>
+
+<p>"How did you know that, Mr. Russell?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean I was certain of it. She'd told me Mr. Berne Webster, the lawyer
+she'd been working for, was out here spending the week-end; and I knew
+she was coming out to meet him."</p>
+
+<p>"Why did she do that?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Russell displayed pathetic embarrassment and confusion before he
+answered that. He plucked at his lower lip with spasmodic fingers. His
+eyes were downcast. He attempted a self-deprecatory smile which ended in
+an unpleasant grimace.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p><p>"She wouldn't say. But it was because she was in love with him."</p>
+
+<p>"And you were jealous of Mr. Webster?"</p>
+
+<p>"We-ell&mdash;yes, sir; that's about it, I guess."</p>
+
+<p>"Did Miss Brace tell you she was coming to Sloanehurst?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir. I suspected it."</p>
+
+<p>"And watched her movements?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"And followed her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you think she was in love with Mr. Webster, Mr. Russell? And
+please give us a direct answer. You can understand the importance of
+what you're about to say."</p>
+
+<p>"I do. I thought so because she had told me that he was in love with
+her, and because of her grief and anger when he dismissed her from his
+office. And she did everything to make me think so, except declaring it
+outright. She did that because she knew I hated to think she was in love
+with him."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Mr. Russell. Now, tell us what happened during
+your&mdash;ah&mdash;shadowing Miss Brace the night she was killed."</p>
+
+<p>"I got off the car at Ridgecrest and walked toward Sloanehurst. It was
+raining then, pretty hard. I thought she had made an appointment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> to
+meet Mr. Webster somewhere in the grounds here. It was a quarter to
+eleven when I got to the little side-gate that opens on the lawn out
+there on the north side of the house."</p>
+
+<p>"How did you know that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I looked at my watch then. It's got a luminous dial."</p>
+
+<p>"You were then at the gate near where she was found, dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And she was at the gate."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! So you saw her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I saw her. When I lifted the latch of the gate, she came toward me.
+There was a heavy drizzle then. I thought she had been leaning on the
+fence a few feet away. She whispered, sharp and quick, 'Who's that?' I
+knew who she was, right off. I said, 'Gene.'</p>
+
+<p>"She caught hold of my arm and shook it. She told me, still whispering,
+if I didn't get away from there, if I didn't go back to town, she'd
+raise an alarm, accuse me of trying to kill her&mdash;or she'd kill me. She
+pressed something against my cheek. It felt like a knife, although I
+couldn't see, for the darkness."</p>
+
+<p>The witness paused and licked his dry lips. He was breathing fast, and
+his restless eyes had a hunted look. The people in the room leaned
+farther toward him, some believing, some doubting him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p><p>Hastings thought: "He's scared stiff, but telling the truth&mdash;so far."</p>
+
+<p>"All right; what next?" asked Dr. Garnet, involuntarily lowering his
+voice to Russell's tone.</p>
+
+<p>"I accused her of having an appointment to meet Webster there. I got
+mad. I hate to have to tell all this, gentlemen; but I want to tell the
+truth. I told her she was a fool to run after a man who'd thrown her
+over.</p>
+
+<p>"'It's none of your look-out what I do!' she told me. 'You get away from
+here, now&mdash;this minute! You'll be sorry if you don't!' There was
+something about her that frightened me, mad as I was. I'd never seen her
+like that before."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" Garnet urged him.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought she would kill me, or somebody else would, and she knew it. I
+got the idea that she was like a crazy woman, out of her head about
+Webster, ready to do anything desperate, anything wild. I can't explain
+it any better than that."</p>
+
+<p>"And did you leave her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"At once?"</p>
+
+<p>"Practically. A sort of panic got hold of me. I can't explain it,
+really."</p>
+
+<p>Russell, seeking an illuminative phrase, gave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> vent to a long-drawn,
+anxious sigh. He appeared to feel no shame for his flight. His fear was
+that he would not be believed.</p>
+
+<p>"Just as she told me a second time to leave her, I thought I heard
+somebody coming toward us, a slushy, dull sound, like heavy footsteps on
+the wet grass. Mildred's manner, her voice, had already scared me.</p>
+
+<p>"When I heard those footsteps, I turned and ran. My heart was in my
+mouth. I ran out to the road and back toward Washington. I ran as fast
+as I could. Twice I fell on my hands and knees. I can't tell you exactly
+how it was, why it was. I just knew something terrible would happen if I
+stayed there. I never had a feeling like that before. I was more afraid
+of her than I was of the man coming toward us."</p>
+
+<p>Members of the jury pushed back their chairs, were audible with subdued
+exclamations and long breaths, relieved of the nervous tension to which
+Russell's story of the encounter at the gate had lifted them. They were,
+however, prejudiced against him, a fact which he grasped.</p>
+
+<p>One of them asked him:</p>
+
+<p>"Can you tell us why you followed her out here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" Russell echoed, like a man seeking time for deliberation.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p><p>"Yes. What did you think you'd do after you'd overtaken her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Persuade her to go back home with me. I wanted to save her from doing
+anything foolish&mdash;anything like that, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"But, from what you've told us here this morning, it seems you never had
+much influence on her behaviour. Isn't that true?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it is.&mdash;But," Russell added eagerly, "I can prove I had no
+idea of hurting her, if that's what you're hinting at. I can prove I
+never struck her. At twenty minutes past eleven last night I was four
+miles from here. Mr. Otis, a Washington commission merchant, picked me
+up in his automobile, six miles outside of Washington and took me into
+town. I couldn't have made that four miles on foot, no matter how I ran,
+in approximately fifteen or twenty minutes.</p>
+
+<p>"It's been proved that she was struck down after eleven anyway.&mdash;You
+said the condition of the body showed that, doctor.&mdash;You see, I would
+have had to make the four miles in less than twenty minutes&mdash;an
+impossibility. You see?"</p>
+
+<p>His eagerness to win their confidence put a disagreeable note, almost a
+whimper, into his voice. It grated on Dr. Garnet.</p>
+
+<p>It affected Hastings more definitely.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p><p>"Now," he decided, "he's lying&mdash;about something. But what?" He noted a
+change in Russell's face, a suggestion of craftiness, the merest shadow
+of slyness over his general attitude of anxiety. And yet, this part of
+his story seemed straight enough.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Garnet's next question brought out the fact that it would be
+corroborated.</p>
+
+<p>"This Mr. Otis, Mr. Russell; where is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Right there, by the window," the witness answered, with a smug smile
+which gave him a still more unprepossessing look.</p>
+
+<p>Jury and spectators turned toward the man at the window. They saw a
+clean-shaven, alert-looking person of middle age, who nodded slightly in
+Russell's direction as if endorsing his testimony. There seemed no
+possible grounds for doubting whatever Otis might say. Hastings at once
+accepted him as genuine, an opinion which, it was obvious, was shared by
+the rest of the assemblage.</p>
+
+<p>Russell sensed the change of sentiment toward himself. Until now, it had
+been a certainty that he would be held for the murder. But his producing
+an outsider, incontestably a trustworthy man, to establish the truth of
+his statement that he had been four miles away from the scene of the
+crime a quarter of an hour after it had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> been committed&mdash;that was
+something in his favour which could not be gainsaid.</p>
+
+<p>Granting even that he had had an automobile at his disposal&mdash;a
+supposition for which there was no foundation&mdash;his alibi would still
+have been good, in view of the rain and the fact that one of the four
+miles in question was "dirt road."</p>
+
+<p>With the realization of this, the jury swung back to the animus it had
+felt against Webster, the incredulity with which it had received his
+statement that there had been between him and the dead woman no closer
+relationship than that of employer and employe.</p>
+
+<p>Webster, seated near the wall furthest from the jury, felt the inquiry
+of many eyes upon him, but he was unmoved, kept his gaze on Russell.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Garnet, announcing that he would ask Mr. Otis to testify a little
+later, handed Russell the weapon with which Mildred Brace had been
+murdered.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever seen that dagger before?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Russell said he had not. Reminded that Sheriff Crown had testified to
+searching the witness's room and had discovered that a nail file was
+missing from his dressing case, a file which, judging by other articles
+in the case, must have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> been the same size as the one used in making the
+amateur dagger, Russell declared that his file had been lost for three
+years. He had left it in a hotel room on the only trip he had ever taken
+to New York.</p>
+
+<p>He gave way to Mr. Otis, who described himself as a commission merchant
+of Washington. Returning from a tour to Lynchburg, Virginia, he said, he
+had been hailed last night by a man in the road and had agreed to take
+him into town, a ride of six miles. Reaching Washington shortly before
+midnight, he had dropped his passenger at Eleventh and F streets.</p>
+
+<p>"Who was this passenger?" inquired Garnet.</p>
+
+<p>"He told me," said Otis, "his name was Eugene Russell. I gave him my
+name. That explains how he was able to find me this morning. When he
+told me how he was situated, I agreed to come over here and give you
+gentlemen the facts."</p>
+
+<p>"Notice anything peculiar about Mr. Russell last night?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I think not."</p>
+
+<p>"Was he agitated, disturbed?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was out of breath. And he commented on that himself, said he'd been
+walking fast. Oh, yes! He was bareheaded; and he explained that&mdash;said
+the rain had ruined a cheap straw hat he had been wearing; the glue had
+run out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> of the straw and down his neck, he had thrown the hat away."</p>
+
+<p>"And the time? When did you pick him up?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was twenty minutes past eleven o'clock. When I stopped, I glanced at
+my machine clock; I carry a clock just above my speedometer."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Otis was positive in his statements. He realized, he said, that his
+words might relieve one man of suspicion and bring it upon another.
+Unless he had been absolutely certain of his facts, he would not have
+stated them. He was sure, beyond the possibility of doubt, that he had
+made no mistake when he looked at his automobile clock; it was running
+when he stopped and when he reached Washington; yes, it was an accurate
+timepiece.</p>
+
+<p>Russell's alibi was established. His defence appealed to the jurymen as
+unassailable. When, after a conference of less than half an hour, they
+brought in a verdict that Mildred Brace had been murdered by a thrust of
+the "nail-file dagger" in the hands of a person unknown, nobody in the
+room was surprised.</p>
+
+<p>And nobody was blind to the fact that the freeing of Eugene Russell
+seriously questioned the innocence of Berne Webster.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2>
+
+<h3>THE BREAKING DOWN OF WEBSTER</h3>
+
+<p>Hastings, sprawling comfortably in a low chair by the south window in
+the music room, stopped his whittling when Berne Webster came in with
+Judge Wilton. "Meddlesome Mike!" thought the detective. "I sent for
+Webster."</p>
+
+<p>"Berne asked me to come with him," the judge explained his presence at
+once. "We've talked things over; he thought I might help him bring out
+every detail&mdash;jog his memory, if necessary."</p>
+
+<p>Hastings did not protest the arrangement. He saw, almost immediately,
+that Webster had come with no intention of giving him hearty
+cooperation. The motive for this lack of frankness he could not
+determine. It was enough that he felt the younger man's veiled
+antagonism and appreciated the fact that Wilton accompanied him in the
+r&ocirc;le of protector.</p>
+
+<p>"If I'm to get anything worth while out of this talk," he decided, "I've
+got to mix up my delivery, shuffle the cards, spring first one thing and
+then another at him&mdash;bewilder him."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p><p>He proceeded with that definite design: at an opportune time, he would
+guide the narrative, take it out of Webster's hands, and find out what
+he wanted to know, not merely what the young lawyer wanted to tell. He
+recognized the necessity of breaking down the shell of self-control that
+overlaid the suspected man's uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>That it was only a shell, he felt sure. Webster, leaning an elbow
+lightly on the piano, looked down at him out of anxious eyes, and
+continually passed his right hand over his smooth, dark-brown hair from
+forehead to crown, a mechanical gesture of his when perplexed.</p>
+
+<p>His smile, too, was forced, hardly more than a slight, fixed twist of
+the lips, as if he strove to advertise his ability to laugh at danger.
+His customary dash, a pleasing levity of manner, was gone, giving place
+to a suggestion of strain, so that he seemed always on the alert against
+himself, determined to edit in advance his answer to every question.</p>
+
+<p>Wilton had chosen a chair which placed him directly opposite Hastings
+and at the same time enabled him to watch Webster. He was smoking a
+cigar, and, through the haze that floated up just then from his lips, he
+gave the detective a long, searching look, to which Hastings paid no
+attention.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p><p>Webster talked nearly twenty minutes, explaining his eagerness to be
+"thoroughly frank as to every detail," reviewing the evidence brought
+out by the inquest, and criticising the action of the jury, but
+producing nothing new. Occasionally he left the piano and paced the
+floor, smoking interminably, lighting the fresh cigarette from the stub
+of the old, obviously strung to the limit of his nervous strength.
+Hastings detected a little twitching of the muscles at the corners of
+his mouth, and the too frequent winking of his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Judge Wilton had told him, Webster continued, of Mrs. Brace's charge
+that he wanted to marry Miss Sloane because of financial pressure; there
+was not a word of truth in it; he had already arranged for a loan to
+make that payment when it fell due. He was, however, aware of his
+unenviable position, and he wanted to give the detective every
+assistance possible, in that way assuring his own prompt relief from
+embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>By this time, Hastings had mapped out his line of questioning, his
+assault on Webster's reticence.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the right idea!" he said, getting to his feet. "Let's go to
+work."</p>
+
+<p>They saw the change in him. Instead of the genial, drawling, slow-moving
+old fellow who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> had seemed thankful for anything he might chance to
+hear, they were confronted now by an aroused, quick-thinking man whose
+words came from him with a sharp, clipped-off effect, and whose
+questions scouted the whole field of their possible and probable
+information. He stood leaning his elbows on the other end of the piano,
+facing Webster across the polished length of its broad top. His
+dominance of the night before, in the library, had returned.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Mr. Webster," he began, innocent of threat, "as things stack up at
+present, only two people had the semblance of a motive for killing
+Mildred Brace&mdash;either Eugene Russell killed her out of jealousy of you;
+or you killed her to silence her demands. Do you see that?"</p>
+
+<p>He had put back his head a little and was peering at Webster under his
+spectacle-rims, down the line of his nose. He saw how the other fought
+down the impulse to deny, hesitating before answering, with a laugh on a
+high note, like derision:</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose that's what a lot of people will say."</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely. Now, I've just had a talk with this Russell&mdash;caught him
+after the inquest. I believe there's something rotten about that alibi
+of his; but I couldn't shake him; and the Otis testimony's sound. So
+we'll have to quit <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>counting on Russell's proving his own guilt. We've
+got that little job on our hands, and the best way to handle it is to
+prove your innocence. See that?"</p>
+
+<p>The bow with which Webster acknowledged this statement was a curious
+mingling of grace and mockery. The detective ignored it.</p>
+
+<p>"And," he continued, "there's only one way for you to come whole out of
+this muddle&mdash;frankness. I'm working for you; you know that. Tell me
+everything you know, and we've got a chance to win. The innocent man who
+tries to twist black into white is an innocent fool." He looked swiftly
+to Wilton, who was leaning far back in his chair, head lolling slowly
+from side to side, the picture of indifference. "Isn't that so, judge?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite," Wilton agreed, pausing to remove his cigar from his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, it's so," Webster said curtly. "I've just told you so.
+That's why I've decided&mdash;the judge and I have talked it over&mdash;to give
+you something in confidence."</p>
+
+<p>"One moment!" Hastings warned him. "Maybe, I won't take it in
+confidence&mdash;if it's something incriminating you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; you've phrased that unfortunately, Berne," the judge put in,
+tilting his head on the chair-back to meet the detective's look.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p><p>Webster was nonplussed. Apparently, his surprise came from the judge's
+remark rather than from the detective's refusal to assume the r&ocirc;le of
+confidant. Hastings inferred that Wilton, agreeing beforehand to the
+proposal being advanced, had changed his mind after entering the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Hastings is right," the judge concluded; "even if he's on your side,
+you can't expect him to be tied up blind that way by a suspected
+man&mdash;and you're just that, Berne."</p>
+
+<p>Seeing Webster's uncertainty, Hastings took another course.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I know what you're talking about, Mr. Webster," he said,
+matter-of-fact. "Your nail-file's missing from your dressing
+case&mdash;disappeared since yesterday morning."</p>
+
+<p>"You know that!" Berne flashed, suddenly angry. "And you're holding it
+over me!"</p>
+
+<p>Open hostility was in every feature of his face; his lips twitched to
+the sharp intake of his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you look at it another way?" the old man countered quickly.
+"If I'd told the coroner about it&mdash;if I'd told him also that the size of
+that nail-file, judging from the rest of the dressing case, matched that
+of the one used for the blade of the dagger, matched it as well as
+Russell's&mdash;what then?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p><p>"He's right, Berne," Wilton cautioned again. "He's taken the friendly
+course."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Several years ago," Hastings goaded, so that Webster pivoted on his
+heel to face him; "you lost yours when?&mdash;last night?&mdash;this morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know! I noticed its absence this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"There you are!&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Webster answered, half-sullen.</p>
+
+<p>Hastings changed the subject again.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you know Mildred Brace intended to clear out, leave Washington,
+today?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no!" Webster shot that out in genuine surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"I got it from Russell," Hastings informed, and went at once to another
+topic.</p>
+
+<p>"And that brings us to the letter. Judge Wilton tell you about that?"</p>
+
+<p>Webster was lighting a cigarette, with difficulty holding the fire of
+the old one to the end<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> of the new. The operation seemed to entail hard
+labour for him.</p>
+
+<p>"In the grey envelope?" he responded, drawing on the cigarette. "Yes. I
+didn't get it."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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"&mdash;Hastings stopped, at the far end of his pacing, and looked hard
+at Webster&mdash;"it was addressed to you."</p>
+
+<p>Webster, again with his queer, high-pitched laugh, like derision, threw
+back his head and took two long strides toward the centre of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"That would be Russell's game, wouldn't it?" he retorted, at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Brace told me the same thing," Hastings said quietly, flashing a
+look at Wilton and back to the other.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>He trembled like a man with a chill. Hastings gave him no time to
+recover himself.</p>
+
+<p>"You know Mrs. Brace, then? Know her well?" he pressed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well enough!" Webster retorted with hot repugnance. "Well enough,
+although I never had but one conversation with her&mdash;if you may call that
+bedlam wildness a conversation. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> 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&mdash;understand
+what I mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly," agreed Hastings.</p>
+
+<p>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!"</p>
+
+<p>But he hurried the inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"So you think she lied about that letter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course!" Webster laughed on a high note. "Next, I suppose, she'll
+produce the letter."</p>
+
+<p>"She can't very well do that."</p>
+
+<p>Something in his voice alarmed the suspected man.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Hastings smiled.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></p><p>"What do you mean?" Webster asked again, his voice lowered, and came a
+step nearer to the detective.</p>
+
+<p>Hastings took a piece of paper from his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's the flap of the grey envelope," he said, as if that was all the
+information he meant to impart.</p>
+
+<p>Webster urged him, with eyes and voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"And on the back of it is some of Mildred Brace's handwriting."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>fireplace, behind the screen, in your room upstairs."</p>
+
+<p>He paused, looking toward the door, his attention caught by a noise in
+the hall.</p>
+
+<p>Webster laughed, on the high, derisive note. He was noticeably pale.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, man!" Judge Wilton said, harsh and imperious. "Can't you see the
+boy's suffering? What's written on it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What difference does it make&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"This letter incident can't be waved away," Hastings, without handing
+over the scrap of envelope, proceeded in even, measured tones&mdash;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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> do. Consider what you're up against. You&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Her mother and her closest friend, her would-be fianc&eacute;, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> 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&mdash;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&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Wilton intervened again.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> the Sloane
+family&mdash;at least, of Miss Lucille Sloane! Why's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me what's on that paper," Webster said hoarsely, as if he had not
+heard the colloquy of the other two.</p>
+
+<p>He held up a trembling hand, but without taking a step. He still swayed,
+like a man dangled on strings, against the piano.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; tell him!" urged Wilton.</p>
+
+<p>Hastings handed Webster the envelope flap. Instead of looking at it,
+Webster let it drop on the piano.</p>
+
+<p>"One of the words," Hastings said, "is 'pursuit.' The other two are
+uncompleted."</p>
+
+<p>"And it's her handwriting, the daughter's?" Wilton said.</p>
+
+<p>"Beyond a doubt."</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"Then, I'm in desperate shape!"</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>The effect on the collapsing man was, in a way,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;you
+know," he hesitated, frowning, "if I'd killed the woman, I couldn't have
+acted the coward more thoroughly."</p>
+
+<p>Hastings went through with what he wanted to say:</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>Webster was passing his hand across his hair now, and breathing in a
+deep, gusty fashion.</p>
+
+<p>"Not the faintest," he replied, hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;particularly you, Webster&mdash;tell me what
+you know. It's your own affair&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear sir&mdash;&mdash;" Judge Wilton began.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p><p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>He was fine in his intensity. Astounded by his vehemence, the two men he
+addressed were silent, meeting his keen and steady scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"You know my position now," he added, no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"Threats?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Judge Wilton tried to placate him:</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see what your complaint is, Hastings. We&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Save for the one, gurgling outcry, no word<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2>
+
+<h3>THE WHISPERED CONFERENCE</h3>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"That is," he explained, "for three or four days&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have a nurse out to look after him. Miss Sloane has volunteered,
+but she has troubles of her own."</p>
+
+<p>Judge Wilton took the news to Hastings, who was on the front porch,
+whittling, waiting to see Lucille before returning to Washington.</p>
+
+<p>"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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> rather
+roughly. That sort of questioning, tantalizing, keeping a man on
+tenterhooks, knocks the metal out of a high-strung temperament like his.
+I don't mind telling you it had me pretty well worked up."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry it knocked him out," Hastings said. "All I wanted was the
+facts. He wasn't frank with me."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>The old man was unconvinced, and showed it.</p>
+
+<p>"Suspicion doesn't usually knock a man into a cocked hat&mdash;unless there's
+something to base it on," he contended.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Hastings, looking up from the intricate pattern he was carving,
+challenged the judge:</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>In the inconsiderable pause that followed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> 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:</p>
+
+<p>"That's going far afield, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Hastings smiled in return: "Maybe so, but it's a possibility&mdash;and
+possibilities have to be dealt with."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"It didn't matter at all," Hastings matched Wilton's cordial tone; "and
+I appreciate your offer, judge. Suppose you tell me anything that occurs
+to you, anything that will throw light on this case any time; and I'll
+act as go-between for you with the authorities&mdash;if necessary."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to do the talking for this family and its friends. I can work
+better if I can handle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> things myself. The half of my job is to save the
+Sloanes from as many wild rumours as I can."</p>
+
+<p>Wilton nodded approval.</p>
+
+<p>"How about Arthur? You want me to take any questions to him for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; thanks.&mdash;But," Hastings added, "you might make him see the
+necessity of telling me what he saw last night. If he doesn't come out
+with it, he'll make it all the harder on Webster."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think he saw anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't he? Why'd he refuse to testify before the coroner, then?"</p>
+
+<p>Sheriff Crown's car came whirling up the driveway; and Hastings spoke
+hurriedly:</p>
+
+<p>"You know he's not as sick as he makes out. He's got to tell me what he
+knows, judge! He's holding back something. That's why he wants to make
+me so mad I'll quit the case. Who's he shielding? That's what people
+will want to know."</p>
+
+<p>Wilton pondered that.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll see what I can do," he finally agreed. "According to you, it may
+appear&mdash;people may suspect&mdash;that Webster's guilty or shielding somebody
+else; and Arthur's guilty or shielding Webster!"</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Crown reached the porch, they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> were discussing Webster's
+condition, and Hastings, with the aid of the judge's penknife, was
+tightening a screw in his big barlowesque blade. They were careful to
+say nothing that might arouse the sheriff's suspicion of their
+compact&mdash;an agreement whereby a private detective, and not the law's
+representative, was to have the benefit of all the judge's information
+bearing on the murder.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Crown, however, was dissatisfied.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm tied up!" he complained, nursing with forefinger and thumb his
+knuckle-like chin. "The only place I can get information is at the wrong
+end&mdash;Russell!"</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with me?" the detective asked amiably. "I'll be glad
+to help&mdash;if you think I can."</p>
+
+<p>"What good's that to me?" He wore his best politician's smile, but there
+was resentment in his voice. "Your job is keeping things quiet&mdash;for
+Sloanehurst. Mr. Sloane's ill, too ill to see me without endangering his
+life, so his funeral-faced valet tells me. Miss Lucille says, politely
+enough, she's told all she knows, told it on the stand, and I'm to go to
+you if I want anything more from her. The judge here knows nothing about
+the inside relationships of the family and Webster, or of Webster and
+the Brace girl. And Webster's down and out, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>thoroughly and
+conveniently! If all that don't catch your uncle Robert where the hair's
+short, I'll quit!"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want to know?" Hastings countered. "You've had access to
+everything, far as I can see."</p>
+
+<p>Reply to that was delayed by the appearance of Jarvis, summoning the
+judge to Arthur Sloane's room.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to get at Webster," Crown told Hastings. "And here's why: if
+Russell didn't kill her, Webster did."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you've weakened!" the old man guyed head bent over his whittling.
+"You had Russell's goose cooked this morning&mdash;roasted to a rich, dark
+brown!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and if I could break down his alibi, I'd still have him cooked!"</p>
+
+<p>"You accept the alibi, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, I accept it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you?" objected Crown. "He didn't have an aeroplane in his hip
+pocket, did he? That's the only way he could have covered those four
+miles in fifteen minutes.&mdash;Or does his alibi have to fall in order to
+save Miss Sloane's fianc&eacute;?"</p>
+
+<p>He slapped his thigh and thrust out his bristly moustache. "You're paid
+to fasten the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> thing on Russell," he said, clearly pugnacious. "I don't
+expect you to help me work against Webster! I'm not that simple!"</p>
+
+<p>The old man, with a gesture no more arresting than to point at the
+sheriff with the piece of wood in his left hand, made the official jaw
+drop almost to the official chest.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Crown," he said, "get this, once and for all: a man ain't
+necessarily a crook because he's once worked for the government. I'm as
+anxious to find the guilty man now, every time, as when I was in the
+Department of Justice. And I intend to. From now on, you'll give me
+credit for that!&mdash;Won't you, Mr. Sheriff?"</p>
+
+<p>Crown apologized. "I'm worried; that's what. I'm up a gum stump and
+can't get down."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, but don't try to make a ladder out of me! Why don't you look
+into that alibi?"</p>
+
+<p>Crown was irritated again. "What do you stick to that for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because," Hastings declared, "I'm ready to swear-and-cross-my-heart he
+lied when he said he ran that four miles. I'm ready to swear he was here
+when the murder was done. When a man's got as good an alibi as he said
+he had, his adam's-apple don't play 'Yankee Doodle' on his windpipe."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that so!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p><p>"It is&mdash;and here's another thing: when's Mrs. Brace going to break
+loose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, you're talking!" agreed Crown, with momentary enthusiasm. "She
+told me this morning she'd help me show up Webster&mdash;she wouldn't have it
+that Russell killed the girl. Foxy business! Mixed up in it herself, she
+runs to the rescue of the man she&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The sheriff paused, unable to bring that reasoning to its logical
+conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said, dejected; "I can't believe she put him up to murdering
+her daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"That woman," Hastings said, "is capable of anything&mdash;anything! We're
+going to find she's terrible, I tell you, Crown. She's mixed up in the
+murder somehow&mdash;and, if you don't find out how, I will!"</p>
+
+<p>"How can we get her?" Crown argued. "She was in her flat when the
+killing was done. We've searched these grounds, and found nothing to
+incriminate anybody. All we've got is a strong suspicion against two
+men. She's out and away."</p>
+
+<p>"Not if we watch her. She's promised to make trouble&mdash;she'll be lucky if
+she makes none for herself. Let's keep after her."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm on! But," the sheriff reminded, again half-hearted, "that won't get
+us anything soon. She won't leave her flat before the funeral."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p><p>"That won't keep her quiet very long," Hastings contended. "She told me
+the funeral would be at nine o'clock tomorrow morning&mdash;from an
+undertaker's.&mdash;Anyway, I've instructed one of my assistants to keep
+track of her. I'm not counting on her grief absorbing her, even for
+today."</p>
+
+<p>But he saw that Crown was not greatly impressed with the possibility of
+finding the murderer through Mrs. Brace. The sheriff was engrossed in
+mental precautions against being misled by "the Sloanehurst detective."</p>
+
+<p>He was still in that mood when Miss Sloane sent for Hastings.</p>
+
+<p>The detective found her in the music room. She had taken the chair which
+Judge Wilton had occupied an hour before, and was leaning one elbow on
+an arm of it, her chin resting in the cup of her hand. Her dress&mdash;a
+filmy lavender so light that it shaded almost to pink, and magically
+made to bring out the grace of her figure&mdash;drew his attention to the
+slight sag of her shoulders, suggestive of great weariness.</p>
+
+<p>But he was captivated anew by her grave loveliness, and by her
+fortitude. She betrayed her agitation only in the fine tremour in her
+hands and a certain slowness in her words.</p>
+
+<p>On the porch, talking to Judge Wilton, he had wondered, in a moment of
+irritation, why<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> he continued on the case against so much apparent
+opposition in the very household which he sought to help. He knew now
+that neither his sense of duty nor his fee was the deciding influence.
+He stayed because this girl needed him, because he had seen in her eyes
+last night the haggard look of an unspeakable suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>"You wanted to see me&mdash;is there anything special?" she asked him,
+immediately alert.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; there is, Miss Sloane," he said, careful to put into his voice all
+the sympathy he felt for her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" She was looking at him with steady eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"It's this, and I want you to bear in mind that I wouldn't bring it up
+but for my desire to put an end to your uncertainty: I'm afraid you
+haven't told me everything you know, everything you saw last night
+in&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>When she would have spoken, he put up a warning hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me explain, please. Don't commit yourself until you see what I
+mean. Judge Wilton and Mr. Webster seem to think I'm not needed here. It
+may be a natural attitude&mdash;for them. They're both lawyers, and to
+lawyers a mere detective doesn't amount to much."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm sure it isn't that," she flashed out, apologizing.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p><p>"Oh, I don't mind, personally," he said, with a smile for which she
+felt grateful. "As I say, it's natural for them to think that way,
+perhaps. Your father, however, is not a lawyer; and, when I went into
+his room at your request, he took pains to offend me, insult me, several
+times." That brought a faint flush to her face. "So, that leaves only
+you to give me facts which I must have&mdash;if they exist."</p>
+
+<p>He became more urgent.</p>
+
+<p>"And you employed me, Miss Sloane; you appealed to me when you were at a
+loss where to turn. I'm only fair to myself as well as to you when I
+tell you that your distress, far more than financial considerations,
+persuaded me to undertake this work without first consulting your
+father."</p>
+
+<p>She leaned toward him, bending from the waist, her eyes slightly
+widened, so that their effect was to give her a startled air.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean you'll give it up!" she said, plainly entreating. "You
+won't give it up!"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you quite sure you don't want me to give it up? Judge Wilton has
+asked me twice, out of politeness, not to give it up. Are you merely
+being polite?"</p>
+
+<p>She smiled, looking tired, and shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Really, Mr. Hastings, if you were to desert<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> us now, I should be
+desperate&mdash;altogether. Desperate! Just that."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't desert you," he said gently. "As I told Mr. Webster, I know too
+little and I suspect too much to do that."</p>
+
+<p>Before she spoke again, she looked at him intently, drawing in her under
+lip a little against her teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"What, Mr. Hastings?" she asked, then. "What do you suspect?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me answer that with a question," he suggested. "Last night, your
+one idea was that I could protect you and your father, everybody in the
+house here, by acting as your spokesman. I think you wanted to set me up
+as a buffer between all of you on the one side and the authorities and
+the reporters on the other. You wanted things kept down, nothing to get
+out beyond that which was unavoidable. Wasn't that it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; it was," she admitted, not seeing where his question led.</p>
+
+<p>"You were afraid, then, that something incriminating might be divulged,
+weren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no!" she denied instantly.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean something which might seem incriminating. You trusted the person
+whom it would seem to incriminate; and you wanted time for the murderer
+to be found without, in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>meantime, having the adverse circumstance
+made public. Isn't that it, Miss Sloane?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;practically."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's be clear on that. Your fear was that too much questioning of you
+or the other person might result in a slip-up&mdash;might make you or him
+mention the apparently damaging incident, with disastrous effect. Wasn't
+that it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; that was it."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, what was that apparently incriminating incident?"</p>
+
+<p>She started. He had brought her so directly to the confession that she
+saw now the impossibility of withholding what he sought.</p>
+
+<p>"It may be," he tried to lighten her responsibility, "the very thing
+that Webster and the judge have concealed&mdash;for I'm sure they're keeping
+something back. Perhaps, if I knew it, things would be easier. People
+closely affected by a crime are the last to judge such things
+accurately."</p>
+
+<p>She gave a long breath of relief, looking at him with perplexity
+nevertheless.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;I know. That was why I came to you&mdash;last night&mdash;in the beginning."</p>
+
+<p>"And it was about them, Webster and Wilton," he drew the conclusion for
+her, still encouraging her with his smile, regarding her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> over the rims
+of his spectacles with a fatherly kindness.</p>
+
+<p>She turned from him and looked out of the window. It was the middle of a
+hot, still day, no breeze stirring, and wonderfully quiet. For the
+moment, there was no sound, in the house or outside.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she cried, her voice a revelation of the extent to which her
+doubts had oppressed her. "It was like that, out there&mdash;quiet, still! If
+you could only understand!"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child," he said, "rely on me. The sheriff is bound to assert
+himself, to keep in the front of things; he's that kind of a man. He'll
+make an arrest any time, or announce that he will. Don't you see the
+danger?" He leaned forward and took her hand, a move to which she seemed
+oblivious. "Don't you see I must have facts to go on&mdash;if I'm to help
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>At that, she disengaged her hand, and sat very straight, her face again
+a little turned from him. A twitch, like a shudder cut short, moved her
+whole body, so that the heel of her slipper rapped smartly on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish," she whispered dully, "I wish I knew what to do!"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me," he urged, as if he spoke to a child.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p><p>She showed him her face, very white, with sudden shadows under the
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I must, I think; I must tell you," she said, not much louder than the
+previous whisper. "You were right. I didn't tell the whole story of what
+I saw. Believe me, I didn't think it mattered. I thought, really, things
+would right themselves and explanations be unnecessary. But you
+knew&mdash;didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I knew." He realized her ordeal, helping her through it. "What
+were they doing?"</p>
+
+<p>She held her chin high.</p>
+
+<p>"It was all true, what I told you in the library, my being waked up by
+father's moving about, my going to the window, my seeing Berne and the
+judge facing each other across&mdash;her&mdash;there at the end of the awful
+yellow arm of light. But that wasn't all. The moment the light flashed
+on, the judge threw back his head a little, like a man about to cry out,
+shout for help. I am sure that was it.</p>
+
+<p>"But Berne was too quick for that. Berne put out his hand; his arm shot
+across her; and his hand closed the judge's mouth. The judge made no
+noise whatever, but he shook his head from side to side two or three
+times&mdash;I'm not certain how many&mdash;while Berne leant over the body and
+whispered to him. It seemed to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> me I could almost hear the words, but I
+didn't.</p>
+
+<p>"Then Berne took his hand from the judge's mouth. I think, before that,
+the judge made a sign, tried to nod his head up and down, to show he
+would do as Berne said. Then, when they saw she was dead, they both
+hurried around the corner to the front of the house, and I heard them
+come in; I heard the judge call to father and run up to your room."</p>
+
+<p>She was alarmed then by the amazement and disapproval in his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she said, and this time she took his hand. "You see! You see! You
+don't understand! You think Berne killed her!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," he said, wondering. "I must think." For the moment,
+indignation swept him. "Wilton! A judge, a judge!&mdash;keeping quiet on a
+thing like that! I must think."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2>
+
+<h3>MOTIVES REVEALED</h3>
+
+<p>She let go his hand and, still leaning toward him, waited for him to
+speak. A confusion of misgivings assailed her&mdash;she regretted having
+confided in him. If his anger embraced Berne as well as Judge Wilton,
+she had done nothing but harm!</p>
+
+<p>Seeing her dismay, he tried again to reassure her.</p>
+
+<p>"But no matter!" he minimized his own sense of shock. "I'm sure I'll
+understand if you'll tell me more&mdash;your explanation."</p>
+
+<p>Obviously, the only inference he could draw from her story as she had
+told it was that Webster had killed the woman and, found bending over
+her body, had sprung forward to silence the man who had discovered him.
+Nevertheless, it was equally evident that she was sincere in attributing
+to Webster a different motive for preventing the judge's outcry.
+Consideration of that persuaded Hastings that she could give him facts
+which would change the whole aspect of the crime.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p><p>Her hesitance now made him uneasy; he recognized the necessity of
+increasing her reliance upon him. If she told him only a part of what
+she knew, he would be scarcely in a better position than before.</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally," he added, "you can throw light on the whole incident&mdash;light
+by which I must be guided, to a great degree."</p>
+
+<p>"If Berne were not ill," she responded to that, "I wouldn't tell.&mdash;It's
+because he's lying up there, his lips closed, unable to keep a look-out
+for developments, at the mercy of what the sheriff may do or
+say!&mdash;That's why I feel so dreadfully the need of help, Mr. Hastings!"</p>
+
+<p>She slid back in her chair, moving farther from him, as if his kindly
+gaze disconcerted her.</p>
+
+<p>"If he hadn't suffered this collapse, I should have left the matter to
+him, I think. But now&mdash;now I can't!" She straightened again, her chin
+up, the signal with her of final decision. "He acted on his impulsive
+desire to prevent my being shocked by that discovery&mdash;that horror out
+there on the lawn. Things had happened to convince him that such a
+thing, shouted through the night, would be a terrific blow to me. I'm
+sure that that was the only idea he had when he put his hand over Judge
+Wilton's mouth."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p><p>"I can believe that," he said. "Tell me why you believe it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she protested, hands clenched on her knees; "if it affected only
+him and me!"</p>
+
+<p>Her suspicion of her father recurred to him. It was, he thought, back of
+the terror he saw in her eyes now.</p>
+
+<p>"But it does affect only him and me, after all!" she continued fiercely,
+as much to strengthen herself in what she wanted to believe as to force
+him to that belief. "Let me tell you the whole affair, from beginning to
+end."</p>
+
+<p>She proceeded in a low tone, the words slower, as if she laboured for
+precision and clarity.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go back to Friday&mdash;the night before last&mdash;it seems months ago! I
+had heard that Berne had become involved in some sort of relationship
+with his stenographer&mdash;that she had been dismissed from his office and
+refused to accept the dismissal as final. I mean, of course, I heard she
+was in love with him, and he'd been in love with her&mdash;or should have
+been.</p>
+
+<p>"It was told me by a friend of mine in Washington, Lucy Carnly. It seems
+another stenographer overheard the conversation between Berne and
+Miss&mdash;Miss Brace. It got out that way. It was very circumstantial; I
+couldn't help believing it, some of it; Lucy wouldn't have brought me
+idle gossip&mdash;I thought."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p><p>She drew in her under lip, to hide its momentary tremour, and shook her
+head from side to side once.</p>
+
+<p>"All that, Mr. Hastings, came up, as a matter of course, when Berne
+reached here evening before last for the week-end. I'd just heard it
+that day. He denied it, said there had been nothing remotely resembling
+a love affair.&mdash;He was indignant, and very hurt!&mdash;He said she'd
+misconstrued some of his kindnesses to her. He couldn't explain how she
+had misconstrued them. At any rate, the result was that I broke our
+engagement. I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Friday night!" Hastings exclaimed involuntarily.</p>
+
+<p>He grasped on the instant how grossly Webster, by withholding all this,
+had deceived him, left him in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and I told father about it," she hurried her words here, the
+effect of her manner being the impression that she hoped this fact would
+not bulk too large in the detective's thoughts. "The three of us had a
+talk about it Friday night. Father's wonderfully fond of Berne and tried
+to persuade me I was foolishly ruining my life. I refused to change my
+mind. When I went upstairs, they stayed a long time in the library,
+talking.</p>
+
+<p>"I think they decided the best thing for Berne<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> was to stay on here,
+through yesterday and today, in the hope that he and father might change
+my mind. Father tried to, yesterday morning. He was awfully upset.
+That's one reason he's so worn out and sick today.&mdash;I love my father so,
+Mr. Hastings!" She held her lips tight-shut a moment, a sob struggling
+in her throat. "But my distress, my own hurt pride&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What did your father say about Mildred Brace?" Hastings asked, when she
+did not finish that sentence.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him, again with widened eyes, a startled air, putting both
+her hands to her throat.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" she said, voice falling to a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>Then, turning her face half from him, she whispered so low that he heard
+her with difficulty: "I wish I were dead!"</p>
+
+<p>Her words frightened him, they had so clearly the ring of truth, as if
+she would in sober fact have preferred death to the thought which was
+breaking her heart&mdash;suspicion of her father.</p>
+
+<p>"That was why Berne stopped the judge's outcry," she said at last,
+turning her white face to him; "he had the sudden wild idea that I'm
+afraid you have&mdash;that father might have killed her. And Berne did not
+want that awful fact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> screamed through the night at me. Oh, can't you
+see&mdash;can't you see that, Mr. Hastings?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's entirely possible; Mr. Webster may have thought that.&mdash;But let's
+keep the story straight. What had your father said about Mildred
+Brace&mdash;to arouse any such suspicion?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was angry, terribly indignant. You know I made no secret to you of
+his high temper. His rages are fierce.&mdash;Once, when he was that way, I
+saw him kill a dog. If it had&mdash;but I think all men who're unstrung
+nervously, as he is, have high tempers. He felt so indignant because she
+had come between Berne and myself. He blamed neither Berne nor me. He
+seemed to concentrate all his anger upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"He said&mdash;you see, Mr. Hastings, I tell you everything!&mdash;he threatened
+to go to her and&mdash;&mdash; He had, of course, no definite idea what he would
+do. Finally, he did say he would buy her off, pay her to leave this part
+of the country. After that, he said, he knew I would 'see things
+clearly,' and Berne and I would be reconciled."</p>
+
+<p>Hastings remembered Russell's assertion that Mildred had her ticket to
+Chicago.</p>
+
+<p>"Did he buy her off?" he asked quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no; he was merely wishing that he could, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"But he made no attempt to get in touch with her yesterday? You're
+sure?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p><p>"Quite," she said. "But don't you see. Mr. Hastings? Father was so
+intense in his hatred of her that Berne thought of him the moment he
+found that body&mdash;out there. He thought father must have encountered her
+on the lawn in some way, or she must have come after him, and he, in a
+fit of rage, struck her down."</p>
+
+<p>"Has Webster told you this?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;but it's true; it is!"</p>
+
+<p>"But, if your supposition is to hold good, how did your father happen to
+be in possession of that dagger, which evidently was made with malice
+aforethought, as the lawyers say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," she said, her lips quivering, hands gripping spasmodically at
+her knees. "He didn't do it! He didn't do it! Berne's idea was a
+mistake!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who, then?" he pressed her, realizing now that she was so unstrung she
+would give him her thoughts unguarded.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that man Russell," she said, her voice so low and the words so
+slow that he thought her at the limit of her endurance. "But I've said
+all this to show you why Berne put his hand over the judge's mouth. I
+want to make it very clear that he feared father&mdash;think of it, Mr.
+Hastings!&mdash;had killed her! At first, I thought&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She bowed her face in both her hands and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> wept unrestrainedly, without
+sobs, the tears streaming between her fingers and down her wrists.</p>
+
+<p>The old man put one hand on her hair, and with the other brought forth
+his handkerchief, being bothered by the sudden mistiness of his
+spectacles.</p>
+
+<p>"A brave girl," he said, his own voice insecure. "What a woman! I know
+what you mean. At first, you feared your father might have been
+concerned in the murder. I saw it in your eyes last night. You had the
+same thought that young Webster had&mdash;rather, that you say he had."</p>
+
+<p>Her weeping ceased as suddenly as it had begun. She looked at him
+through tears.</p>
+
+<p>"And I've only injured Berne in your eyes; I think, irreparably! This
+morning I thought you heard me when I asked him not to let it be known
+that our engagement was broken? Don't you remember? You were on the
+porch as we came around the corner."</p>
+
+<p>For the first time since its utterance, he recalled her statement then,
+"We'll have to leave it as it was," and Webster's significant rejoinder.
+He despised his own stupidity. Had he magnified Webster's desire to keep
+that promise into guilty knowledge of the crime itself? And had not the
+mistake driven him into false and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>valueless interpretations of his
+entire interview with Webster?</p>
+
+<p>"He promised," Lucille pursued, "for the same reason I had in asking
+it&mdash;to prevent discovery of the fact that father might have had a motive
+for wishing her dead! It was a mistake, I see now, a terrible mistake!"</p>
+
+<p>"Can you tell me why you didn't have the same thoughts about Berne?" He
+was sorry he had to make that inquiry. If he could, he would have spared
+her further distress. "Why wouldn't he have had the same motive, hatred
+of Mildred Brace, a thousand times stronger?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," she said. "I simply never thought of it&mdash;not once."</p>
+
+<p>Fine psychologist that he was, Hastings knew why that view had not
+occurred to her. Her love for Webster was an idealizing sentiment,
+putting him beyond even the possibility of wrong-doing. Her love for her
+father, unusual in its devotion as it was, recognized his weaknesses
+nevertheless.</p>
+
+<p>And, while seeking to protect the two, she had told a story which, so
+far as bald facts went, incriminated the lover far more than the father.
+She had attributed to Sloane, in her uneasiness, the motive which would
+have been most natural to the discarded Webster. Even now, she could not
+suspect Berne; her only fear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> was that others, not understanding him as
+she did, might suspect him! Although she had broken with him, she still
+loved him. More than that: his illness and consequent helplessness
+increased her devotion for him, brought to the surface the maternal
+phase of it.</p>
+
+<p>"If she had to choose between the two," Hastings thought, "she'd save
+Webster&mdash;every time!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know&mdash;I tell you, Mr. Hastings, I <i>know</i> neither Berne nor father is
+at all responsible for this crime. I tell you," she repeated, rising to
+her feet, as if by mere physical height she hoped to impress her
+knowledge upon him, "I <i>know</i> they're innocent.&mdash;Don't <i>you</i> know it?"</p>
+
+<p>She stood looking down at him, her whole body tense, arms held close
+against her sides, the knuckles of her fingers white as ivory. Her eyes
+now were dry, and brilliant.</p>
+
+<p>He evaded the flat statement to which she pressed him.</p>
+
+<p>"But your knowledge, Miss Sloane, and what we must prove," he said, also
+standing, "are two different things just now. The authorities will
+demand proofs."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. That's why I've told you these things." Somehow, her manner
+reproached him. "You said you had to have them in order to handle
+this&mdash;this situation properly. Now that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> you know them, I'm sure you'll
+feel safe in devoting all your time to proving Russell's guilt." She
+moved her head forward, to study him more closely. "You know he's
+guilty, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm certain Mrs. Brace figured in her daughter's murder," he said. "She
+was concerned in it somehow. If that's true, and if your father
+approached neither her nor her daughter yesterday, it does seem highly
+possible that Russell's guilty."</p>
+
+<p>He turned from her and stood at the window, his back to her a few long
+moments. When he faced her again, he looked old.</p>
+
+<p>"But the facts&mdash;if we could only break down Russell's alibi!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she whispered, in new alarm. "I'd forgotten that!"</p>
+
+<p>All the tenseness went out of her limbs. She sank into her chair, and
+sat there, looking up to him, her eyes frankly confessing a panic fear.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I'm sorry I told you," she said, desperately. "I can't make you
+understand!" Another consideration forced itself upon her. "You won't
+have to tell anybody&mdash;anybody at all&mdash;about this, will you&mdash;now?"</p>
+
+<p>He was prepared for that.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have to ask Judge Wilton why he acted on Mr. Webster's advice&mdash;and
+what that advice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> was, what they whispered to each other when you saw
+them."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that's perfectly fair," she assented, relieved. "That will stop
+all the secrecy between them and me. It's the very thing I want. If
+that's assured, everything else will work itself out."</p>
+
+<p>Her faith surprised him. He had not realized how unqualified it was.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you ask the judge about it?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; just before I came in here&mdash;after Berne's collapse. I felt so
+helpless! But he tried to persuade me my imagination had deceived me; he
+said they had had no such scene. You know how gruff and hard Judge
+Wilton can be at times. I shouldn't choose him for a confidant."</p>
+
+<p>"No; I reckon not. But we'll ask him now&mdash;if you don't mind."</p>
+
+<p>Willis, the butler, answered the bell, and gave information: Judge
+Wilton had left Sloanehurst half an hour ago and had gone to the
+Randalls'. He had asked for Miss Sloane, but, learning that she was
+engaged, had left his regrets, saying he would come in tomorrow, after
+the adjournment of court.</p>
+
+<p>"He's on the bench tomorrow at the county-seat," Lucille explained the
+message. "He <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>always divides his time between us and the Randalls when
+he comes down from Fairfax for his court terms. He told me this morning
+he'd come back to us later in the week."</p>
+
+<p>"On second thought," Hastings said, "that's better. I'll talk to him
+alone tomorrow&mdash;about this thing, this inexplicable thing: a judge
+taking it upon himself to deceive the sheriff even! But," he softened
+the sternness of his tone, "he must have a reason, a better one than I
+can think of now." He smiled. "And I'll report to you, when he's told
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad it's tomorrow," she said wearily. "I&mdash;I'm tired out."</p>
+
+<p>On his way back to Washington, the old man reflected: "Now, she'll
+persuade Sloane to do the sensible thing&mdash;talk." Then, to bolster that
+hope, he added a stern truth: "He's got to. He can't gag himself with a
+pretended illness forever!"</p>
+
+<p>At the same time the girl he had left in the music room wept again,
+saying over and over to herself, in a despair of doubt: "Not that! Not
+that! I couldn't tell him that. I told him enough. I know I did. He
+wouldn't have understood!"</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2>
+
+<h3>HENDRICKS REPORTS</h3>
+
+<p>In his book-lined, "loosely furnished" apartment Sunday afternoon
+Hastings whittled prodigiously, staring frequently at the flap of the
+grey envelope with the intensity of a crystal-gazer. Once or twice he
+pronounced aloud possible meanings of the symbols imprinted on the scrap
+of paper.</p>
+
+<p>"'&mdash;edly de&mdash;,'" he worried. "That might stand for 'repeatedly demanded'
+or 'repeatedly denied' or 'undoubtedly denoted' or a hundred&mdash;&mdash; But
+that 'Pursuit!' is the core of the trouble. They put the pursuit on him,
+sure as you're knee-high to a hope of heaven!"</p>
+
+<p>The belief grew in him that out of those pieces of words would come
+solution of his problem. The idea was born of his remarkable instinct.
+Its positiveness partook of superstition&mdash;almost. He could not shake it
+off. Once he chuckled, appreciating the apparent absurdity of trying to
+guess the criminal meaning, the criminal intent, back of that writing.
+But he kept to his conjecturing.</p>
+
+<p>He had many interruptions. Newspaper <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>reporters, instantly impressed by
+the dramatic possibilities, the inherent sensationalism, of the murder,
+flocked to him. Referred to him by the people at Sloanehurst, they asked
+for not only his narration of what had occurred but also for his opinion
+as to the probability of running down the guilty man.</p>
+
+<p>He would make no predictions, he told them, confining himself to a
+simple statement of facts. When one young sleuth suggested that both
+Sloane and Webster feared arrest on the charge of murder and had relied
+on his reputation to prevent prompt action against them by the sheriff,
+the old man laughed. He knew the futility of trying to prevent
+publication of intimations of that sort.</p>
+
+<p>But he took advantage of the opportunity to put a different
+interpretation on his employment by the Sloanes.</p>
+
+<p>"Seems to me," he contributed, "it's more logical to say that their
+calling in a detective goes a long way to show their innocence of all
+connection with the crime. They wouldn't pay out real money to have
+themselves hunted, if they were guilty, would they?"</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards, he was glad he had emphasized this point. In the light of
+subsequent events, it looked like actual foresight of Mrs. Brace's
+tactics.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p><p>Soon after five Hendricks came in, to report. He was a young man,
+stockily built, with eyes that were always on the verge of laughter and
+lips that sloped inward as if biting down on the threatened mirth. The
+shape of his lips was symbolical of his habit of discourse; he was of
+few words.</p>
+
+<p>"Webster," he said, standing across the table from his employer and
+shooting out his words like a memorized speech, "been overplaying his
+hand financially. That's the rumour; nothing tangible yet. Gone into
+real estate and building projects; associated with a crowd that has the
+name of operating on a shoestring. Nobody'd be surprised if they all
+blew up."</p>
+
+<p>"As a real-estate man, I take it," Hastings commented, slowly shaving
+off thin slivers of chips from his piece of pine, "he's a brilliant
+young lawyer. That's it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," Hendricks agreed, the slope of his lips accentuated.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep after that, tomorrow.&mdash;What about Mrs. Brace?"</p>
+
+<p>"Destitute, practically; in debt; threatened with eviction; no
+resources."</p>
+
+<p>"So money, lack of it, is bothering her as well as Webster!&mdash;How much is
+she in debt?"</p>
+
+<p>"Enough to be denied all credit by the stores;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> between five and seven
+hundred, I should say. That's about the top mark for that class of
+trade."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Hendricks; thanks," the old man commended warmly. "That's
+great work, for Sunday.&mdash;Now, Russell's room?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir; I went over it."</p>
+
+<p>"Find any steel on the floor?"</p>
+
+<p>Hendricks took from his pocket a little paper parcel about the size of a
+man's thumb.</p>
+
+<p>"Not sure, sir. Here's what I got."</p>
+
+<p>He unfolded the paper and put it down on the table, displaying a small
+mass of what looked like dust and lint.</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful what a magnet will pick up, ain't it?" mused his employer: "I
+got the same sort of stuff at Sloanehurst this morning.&mdash;I'll go over
+this, look for the steel particles, right away."</p>
+
+<p>"Anything else, sir&mdash;special?"</p>
+
+<p>The assistant was already half-way to the door. He knew that a floor an
+inch deep in chips from his employer's whittling indicated laborious
+mental gropings by the old man. It was no time for superfluous words.</p>
+
+<p>"After dinner," Hastings instructed, "relieve Gore&mdash;at the Walman.
+Thanks."</p>
+
+<p>As Hendricks went out, there was another telephone call, this time from
+Crown, to make<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> amends for coolness he had shown Hastings at
+Sloanehurst.</p>
+
+<p>"I was wrong, and you were right," he conceded, handsomely; "I mean
+about that Brace woman. Better keep your man on her trail."</p>
+
+<p>"What's up?" Hastings asked amicably.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I want to know! I've seen her again. I couldn't get
+anything more from her except threats. She's going on the warpath. She
+told me: 'Tomorrow I'll look into things for myself. I'll not sit here
+idle and leave everything to a sheriff who wants campaign contributions
+and a detective who's paid to hush things up!' You can see her saying
+that, can't you? Wow!"</p>
+
+<p>"That all?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's all, right now. But I've got a suspicion she knows more than we
+think. When she makes up her mind to talk, she'll say something!&mdash;Mr.
+Hastings," Crown added, as if he imparted a tremendous fact, "that
+woman's smart! I tell you, she's got brains, a head full of 'em!"</p>
+
+<p>"So I judged," the detective agreed, drily. "By the way, have you seen
+Russell again?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. There's another thing. I don't see where you get that stuff about
+his weak alibi. It's copper-riveted!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p><p>"He says so, you mean."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and the way he says it. But I followed your advice. I've
+advertised, through the police here and up and down the Atlantic coast,
+for any automobile party or parties who went along that Sloanehurst road
+last night between ten-thirty and eleven-thirty."</p>
+
+<p>"Fine!" Hastings congratulated. "But get me straight on that: I don't
+say any of them saw him; I say there's a chance that he was seen."</p>
+
+<p>The old man went back, not to examination of Hendricks' parcel, but to
+further consideration of the possible contents of the letter that had
+been in the grey envelope. Russell, he reflected, had been present when
+Mildred Brace mailed it, and, what was more important, when Mildred
+started out of the apartment with it.</p>
+
+<p>He made sudden decision: he would question Russell again. Carefully
+placing Hendricks' package of dust and lint in a drawer of the table, he
+set out for the Eleventh street boarding house.</p>
+
+<p>It was, however, not Russell who figured most prominently in the
+accounts of the murder published by the Monday morning newspapers. The
+reporters, resenting the reticence they had encountered at Sloanehurst,
+and making much of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> Mrs. Brace's threats, put in the forefront of their
+stories an appealing picture of a bereaved mother's one-sided fight for
+justice against the baffling combination of the Sloanehurst
+secretiveness and indifference and the mysterious circumstances of the
+daughter's death. Not one of them questioned the validity of Russell's
+alibi.</p>
+
+<p>"With the innocence of the dead girl's fianc&eacute; established," said one
+account, "Sheriff Crown last night made no secret of his chagrin that
+Berne Webster had collapsed at the very moment when the sheriff was on
+the point of putting him through a rigid cross-examination. The young
+lawyer's retirement from the scene, coupled with the Sloane family's
+retaining the celebrated detective, Jefferson Hastings, as a buffer
+against any questioning of the Sloanehurst people, has given Society,
+here and in Virginia, a topic for discussion of more than ordinary
+interest."</p>
+
+<p>Another paragraph that caught Hastings' attention, as he read between
+mouthfuls of his breakfast, was this:</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Brace, discussing the tragedy with a reporter last night, showed a
+surprising knowledge of all its incidents. Although she had not left her
+apartment in the Walman all day, she had been questioned by both Sheriff
+Crown and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> Mr. Hastings, not to mention the unusually large number of
+newspaper writers who besieged her for interviews.</p>
+
+<p>"And it seemed that, in addition to answering the queries put to her by
+the investigators, she had accomplished a vast amount of keen inquiry on
+her own account. When talking to her, it is impossible for one to escape
+the impression that this extraordinarily intelligent woman believes she
+can prove the guilt of the man who struck down her daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"Just what I was afraid of," thought the detective. "Nearly every paper
+siding with her!"</p>
+
+<p>His face brightened.</p>
+
+<p>"All the better," he consoled himself. "More chance of her overreaching
+herself&mdash;as long as she don't know what I suspect. I'll get the meaning
+of that grey letter yet!"</p>
+
+<p>But he was worried. Berne Webster's collapse, he knew, was too
+convenient for Webster&mdash;it looked like pretence. Ninety-nine out of
+every hundred newspaper readers would consider his illness a fake, the
+obvious trick to escape the work of explaining what seemed to be
+inexplicable circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>To Hastings the situation was particularly annoying because he had
+brought it about; his own questioning had turned out to be the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> straw
+that broke the suspected man's endurance.</p>
+
+<p>"Always blundering!" he upbraided himself. "Trying to be so all-shot
+smart, I overplayed my hand."</p>
+
+<p>He got Dr. Garnet on the wire.</p>
+
+<p>"Doctor," he said, in a tone that implored, "I'm obliged to see Webster
+today."</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry, Mr. Hastings," came the instant refusal; "but it can't be done."</p>
+
+<p>"For one question," qualified Hastings; "less than a minute's talk&mdash;one
+word, 'yes' or 'no'? It's almost a matter of life and death."</p>
+
+<p>"If that man's excited about anything," Garnet retorted, "it will be
+entirely a matter of death. Frankly, I couldn't see my way clear to
+letting you question him if his escaping arrest depended on it. I called
+in Dr. Welles last night; and I'm giving you his opinion as well as my
+own."</p>
+
+<p>"When can I see him, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't answer that. It may be a week; it may be a month. All I can
+tell you today is that you can't question him now."</p>
+
+<p>With that information, Hastings decided to interview Judge Wilton.</p>
+
+<p>"He's the next best," he thought. "That whispering across the woman's
+body&mdash;it's got to be explained, and explained right!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p><p>As a matter of fact, he had refrained from this inquiry the day before,
+so that his mind might not be clouded by anger. His deception by the
+judge had greatly provoked him.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>MRS. BRACE BEGINS</h3>
+
+<p>Court had recessed for lunch when Hastings, going down a second-story
+corridor of the Alexandria county courthouse, entered Judge Wilton's
+anteroom. His hand was raised to knock on the door of the inner office
+when he heard the murmur of voices on the other side. He took off his
+hat and sat down, welcoming the breeze that swept through the room, a
+refreshing contrast to the forenoon's heat and smother downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>He reached for his knife and piece of pine, checked the motion and
+glanced swiftly toward the closed door. A high note of a woman's voice
+touched his memory, for a moment confusing him. But it was for a moment
+only. While the sound was still in his ears, he remembered where he had
+heard it before&mdash;from Mrs. Brace when, toward the close of his interview
+with her, she had shrilly denounced Berne Webster.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brace, her daughter's funeral barely three hours old, had started
+to make her threats good.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p><p>While he was considering that, the door of the private office swung
+inward, Judge Wilton's hand on the knob. It opened on the middle of a
+sentence spoken by Mrs. Brace:</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;tell you, you're a fool if you think you can put me off with that!"</p>
+
+<p>Her gleaming eyes were so furtive and so quick that they traversed the
+whole of Wilton's countenance many times, a fiery probe of each separate
+feature. The inflections of her voice invested her words with ugliness;
+but she did not shriek.</p>
+
+<p>"You bully everybody else, but not me! They don't call you 'Hard Tom
+Wilton' for nothing, do they? I know you! I know you, I tell you! I was
+down there in the courtroom when you sentenced that man! You had cruelty
+in your mind, cruelty on your face. Ugh! And you're cruel to me&mdash;and
+taking an ungodly pleasure in it! Well, let me tell you, I won't be
+broken by it. I want fair dealing, and I'll have it!"</p>
+
+<p>At that moment, facing full toward Hastings, she caught sight of him.
+But his presence seemed a matter of no importance to her; it did not
+break the stream of her fierce invective. She did not even pause.</p>
+
+<p>He saw at once that her anger of yesterday was as nothing to the
+storming rage which shook her now. Every line of her face revealed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+malignity. The eyebrows were drawn higher on her forehead, nearer to the
+wave of white hair that showed under her black hat. The nostrils dilated
+and contracted with indescribable rapidity. The lips, thickened and
+rolling back at intervals from her teeth, revealed more distinctly that
+animal, exaggerated wetness which had so repelled him.</p>
+
+<p>"You were out there on that lawn!" she pursued, her glance flashing back
+to the judge. "You were out there when she was killed! If you try to
+tell me you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Stop it! Stop it!" Wilton commanded, and, as he did so, turned his head
+to an angle that put Hastings within his field of vision.</p>
+
+<p>The judge, with one hand on the doorknob, had been pressing with the
+other against the woman's shoulders, trying to thrust her out of the
+room&mdash;a move which she resisted by a hanging-back posture that threw her
+weight on his arm. He put more strength now into his effort and
+succeeded in forcing her clear of the threshold. His eyes were blazing
+under the shadow of his heavy, overhanging brows; but there was about
+him no suggestion of a loss of self-control.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad to see you!" he told Hastings, speaking over Mrs. Brace's
+head, and smiling a deprecatory recognition of the hopelessness of
+contending with an infuriated woman.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></p><p>She addressed them both.</p>
+
+<p>"Smile all you please, now!" she threatened. "But the accounts aren't
+balanced yet! Wait for what I choose to tell&mdash;what I intend to do!"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she got herself in hand. It was as unexpected and thorough a
+transformation as the one Hastings had seen twenty-four hours before
+during her declaration of Webster's guilt. She had the same appearance
+now as then, the same tautness of body, the same flat, constrained tone.</p>
+
+<p>She turned to Wilton:</p>
+
+<p>"I ask you again, will you help me as I asked you? Are you going to deny
+me fair play?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her in amazement, scowling.</p>
+
+<p>"What fair play?" he exclaimed, and, without waiting for her reply, said
+to Hastings: "She insists that I know young Webster killed her daughter,
+that I can produce the evidence to prove it. Can you disabuse her mind?"</p>
+
+<p>She surprised them by going, slowly and with apparent composure, toward
+the corridor door. There she paused, looking at first one and then the
+other with an evil smile so openly contemptuous that it affected them
+strongly. There was something in it that made it flagrantly insulting.
+Hastings turned away from her. Judge Wilton gave her look for look, but
+his already flushed face coloured more darkly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p><p>"Very well, Judge Wilton!" she gave him insolent good-bye, in which
+there was also unmistakable threat. "You'll do the right thing sooner or
+later&mdash;and as I tell you. You're&mdash;get this straight&mdash;you're not through
+with me yet!"</p>
+
+<p>She laughed, one low note, and, impossible as it seemed, proclaimed with
+the harsh sound an absolute confidence in what she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor you, Mr. Hastings!" she continued, taking her time with her words,
+and waiting until the detective faced her again, before she concluded:
+"You'll sing a different tune when you find I've got this affair in my
+hands&mdash;tight!"</p>
+
+<p>Still smiling her contempt, as if she enjoyed a feeling of superiority,
+she left the room. When her footsteps died down the corridor, the two
+men drew long breaths of relief.</p>
+
+<p>Wilton broke the ensuing silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she sane?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Hastings said, "so far as sanity can be said to exist in a mind
+consecrated to evil."</p>
+
+<p>The judge was surprised by the solemnity of the other's manner. "Why do
+you say that?" he asked. "Do you know that much about her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who wouldn't?" Hastings retorted. "It's written all over her."</p>
+
+<p>Wilton led the way into his private office and closed the door.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p><p>"I'm glad it happened at just this time," he said, "when everybody's
+out of the building." He struck the desk with his fist. "By God!" he
+ground out through gritted teeth. "How I hate these wild, unbridled
+women!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," agreed Hastings, taking the chair Wilton rolled forward for him.
+"She worries me. Wonder if she's going to Sloanehurst."</p>
+
+<p>"That would be the logical sequel to this visit," Wilton said. "But
+pardon my show of temper. You came to see me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and, like her, for information. But," the detective said, smiling,
+"not for rough-house purposes."</p>
+
+<p>The judge had not entirely regained his equanimity; his face still wore
+a heightened colour; his whole bearing was that of a man mentally
+reviewing the results of an unpleasant incident. Instead of replying
+promptly to Hastings, he sat looking out of the window, obviously
+troubled.</p>
+
+<p>"Her game is blackmail," he declared at last.</p>
+
+<p>"On whom?" the detective queried.</p>
+
+<p>"Arthur Sloane, of course. She calculates that he'll play to have her
+cease annoying his daughter's fianc&eacute;. And she'll impress Arthur, if
+Jarvis ever lets her get to him. Somehow, she strangely compels
+credence."</p>
+
+<p>"Not for me," Hastings objected, and did not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> point out that Wilton's
+words might be taken as an admission of Webster's guilt.</p>
+
+<p>The judge himself might have seen that.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean," he qualified, "she seems too smart a woman to put herself in a
+position where ridicule will be sure to overtake her. And yet, that's
+what she's doing&mdash;isn't she?"</p>
+
+<p>The detective was whittling, dropping the chips into the waste-basket.
+He spoke with a deliberateness unusual even in him, framing each
+sentence in his mind before giving it utterance.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon, judge, you and I have had some four or five talks&mdash;that is,
+not counting Saturday evening and yesterday at Sloanehurst. That's about
+the extent of our acquaintance. That right?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes," Wilton said, surprised by the change of topic.</p>
+
+<p>"I mention it," Hastings explained, "to show how I've felt toward
+you&mdash;you interested me. Excuse me if I speak plainly&mdash;you'll see why
+later on&mdash;but you struck me as worth studying, deep. And I thought you
+must have sized me up, catalogued me one way or the other. You're like
+me: waste no time with men who bore you. I felt certain, if you'd been
+asked, you'd have checked me off as reliable. Would you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Unquestionably."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p><p>"And, if I was reliable then, I'm reliable now. That's a fair
+assumption, ain't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly." The judge laughed shortly, a little embarrassed.</p>
+
+<p>"That brings me to my point. You'll believe me when I tell you my only
+interest in this murder is to find the murderer, and, while I'm doing
+it, to save the Sloanes as much as possible from annoyance. You'll
+believe me, also, when I say I've got to have all the facts if I'm to
+work surely and fast. You recognize the force of that, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, Hastings." Wilton spoke impatiently this time.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine!" The old man shot him a genial glance over the steel-rimmed
+spectacles. "That's the introduction. Here's the real thing: I've an
+idea you could tell me more about what happened on the lawn Saturday
+night."</p>
+
+<p>After his involuntary, immediate start of surprise, Wilton tilted his
+head, slowly blowing the cigar smoke from his pursed lips. He had a fine
+air of reflection, careful thought.</p>
+
+<p>"I can elaborate what I've already told you," he said, finally, "if
+that's what you mean&mdash;go into greater detail."</p>
+
+<p>He watched closely the edge of the detective's face unhidden by his
+bending over the wood he was cutting.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p><p>"I don't think elaboration could do much good," Hastings objected. "I
+referred to new stuff&mdash;some fact or facts you might have omitted,
+unconsciously."</p>
+
+<p>"Unconsciously?" Wilton echoed the word, as a man does when his mind is
+overtaxed.</p>
+
+<p>Hastings took it up.</p>
+
+<p>"Or consciously, even," he said quickly, meeting the other's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The judge moved sharply, bracing himself against the back of the chair.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Skilled in the law yourself, thoroughly familiar, with the rules of
+evidence, it's more than possible that you might have reviewed matters
+and decided that there were things which, if they were known, would do
+harm instead of good&mdash;obscure the truth, perhaps; or hinder the hunt for
+the guilty man instead of helping it on. That's clear enough, isn't it?
+You might have thought that?"</p>
+
+<p>The look of sullen resentment in the judge's face was unmistakable.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, say what you mean!" he retorted warmly. "What you're insinuating is
+that I've lied!"</p>
+
+<p>"It don't have to be called that."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, that I, a judge, sworn to uphold the law and punish crime,
+have elected to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> thwart the law and to cheat its officials of the facts
+they should have. Is that what you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be honest with you," Hastings admitted, unmoved by the other's
+grand manner. "I've wondered about that&mdash;whether you thought a judge had
+a right to do a thing of that sort."</p>
+
+<p>Wilton's hand, clenched on the edge of the desk, shook perceptibly.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you think that, judge?" the detective persisted.</p>
+
+<p>The judge hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a point I've never gone into," he said finally, with intentional
+sarcasm.</p>
+
+<p>Hastings snapped his knife-blade shut and thrust the piece of wood into
+his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's get away from this beating about the bush," he suggested, voice
+on a sterner note. "I don't want to irritate you unnecessarily, judge. I
+came here for information&mdash;stuff I'm more than anxious to get. And I go
+back to that now: won't you tell me anything more about the discovery of
+the woman's body by the two of you&mdash;you and Webster?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I won't! I've covered the whole thing&mdash;several times."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there anything that you haven't told&mdash;anything you've decided to
+suppress?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p><p>Wilton got up from his chair and struck the desk with his fist.</p>
+
+<p>"See here, Hastings! You're getting beside yourself. Representing Miss
+Sloane doesn't warrant your insulting her friends. Suppose we consider
+this interview at an end. Some other time, perhaps&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Hastings also had risen.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a minute, judge!" he interrupted, all at once assuming the
+authoritative air that had so amazed Wilton the night of the murder.
+"You're suppressing something&mdash;and I know it!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's a lie!" Wilton retorted, the flush deepening to crimson on his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"It ain't a lie," Hastings contradicted, holding his self-control. "And
+you watch yourself! Don't you call me a liar again&mdash;not as long as you
+live! You can't afford the insult."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, don't provoke it. Don't&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What did Webster whisper to you, across that corpse?" Hastings
+demanded, going nearer to Wilton.</p>
+
+<p>"What's this?" Wilton's tone was one of consternation; the words might
+have been spoken by a man stumbling on an unsuspected horror in a dark
+room.</p>
+
+<p>They stared at each other for several <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>dragging seconds. The detective
+waved a hand toward the judge's chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down," he said, resuming his own seat.</p>
+
+<p>There followed another pause, longer than the first. The judge's
+breathing was laboured, audible. He lowered his eyes and passed his hand
+across their thick lids. When he looked up again, Hastings commanded him
+with unwavering, expectant gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"I've made a mistake," Wilton began huskily, and stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" Hastings said, unbending. "How?"</p>
+
+<p>"I see it now. It was a matter of no importance, in itself. I've
+exaggerated it, by my silence, into disproportionate significance." His
+tone changed to curiosity. "Who told you about&mdash;the whispering?"</p>
+
+<p>The detective was implacable, emphasizing his dominance.</p>
+
+<p>"First, what was it?" When Wilton still hesitated, he repeated: "What
+did Webster say when he put his hand over your mouth&mdash;to prevent your
+outcry?"</p>
+
+<p>The judge threw up his head, as if in sudden resolve to be frank. He
+spoke more readily, with a clumsy semblance of amiability.</p>
+
+<p>"He said, 'Don't do that! You'll frighten Lucille!' I tried to nod my
+head, agreeing. But he misunderstood the movement, I think.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> He thought
+I meant to shout anyway; he tightened his grip. 'Keep quiet! Will you
+keep quiet?' he repeated two or three times. When I made my meaning
+clear, he took his hand away. He explained later what had occurred to
+him the moment Arthur's light flashed on. He said it came to him before
+he clearly realized who I was. It&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I swear, Hastings, I hate to tell you this. It suggests unjust
+suspicions. Of what value are the wild ideas of a nervous man, all to
+pieces anyway, when he stumbles on a dead woman in the middle of the
+night?"</p>
+
+<p>"They were valuable enough," Hastings flicked him, "for you to cover
+them up&mdash;for some reason. What were they?"</p>
+
+<p>Wilton was puzzled by the detective's tone, its abstruse insinuation.
+But he answered the question.</p>
+
+<p>"He said his first idea, the one that made him think of Lucille, was
+that Arthur might have had something to do with the murder."</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Why did he think Sloane had killed Mildred Brace?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because she had been the cause of Lucille's breaking her engagement
+with Berne&mdash;and Arthur knew that. Arthur had been in a rage&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"All right!" Hastings checked him suddenly, and, getting to his feet,
+fell to pacing the room,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> his eyes, always on Wilton. "I'm acquainted
+with that part of it."</p>
+
+<p>He paid no attention to Wilton's evident surprise at that statement. He
+had a surprise of his own to deal with: the unexpected similarity of the
+judge's story with Lucille Sloane's theorizing as to what Webster had
+whispered across the body in the moment of its discovery. The two
+statements were identical&mdash;a coincidence that defied credulity.</p>
+
+<p>He caught himself doubting Lucille. Had she been theorizing, after all?
+Or had she relayed to him words that Wilton had put into her mouth?
+Then, remembering her grief, her desperate appeals to him for aid, he
+dismissed the suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd stake my life on her honesty," he decided. "Her intuition gave her
+the correct solution&mdash;if Wilton's not lying now!"</p>
+
+<p>He put the obvious question: "Judge, am I the first one to hear
+this&mdash;from you?" and received the obvious answer: "You are. I didn't
+volunteer it to you, did I?"</p>
+
+<p>"All right. Now, did you believe Webster? Wait a minute! Did you believe
+his fear wasn't for himself when he gagged you that way?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I did," replied Wilton, in a tone that lacked sincerity.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you believe it now?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p><p>"If I didn't, do you think I'd have tried for a moment to conceal what
+he said to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you conceal it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because Arthur Sloane was my friend, and his daughter's happiness would
+have been ruined if I'd thrown further suspicion on him. Besides, what I
+did conceal could have been of no value to any detective or sheriff on
+earth. It meant nothing, so long as I knew the boy's sincerity&mdash;and his
+innocence as well as Arthur's."</p>
+
+<p>"But," Hastings persisted, "why all this concern for Webster, after his
+engagement had been broken?"</p>
+
+<p>"How's that?" Wilton countered. "Oh, I see! The break wasn't permanent.
+Arthur and I had decided on that. We knew they'd get together again."</p>
+
+<p>Hastings halted in front of the judge's chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you kept back anything else?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," Wilton said, with a return of his former sullenness. "And,"
+he forced himself to the avowal, "I'm sorry I kept that back. It's
+nothing."</p>
+
+<p>Hastings' manner changed on the instant. He was once more cordial.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, judge!" he said heartily, consulting his ponderous watch.
+"This is all between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> us. I take it, you wouldn't want it known by the
+sheriff, even now?" Wilton shook his head in quick negation. "All right!
+He needn't&mdash;if things go well. And the person I got it from won't spread
+it around.&mdash;That satisfactory?"</p>
+
+<p>The judge's smile, in spite of his best effort, was devoid of
+friendliness. The dark flush that persisted in his countenance told how
+hardly he kept down his anger.</p>
+
+<p>Hastings put on his hat and ambled toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way," he proclaimed an afterthought, "I've got to ask one more
+favour, judge. If Mrs. Brace troubles you again, will you let me know
+about it, at the earliest possible moment?"</p>
+
+<p>He went out, chuckling.</p>
+
+<p>But the judge was as mystified as he was resentful. He had detected in
+Hastings' manner, he thought, the same self-satisfaction, the same quiet
+elation, which he and Berne had observed at the close of the music-room
+interview. Going to the window, he addressed the summer sky:</p>
+
+<p>"Who the devil does the old fool suspect&mdash;Arthur or Berne?"</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>MR. CROWN FORMS AN ALLIANCE</h3>
+
+<p>"If you've as much as five hundred dollars at your disposal&mdash;pin-money
+savings, perhaps&mdash;anything you can check on without the knowledge of
+others, you can do it," Hastings urged, ending a long argument.</p>
+
+<p>"I! Take it to her myself?" Lucille still protested, although she could
+not refute his reasonings.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the only way that would be effective&mdash;and it wouldn't be so
+difficult. I had counted on your courage&mdash;your unusual courage."</p>
+
+<p>"But what will it accomplish? If I could only see that, clearly!"</p>
+
+<p>She was beginning to yield to his insistence.</p>
+
+<p>They were in the rose garden, in the shade of a little arbor from whose
+roof the great red flowers drooped almost to the girl's hair. He was
+acutely aware of the pathetic contrast between her white, ravaged face
+and the surrounding scene, the fragrance, the roses of every colour
+swaying to the slow breeze of late afternoon, the long, cool shadows. He
+found it hard to force<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> her to the plan, and would have abandoned it but
+for the possibilities it presented to his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"I've already touched on that," he applied himself to her doubts. "I
+want you to trust me there, to accept my solemn assurance that, if Mrs.
+Brace accepts this money from you on our terms, it will hasten my
+capture of the murderer. I'll say more than that: you are my only
+possible help in the matter. Won't you believe me?"</p>
+
+<p>She sat quite still, a long time, looking steadily at him with unseeing
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to go to that dreadful woman's apartment, be alone with
+her, make a secret bargain," she enumerated the various parts of her
+task, wonder and repugnance mingling in her voice. "That horrible woman!
+You say, yourself, Mr. Hastings, she's horrible."</p>
+
+<p>"Still," he repeated, "you can do it."</p>
+
+<p>A little while ago she had cried out, both hands clenched on the arm of
+the rustic bench, her eyes opening wide in the startled look he had come
+to know: "If I could do something, <i>anything</i>, for Berne! Dr. Welles
+said only an hour ago he had no more than an even chance for his life.
+Half the time he can't speak! And I'm responsible. I am! I know it. I
+try to think I'm not. But I am!"</p>
+
+<p>He recurred to that.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p><p>"Dr. Welles said the ending of Mr. Webster's suspense would be the best
+medicine for him. And I think Webster would see that nobody but you
+could do this&mdash;in the very nature of things. The absolute secrecy
+required, the fact that you buy her silence, pay her to cease her
+accusations against Berne&mdash;don't you see? He'd want you to do it."</p>
+
+<p>That finished her resistance. She made him repeat all his directions,
+precautions for secrecy.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could tell you how important it is," he said. "And keep this
+in mind always: I rely on your paying her the money without even a
+suspicion of it getting abroad. If accidents happen and you're seen
+entering the Walman, what more natural than that you want to ask this
+woman the meaning of her vague threats against&mdash;against
+Sloanehurst?&mdash;But of money, your real object, not a word! Nobody's to
+have a hint of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes; I see the necessity of that." But she was distressed. "Suppose
+she refuses?"</p>
+
+<p>Her altered frame of mind, an eagerness now to succeed with the plan she
+had at first refused, brought him again his thought of yesterday: "If
+she were put to it&mdash;if she could save only one and had to choose between
+father and fianc&eacute;, her choice would be for the fianc&eacute;."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p><p>He answered her question. "She won't refuse," he declared, with a
+confidence she could not doubt. "If I thought she would, I'd almost be
+willing to say we'd never find the man who killed her daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"When I think of Russell's alibi&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Have we mentioned Russell?" he protested, laughing away her fears.
+"Anyway, his old alibi's no good&mdash;if that's what's troubling you. Wait
+and see!"</p>
+
+<p>He was in high good humour.</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>In that same hour the woman for whom he had planned this trap was busy
+with a scheme of her own. Her object was to form an alliance with
+Sheriff Crown. That gentleman, to use his expressive phrase, had been
+"putting her over the jumps" for the past forty minutes, bringing to the
+work of cross-questioning her all the intelligence, craftiness and logic
+at his command. The net result of his fusillade of interrogatories,
+however, was exceedingly meagre.</p>
+
+<p>As he sat, caressing his chin and thrusting forward his bristly
+moustache, Mrs. Brace perceived in his eyes a confession of failure.
+Although he was far from suspecting it, he presented to her keen
+scrutiny an amusing figure. She observed that his shoulders drooped, and
+that, as he slowly produced a handkerchief and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> mopped his forehead, his
+movements were eloquent of gloom.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, Mr. Crown felt himself at a loss. He had come to the end of his
+resourcefulness in the art of probing for facts. He was about to take
+his departure, with the secret realization that he had learned nothing
+new&mdash;unless an increased admiration of Mrs. Brace's sharpness of wit
+might be catalogued as knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>She put his thought into language.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Mr. Crown, you're wasting your time shouting at me, bullying
+me, accusing me of protecting the murderer of my own daughter."</p>
+
+<p>There was a new note in her voice, a hint, ever so slight, of a
+willingness to be friendly. He was not insensible to it. Hearing it, he
+put himself on guard, wondering what it portended.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't say that," he contradicted, far from graciousness. "I said you
+knew a whole lot more about the murder than you'd tell&mdash;tell me anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"But why should I want to conceal anything that might bring the man to
+justice?"</p>
+
+<p>"Blessed if I know!" he conceded, not without signs of irritation.</p>
+
+<p>So far as he could see, not a feature of her face changed. The lifted
+eyebrows were still high upon her forehead, interrogative and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> mocking;
+the restless, gleaming eyes still drilled into various parts of his
+person and attire; the thin lips continued their moving pictures of
+contempt. And yet, he saw, too, that she presented to him now another
+countenance.</p>
+
+<p>The change was no more than a shadow; and the shadow was so light that
+he could not be sure of its meaning. He thought it was friendliness, but
+that opinion was dulled by recurrence of his admiration of her
+"smartness." He feared some imposition.</p>
+
+<p>"You've adopted Mr. Hastings' absurd theory," she said, as if she
+wondered. "You've subscribed to it without question."</p>
+
+<p>"What theory?"</p>
+
+<p>"That I know who the guilty man is."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" He was still on guard.</p>
+
+<p>"It surprises me&mdash;that's all&mdash;a man of your intellect, your
+originality."</p>
+
+<p>She sighed, marvelling at this addition to life's conundrums.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" he asked, bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>"I should never have thought you'd put yourself in that position before
+the public. I mean, letting him lead you around by the
+nose&mdash;figuratively."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Crown started forward in his chair, eyes popped. He was indignant
+and surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that what they're saying?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p><p>"Naturally," she said, and with the one word laid it down as an
+impossibility that "they" could have said anything else. "That's what
+the reporters tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll be&mdash;dog-goned!" The knuckle-like chin dropped. "They're
+saying that, are they?"</p>
+
+<p>Disturbed as he was, he noticed that she regarded him with apparently
+genuine interest&mdash;that, perhaps, she added to her interest a regret that
+he had displayed no originality in the investigation, a man of his
+intellect!</p>
+
+<p>"They couldn't understand why you were playing Hastings' game," she
+proceeded, "playing it to his smallest instructions."</p>
+
+<p>"Hastings' game! What the thunder are they talking about? What do they
+mean, his game?"</p>
+
+<p>"His desire to keep suspicion away from the Sloanes and Mr. Webster.
+That's what they hired him for&mdash;isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I guess it is&mdash;by gravy!" Mr. Crown's long-drawn sigh was distinctly
+tremulous.</p>
+
+<p>"That old man pockets his fee when he throws Gene Russell into jail.
+Why, then, isn't it his game to convince you of Gene's guilt? Why isn't
+it his game to persuade you of my secret knowledge of Gene's guilt?
+Why&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"So, that's&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me say what I started," she in turn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> interrupted him. "As one of
+the reporters pointed out, why isn't it his game to try to make a fool
+of you?"</p>
+
+<p>The smile with which she recommended that rumour to his attention
+incensed him further. It patronized him. It said, as openly as if she
+had spoken the words: "I'm really very sorry for you."</p>
+
+<p>He dropped his hands to his widespread knees, slid forward to the edge
+of his chair, thrust his face closer to hers, peered into her hard face
+for her meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"Making a fool of me, is he?" he said in the brutal key of unrepressed
+rage.</p>
+
+<p>A quick motion of her lifted brows, a curve of her lower
+lip&mdash;indubitably, a new significance of expression&mdash;stopped his
+outburst.</p>
+
+<p>"By George!" he said, taken aback. "By George!" he repeated, this time
+in a coarse exultation. He thrust himself still closer to her, certain
+now of her meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you know?" He lowered his voice and asked again: "Mrs. Brace,
+what do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>She moved back, farther from him. She was not to be rushed
+into&mdash;anything. She made him appreciate the difficulty of "getting next"
+to her. He no longer felt fear of her imposing on him&mdash;she had just
+exposed, for his benefit, how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> Hastings had played on his credulity! He
+felt grateful to her for that. His only anxiety now was that she might
+change her mind, might refuse him the assistance which that new and
+subtle expression had promised a moment ago.</p>
+
+<p>"If I thought you'd use&mdash;&mdash;" she began, broke off, and looked past his
+shoulder at the opposite wall, the pupils of her eyes sharp points of
+light, lips drawn to a line almost invisible.</p>
+
+<p>Her evident prudence fired his eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>"If I'd do what?" he asked. "If you thought I'd&mdash;what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me think," she requested.</p>
+
+<p>He changed his posture, with a great show of watching the sunset sky,
+and stole little glances at her smooth, untroubled face. He believed now
+that she could put him on the trail of the murderer. He confessed to
+himself, unreservedly, that Hastings had tricked him, held him up to
+ridicule&mdash;to the ridicule of a nation, for this crime held the interest
+of the entire country. But here was his chance for revenge! With this
+"smart" woman's help, he would outwit Hastings!</p>
+
+<p>"If you'd use my ideas confidentially," she said at last, eying him as
+if she speculated on his honesty; "if I were sure that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why can't you be sure of it?" he broke in. "My job is to catch the man
+who killed your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> daughter. I've got two jobs. The other is to show up
+old Hastings! Why wouldn't I do as you ask&mdash;exactly as you ask?"</p>
+
+<p>She tantalized him.</p>
+
+<p>"And remember that what I say is ideas only, not knowledge?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure! Certainly, Mrs. Brace."</p>
+
+<p>"And, even when you arrest the right man, say nothing of what you owe me
+for my suggestions? You're the kind of man to want to do that sort of
+thing&mdash;give me credit for helping you."</p>
+
+<p>Even that pleased him.</p>
+
+<p>"If you specify silence, I give you my word on it," he said, with a
+fragment of the pompous manner he had brought into the apartment more
+than an hour ago.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll take my ideas, my theory, work on it and never bring me into
+it&mdash;in any way? If you make that promise, I'll tell you what I think,
+what I'm certain is the answer to this puzzle."</p>
+
+<p>"Win or lose, right or wrong idea, you have my oath on it."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well!" She said that with the air of one embarking on a tremendous
+venture and scorning all its possibilities of harm. "I shall trust you
+fully.&mdash;First, let me sketch all the known facts, everything connected
+with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> tragedy, and everything I know concerning the conduct of the
+affected individuals since."</p>
+
+<p>He was leaning far toward her once more, a child-like impatience stamped
+on his face. As she proceeded, his admiration grew.</p>
+
+<p>For this, there was ample ground. The newspaper paragraph Hastings had
+read that morning commenting on her mastery of all the details of the
+crime had scarcely done her justice. Before she concluded, Crown had
+heard from her lips little incidents that had gone over his head. She
+put new and accurate meaning into facts time and time again, speaking
+with the particularity and vividness of an eye-witness.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," she said, having reconstructed the crime and described the
+subsequent behaviour of the tragedy's principal actors; "now who's
+guilty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," echoed Crown, with a click in his throat. "Who's guilty?
+What's your theory?"</p>
+
+<p>She was silent, eyes downcast, her hands smoothing the black, much-worn
+skirt over her lean knees. Recital of the gruesome story, the death of
+her only child, had left her unmoved, had not quickened her breathing.</p>
+
+<p>"In telling you that," she resumed, her restless eyes striking his at
+rapid intervals, "I think I'll put you in a position to get the right
+man&mdash;if you'll act."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p><p>"Oh, I'll act!" he declared, largely. "Don't bother your head about
+that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, it's only a theory&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I know! And I'll keep it to myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. Arthur Sloane is prostrated, can't be interviewed. He can't
+be interviewed, for the simple reason that he's afraid he'll tell what
+he knows. Why is he afraid of that? Because he knows too much, for his
+own comfort, and too much for his daughter's comfort. How does he know
+it? Because he saw enough night before last to leave him sure of the
+murderer's identity.</p>
+
+<p>"He was the man who turned on the light, showing Webster and Judge
+Wilton bending over Mildred's body. It occurred at a time when usually
+he is in his first sound sleep&mdash;from bromides. Something must have
+happened to awake him, an outcry, something. And yet, he says he didn't
+see them&mdash;Wilton and Webster."</p>
+
+<p>"By gravy!" exclaimed the sheriff, awe-struck.</p>
+
+<p>"Either," she continued, "Arthur Sloane saw the murder done, or he
+looked out in time to see who the murderer was. The facts substantiate
+that. They are corroborated by his subsequent behaviour. Immediately
+after the murder he was in a condition that couldn't be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> explained by
+the mere fact that he's a sufferer from chronic nervousness. When
+Hastings asked him to take a handkerchief, he would have fallen to the
+ground but for the judge's help. He couldn't hold an electric torch.
+And, ever since, he's been in bed, afraid to talk. Why, he even refused
+to talk to Hastings, the man he's retained for the family's protection!"</p>
+
+<p>"He did, did he! How do you know that, Mrs. Brace?"</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it enough that I know it&mdash;or advance it as a theory?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did&mdash;I thought, possibly, Jarvis, the valet, told you."</p>
+
+<p>She ignored that.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, as to the daughter of the house. There was only one possible
+reason for Lucille Sloane's hiring Hastings: she was afraid somebody in
+the house, Webster, of course, would be arrested. Being in love with
+him, she never would have suspected him unless there had been concrete,
+undeniable evidence of his guilt. Do you grasp that reasoning?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, I do!" Mr. Crown condemned himself. "What I'm wondering is why I
+didn't see it long ago."</p>
+
+<p>"She, too, you recall, was looking out of a window&mdash;on that side of the
+house&mdash;scarcely fifteen yards from where the crime was done.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> It's not
+hard to believe that she saw what her father saw: the murder or the
+murderer.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Crown, if you can make her or her father talk, you'll get the truth
+of this thing, the truth and the murderer.</p>
+
+<p>"And look at Judge Wilton's part. You asked me why I went to his office
+this morning. I went because I'm sure he knows the truth. Didn't he stay
+right at Webster's side when old Hastings interviewed Webster yesterday?
+Why? To keep Webster from letting out, in his panic, a secret which both
+of them knew."</p>
+
+<p>The sheriff's admiration by this time was boundless. He felt driven to
+give it expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Brace, you're a loo-loo! A loo-loo, by gravy! Sure, that was his
+reason. He couldn't have had any other!"</p>
+
+<p>"As for Webster himself," she carried on her exposition, without
+emotion, without the slightest recognition of her pupil's praise, "he
+proves the correctness of everything we've said, so far. That secret
+which the judge feared he would reveal, that secret which old Hastings
+was blundering after&mdash;that secret, Mr. Crown, was such a danger to him
+that, to escape the questioning of even stupid old Hastings, he could do
+nothing but crumple up on the floor and feign illness, prostration. Why,
+don't you see, he was afraid to talk!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p><p>"Everything you say hits the mark!" agreed Crown, smiling happily.
+"Centre-shots! Centre-shots! You've been right from the very beginning.
+You tried to tell me all this yesterday morning, and, fool that I
+was&mdash;fool that Hastings was!" He switched to a summary of what she had
+put into his mind: "It's right! Webster killed her, and Sloane and his
+daughter saw him at it. Even Wilton knows it&mdash;and he a judge! It seems
+impossible. By gravy! he ought to be impeached."</p>
+
+<p>A new idea struck him. Mrs. Brace, imperturbable, exhibiting no elation,
+was watching him closely. She saw his sudden change of countenance. He
+had thought: "She didn't reason this out. Russell saw the murder&mdash;the
+coward&mdash;and he's told her. He ran away from&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Another suspicion attacked him: "But that was Jarvis' night off. Has she
+seen Jarvis?"</p>
+
+<p>Impelled to put this fresh bewilderment into words, he was stayed by the
+restless, brilliant eyes with which she seemed to penetrate his
+lumbering mind. He was afraid of losing her cooperation. She was too
+valuable an ally to affront. He kept quiet.</p>
+
+<p>She brought him back to her purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, you agree with me? You think Webster's guilty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Think!" He almost shouted his contempt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> of the inadequate word. "Think!
+I know! Guilty? The man's black with guilt."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure of it," she said, curiously skilful in surrendering to him all
+credit for that vital discovery. "What are you going to do&mdash;now that you
+know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Make him talk, turn him inside out! Playing sick, is he! I'm going back
+to Sloanehurst this evening. I'm going to start something. You can take
+this from me: Webster'll loosen that tongue of his before another sun
+rises!"</p>
+
+<p>But that was not her design.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't do it," she objected, her voice heavy with disappointment.
+"Dr. Garnet, your own coroner, says questioning will kill him. Dr.
+Garnet's as thoroughly fooled as Hastings, and," she prodded him with
+suddenly sharp tone, "you."</p>
+
+<p>"That's right." He was crestfallen, plucking at his chin. "That's hard
+to get around. But I've got to get around it! I've got to show results,
+Mrs. Brace. People, some of the papers even, are already hinting that
+I'm too easy on a rich man and his friend."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said, evenly. "And you told&mdash;I understood you'd act, on our
+theory."</p>
+
+<p>"I've got to! I've got to act!"</p>
+
+<p>His confusion was manifest. He did not know what to do, and he was
+silent, hoping for a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> suggestion from her. She let him wait. The pause
+added to his embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>"What would&mdash;that is," he forced himself to the appeal, "I was
+wondering&mdash;anything occur to you? See any way out of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, I know nothing about such procedure," she replied to that,
+slowly, as if she groped for a new idea. "But, if you got the proof from
+somewhere else, enough to warrant the arrest of Webster&mdash;&mdash;" Her smile
+deprecated her probable ineptness. "If Arthur Sloane&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He fairly fell upon the idea.</p>
+
+<p>"Right!" he said, clapping his hands together. "Sloane's no dying man,
+is he? And he knows the whole story. Right you are, Mrs. Brace! He can
+shake and tremble and whine all he pleases, but tonight he's my meat&mdash;my
+meat, right! Talk? You bet he'll talk!"</p>
+
+<p>She considered, looking at the opposite wall. He was convinced that she
+examined the project, viewing it from the standpoint of his interest,
+seeking possible dangers of failure. Nevertheless, he hurried her
+decision.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the thing to do, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should think so," she said at last. "You, with your mental
+forcefulness, your ability as a questioner&mdash;why, I don't see how you can
+fail to get at what he knows. Beside, you have the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> element of surprise
+on your side. That will go far toward sweeping him off his feet."</p>
+
+<p>He was again conscious of his debt of gratitude to this woman, and tried
+to voice it.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the first time," he declared, big with confidence, "I've felt
+that I had the right end of this case."</p>
+
+<p>When she had closed the door on him, she went back to the living room
+and set back in its customary place the chair he had occupied. Her own
+was where it always belonged. From there she went into the bathroom and,
+as Hastings had seen her do before, drew a glass of water which she
+drank slowly.</p>
+
+<p>Then, examining her hard, smooth face in the bedroom mirror, she said
+aloud:</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty soon, now, somebody will talk business&mdash;with me."</p>
+
+<p>There was no elation in her voice. But her lips were, for a moment,
+thick and wet, changing her countenance into a picture of inordinate
+greed.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV</h2>
+
+<h3>IN ARTHUR SLOANE'S ROOM</h3>
+
+<p>Hastings went back to Sloanehurst that evening for another and more
+forceful attempt to argue Arthur Sloane into frankness. Like Mrs. Brace,
+he could not get away from the definite conclusion that Lucille's father
+was silent from fear of telling what he knew. Moreover, he realized
+that, without a closer connection with Sloane, his own handling of the
+case was seriously impeded.</p>
+
+<p>Lucille was on the front porch, evidently waiting for him, although he
+had not notified her in advance of his visit. She went hurriedly down
+the steps and met him on the walk. When he began an apology for having
+to annoy her so frequently, she cut short his excuses.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I'm glad you're here&mdash;so glad! We need your help. The sheriff's
+here."</p>
+
+<p>She put her hand on his coat sleeve; he could feel the tremour of it as
+she pulled, unconsciously, on the cloth. She turned toward the verandah
+steps.</p>
+
+<p>"What's he doing?" he asked, detaining her.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p><p>"He's in father's room," she said in feverish haste, "asking him all
+sorts of questions, saying ridiculous things. Really, I'm afraid&mdash;for
+father's health! Can't you go in now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't Judge Wilton manage him? Isn't the judge here?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. He came over at dinner time; but he went back to the Randalls'.
+Father didn't feel up to talking to him."</p>
+
+<p>Crown, she explained, had literally forced his way into the bedroom,
+disregarding her protests and paying no attention to the pretence of
+physical resistance displayed by Jarvis.</p>
+
+<p>"The man seems insane!" she said. "I want you to make him leave father's
+room&mdash;please!"</p>
+
+<p>She halted near the library door, leaving the matter in Hastings' hands.
+Since entering the house he had heard Crown's voice, raised to the key
+of altercation; and now, when he stepped into Sloane's room, the rush of
+words continued.</p>
+
+<p>The sheriff, unaware of the newcomer, stood near the bed, emphasizing
+his speech with restless arms and violent motions of his head, as if to
+galvanize into response the still and prostrate form before him. On the
+opposite side of the bed stood the sepulchral Jarvis, flashing malign
+looks at Crown, but chiefly busy, with unshaking hands, preparing a
+beverage of some sort for the sick man.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p><p>Sloane lay on his back, eyes closed, face under the full glare of the
+reading light. His expression indicated both boredom and physical
+suffering.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;have to make an arrest!" Crown was saying. "You're making me take
+that action&mdash;ain't you? I come in here, considerate as I know how to be,
+and I ask you for a few facts. Do you give 'em to me? Not by a long
+shot! You lie there in that bed, and talk about leaping angels, and say
+I bore you! Well, Mr. Sloane, that won't get you a thing! You're where I
+said you were: it's either Webster that will be arrested&mdash;or yourself!
+Now, I'm giving you another chance. I'm asking you what you saw; and you
+can tell me&mdash;or take the consequences!"</p>
+
+<p>Hastings thought: "He's up that gum stump of his again, and don't know
+how to quit talking."</p>
+
+<p>Sloane made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," thundered Crown. "I'm asking you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Moaning martyrs!" Sloane protested in a thin, querulous tone. "Jarvis,
+the bromide."</p>
+
+<p>"All right!" the sheriff delivered his ultimatum. "I'll stick to what I
+said. Webster may be too sick to talk, but not too sick to have a
+warrant served on him. He'll be arrested because you won't tell me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p><p>Hastings spoke then.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen!" he greeted pleasantly. "Mr. Sloane, good evening. Mr.
+Sheriff&mdash;am I interrupting a private conference?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fiery fiends!" wailed Sloane. "Another!"</p>
+
+<p>Hastings gave his attention to Crown. He was certain that the man,
+balked by Sloane's refusal to "talk," would welcome an excuse for
+leaving the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see you a moment, will you?" He put a hand on the sheriff's
+shoulder, persuading: "It's important, right now."</p>
+
+<p>"But I want to know what Mr. Sloane's going to say," Crown blustered.
+"If he'll tell&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Hastings stopped him with a whisper: "That's exactly what he'll
+do&mdash;soon!"</p>
+
+<p>He led the sheriff into the hall. They went into the parlour.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," Hastings began, in genial tone; "did you get anything from him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a dad-blamed thing!" Crown was still blustery. "But he'll talk
+before I'm through! You can put your little bets down on that!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right. You've had your chance at him. Better let me see him."</p>
+
+<p>Crown looked his distrust. He was thinking of Mrs. Brace's warning that
+this man had made a fool of him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p><p>"I'm not trying to put anything over on you," the detective assured
+him. "Fact is, I'm out here for the newspaper men. They've had nothing
+from him; they've asked me to get his story. I'll give it to you before
+I see them. What do you say?"</p>
+
+<p>Crown still hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"If, after you've heard it," Hastings added, "you want to question him
+further, you can do it, of course. But this way we take two shots at
+it."</p>
+
+<p>To that, the other finally agreed.</p>
+
+<p>Hastings found Sloane smoking a cigarette, his eyes still closed. Jarvis
+was behind a screen near the door, now and then clinking glass against
+glass as he worked.</p>
+
+<p>The old man took a chair near the bed and waited for Sloane to speak. He
+waited a long time. Finally, the invalid looked at him from under
+lowered lids, slyly, like a child peeping. Hastings returned the look
+with a pleasant smile, his shrewd eyes sparkling over the rims of his
+spectacles.</p>
+
+<p>"Well!" Sloane said at last, in a whiney tone. "What do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"First," Hastings apologized, "I want to say how sorry I am I didn't
+make myself clearly understood night before last when I told Miss Sloane
+I'd act as mouthpiece for this <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>household. I didn't mean I could invent
+a statement for each of you, or for any of you. What I did mean amounts
+to this: if you, for instance, would tell me what you know&mdash;all you
+know&mdash;about this murder, I could relay it to the reporters&mdash;and to the
+sheriff, who's been annoying you so this evening. As&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Flat-headed fiends!" Sloane cut in, writhing under the light coverlet.
+"Another harangue!"</p>
+
+<p>Hastings kept his temper.</p>
+
+<p>"No harangue about it. But it's to come to this, Mr. Sloane: you're
+handicapping me, and the reporters and the sheriff don't trust you."</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Why don't they trust me?" shrilled Sloane, writhing again.</p>
+
+<p>"Ill tell you in a very few words: because you refused to testify at the
+inquest yesterday, giving illness as an excuse. That's one reason.
+The&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Howling helions! Wasn't I ill? Didn't I have enough to make me
+ill?&mdash;Jarvis, a little whiskey!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Garnet hasn't told them so&mdash;the reporters. He won't tell them so.
+In fact," Hastings said, with less show of cordiality, "from all he said
+to me, I gather he doesn't think you an ill man&mdash;that is, dangerously
+ill."</p>
+
+<p>"And because of that, they say what, these reporters, this sheriff?
+What?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p><p>"They're in ugly mood, Mr. Sloane. They're saying you're trying to
+protect&mdash;somebody&mdash;by keeping still about a thing which you should be
+the first to haul into daylight. That's it&mdash;in a nutshell."</p>
+
+<p>Sloane had stopped trembling. He sat up in the bed and stared at the
+detective out of steady, hard eyes. He waved away the whiskey Jarvis
+held toward him.</p>
+
+<p>"And you want what, Mr. Hastings?" he inquired, a curiously effective
+sarcasm in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"A statement covering every second from the time you waked up Saturday
+night until you saw the body."</p>
+
+<p>"A statement!&mdash;Reporters!" He was snarling on that. "What's got into
+you, anyway? What are you trying to do&mdash;make people suspect me of the
+murder-make 'em suspect Berne?"</p>
+
+<p>He threw away the cigarette and shook his fist at Hastings. He gulped
+twice before he could speak again; he seemed on the point of choking.</p>
+
+<p>"In an ugly mood, are they? Well, they can stay in an ugly mood. You,
+too! And that hydrophobiac sheriff! Quivering and crucified saints! I've
+had enough of all of you&mdash;all of you, understand! Get out of here! Get
+out!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p><p>Although his voice was shrill, there was no sound of weakness in it.
+The trembling that attacked him was the result of anger, not of
+nervousness.</p>
+
+<p>Hastings rose, astounded by the outbreak.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid you don't realize the seriousness of&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, get out of here!" Sloane interrupted again. "You've imposed on my
+daughter with your talk of being helpful, and all that rot, but you
+can't hoodwink me. What the devil do you mean by letting that sheriff
+come in here and subject me to all this annoyance and shock? You'd save
+us from unpleasantness!"</p>
+
+<p>He spoke more slowly now, as if he cudgelled his brain for the most
+biting sarcasm, the most unbearable insolence.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't realize the seriousness!&mdash;Flat-headed fiends!&mdash;Are you any nearer
+the truth now than you were at the start?&mdash;Try to understand this, Mr.
+Hastings: you're discharged, fired! From now on, I'm in charge of what
+goes on in this house. If there's any trouble to be avoided, I'll attend
+to it. Get that!&mdash;and get out!"</p>
+
+<p>Hastings, opening his mouth for angry retort, checked himself. He stood
+a moment silent, shaken by the effort it cost him to maintain his
+self-control.</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" Sloane's nasal, twangy <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>exclamation was clearly intended to
+provoke him further.</p>
+
+<p>But, without a word, he turned and left the room. Passing the screen
+near the door, he heard Jarvis snicker, a discreet echo of Sloane's
+goading ridicule.</p>
+
+<p>On his way back to the parlour, the old man made up his mind to discount
+Sloane's behaviour.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got to take a chance," he counselled himself, "but I know I'm
+right in doing it. A big responsibility&mdash;but I'm right!"</p>
+
+<p>Then he submitted this report:</p>
+
+<p>"He says nothing new, Crown. Far as I can make out, nothing unusual
+waked him up that night&mdash;except chronic nervousness; he turned on that
+light to find some medicine; he knew nothing of the murder until Judge
+Wilton called him."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" growled Crown. "And you fall for that!"</p>
+
+<p>Hastings eyed him sternly. "It's the statement I'm going to give to the
+reporters."</p>
+
+<p>The sheriff was silent, irresolute. Hastings congratulated himself on
+his earlier deduction: that Crown, unable to frighten Sloane into
+communicativeness, was thankful for an excuse to withdraw.</p>
+
+<p>Hendricks had reported the two-hour <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>conference between Crown and Mrs.
+Brace late that afternoon. Hastings decided now: "The man's in cahoots
+with her. His ally! And he won't act until he's had another session with
+her.&mdash;And she won't advise an arrest for a day or two anyway. Her game
+is to make him play on Sloane's nerves for a while. She advises threats,
+not arrests&mdash;which suits me, to a T!"</p>
+
+<p>He fought down a chuckle, thinking of that alliance.</p>
+
+<p>Crown corroborated his reasoning.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Hastings," he said doggedly. "I'm not going back to his
+room. I gave him his chance. He can take the consequences."</p>
+
+<p>"What consequences?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd hardly describe 'em to his personal representative, would I? But
+you can take this from me: they'll come soon enough&mdash;and rough enough!"</p>
+
+<p>Hastings made no reference to having been dismissed by Sloane. He was
+glad when Crown changed the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"Hastings, you saw the reporters this afternoon&mdash;I've been
+wondering&mdash;they asked me&mdash;did they ask you whether you suspected the
+valet&mdash;Jarvis?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Killing her."</p>
+
+<p>"No; they didn't ask me."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p><p>"Funny," said Crown, ill at ease. "They asked me."</p>
+
+<p>"So you said," Hastings reminded, looking hard at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Well!" Crown blurted it out. "Do you suspect him? Are you working on
+that line&mdash;at all?"</p>
+
+<p>Hastings paused. He had no desire to mislead him. And yet, there was no
+reason for confiding in him&mdash;and delay was at present the Hastings plan.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you, Crown," he said, finally; "I'll work on any line that
+can lead to the guilty man.&mdash;What do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who? Me?" Crown's tone indicated the absurdity of suspecting Jarvis.
+"Not a thing."</p>
+
+<p>But it gave Hastings food for thought. Was Mrs. Brace in communication
+with Jarvis? And did Crown know that? Was it possible that Crown wanted
+to find out whether Hastings was having Jarvis shadowed? How much of a
+fool was the woman making of the sheriff, anyway?</p>
+
+<p>Another thing puzzled him: why did Mrs. Brace suspect Arthur Sloane of
+withholding the true story of what he had seen the night of the murder?
+Hastings' suspicion, amounting to certainty, came from his knowledge
+that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> man's own daughter thought him deeply involved in the crime.
+But Mrs. Brace&mdash;was she clever enough to make that deduction from the
+known facts? Or did she have more direct information from Sloanehurst
+than he had thought possible?</p>
+
+<p>He decided not to leave the sheriff entirely subject to her schemes and
+suggestions. He would give Mr. Crown something along another line&mdash;a
+brake, as it were, on impulsive action.</p>
+
+<p>"You talk about arresting Webster right away&mdash;or Sloane," he began,
+suddenly confiding. "You wouldn't want to make a mistake&mdash;would you?"</p>
+
+<p>Crown rose to that. "Why? What do you know&mdash;specially?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, not so much, maybe. But it's worth thinking about. I'll give you
+the facts&mdash;confidentially, of course.&mdash;Hub Hill's about a hundred yards
+from this house, on the road to Washington. When automobiles sink into
+it hub-deep, they come out with a lot of mud on their wheels&mdash;black,
+loamy mud. Ain't any other mud like that Hub Hill mud anywhere near
+here. It's just special and peculiar to Hub Hill. That so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," agreed Crown, absorbed.</p>
+
+<p>"All right. How, then, did Eugene Russell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> keep black, Hub Hill mud on
+his shoes that night if he went the four miles on foot to where Otis
+picked him up?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eh?" said Crown, chin fallen.</p>
+
+<p>"By the time he'd run four miles, his shoes would have been covered with
+the red mud of that mile of 'dirt road' or the thin, grey mud of the
+three miles of pike&mdash;wouldn't they? They'd have thrown off that Hub Hill
+mud pretty quick, wouldn't they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thunder!" marvelled Crown. "That's right! And those shoes were in his
+room; I saw 'em." He gurgled, far back in his throat. "Say! How did he
+get from Hub Hill to where Otis picked him up?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I say," declared Hastings, very bland. "How?"</p>
+
+<p>To Lucille, after Crown's departure, the detective declared his
+intention to "stand by" her, to stay on the case. He repeated his
+statement of yesterday: he suspected too much, and knew too little, to
+give it up.</p>
+
+<p>He told her of the responsibility he had assumed in giving the sheriff
+the fictitious Sloane statement. "That is, it's not fictitious, in
+itself; it's what your father has been saying. But I told Crown, and I'm
+going to tell the newspaper men, that he says it's all he knows, really.
+And I hate to do it&mdash;because, honestly, Miss Sloane,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> I don't think it
+is all. I'm afraid he's deceiving us."</p>
+
+<p>She did not contradict that; it was her own opinion.</p>
+
+<p>"However," the old man made excuse, "I had to do it&mdash;in view of things
+as they are. And he's got to stick to it, now that I've made it
+'official,' so to speak. Do you think he will?"</p>
+
+<p>She did not see why not. She would explain to him the importance, the
+necessity, of that course.</p>
+
+<p>"He's so mistaken in what he's doing!" she said. "I don't understand
+him&mdash;really. You know how devoted to me he is. He called me into his
+room again an hour or two ago and tried to comfort me. He said he had
+reason to know everything would come out as it should. But he looked
+so&mdash;so uncertain!&mdash;Oh, Mr. Hastings, who did kill that woman?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think I'll be able to prove who did it&mdash;let's see," he spoke with a
+light cheerfulness, and at the same time with sincerity; "I'll be able
+to prove it in less than a week after Mrs. Brace takes that money from
+you."</p>
+
+<p>She said nothing to that, and he leaned forward sharply, peering at her
+face, illegible to him in the darkness of the verandah.</p>
+
+<p>"So much depends on that, on you," he added. "You won't fail
+me&mdash;tomorrow?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p><p>"I'll do my best," she said, earnestly, struggling against depression.</p>
+
+<p>"She must take that money," he declared with great emphasis. "She must!"</p>
+
+<p>"And you think she will?"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Sloane, I know she will," he said, a fatherly encouragement in his
+voice. "I'm seldom mistaken in people; and I know I've judged this woman
+correctly. Money's her weakness. Love of it has destroyed her already.
+Offering this bribe to anybody else situated as she is would be
+ridiculous&mdash;but she&mdash;she'll take it."</p>
+
+<p>Lucille sat a long time on the verandah after Hastings had gone. She was
+far more depressed than he had suspected; she had to endure so much, she
+thought&mdash;the suspense, which grew heavier as time went by; the
+notoriety; Berne Webster still in danger of his life; her father's
+inexplicable pose of indifference toward everything; the suspicions of
+the newspapers and the public of both her father and Berne; and the
+waiting, waiting, waiting&mdash;for what?</p>
+
+<p>A little moan escaped her.</p>
+
+<p>What if Mrs. Brace did take the marked money? What would that show? That
+she was acting with criminal intent, Hastings had said. But he had
+another and more definite object<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> in urging her to this undertaking; he
+expected from it a vital development which he had not explained&mdash;she was
+sure. She worried with that idea.</p>
+
+<p>Her confidence in Hastings had been without qualification. But what was
+he doing? Anything? Judge Wilton was forever saying, "Trust Hastings;
+he's the man for this case." And that was his reputation; people
+declared that, if anybody could get to the bottom of all this mystery,
+he could. Yet, two whole days had passed since the murder, and he had
+just said another week might be required to work out his plan of
+detection&mdash;whatever that plan was.</p>
+
+<p>Another week of this! She put her hot palms to her hotter temples,
+striving for clarity of thought. But she was dazed by her terror&mdash;her
+isolated terror, for some of her thoughts were such that she could share
+them with nobody&mdash;not even Hastings.</p>
+
+<p>"If the sheriff makes no arrest within the next few days, I'll be out of
+the woods," he had told her. "Delay is what I want."</p>
+
+<p>There, again, was discouragement, for here was the sheriff threatening
+to serve a warrant on Berne within the next twenty-four hours! She had
+heard Crown make the threat, and to her it had seemed absolutely final:
+unless her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> father revealed something which Crown wanted, whether her
+father knew it or not, Berne was to be subjected to this humiliation,
+this added blow to his chance for recovery!</p>
+
+<p>She sprang up, throwing her hands wide and staring blindly at the stars.</p>
+
+<p>The woman whom she was to bribe cast a deep shadow on her imagination.
+Sharing the feeling of many others, she had reached the reluctant
+conclusion that Mrs. Brace in some way knew more than anybody else about
+the murder and its motives. It was, she told herself, a horrid feeling,
+and without reason. But she could not shake it off. To her, Mrs. Brace
+was a figure of sinister power, an agent of ugliness, waiting to do
+evil&mdash;waiting for what?</p>
+
+<p>By a great effort, she steadied her jangled nerves. Hastings was
+counting on her. And work&mdash;even work in the dark&mdash;was preferable to this
+idleness, this everlasting summing-up of frightful possibilities without
+a ray of hope. She would do her best to make that woman take the money!</p>
+
+<p>Tomorrow she would be of real service to Berne Webster&mdash;she would atone,
+in some small measure, for the sorrow she had brought upon him,
+discarding him because of empty gossip!&mdash;Would he continue to love
+her?&mdash;Perhaps, if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> she had not discarded him, Mildred Brace would not
+have been murdered.</p>
+
+<p>A groan escaped her. She fled into the house, away from her thoughts.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE BRIBE</h3>
+
+<p>It was nine o'clock the following evening when Lucille Sloane, sure that
+she had entered the Walman unobserved, rang the bell of Mrs. Brace's
+apartment. Her body felt remarkably light and facile, as if she moved in
+a tenuous, half-real atmosphere. There were moments when she had the
+sensation of floating. Her brain worked with extraordinary rapidity. She
+was conscious of an unusually resourceful intelligence, and performed a
+series of mental gymnastics, framing in advance the sentences she would
+use in the interview confronting her.</p>
+
+<p>The constant thought at the back of her brain was that she would
+succeed; she would speak and act in such a way that Mrs. Brace would
+take the money. She was buoyed by a fierce determination to be repaid
+for all the suspense, all the agony of heart, that had weighed her down
+throughout this long, leaden-footed day&mdash;the past twenty-four hours
+unproductive of a single enlightening incident.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p><p>Mrs. Brace opened the door and, with a scarcely perceptible nod of the
+head, motioned her into the living room. Neither of them spoke until
+they had seated themselves on the chairs by the window. Even then, the
+silence was prolonged, until Lucille realized that her tongue was dry
+and uncomfortably large for her mouth. An access of trembling shook her.
+She tried to smile and knew that her lips were twisting in a ghastly
+grin.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brace moved slowly to and fro on the armless rocker, her swift,
+appraising eyes taking in her visitor's distress. The smooth face wore
+its customary, inexpressive calm. Lucille, striving desperately to
+arrive at some opinion of what the woman thought, saw that she might as
+well try to find emotion in a statue.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I," the girl finally attained a quick, flurried utterance, "want to
+thank you for&mdash;for having this&mdash;this talk with me."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want to talk about, Miss Sloane?"</p>
+
+<p>The low, metallic voice was neither friendly nor hostile. It expressed,
+more than anything else, a sardonic, bullying self-sufficiency.</p>
+
+<p>It both angered and encouraged Lucille. She perceived the futility of
+polite, introductory phrases here; she could go straight to her purpose,
+be brutally frank. She gave Mrs. Brace<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> a brilliant, disarming smile, a
+proclamation of fellowship. Her confidence was restored.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure we can talk sensibly together, Mrs. Brace," she explained,
+dissembling her indignation. "We can get down to business, at once."</p>
+
+<p>"What business?" inquired the older woman, with some of the manner
+Hastings had seen, an air of lying in wait.</p>
+
+<p>"I said, on the 'phone, it was something of advantage to you&mdash;didn't I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; you said that."</p>
+
+<p>"And, of course, I want something from you."</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you what it is." Lucille spoke now with cool precision, as
+yet untouched by the horror she had expected to feel. "It's a matter of
+money."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brace's tongue came out to the edge of the thin line of her lips.
+Her nostrils quivered, once, to the sharply indrawn breath. Her eyes
+were more furtive.</p>
+
+<p>"Money?" she echoed. "For what?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's no good of my making long explanations, Mrs. Brace," Lucille
+said. "I've read the newspapers, every line of them, about&mdash;our trouble.
+And I saw the references to your finances, your lack of money."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" Mrs. Brace's right hand lay on her lap; the thumb of it began to
+move against the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> forefinger rapidly, the motion a woman makes in
+feeling the texture of cloth&mdash;or the trick of a bank clerk separating
+paper money.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I read, also, what you said about the tragedy. Today I noticed
+that the only note of newness in the articles in the papers came from
+you&mdash;from your saying that 'in a few days, three or four at the
+outside'&mdash;that was your language, I'm quite sure&mdash;you'd produce evidence
+on which an arrest would be made. I've intelligence enough to see that
+the public's interest in you is so great, the sympathy for you is so
+great, that your threats&mdash;I mean, predictions, or opinions&mdash;colour
+everything that's written by the reporters. You see?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do I see what?"</p>
+
+<p>Despite her excellent pose of waiting with nothing more than a polite
+interest, Lucille saw in her a pronounced alteration. That was not so
+much in her face as in her body. Her limbs had a look of rigidity.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you see what I mean?" Lucille insisted. "I see that you can make
+endless trouble for us&mdash;for all of us at Sloanehurst. You can make
+people believe Mr. Webster guilty, and that father and I are shielding
+him. People listen to what you say. They seem to be on your side."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p><p>"I wondered if you wouldn't stop your interviews&mdash;your accusations?"</p>
+
+<p>The younger woman's eagerness, evident now in the variety of her
+gestures and the rapid procession of pallour and flush across her
+cheeks, persuaded Mrs. Brace that Lucille was acting on an impulse of
+her own, not as an agent to carry out another's well designed scheme.
+The older woman, at that idea, felt safe. She asked:</p>
+
+<p>"And you want&mdash;what?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've come here to ask you to tell me all you know, or to be quiet
+altogether."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I don't understand&mdash;fully," returned Mrs. Brace, with an
+exaggerated bewilderment. "Tell all I know?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is, if you do know anything you haven't told!" Lucille urged her.
+"Oh, don't you see? I'm saying to you that I want to put an end to this
+dreadful suspense!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brace laughed disagreeably; her face was harder, less human. "You
+mean I'm amusing myself, exerting myself needlessly, as a matter of
+spite? Do you mean to tell me that?"</p>
+
+<p>"No! No!" Lucille denied, impatient with herself for lack of clearness.
+"I mean I'm sure you're attacking an innocent man. And I'm willing, I'm
+anxious&mdash;oh, I hope so much, Mrs. Brace&mdash;to make an agreement with
+you&mdash;a financial arrangement&mdash;&mdash;" She paused the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>fractional part of a
+second on that; and, seeing that the other did not resent the term, she
+added: "to pay you to stop it. Isn't that clear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; that's clear."</p>
+
+<p>"Understand me, please. What I ask is that you say nothing more to the
+reporters, the sheriff or the Washington police, that will have the
+effect of hounding them on against Mr. Webster. I want to eliminate from
+the situation all the influence you've exerted to make Mr. Crown believe
+Mr. Webster's guilty and my father's protecting him."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me think," Mrs. Brace said, coolly.</p>
+
+<p>Lucille exulted inwardly, "She'll do it! She'll do it!" The hard eyes
+dissected her eager face. The girl drew back in her chair, thinking now:
+"She suspects who sent me!"</p>
+
+<p>At last, the older woman spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"The detective, Hastings, would never have allowed you to come here,
+Miss Sloane.&mdash;Excuse my frankness," she interjected, with a smile she
+meant to be friendly; "but you're frank with me; we're not mincing
+matters; and I have to be careful.&mdash;He'd have warned you that your
+errand's practical confession of your knowledge of something
+incriminating Berne Webster. If you didn't suspect the man even more
+strongly than I do, you'd never have been driven to&mdash;this."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p><p>She leaned the rocker back and crossed her knees, the movement throwing
+into high relief the hard lankness of her figure. She gazed at the wall,
+over Lucille's head, as she dealt with the possibilities that presented
+themselves to her analysis. Her manner was that of a certain gloating
+enjoyment, a thinly covered, semi-orderly greediness.</p>
+
+<p>"She's not even thinking of her daughter," Lucille thought, and went
+pale a moment. "She's as bad as Mr. Hastings said&mdash;worse!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then, too," Mrs. Brace continued, "your father discharged him last
+night."</p>
+
+<p>Lucille remembered the detective's misgivings about Jarvis; how else had
+this woman found that out?</p>
+
+<p>"And you've taken matters into your own hands.&mdash;Did your father send you
+here&mdash;to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, no!"</p>
+
+<p>The other smiled slyly, the tip of her tongue again visible, her
+eyebrows high in interrogation. "Of course," she said; "you wouldn't
+tell me if he had. He would have warned you against that admission."</p>
+
+<p>"It's Mr. Webster about whom I am most concerned," Lucille reminded,
+sharpness in her vibrant young voice. "My father's being annoyed is
+merely incidental."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p><p>"Oh, of course! Of course," Mrs. Brace grinned, with broad sarcasm.</p>
+
+<p>Lucille started. The meaning of that could not be misunderstood; she
+charged that the money was offered at Arthur Sloane's instigation and
+that the concern for Berne Webster was merely pretence.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brace saw her anger, and placated it:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't mind me, Miss Sloane. A woman who's had to endure what I
+have&mdash;well, she doesn't always think clearly."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not," Lucille assented; but she was aware of a sudden longing
+to be done with the degrading work. "Now that we understand each other,
+Mrs. Brace, what do you say?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brace thought again.</p>
+
+<p>"How much?" she asked at last, her lips thickening. "How much, Miss
+Sloane, do you think my silence is worth?"</p>
+
+<p>Lucille took a roll of bills from her handbag. The woman's chair slid
+forward, answering to the forward&mdash;leaning weight of her new posture.
+She was lightly rubbing her palms together, as, with head a little
+bowed, she stared at the money in the younger woman's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I have here five hundred dollars," Lucille began.</p>
+
+<p>"What!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brace said that roughly; and, in violent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> anger, drew back, the
+legs of her chair grating on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Lucille gazed at her, uncomprehending.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she said, uncertainly. "You mean&mdash;it isn't enough?"</p>
+
+<p>"Enough!" Mrs. Brace's rage and disappointment grew, her lowered brows a
+straight line close down to her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"But I could get more!" Lucille exclaimed, struggling with disgust.
+"This," she added, with ready invention, "can serve as a part payment, a
+promise of&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah-h!" the older woman exclaimed. "That's different. I misunderstood."</p>
+
+<p>She put down the signals of her wrath, succeeding in that readjustment
+so promptly that Lucille stared at her in undisguised amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"You must pardon me, Miss Sloane. I thought you were making me the
+victim of your ridicule, some heartless joke."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, we can come to an agreement? That is, if this money is the
+first&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She broke the sentence. Mrs. Brace had put up her hand, and now held her
+head to one side, listening.</p>
+
+<p>There was a step clearly audible outside, in the main hall. The next
+moment the doorbell rang. They sat motionless. When the bell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> rang
+again, Mrs. Brace informed her with a look that she would not answer it.</p>
+
+<p>But the ringing continued, became a prolonged jangle. It got on
+Lucille's already strained nerves.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose you slip into the bedroom," Mrs. Brace whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no!" Lucille whispered back.</p>
+
+<p>She was weighed down by black premonition; she hoped Mrs. Brace would
+not open the door.</p>
+
+<p>The bell rang again.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have to!" Mrs. Brace said at last. "I won't let anybody in. I
+have to answer it!"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll send them away&mdash;whoever it is&mdash;at once?"</p>
+
+<p>"At once. I don't want you seen here, any more than you want to be
+seen!"</p>
+
+<p>Lucille started toward the bedroom. At the first step she took, Mrs.
+Brace put a hand on her arm.</p>
+
+<p>"That money!" she demanded, in a low whisper. "I'll take it."</p>
+
+<p>"And do what I asked&mdash;stop attacking us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Yes!"</p>
+
+<p>Lucille gave her the money.</p>
+
+<p>There were no lights in the bedroom. Lucille, for fear of stumbling or
+making a noise, stood to one side of the door-frame, close to the wall.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brace's footsteps stopped. There was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> the click of the opening
+door. Then, there came to Lucille the high-pitched, querulous voice
+which she had been afraid she would hear.</p>
+
+<p>It was her father's.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII</h2>
+
+<h3>"THE WHOLE TRUTH"</h3>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Brace, good evening.&mdash;May I come in?"</p>
+
+<p>Then followed the sound of footsteps, and the closing of the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I shan't detain you long, Mrs. Brace." They were still in the hall.
+"May I come in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly." The tardy assent was the perfection of indifference.</p>
+
+<p>They entered the living room. Lucille, without using her eyes, knew that
+her father was standing just within the doorway, glancing around with
+his slight squint, working his lips nervously, his head thrust forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah-h!" his shrill drawl, although he kept it low, carried back to
+Lucille. "All alone&mdash;may I ask?" He went toward the chairs by the
+window. "That is, I hope to have&mdash;well&mdash;rather a confidential little
+talk with you."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brace resumed her place on the armless rocker after she had moved a
+chair forward for him. Lucille heard it grate on the floor. Certain that
+he had taken it, she looked into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> room. Her intuition was correct;
+Mrs. Brace had placed it so that his back was turned to both the bedroom
+door and the door into the entry. This made her escape possible.</p>
+
+<p>The relief she got from the thought was of a violent nature. It came to
+her like a blow, almost forcing a gasp from her constricted throat. If
+she could tiptoe without sound a distance of eighteen feet, a matter of
+six or seven steps, she could leave the apartment without his knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>To that she was doubly urged. In the first place, Hastings' warning
+drummed upon her brain; he had specified the importance of keeping even
+her father in ignorance of her errand.</p>
+
+<p>Upon that came another reason for flight, her fear of hearing what her
+father would say. A wave of nausea weakened her. She bowed down, there
+in the dark, under the burden of her suspicion: he had come to do, for
+quite a different reason, what she had done! She kept away from definite
+analysis of his motive. Fear for Berne, or fear for himself, it was
+equally horrible to her consideration.</p>
+
+<p>"I admire your spirit, Mrs. Brace," he was saying, in ingratiating tone;
+"and your shrewdness. I've followed all you said, in the papers. And I'm
+in hopes that we may&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped, and Lucille, judging from the thin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> edges of sounds that she
+caught, had a mental picture of his peering over his shoulder. He
+resumed:</p>
+
+<p>"I must apologize, I'm sure. But you'll realize my concern for
+secrecy&mdash;after I've explained. May I&mdash;ah-h-h&mdash;do you mind if I look
+about, for possible hearers?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's unnecessary," came the calm, metallic assurance. "I've no
+objection to your searching my apartment, if you insist." She laughed, a
+mirthless deprecation of his timidity, and coolly put herself at his
+disposal in another sentence: "I've sense enough to form an idea of what
+you'll propose; and I'd scarcely want others to hear it&mdash;would I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah-h-h!" he drawled, expressing a grudging disposition to accept her
+assurance. "Certainly not.&mdash;Well, that's very reasonable&mdash;and obliging,
+I'm sure."</p>
+
+<p>Again by the thin fringes of sound, Lucille got information of his
+settling into his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," he began; "why, in the name of all the unfathomable, inscrutable
+angels&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"First, Mr. Sloane," Mrs. Brace interrupted him&mdash;and Lucille heard the
+rattle of a newspaper; "as a preface to our&mdash;shall we say
+conference?&mdash;our conference, then, let me read you this summary of my
+position.&mdash;That is, if you care to understand my position thoroughly."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p><p>She was far from her habitual quietness, rattling the newspaper
+incessantly. The noise, Lucille realized, would hang as a curtain
+between her father's ears and the possible sounds of her progress from
+the bedroom door to the entry.</p>
+
+<p>Stealing a glance into the living room, she saw his back and, over his
+stooped shoulders, Mrs. Brace's calm face. In that instant, the
+newspaper shook more violently&mdash;enough, she thought, to signal
+cooperation.</p>
+
+<p>She sickened again at sight of that woman about to dispense bought
+favours to her father. The impulse to step forth and proclaim her
+presence rose strongly within her; but she was turned from it by fear
+that her interruption might produce disastrous results. After all, she
+was not certain of his intention.</p>
+
+<p>She knew, however, that at any moment he might insist on satisfying
+himself, by a tour of inspection, that he was safe from being overheard.
+She hesitated no longer. She would try to get away.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at this, Mr. Sloane, if you please," Mrs. Brace was saying;
+"notice how the items are made to stand out, each in a paragraph of
+large type."</p>
+
+<p>She held the paper so that Sloane bent forward, and, against his will,
+was held to joint<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> perusal while she read aloud. The curtain of
+protecting noise thus was thickened.</p>
+
+<p>"'That Mrs. Brace has knowledge of the following facts,'" the harsh,
+colourless voice was reading.</p>
+
+<p>Lucille began her escape. She moved with an agony of precaution, taking
+steps only a few inches long, her arms held out from her sides to avoid
+unnecessary rustling of her clothing. She went on the balls of her feet,
+keeping the heels of her shoes always free of the floor, each step a
+slow torture.</p>
+
+<p>Her breathing stopped&mdash;a hysterical contraction of her chest prevented
+breathing. Her face burned like fire. Her head felt crowded, as if the
+blood tried to ooze through the confining scalp. There was a great
+roaring in her ears. The pulse in her temples was like the blows of
+sledges.</p>
+
+<p>Once, midway of the distance, as she stood lightly balanced, with arms
+outstretched, something went wrong with her equilibrium. She started
+forward as she had often done when a child, with the sensation of
+falling on her face. Her skirt billowed out in front of her. If she had
+had any breath in her, she would have cried out.</p>
+
+<p>But the automatisms of her body worked better than her overtaxed brain.
+Her right foot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> went out easily and softly&mdash;she marvelled at that
+independent motion of her leg&mdash;and, taking up the falling weight of her
+body, restored her balance.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brace's voice had not faltered, although she must have seen the
+misstep. Arthur Sloane's bowed shoulders had not stirred. Mrs. Brace
+continued the printed enumeration of her stores of knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Lucille took another step. She was safe!&mdash;almost. There remained but a
+yard of her painful progress. One more step, she comforted herself,
+would put her on the threshold of the entry door, and from there to the
+corridor door, shielded by the entry wall from possible observation by
+her father, would be an easy business.</p>
+
+<p>She completed that last step. On the threshold, she had to turn her body
+through an arc of ninety degrees, unless she backed out of the door.
+This she was afraid to do; her heel might meet an obstruction; a raised
+plank of the flooring, even, would mean an alarming noise.</p>
+
+<p>She began to turn. The reading continued. The whole journey from door to
+door, in spite of the anguished care of every step, had consumed
+scarcely a minute. She was turning, the balancing arms outstretched.
+Deep down in her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> chest there was the beginning of a sensation, muscles
+relaxing, the promise of a long breath of relief.</p>
+
+<p>Her left hand&mdash;or, perhaps, her elbow; in the blinding, benumbing flash
+of consternation, she did not know which&mdash;touched the pile of magazines
+on the table that was set against the door-frame. The magazines did not
+fall to the floor, but the fluttering of the loose cover of the one on
+top made a noise.</p>
+
+<p>She fled, taking with her the flashing memory of the first stirring of
+her father's figure and the crackle of the paper in Mrs. Brace's hand.
+In two light steps she was at the corridor door. Her hands found the
+latch and turned it. She ran down the stairs with rapid, skimming steps,
+the door clicking softly shut as she made the turn on the next landing.</p>
+
+<p>Her exit had been wonderfully quiet. She knew this, in spite of the fact
+that her straining senses had exaggerated the flutter of the magazine
+cover and the click of the door into a terrifying volume of sound. It
+was entirely possible that Mrs. Brace had been able to persuade her
+father that he had heard nothing more than some outside noise. She was
+certain that he had not seen her.</p>
+
+<p>She crossed the dim, narrow lobby of the Walman so quickly, and so
+quietly, that the girl<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> at the telephone board did not look in her
+direction.</p>
+
+<p>Once in the street, she was seized by desire to confide to Hastings the
+story of her experience. She decided to act on the impulse.</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>He was at first more concerned with her physical condition than with
+what she had to tell. He saw how near she was to the breaking point.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child!" he said, in the tone of fatherly solicitude which she
+had learned to like. "Comfort before conference! Here, this chair by the
+window&mdash;so&mdash;and this wreck of a fan, can you use it? Fine! Now, cool
+your flushed face in this thin, very thin stream of a breeze&mdash;feel it? A
+glass of water?&mdash;just for the tinkling of ice? That's better, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>The only light in the room was the reading lamp, under a dark-green
+shade, and from this little island of illumination there ran out a
+chaotic sea of shadows, huge waves of them, mounting the height of the
+book-shelves and breaking irregularly on the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>In the dimness, as he walked back and forth hunting for the fan or
+bringing her the water, he looked weirdly large&mdash;like, she thought
+dully, a fairy giant curiously draped. But the serenity of his
+expression touched her. She was glad she had come.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p><p>While she told her story, he stood in front of her, encouraging her
+with a smile or a nod now and then, or ambled with soft step among the
+shadows, always keeping his eyes upon her. For the moment, her tired
+spirit was freshened by his lavish praise of the manner in which she had
+accomplished her undertaking. Following that, his ready sympathy made it
+easier for her to discuss her fear that her father had planned to bribe
+Mrs. Brace.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the effort taxed her severely. At the end of it, she
+leaned back and closed her eyes, only to open them with a start of
+fright at the resultant dizziness. The sensation of bodily lightness had
+left her. Her limbs felt sheathed in metal. An acute, throbbing pain
+racked her head. She was too weary to combat the depression which was
+like a cold, freezing hand at her heart.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't say anything!" she complained weakly.</p>
+
+<p>He stood near her chair, gazing thoughtfully before him.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm trying to understand it," he said; "why your father did that.
+You're right, of course. He went there to pay her to keep quiet. But
+why?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her closely.</p>
+
+<p>"Could it be possible," he put the inquiry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> at last, "that he knew her
+before the murder?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've asked him," she said. "No; he never had heard of her&mdash;neither he
+nor Judge Wilton. I even persuaded him to question Jarvis about that. It
+was the same; Jarvis never had&mdash;until last Sunday morning."</p>
+
+<p>"You think of everything!" he congratulated her.</p>
+
+<p>"No! Oh, no!"</p>
+
+<p>Some quick and overmastering emotion broke down the last of her
+endurance. Whether it was a new and finer appreciation of his
+persistent, untiring search for the guilty man, or the realization of
+how sincerely he liked her, giving her credit for a frankness she had
+not exercised&mdash;whatever the pivotal consideration was, she felt that she
+could no longer deceive him.</p>
+
+<p>She closed her lips tightly, to keep back the rising sobs, and regarded
+him with questioning, fearful eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" he asked gently, reading her appealing look.</p>
+
+<p>"I've a confession to make," she said miserably.</p>
+
+<p>He refused to treat it as a tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>"But it can't be very bad!" he exclaimed pleasantly. "When we're
+overwrought, imagination's like a lantern swinging in the wind, changing
+the size of everything every second."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p><p>"But it is bad!" she insisted. "I haven't been fair. I couldn't bring
+myself to tell you this. I tried to think you'd get along without it!"</p>
+
+<p>"And now?"</p>
+
+<p>She answered him with an outward calmness which was, in reality,
+emotional dullness. She had suffered so much that to feel vividly was
+beyond her strength.</p>
+
+<p>"You have the right to know it," she said, looking at him out of
+brilliant, unwinking eyes. "It's about father. He was out there&mdash;on the
+lawn&mdash;before he turned on the light in his room. I heard him come in, a
+minute before Berne went down the back stairs and out to the lawn. And I
+heard him go to his window and stand there, looking out, at least five
+long minutes before he flashed on his light."</p>
+
+<p>He waited, thinking she might have more to tell. Construing his silence
+as reproof, she said, without changing either her expression or her
+voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I know&mdash;it's awful. I should have told you. Perhaps, I've done great
+harm."</p>
+
+<p>"You've been very brave," he consoled her, with infinite tenderness.
+"But it happens that I'd already satisfied myself on that point. I knew
+he'd been out there."</p>
+
+<p>She was dumb, incapable of reacting to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> words. Even the fact that he
+was smiling, with genuine amusement, did not affect her.</p>
+
+<p>"Here comes the grotesque element, the comical, that's involved in so
+many tragedies," he explained. "Your father's weakness for 'cure' of
+nervousness, and his shrinking from the ridicule he's suffered because
+of it&mdash;there's the explanation of why he was out there that night."</p>
+
+<p>She could not see significance in that, but neither could she summon
+energy to say so. She wondered vaguely why he thought it funny.</p>
+
+<p>"That night&mdash;rather, the early morning hours following&mdash;while the rest
+of you were in the library, I looked through his room, and I found a
+pair of straw sandals in the closet&mdash;such as a man could slip on and off
+without having to bend down to adjust them. And they were wet, inside
+and out.</p>
+
+<p>"Sunday morning, when Judge Wilton and I were at his bedside, I saw on
+the table a 'quack' pamphlet on the 'dew' treatment for nervousness, the
+benefit of the 'wet, cooling grass' upon the feet at night. You know the
+kind of thing. So&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh-h-h!" she breathed, tremulous and weak. "So that's why he was out
+there! Why didn't I think? Oh, how I've suspected him of&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But remember," he warned; "that's why he went out. We still don't know
+what he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>&mdash;what happened after he got out there&mdash;or why he's refused to
+say that he ever was out there. When we think of this, and other things,
+and, too, his call tonight on Mrs. Brace, for bribery&mdash;leaving what we
+thought was a sickbed&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But he's been up all day!" she corrected.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet," he said, and stopped, reflecting.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me," she implored; "tell me, Mr. Hastings, do you suspect my
+father&mdash;or not&mdash;of the&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>He answered her unfinished question with a solemn, painstaking care:</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Sloane, you're not one who would want to be misled. You can bear
+the truth. I'd be foolish to say that he's not under suspicion. He is.
+Any one of the men there that night may have committed the murder.
+Webster, your father, Wilton&mdash;only there, suspicion seems totally
+gratuitous&mdash;Eugene Russell, Jarvis&mdash;I've heard things about him&mdash;any one
+of them may have struck that blow&mdash;may have."</p>
+
+<p>"And father," she said, in a grieved bewilderment, "has paid Mrs. Brace
+to stop saying she suspects Berne," she shuddered, facing the
+alternative, "or himself!"</p>
+
+<p>"You see," he framed the conclusion for her, "how hard he makes it for
+us to keep him out of trouble&mdash;if that gets out. He's put his hand on
+the live wire of circumstantial evidence, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> wire that too often
+thrashes about, striking the wrong man."</p>
+
+<p>"And Berne?" she cried out. "I think I could stand anything if only I
+knew&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But this time the mutinous sobs came crowding past her lips. She could
+not finish the inquiry she had begun.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MAN WHO RODE AWAY</h3>
+
+<p>It was early in the afternoon of Wednesday when Mr. Hastings, responding
+to the prolonged ringing of his telephone, took the receiver off the
+hook and found himself in communication with the sheriff of Alexandria
+county. This was not the vacillating, veering sheriff who had spent
+nearly four days accepting the hints of a detective or sitting,
+chameleon-minded, at the feet of a designing woman. Here was an
+impressive and self-appreciative gentleman, one who delighted in his own
+deductive powers and relished their results.</p>
+
+<p>He said so. His confidence fairly rattled the wire. His words
+annihilated space grandly and leaped into the old man's receptive ear
+with sizzling and electric effect. Mr. Crown, triumphant, was glad to
+inform others that he was making a hit with himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello! That you, Hastings? Well, old fellow, I don't like to annoy you
+with an up-to-date rendition of 'I told you so!'&mdash;but it's come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> out, to
+the last syllable, exactly as I said it would&mdash;from the very first!"</p>
+
+<p>Ensued a pause, for dramatic effect. The detective did not break it.</p>
+
+<p>"Waiting, are you? Well, here she goes; Russell's alibi's been knocked
+into a thousand pieces! It's blown up! It's gone glimmering!&mdash;What do
+you think of that?"</p>
+
+<p>Hastings refrained from replying that he had regarded such an event as
+highly probable. Instead, he inquired:</p>
+
+<p>"And that simplifies things?"</p>
+
+<p>"Does it!" exploded Mr. Crown. "I'm getting to you a few minutes ahead
+of the afternoon papers. You'll see it all there." An apologetic laugh
+came over the wire. "You'll excuse me, I know; I had to do this thing up
+right, put on the finishing touches before you even guessed what was
+going on. I've wound up the whole business. The Washington police nabbed
+Russell an hour ago, on my orders.</p>
+
+<p>"'Simplifies things?' I should say so! I guess you can call 'em
+'simplified' when a murder's been committed and the murderer's waiting
+to step into my little ring-tum-fi-diddle-dee of a country jail! 'No
+clue to this mystery,' the papers have been saying! What's the use of a
+clue when you <i>know</i> a guy's guilty? That's what I've been whistling all
+along!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p><p>"But the alibi?" Hastings prompted. "You say it's blown up?"</p>
+
+<p>"Blown! Gone! Result of my sending out those circulars asking if any
+automobile parties passed along the Sloanehurst road the murder night.
+Remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." The old man recalled having made that suggestion, but did not say
+so.</p>
+
+<p>"This morning the chief of police of York&mdash;York, Pennsylvania&mdash;wired me.
+I got him by long-distance right away. He gave me the story, details
+absolutely right and straight, all verified&mdash;and everything. A York man,
+named Stevens, saw a newspaper account, for the first time this morning,
+of the murder. He and four other fellows were in a car that went up Hub
+Hill that night a little after eleven&mdash;a few minutes after.&mdash;Hear that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Go on."</p>
+
+<p>"Stevens was on the back seat. They went up the hill on low&mdash;terrible
+piece of road, he calls it&mdash;they were no more than crawling. He says he
+was the only sober man in the crowd&mdash;been out on a jollification tour of
+ten days. He saw a man slide on to the running board on his side of the
+car as they were creeping up the hill. The rest of the party was
+singing, having a high old time.</p>
+
+<p>"Stevens said he never said a word, just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> watched the guy on the running
+board, and planned to crack him on the head with an empty beer bottle
+when they got on the straight road and were hitting up a good clip&mdash;just
+playing, you understand.</p>
+
+<p>"After he'd watched the guy a while and was trying to fish up a beer
+bottle from the bottom of the car, the chauffeur slowed down and
+hollered back to him on the back seat that he wanted to stop and look at
+his radiator&mdash;it was about to blow up, too hot. He'd been burning the
+dust on that stretch of good road.</p>
+
+<p>"When he slowed down, the guy on the running board slipped off. Stevens
+says he rolled down a bank."</p>
+
+<p>The jubilant Mr. Crown stopped, for breath.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right, far as it goes," Hastings said; "but does he identify
+that man as Russell?"</p>
+
+<p>"To the last hair on his head!" replied the sheriff. "Stevens'
+description of the fellow is Russell all over&mdash;all over! Just to show
+you how good it is, take this: Stevens describe the clothes Russell
+wore, and says what Otis said: he'd lost his hat."</p>
+
+<p>"Stevens got a good look at him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Says the headlights were full on him as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> he stood on one side of the
+road, there on Hub Hill, waiting to slide on the running board.&mdash;And
+this Stevens is a shrewd guy, the York chief says. I guess his story
+plugs Russell's lies, shoots that alibi so full of holes it makes a
+sifter look like a piece of sheet-iron!</p>
+
+<p>"That car went up Hub Hill at seven minutes past eleven&mdash;that means
+Russell had plenty of time to kill the girl after the rain stopped and
+to get out on the road and slip on to that running board. And the car
+slowed up, where he rolled off the running board, at eighteen minutes
+past eleven.</p>
+
+<p>"Time's right, location's right, identification's right!&mdash;Pretty sweet,
+ain't it, old fellow? Congratulate me, don't you? Congratulate me, even
+if it does step on all those mysterious theories of yours&mdash;that right?"</p>
+
+<p>Hastings bestowed the desired felicitations upon the exuberant conqueror
+of crime.</p>
+
+<p>Turning from the telephone, he gazed a long time at the piece of grey
+envelope on the table before him. He had clung to his belief that, in
+those fragments of words, was to be found a clue to the solution of the
+mystery. He picked up his knife and fell to whittling.</p>
+
+<p>Outside in the street a newsboy set up an abrupt, blaring din, shouting
+sensational headlines:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">"SLOANEHURST MYSTERY SOLVED!&mdash;RUSSELL THE MURDERER!&mdash;ALIBI A FAKE!"</p>
+
+<p>The old man considered grimly, the various effects of this development
+in the case&mdash;Lucille Sloane's unbounded relief mingled with censure of
+him for having added to her fears, and especially for having subjected
+her to the ordeal of last night's experience with Mrs. Brace&mdash;the
+adverse criticism from both press and public because of his refusal to
+join in the first attacks upon Russell, Arthur Sloane's complacency at
+never having treated him with common courtesy.</p>
+
+<p>His thoughts went to Mrs. Brace and her blackmail schemes, as he had
+interpreted or suspected them.</p>
+
+<p>"If I'd had a little more time," he reflected, "I might have put my hand
+on&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes rested on the envelope flap. His mind flashed to another and
+new idea. His muscles stiffened; he put his hands on the arms of his
+chair and slowly lifted himself up, the knife dropping from his fingers
+and clattering on the floor. He stood erect and held both hands aloft, a
+gesture of wide and growing wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"Cripes!" he said aloud.</p>
+
+<p>He picked up the grey paper with a hand that trembled. His pendent
+cheeks puffed out like those of a man blowing a horn. He stared at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> the
+paper again, before restoring it to its envelope, which he put back into
+one of his pockets.</p>
+
+<p>"Cripes!" he said again. "It's a place! Pursuit! That's where the&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He became a whirlwind of action, covered the floor with springy step.
+Taking a book of colossal size from a shelf, he whirled the pages,
+running his finger down a column while he murmured,
+"Pursuit&mdash;P-u-r&mdash;P-u&mdash;P-u&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But there was no such name in the postal directory. He went back to
+older directories. He began to worry. Was there no such postoffice as
+Pursuit? He went to other books, whirling the pages, running down column
+after column. And at last he got the information he sought.</p>
+
+<p>Consulting a railroad folder, he found a train schedule that caused him
+to look at his watch.</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty-five minutes," he figured. "I'm going!"</p>
+
+<p>He telephoned for a cab.</p>
+
+<p>Then, seating himself at the table, he tore a sheet from a scratch-pad
+and wrote:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't lose sight of Mrs. Brace. Disregard Russell's arrest.</p>
+
+<p>"Hendricks: the Sloanehurst people are members of the Arlington Golf
+Club. Get a look at golf bags there. Did one, or two, contain piece or
+pieces of a bed-slat?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p><p>"Gore: check up on Mrs. B.'s use of money.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be back Sunday."</p>
+
+<p>He sealed the envelope into which he put that, and, addressing it to
+Hendricks, left it lying on the table.</p>
+
+<p>At the station he bought the afternoon newspapers and turned to Eugene
+Russell's statement, made to the reporters immediately after his arrest.
+It ran:</p>
+
+<p>"I repeat that I'm innocent of the murder. Of course, I made a mistake
+in omitting all mention of my having ridden the first four miles from
+Sloanehurst. But, being innocent and knowing the weight of the
+circumstantial evidence against me, I could not resist the temptation to
+make my alibi good. I neither committed that murder nor witnessed it.
+The story I told at the inquest of what happened to me and what I did at
+Sloanehurst stands. It is the truth."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX</h2>
+
+<h3>"PURSUIT!"</h3>
+
+<p>Returning from his trip Sunday morning, the detective, after a brief
+conference with Hendricks, had gone immediately to Mrs. Brace's
+apartment. She sat now, still and watchful, on the armless rocker by the
+window, waiting for him to disclose the object of his visit. Except the
+lifted, faintly interrogating eyebrows, there was nothing in her face
+indicative of what she thought.</p>
+
+<p>He caught himself comparing her to a statue, forever seated on the
+low-backed, uncomfortable chair, awaiting without emotion or alteration
+of feature the outcome of her evil scheming. Her hardness gave him the
+impression of something hammered on, beaten into an ugly pattern.</p>
+
+<p>Having that imperturbability to overcome, he struck his first blow with
+surprising directness.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm just back from Pursuit," he said.</p>
+
+<p>That was the first speech by either of them since the monosyllabic
+greeting at the door. He saw that she had prepared herself for such an
+announcement; but the way she took it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>reminded him of a door shaken by
+the impact of a terrific blow. A little shiver, for all her force of
+repression, moved her from head to foot.</p>
+
+<p>"You are?" she responded, her voice controlled, the hard face untouched
+by the shock to which her body had responded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I got back half an hour ago, and, except for one of my assistants,
+you're the first person I've seen." When that drew no comment from her,
+he added: "I want you to remember that&mdash;later on."</p>
+
+<p>He began to whittle.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" she asked with genuine curiosity, after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Because it may be well for you to know that I'm dealing with you alone,
+and fairly.&mdash;I got all the facts concerning you."</p>
+
+<p>"Concerning me?" Her tone intimated doubt.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Mrs. Brace!" he exclaimed, disapproving her apparent intention.
+"You're surely not going to pretend ignorance&mdash;or innocence!"</p>
+
+<p>She crossed her knees, and, putting her left forearm across her body,
+rested her right elbow in that hand. She began to rock very gently, her
+posture causing her to lean forward and giving her a look of continual
+but polite questioning.</p>
+
+<p>"If you want to talk to me," she said, her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> voice free of all feeling,
+"you'll have to tell me what it's about."</p>
+
+<p>"All right; I will," he returned. "You'll remember, I take it, my asking
+you to tell me the meaning of the marks on the flap of the grey
+envelope. I'll admit I was slow, criminally slow, in coming to the
+conclusion that 'Pursuit!' referred to a place rather than an act. But I
+got it finally&mdash;and I found Pursuit&mdash;not much left of it now; it's not
+even a postoffice.</p>
+
+<p>"But it's discoverable," he continued on a sterner note, and began to
+shave long, slender chips from his block of wood. "I'll give you the
+high lights: young Dalton was killed&mdash;his murderer made a run for
+it&mdash;but you, a young widow then, in whose presence the thing was done,
+smoothed matters out. You swore it was a matter of self-defence. The
+result was that, after a few half-hearted attempts to locate the
+fugitive, the pursuit was given up."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. But why bring that story here&mdash;now? What's its
+significance?"</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her in amazement. Her thin, sensitive lips were drawn back
+at the corners, enough to make her mouth look a trifle wider&mdash;and enough
+to suggest dimly that their motion was the start of a vindictive
+grimace. Otherwise, she was unmoved, unresponsive to the open threat of
+what he had said.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p><p>"Let me finish," he retorted. "An unfortunate feature, for you, was
+that you seemed to have made money out of the tragedy. In straitened
+circumstances previously, you began to spend freely&mdash;comparatively
+speaking&mdash;a few days after the murderer's disappearance. In fact,
+bribery was hinted; you had to leave the village. See any significance
+in that?" he concluded, with irony.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose you explain it," she said, still cool.</p>
+
+<p>"The significance is in the strengthening of the theory I've had
+throughout the whole week that's passed since your daughter was killed
+at Sloanehurst."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped rocking; her eyes played a fiery tattoo on every feature of
+his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Your daughter's death was the unexpected result of your attempts to
+blackmail young Dalton's murderer. You, being afraid of him, and not
+confessing that timidity to Mildred, persuaded her to approach him&mdash;in
+person."</p>
+
+<p>"I! Afraid of him!" she objected, aroused at last.</p>
+
+<p>Her brows were lowered, a heavy line above her furtive, swift eyes; her
+nostrils fluttered nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"Granting your absurd theory," she continued, "why should I have feared
+him? What<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> had he done&mdash;except strike to save his own life?"</p>
+
+<p>"You forget, Mrs. Brace," he corrected. "That body showed twenty-nine
+wounds, twenty-eight of them unnecessary&mdash;if the first was inflicted in
+mere self-defence. It was horrible mutilation."</p>
+
+<p>"So!" she ridiculed, with obvious effort. "You picture him as a
+butcher."</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely. And you, having seen to what lengths his murderous fury
+could take him, were afraid to face him&mdash;even after your long, long
+search had located him again. Let's be sensible, Mrs. Brace. Let's give
+the facts of this business a hearing.</p>
+
+<p>"You had come to Washington and located him at last. But, after
+receiving several demands from you, he'd stopped reading your
+letters&mdash;sent them back unopened. Consequently, in order for you to make
+an appointment with him, he had to be communicated with in a handwriting
+he didn't know. Hence, your daughter had to write the letter making that
+appointment a week ago last night. Then, however&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you think&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then, however," he concluded, overbearing her with his voice, "you
+hadn't the courage to face him&mdash;out there, in the dark, alone. You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+persuaded Mildred to go&mdash;in your place. And he killed her."</p>
+
+<p>"Ha!" The mocking exclamation sounded as though it had been pounded out
+of her by a blow upon her back. "What makes you say that? Where do you
+get that? Who put that into your head?"</p>
+
+<p>She volleyed those questions at him with indescribable rapidity, her
+lips drawn back from her teeth, her brows straining far up toward the
+line of her hair. The profound disgust with which he viewed her did not
+affect her. She darted to and fro in her mind, running about in the
+waste and tumult of her momentary confusion, seeking the best thing to
+say, the best policy to adopt, for her own ends.</p>
+
+<p>He had had time to determine that much when her gift of self-possession
+reasserted itself. She forced her lips back to their thin line, and
+steadied herself. He could see the vibrant tautness of her whole body,
+exemplified in the rigidity with which she held her crossed knees, one
+crushed upon the other.</p>
+
+<p>"I know, I think, what misled you," she answered her own question.
+"You've talked to Gene Russell, of course. He may have heard&mdash;I think he
+did hear&mdash;Mildred and me discussing the mailing of a letter that Friday
+night."</p>
+
+<p>"He did," Hastings said, firmly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p><p>"But he couldn't have heard anything to warrant your theory, Mr.
+Hastings. I merely made fun of her wavering after she'd once said she'd
+confront Berne Webster again with her appeal for fair play."</p>
+
+<p>He inspected her with an emotion that was a mingling of incredulity and
+repugnant wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"It's no use, Mrs. Brace," he told her. "Russell didn't see the name of
+the man to whom the letter was addressed. I saw him last Sunday
+afternoon. He told me he took the name for granted, because Mildred had
+taunted him, saying it went to Webster. As a matter of fact, he wanted
+to see if Webster was at Sloanehurst and fastened his eyes for a
+fleeting glimpse on that word&mdash;and on that alone. Besides, there are
+facts to prove that the letter did not go to Webster.&mdash;Do you see how
+your fancied security falls away?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me think," she said, her tone flat and impersonal.</p>
+
+<p>She was silent, her restless eyes gazing at the wall over his head. He
+watched her, and glanced only at intervals at the wood he was aimlessly
+shaving.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," she said, after a while, looking at him with a speculative,
+deliberating air, "you've deduced and pieced this together.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> You've a
+woman's intuition&mdash;comprehension of motives, feelings."</p>
+
+<p>She was silent again.</p>
+
+<p>"Pieced what together?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"It's plain enough, isn't it? You began with your suspicion that my need
+of money was heavier in my mind than grief at Mildred's death. On that,
+you built up&mdash;well, all you've just said."</p>
+
+<p>"It was more than a suspicion," he corrected. "It was knowledge&mdash;that
+everything you did, after her death, was intended to help along your
+scheme to&mdash;we'll say, to get money."</p>
+
+<p>"Still," she persisted shrewdly, "you felt the necessity of proving I'd
+blackmail&mdash;if that's the word you want to use."</p>
+
+<p>"How?" he put in quickly. "Prove it, how?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's why you sent that girl here with the five hundred. I see it now;
+although, at the time, I didn't." She laughed, a short, bitter note.
+"Perhaps, the money, or my need of it, kept me from thinking straight."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," she made the admission calmly, "as soon as I took the hush
+money, your theory seemed sound&mdash;the whole of it: my motives and
+identity of the murderer."</p>
+
+<p>She was thinking with a concentration so <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>intense that the signs of it
+resembled physical exertion. Moisture beaded the upper part of her
+forehead. He could see the muscles of her face respond to the locking of
+her jaws.</p>
+
+<p>"But there's nothing against me," she began again, and, moved by his
+expression, qualified: "nothing that I can be held for, in the courts."</p>
+
+<p>"You've decided that, have you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll admit it," she said. "There's nothing&mdash;there can be nothing&mdash;to
+disprove my statement that Dalton's death was provoked. I hold the key
+to that&mdash;I alone. That being true, I couldn't be prosecuted in Pursuit
+as 'accessory after the fact.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he agreed. "That's true."</p>
+
+<p>"And here," she concluded, without a hint of triumph, even without a
+special show of interest, "I can't be proceeded against for blackmail.
+That money, from both of them, was a gift. I hadn't asked for it, much
+less demanded it. I," she said with an assured arrogance, "hadn't got
+that far.&mdash;So, you see, Mr. Hastings, I'm far from frightened."</p>
+
+<p>He found nothing to say to that shameless but unassailable declaration.
+Also, he was aware that she entertained, and sought solution of, a
+problem, the question of how best to satisfy her implacable
+determination to make the man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> pay. That purpose occupied all her mind,
+now that her money greed was frustrated.</p>
+
+<p>It was on this that he had calculated. It explained his going to her
+before confronting the murderer. He had felt certain that her perverted
+desire to "get even" would force her into the strange position of
+helping him.</p>
+
+<p>He broke the silence with a careful attempt to guide her thoughts:</p>
+
+<p>"But don't fool yourself, Mrs. Brace. You've got out of this all you'll
+ever get, financially&mdash;every cent. And you're in an unpleasant
+situation&mdash;an outcast, perhaps. People don't stand for your line of
+stuff, your behaviour."</p>
+
+<p>She did not resent that. Making a desperate mental search for the best
+way to serve her hard self-interest, he thought, she was impervious to
+insult.</p>
+
+<p>"I know," she said, to his immense relief. "I've been considering the
+only remaining point."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"The sure way to make him suffer as horribly as possible."</p>
+
+<p>He pretended absorption in his carving.</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't he have provided me with money when I asked it?" she
+demanded, at last.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p><p>The new quality of her speech brought his head up with a jerk. Instead
+of colourless harshness, it had a warm fury. It was not that she spoke
+loudly or on a high key; but it had an unbridled, self-indulgent sound.
+He got the impression that she put off all censorship from either her
+feeling or her expression.</p>
+
+<p>"That wasn't much to ask&mdash;as long as he continued his life of ease, of
+luxury, of safety&mdash;as long as I left out of consideration the debt he
+couldn't pay, the debt that was impossible of payment."</p>
+
+<p>Alien as the thing seemed in connection with her, he grasped it. She
+thought that she had once loved the man.</p>
+
+<p>"The matter of personal feeling?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. When he left Pursuit, he destroyed the better part of me&mdash;what you
+would call the good part."</p>
+
+<p>She said that without sentimentalism, without making it a plea for
+sympathy; she had better sense, he saw, than to imagine that she could
+arouse sympathy on that ground.</p>
+
+<p>"And," she continued, with intense malignity, "what was so monstrous in
+my asking him for money? I asked him for no payment of what he really
+owes me. That's a debt he can't pay! My beauty, destroyed, withered and
+covered over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> with the hard mask of the features you see now; my
+capacity for happiness, dead, swallowed up in my long, long devotion to
+my purpose to find him again&mdash;those things, man as you are, you realize
+are beyond the scope of payment or repayment!"</p>
+
+<p>Without rising to a standing position, she leaned so far forward that
+her weight was all on her feet, and, although her figure retained the
+posture of one seated on a chair, she was in fact independent of support
+from it, and held herself crouching in front of him, taut, a tremor in
+her limbs because of the strain.</p>
+
+<p>Her hands were held out toward him, the tips of her stiffened,
+half-closed fingers less than a foot from his face. Her brows were drawn
+so high that the skin of her forehead twitched, as if pulled upward by
+another's hand. It was with difficulty that he compelled himself to
+witness the climax of her rage. Only his need of what she knew kept him
+still.</p>
+
+<p>"Money!" she said, her lean arms in continual motion before him. "You're
+right, there. I wanted money. I made up my mind I'd have it. It was such
+a purpose of mine, so strongly grown into my whole being, that even
+Mildred's death couldn't lessen or dislodge it. And there was more than
+the want of money in my never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> letting loose of my intention to find
+him. He couldn't strip me bare and get away! You've understood me pretty
+well. You know it was written, on the books, that he and I should come
+together again&mdash;no matter how far he went, or how cleverly!</p>
+
+<p>"And I see now!" she gave him her decision, and, as she did so, rose to
+an upright position, her hands at her sides going half-shut and open,
+half-shut and open, as if she made mental pictures of the closing in of
+her long pursuit. "I'll say what you want me to say. Confront him; put
+me face to face with him, and I'll say the letter went to him. Oh, never
+fear! I'll say the appropriate thing, and the convincing
+thing&mdash;appropriately convincing!"</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes glittered, countering his searching glance, as she stood over
+him, her body flung a little forward from the waist, her arms busy with
+their quick, angular gesticulation.</p>
+
+<p>"When?" he asked. "When will you do that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now," she answered instantly. "Now!&mdash;Now!&mdash;Oh, don't look surprised.
+I've thought of this possibility. My God!" she said with a bitterness
+that startled him. "I've thought of every possibility, every possible
+crook and quirk of this business."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p><p>She was struck by his slowness in responding to her offer.</p>
+
+<p>"But you," she asked; "are you sure&mdash;have you the proof?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks," he said drily. "You needn't be uneasy about that.&mdash;Now, if I
+may do a little telephoning, we'll start."</p>
+
+<p>He went a step from her and turned back.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way," he stipulated, "that little matter of the five
+hundred&mdash;you needn't refer to it. I mean it will have to be left out.
+It's not necessary."</p>
+
+<p>"No; it isn't," she agreed, with perfect indifference. "And it's spent."</p>
+
+<p>When he had telephoned to Sloanehurst and the sheriff's office, he found
+her with her hat on, ready to accompany him.</p>
+
+<p>As they stepped out of the Walman, she saw the automobile waiting for
+them. She stopped, a new rage darting from her eyes. He thought she
+would go back. After a brief hesitation, however, she gave a short, ugly
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"You were as sure as that, were you!" she belittled herself. "Had the
+car wait&mdash;to take me there!"</p>
+
+<p>"By no means," he denied. "I hoped you'd go&mdash;that's all."</p>
+
+<p>"That's better," she said, determined to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>assert her individuality of
+action. "You're not forcing me into this, you know. I'm doing it, after
+thinking it out to the last detail&mdash;for my own satisfaction."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX</h2>
+
+<h3>DENIAL OF THE CHARGE</h3>
+
+<p>Hastings, fully appreciating the value of surprise, had instructed Mrs.
+Brace to communicate none of the new developments to anybody until he
+asked for them. Reaching Sloanehurst, he went alone to the library,
+leaving her in the parlour to battle as best she might with the
+sheriff's anxious curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>Arthur Sloane and Judge Wilton gave him cool welcome, parading for his
+benefit an obvious and insolent boredom. Although uninvited to sit down,
+he caught up a chair and swung it lightly into such position that, when
+he seated himself, he faced them across the table. He was smiling,
+enough to indicate a general satisfaction with the world.</p>
+
+<p>There was in his bearing, however, that which carried them back to their
+midnight session with him immediately following the discovery of Mildred
+Brace's body. The smile did not lessen his look of unquestionable power;
+his words were sharp, clipped-off.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span></p><p>"I take it," he said briskly, untouched by their demeanour of
+indifference, "you gentlemen will be interested in the fact that I've
+cleared up this mystery."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah-h-h!" drawled Sloane. "Again?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by 'again'?" he asked, good-naturedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Crown, the sheriff, accomplished it four days ago, I'm credibly
+informed."</p>
+
+<p>"He made a mistake."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah?" Sloane ridiculed.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. 'Ah!'" Hastings took him up curtly, and, with a quick turn of his
+head, addressed himself to Wilton: "Judge, I've been to Pursuit."</p>
+
+<p>When he said that, his head was thrown back so that he squinted at
+Wilton down the line of his nose, under the rims of his spectacles.</p>
+
+<p>"Pursuit!"</p>
+
+<p>Wilton's echo of the word was explosive. He had been leaning back in his
+chair, eying the detective from under lowered lids, and drawing deep,
+prolonged puffs from his cigar. But, with the response to Hastings'
+announcement, he sat up and leaned forward, putting his elbows on the
+rim of the table. It was an awkward attitude, compelling him to extend
+his neck and turn his face upward in order to meet the other's glance.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p><p>"Yes," Hastings said, after a measurable pause. "Interested in that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," Wilton replied, plainly alarmed, and fubbed out his cigar
+with forefinger and thumb, oblivious to the fact that he dropped a
+little shower of fire on the table cover.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll trouble you to observe, Mr. Sloane," Hastings put in, "that, being
+excited, the judge's first impulse is to extinguish his cigar: it's a
+habit of his.&mdash;Now, judge, in Pursuit I heard a lot about you&mdash;a lot."</p>
+
+<p>"All right&mdash;what?"</p>
+
+<p>He made the inquiry reluctantly, as if under compulsion of the
+detective's glance.</p>
+
+<p>"The Dalton case&mdash;and your part in it."</p>
+
+<p>"You know about that, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"All about it," Hastings said, in a way that made doubt impossible;
+Sloane, even, bewildered as he was, got the impression of his ruthless
+certainty.</p>
+
+<p>Wilton did not contest it.</p>
+
+<p>"I struck in self-defence," he excused himself wearily, like a man
+taking up a task against his will. "It would be ridiculous to call that
+murder. No jury would have convicted me&mdash;none would now, if given the
+truth."</p>
+
+<p>"But the body showed twenty-nine wounds," Hastings pressed him, "the
+marks of twenty-nine separate thrusts of that knife."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p><p>"Yes; that's true.&mdash;Yes, I'll tell you about that, you and Arthur&mdash;if
+you'd care to hear?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I'm here for," Hastings said, settling in his chair. He was
+thinking: "He didn't expect this. He's unprepared!"</p>
+
+<p>Sloane, who had been on the point of resenting this unbelievable attack
+on his friend, was struck dumb by Wilton's calm acknowledgment of the
+charge. From long habit, he took the cap off the smelling-salts with
+which he had been toying when Hastings came in, but his shaking hand
+could not lift the bottle to his nose. Wilton guilty of a murder, years
+ago! He drew a long, shuddering breath and huddled in his chair.</p>
+
+<p>Wilton rose clumsily and walked heavily to the door opening into the
+hall. He put his hand on the knob but did not turn it. He repeated the
+performance at the door opening into Sloane's room. In all this he was
+unconscionably slow, moving in the manner of a blind man, feeling his
+way about and fumbling both knobs.</p>
+
+<p>When he came back to the table, his shoulders were hunched to the front
+and downward, crowding his chest. His face looked larger, each separate
+feature of it throbbing coarsely to the pumping of his heart. Pink
+threads stood out on the white of his eyeballs. When the back of his
+neck pressed against his collar, the effect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> was to give the lower half
+of the back of his head an odd appearance of inflation or puffiness.</p>
+
+<p>Hastings had never seen a man struggle so to contain himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Suffering angels!" Sloane sympathized shrilly. "What's the matter,
+Tom?"</p>
+
+<p>"All right&mdash;it's all right," he assured, his voice still low, but so
+resonant and harsh that it sounded like the thrumming of a viol string.</p>
+
+<p>He seated himself, moving his chair several times, adjusting it to a
+proper angle to the table. In the end, he sat close to the table rim,
+hunched heavily on his elbows, and looked straight at Hastings.</p>
+
+<p>"But, since you've been to Pursuit, what do you imply, or say?" he
+asked, the words scraping, as though his throat had been roughened with
+a file.</p>
+
+<p>"That you killed Mildred Brace," Hastings answered, also leaning
+forward, to give the accusation weight.</p>
+
+<p>"I! I killed her!" Wilton's teeth went together with a sharp click; the
+table sagged under his weight. "I deny it. I deny it!" He ripped out an
+oath. "This man's crazy, Arthur! He's dragged up a mistake, a tragedy,
+of my youth, and now has the effrontery to use it as a reason for
+suspecting me of murder!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p><p>"Exactly!" chimed Sloane, in tremulous relief. "Shivering saints! Why
+haven't you said so long ago, Tom?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't give him credit for the wild insanity he's showing," said
+Wilton thickly.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever had been his first impulse, however near he had been to trying
+to explain away all blame in the Dalton murder, it was clear to Hastings
+now that he intended to rely on flat denial of his connection with the
+death of Mildred Brace. He had, perhaps, decided that explanation was
+too difficult.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing his indecision, Hastings turned on Sloane.</p>
+
+<p>"You've been exceedingly offensive to me on several occasions, Mr.
+Sloane. And I've had enough of it. Now, I've got the facts to show that
+you're as foolish in the selection of your friends as in making enemies.
+I'm about to charge this man Wilton with murder. He killed Mildred
+Brace, and I can prove it. If you want to hear the facts back of this
+mystery; if you want the stuff that will enable you to decide whether
+you'll stand by him or against him, you can have it!"</p>
+
+<p>Before Sloane could recover from his surprise at the old man's hot
+resentment, Wilton said, with an air of careless contempt:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we've got to deal with what he says,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> Arthur. I'd rather answer it
+here than with an audience."</p>
+
+<p>"The reading public, for instance?" Hastings retorted, and added: "It
+may interest you, Mr. Sloane, to know that you gave me my first
+suspicion of him. When you stepped back from the handkerchief I held out
+to you&mdash;remember, as I was kneeling over the body, and the servant
+laughed at you?&mdash;I jammed it into Wilton's right-hand coat-pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"Later, when I got it back from him, I saw clinging to it a few cigar
+ashes and two small particles of wet tobacco. He had had in that pocket
+a cigar stump wet from his saliva.</p>
+
+<p>"When he began then his story of finding the body, he said, 'I'd been
+smoking my good-night cigar; this is what's left of it.' As he said
+that, he pointed to the unlit&mdash;remember that, unlit&mdash;cigar stump between
+his teeth. He made it a point to emphasize the fact that so little time
+had elapsed between his finding the body and his giving the alarm that
+he hadn't smoked up the cigar, and also he hadn't taken time to put his
+hand to his mouth, take out the cigar and throw it away.</p>
+
+<p>"It was one of the over-fine little touches that a guilty man tries to
+pile on his scheme for appearing innocent. But what are the facts?</p>
+
+<p>"Just now, as soon as he got excited, he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>mechanically fubbed out his
+cigar. It's a habit of his&mdash;whenever he's in a close corner. He did it
+during the interview I had with him and Webster in the music room last
+Sunday morning&mdash;when, in fact, something dangerous to him came up. He
+did it again when I was talking to him in his office, following a visit
+from Mrs. Brace.</p>
+
+<p>"There you have the beginning of my suspicion. Why had he gone out of
+his way to put a cigar stump into his pocket that night, and to explain
+that he had had it in his mouth all the time? When he came into my room,
+to wake me up, he had no cigar in his mouth. But, when you and I rounded
+the corner of the porch and first saw him kneeling over the body, he had
+one hand in his right-hand coat-pocket. And, when we stood beside him,
+he had put a half-smoked, unlit cigar into his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"You see my point, clearly? Instead of having had the cigar in his mouth
+and having kept it there while he found the body and reported the
+discovery to us, the truth is this: he had fubbed out the cigar when he
+met Mildred Brace on the lawn, and it had occurred to his calculating
+mind that it would be well, when he chose to give the alarm, to use the
+cigar stunt as evidence that he hadn't been engaged in quarrelling with
+and murdering a woman.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p><p>"He was right in his opinion that the average man doesn't go on calmly
+smoking while engaged in such activities. He was wrong in letting us
+discover where he'd carried the stump until he needed it.</p>
+
+<p>"He had put it into that pocket, but, after committing the murder, he
+wasn't quite as calm as he'd expected to be&mdash;something had gone wrong;
+Webster had appeared on the scene&mdash;and the cigar wasn't restored to his
+mouth until you and I first reached the body.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's my handkerchief, showing the ashes and the pieces of cigar
+tobacco on it, just as it was when he handed it back to me."</p>
+
+<p>He took from one of his pockets a tissue-paper parcel, and, unwrapping
+it, handed it to Sloane.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah-h-h-that's what it shows," Sloane admitted, bending over the
+handkerchief.</p>
+
+<p>Wilton welcomed that with a laugh which he meant to be lightly
+contemptuous.</p>
+
+<p>"See here, Arthur!" he objected. "I'm perfectly willing to listen to any
+sane statement this man may make, but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You said you wanted to hear this!" Hasting stopped him. "I'm fair about
+it. I've told you why I began to watch you. I've got more."</p>
+
+<p>"You need it," Sloane complained. "If it's all that thin&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p><p>"Don't shout too soon," Hastings interrupted again. "Mr. Sloane, this
+man's been working against me from the start. Think a moment, and you'll
+realize it. While he was telling your daughter and a whole lot of other
+people that I was the only man to handle the case, he was slipping you
+the quiet instruction to avoid me, not to confide in me, not to tell me
+a single thing. Isn't that true?"</p>
+
+<p>"We-ell, he did say the best way for me to avoid all possibility of
+being involved in the thing was not to talk to anybody."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew it!" Hastings declared, giving his contempt full play. "And he
+persuaded you that you might have seen&mdash;<i>might</i>, mind you&mdash;and he gave
+you the suggestion skilfully, more by indirection than by flat
+statement&mdash;that you might have seen Berne Webster out there on the lawn
+that night, when you were uncertain, when you feared it yourself&mdash;a
+little. Isn't that true?"</p>
+
+<p>Sloane looked at him with widening eyes, his lips trembling.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Mr. Sloane! Let's play fair, didn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"We-ell, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And," Hastings continued, thumping the table with a heavy hand to drive
+home the points of his statement, "he persuaded you to offer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> that money
+to Mrs. Brace&mdash;last Tuesday night.&mdash;Didn't he?&mdash;And that matches his
+slippery cunning in pretending he was saving Webster by hiding the fact
+that Webster's hand had gagged him when they found the body. He figured
+his willingness to help somebody else would keep suspicion away from
+him. I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Rot! All rot!" Wilton broke in. "Where do you think you are, Arthur, on
+the witness stand? He'll have you saying white's black in a minute."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Sloane," the detective said, getting to his feet, "he induced you
+to pay money to Mrs. Brace&mdash;while it's the colour of blackmail, it won't
+be a matter for prosecution; you gave it to her, in a sense,
+unsolicited&mdash;but he induced you to do that because he knew she was out
+for blackmail. He hoped that, if you bought her off, she wouldn't pursue
+him farther."</p>
+
+<p>"Farther!" echoed Sloane. "What do you mean by that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, man! Don't you see? Money was back of all that tragedy. He
+murdered the girl because she had come here to renew her mother's
+attempts at blackmail on him! Not content with duping you, with handling
+you as if you'd been a baby, he put you up to buying off the woman who
+was after him&mdash;and he did it by fooling you into thinking that you were
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>saving the name, if not the very life, of your daughter's fianc&eacute;!
+He&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Lies! Wild lie!" thundered Wilton, pushing back from the table. "I'm
+through with&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No! No!" shrilled Sloane. "Wait! Prove that, Hastings! Prove it&mdash;if you
+can! Shuddering saints! Have I&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked once at Wilton's contorted face, and recoiled, the movement
+confessing at last his lack of faith in the man.</p>
+
+<p>"I will," Hastings answered him, and moved toward the door; "I'll prove
+it&mdash;by the girl's mother."</p>
+
+<p>He threw open the door, and, sure now of holding Sloane's attention,
+went in search of Mrs. Brace and the sheriff.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI</h2>
+
+<h3>"AMPLE EVIDENCE"</h3>
+
+<p>The two men in the library waited a long time for his return. Wilton,
+elbows on the table, stared straight in front of him, giving no sign of
+knowledge of the other's presence. Sloane fidgeted with the
+smelling-salts, emitting now and then long-drawn, tremulous sighs that
+were his own special vocabulary of dissatisfaction. He spoke once.</p>
+
+<p>"Mute and cringing martyrs!" he said, in suspicious remonstrance. "If
+he'd say something we could deny! So far, Tom, you're mixed up in&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Why can't you wait until he's through?" Wilton objected roughly.</p>
+
+<p>They heard people coming down the hall. Lucille, following Mrs. Brace
+into the room, went to her father. They could see, from her look of
+grieved wonder, that Hastings had told her of the charge against Wilton.
+The sheriff's expression confirmed the supposition. His mouth hung open,
+so that the unsteady fingers with which he plucked at his knuckle like
+chin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> appeared also to support his fallen jaw. He made a weak-kneed
+progress from the door to a chair near the screened fireplace.</p>
+
+<p>For a full half-minute Hastings was silent, as if to let the doubts and
+suspense of each member of the group emphasize his dominance of the
+situation. He reviewed swiftly some of the little things he had used to
+build up in his own mind the certainty of Wilton's guilt: the man's
+agitation in the music room at the discovery, not that a part of the
+grey envelope had been found, but that it contained some of the words of
+the letter&mdash;his obvious alarm when found quarrelling with Mrs. Brace in
+his office&mdash;his hardly controlled impulses: once, outside Sloane's
+bedroom, to accuse Berne Webster without proof, and, on the Sloanehurst
+porch last Sunday, to suggest that Sloane was guilty.</p>
+
+<p>The detective observed now that he absolutely ignored Mrs. Brace, not
+even looking in her direction. He perceived also how she reacted to that
+assumed indifference. The tightening of her lips, the flutter of her
+mobile nostrils, left him no longer any doubt that she was in the mood
+to give him the cooperation she had so bitterly promised.</p>
+
+<p>"To be dragged down by such a woman!" he thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Brace," he said, "I've charged Judge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> Wilton with the murder of
+your daughter. I say now he killed her, with premeditation, having
+planned it after receiving a letter from her."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?" she responded, a certain tenseness in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>She had gone to a chair by the window; and, like the sheriff, she faced
+the trio at the table: Wilton, Sloane, and Lucille, who stood behind her
+father, a hand on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Hastings slowly paced the floor as he talked, his hands clasped behind
+him and now and then moving the tail of his coat up and down. He glanced
+at Mrs. Brace over the rims of his spectacles, his eyes shrewd and keen.
+He showed an unmistakable self-satisfaction, like the elation Wilton had
+detected in his bearing on two former occasions.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," he asked her, "what can you tell us about that letter?"</p>
+
+<p>Wilton, his chest pressed so hard against the edge of the table that his
+breathing moved his body, turned his swollen face upon her at last, his
+eyes flaming under the thatch of his down-drawn brows.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Brace, her high-shouldered, lean frame silhouetted against the
+window, began, in a colourless, unemotioned tone:</p>
+
+<p>"As you know, Mr. Hastings, I thought this man Wilton owed me money,
+more than money.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> I'd looked for him for twenty-six years. Less than a
+year ago I located him here in Virginia, and I came to Washington. He
+refused my requests. Then, he stopped reading my letters&mdash;sent them back
+unopened at first; later, he destroyed them unread, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>She cleared her throat lightly, and spoke more rapidly. The intensity of
+her hate, in spite of her power of suppression, held them in a
+disagreeable fascination.</p>
+
+<p>"I was afraid of him, afraid to confront him alone. I'd seen him kill a
+man. But I was in desperate need. I thought, if my daughter could talk
+to him, he would be brought to do the right thing. I suppose," she said
+with a wintry smile, "you'd call it an attempt to blackmail&mdash;if he had
+let it go far enough.</p>
+
+<p>"She wrote him a letter, on grey paper, and sent it, in an oblong, grey
+envelope, to him here at Sloanehurst last Friday night. He got it
+Saturday afternoon. If he hadn't received it, he'd never have been out
+on the lawn&mdash;with a dagger he'd made for the occasion&mdash;at eleven or
+eleven-fifteen, which was the time Mildred said in her letter she'd see
+him there. She had added that, if he did not keep the appointment, she'd
+expose him&mdash;his crime in Pursuit."</p>
+
+<p>"I see," Hastings said, on the end of her cold, metallic utterance, and
+took from his pocket the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> flap of grey envelope. "Is this the flap of
+that envelope; or, better still, are these fragments of words and the
+word 'Pursuit' in your daughter's handwriting?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've examined them already," she said. "They are my daughter's
+writing."</p>
+
+<p>Her lips were suddenly thick, taking on that appearance of abnormal
+wetness which had so revolted him before.</p>
+
+<p>"And I say what you've just said!" she supplemented, her eyebrows high
+upon her forehead. "Tom Wilton killed my daughter. And, when I went to
+his office&mdash;I was sure then that he'd be afraid to harm me so soon after
+Mildred's death&mdash;I accused him of the murder. He took it with a laugh.
+He said I could look at it as a warning that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait!"</p>
+
+<p>The interruption came from Wilton.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to make a statement about this thing!" he ground out, his
+voice coarse and rasping.</p>
+
+<p>Hastings hung upon him with relentless gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you got to say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Much!" returned Wilton. "I'm not going to let myself be ruined on this
+charge because of a mistake of my youth&mdash;mistake, I say! I'm about to
+tell you the story of such suffering, such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> misfortune, as no man has
+ever had to endure. It explains that tragedy in Pursuit; it explains my
+life; it explains everything. I didn't murder that boy Dalton. I struck
+in self-defence. But the twenty-nine wounds on his body&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He paused, preoccupied; he was thinking less of his hearers than of
+himself. It was at that point, Hastings thought afterwards, that he
+began to lose himself in the ugly enjoyment of describing his cruelty.
+It was as if the horrors to which he gave voice subjected him to a
+specious and irresistible charm, equipped him with a spurious courage, a
+sincere indifference to common opinion.</p>
+
+<p>"There is," he said, "a shadow on my soul. My greatest enemy is hidden
+in my own mind.</p>
+
+<p>"But I've fought it, fought it all my life. You may say the makeshifts
+I've adopted, the strategy of my resistance, my tactics to outwit this
+thing, do me little credit. I shall leave it to you to decide. Results
+speak for themselves. I have broken no law; there is against me nothing
+that would bring upon me the penalty of man's laws."</p>
+
+<p>He wedged himself more closely against the edge of the table, and struck
+his left palm with his clenched right hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, Hastings, to have fought this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> thing, in whatever way, has
+been a task that called for every ounce of strength I had. I've lived in
+hell and walked with devils, against my will. Not a day, not a night,
+have I been free of this curse, or my fear of it. There have been times
+when, every night for months, my slumbers were broken or impossible! The
+devilish thing reached down into the depths of sleep and with its foul
+and muddy grasp poisoned even those clear, white pools&mdash;clear and white
+for other men! But no matter&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You've heard of obsessions&mdash;of men seized every six months with an
+irresistible desire to drink&mdash;of kleptomaniacs who, having all they need
+or wish, must steal or go mad&mdash;of others driven by inexplicable impulse,
+mania, to set fire to buildings, for the thrill they get out of seeing
+the flames burst forth. Well, from my earliest childhood until that
+moment when Roy Dalton attacked me, I had fought an impulse even more
+terrible than those. God, what a tyranny! It drove me, drove me, that
+obsession, at times amounting to mental compulsion, to strike, to stab,
+to make the blood flow!"</p>
+
+<p>He rose, getting to his feet slowly, so that his burly bulk gained in
+size, like the slow upheaval of a hillside. Swollen as his face had
+been, it expanded now a trifle more. His nostrils <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>coarsened more
+perceptibly. The puffiness that had been in the back of his neck
+extended entirely around his throat. He hung forward over the table,
+giving all his attention to Hastings, who was unmoved, incredulous.</p>
+
+<p>"The Brace woman will tell you I had to kill him," he proceeded more
+swiftly, displaying a questionable ardour, like a man foreseeing defeat.
+"The mistake I made was in running away&mdash;a bitter mistake! But those
+unnecessary wounds, twenty-eight that need not have been made! The
+obsession to see the blood flow drove me to acts which a jury, I
+thought, would not understand. And, if you don't see the force of my
+explanation, Hastings, if you don't understand, I shall be in little
+better plight&mdash;after all these years!"</p>
+
+<p>He put, there, a sorrowful appeal into his voice; but a sly
+contradiction of it showed faintly in his face, a hint that he took a
+crafty pleasure in dragging into the light the depravity he had kept in
+darkness for a lifetime.</p>
+
+<p>"I got away. I drifted to Virginia, working hard, studying much. I
+became a lawyer. But always I had that affliction to combat; all my
+life, man!&mdash;always! There were periods months long when devils came up
+from the ugly corners of my soul to torture and tempt me.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p><p>"It wasn't the ordinary temptation, not a weak, pale idea of 'I'd like
+to kill and see the blood!'&mdash;but an uproar, an imperial voice, an
+endless command: 'Kill! Draw blood! Kill!'&mdash;What it did to me&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"But to this day I've beaten it! I've been a good citizen. I've observed
+the law. I've refused to let that involuntary lust for blood ruin me or
+cast me out.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me tell you how. I decided that, if I had a hand in awarding just
+punishments, my affliction would be abated enough for me to live in some
+measure of security. There you have the explanation of my being on the
+bench. I cheated the obsession to murder by helping to imprison or
+execute those who did murder!</p>
+
+<p>"That's why I can tell you of my innocence of the Brace murder. Do you
+think I'd tell it unless I knew there could be not even an excuse for
+suspecting me? On the other hand, if I had kept silent as to the true
+motive that drove my hand to those unnecessary mutilations of young
+Dalton&mdash;the only time, remember, that my weakness ever got the better,
+or the worse, of me!&mdash;if I had kept silent on that, you would have had
+ground for suspecting me of a barbarous murder then, and, arguing from
+that, of the Brace murder now.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p><p>"Do I make myself clear?&mdash;Do you want me to go into further detail?"</p>
+
+<p>He sank slowly back to his chair, spent by the strain of supreme effort.
+His breathing was laboured, stertorous.</p>
+
+<p>"That, Crown," Hastings denounced, "is a confession! Knowing he's
+caught, he's got the insolence to whine for mercy because of his
+'sufferings'! Think of it! The thing of which he boasts is the thing for
+which he deserves death&mdash;since death is supposed to be the supreme
+punishment. He tells us, in self-congratulatory terms, that he curbed
+his inhuman longings, satisfied his lust for blood, by going on the
+bench and helping to 'punish those who did murder!'</p>
+
+<p>"Too cowardly to strike a blow, he skulked behind the protection of his
+position. He made of the judicial robe an assassin's disguise. On the
+bench, he was free to sate his thirst for others' sufferings&mdash;adding to
+a sentence five undeserved years here, ten there; slipping into his
+instructions to juries a phrase that would mean the death penalty!</p>
+
+<p>"He revelled in judicial murders. He gloated over the helpless people
+who, looking to him for justice, were merely the victims of his
+abhorrent cruelty. He loved the look of sick surprise in their starting
+eyes. He got a filthy joy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> out of seeing a man turn pale. He rubbed his
+hands in glee when a woman swooned. He&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't stand that&mdash;can't stand it!" Sloane protested, hands over his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What more do you want, to prove his guilt, his abominable guilt?"
+Hastings swept on. "You have the motive, hatred of this woman here and
+her daughter&mdash;you have the proof of the letter sent to him making the
+compulsory appointment&mdash;you have his own crazy explanation of his
+homicidal impulse, from which, by the way, he never sought relief, a
+queer 'impulse' since it gave him time, hours, to plan the crime and
+manufacture the weapon with which he killed!"</p>
+
+<p>"I said at the start," Wilton put in hoarsely, "this man Hastings was
+only theorizing. If he had anything to connect me with&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I have!" Hastings told him, and came to a standstill in front of the
+sheriff, bending over him, as if to drive each statement into Crown's
+reluctant mind.</p>
+
+<p>"He got that letter a little after five in the afternoon. He left me
+here, in this room, with Sloane and Webster, and was gone three-quarters
+of an hour. That was just before dinner. He had the second floor, on
+that side of the house, entirely to himself. He took a nail-file from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>
+Webster's dressing case, and in Webster's room put a sharper point on it
+by filing it roughly with the file-blade of his own pen knife.</p>
+
+<p>"That's doubly proved: first, my magnet, with which I went over the
+floor in Webster's room, picked up small particles of steel. Here they
+are."</p>
+
+<p>He produced a small packet and, without unwrapping it, handed it to
+Crown.</p>
+
+<p>"Again: you'll find that the file-blade of his knife retained particles
+of the steel in the little furrows of its corrugated surface. I know,
+because last Sunday, as your car came up the driveway, I borrowed his
+knife, on the pretext of tightening a screw in the blade of mine. And I
+examined it."</p>
+
+<p>He put up a silencing hand as Wilton forced a jeering laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"But there's more to prove his manufacture and ownership of the weapon
+that killed the woman. He made the handle from the end of a slat on the
+bed in the room which I occupied that night. The inference is obvious:
+he didn't care to risk going outside the house to hunt for the wood he
+needed; he wouldn't take it from an easily visible place; and, having
+stolen something from one room, he paid his attention to mine. All this
+is the supercaution of the so-called 'smart criminal.' It matches the
+risk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> he took in returning to the body to hunt for the weapon. That was
+why he was there when Webster found the body.</p>
+
+<p>"The handle of the dagger matches the wood of the slat I've just
+mentioned. You won't find that particular slat upstairs now. It was
+taken out of the house the next day, broken into sections and packed in
+his bag of golf-sticks. But there is proof in this room of the fact that
+he and he only made the dagger.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll find in the edge of the large blade of his penknife a nick,
+triangular in shape, which left an unmistakable groove in the wood every
+time he cut into it. That little groove shows, to the naked eye, on the
+end of the shortened slat and on the handle of the dagger. If you doubt
+it&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Thunder!" Crown interrupted, in an awed tone. "You're right!"</p>
+
+<p>He had taken the dagger from his pocket and given it minute scrutiny. He
+handed it now to Sloane.</p>
+
+<p>Wilton, watching the scene with flaming eyes, sat motionless, his chin
+thrust down hard upon his collar, his face shining as if it had been
+polished with a cloth.</p>
+
+<p>Sloane gave the dagger back to Crown before he spoke, in a wheezy,
+shrill key: "They're there, the marks, the grooves!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p><p>He did not look at Wilton.</p>
+
+<p>Hastings straightened to his full stature, and looked toward Wilton.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Judge Wilton," he challenged, "you said you preferred to answer
+the accusation here and now. Do you, still?"</p>
+
+<p>Wilton, slowly raising the heavy lids of his eyes, like a man coming out
+of a trance, presented to him and to the others a face which, in spite
+of its flushed and swollen aspect, looked singularly bleak.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not an accusation," he said in his roughened, grating voice. "It's
+a network of suppositions, of theories, of impossibilities&mdash;a crazy
+structure, all built on the rotten foundation of a previous misfortune."</p>
+
+<p>"Arrest him, Crown!" Hastings commanded sharply.</p>
+
+<p>Wilton tried to laugh, but his heavy lips merely worked in a crazy
+barrenness of sound. With a vague, clumsy idea of covering up his
+confusion, he started to light a cigar.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped, hands in mid-air, when Crown, shambling to his feet, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Judge, I've got to act. He's proved his case."</p>
+
+<p>"Proved it!" Wilton made weak protest.</p>
+
+<p>"If he hasn't, let's see your penknife."</p>
+
+<p>Wilton put his hand into his trousers pocket,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> began the motion that
+would have drawn out the knife, checked it, and withdrew his hand empty.
+He managed a mirthless, dreary laugh, a rattling sound that fell, dead
+of any feeling, from his grimacing lips.</p>
+
+<p>"No, by God!" he refused. "I'll give it to neither of you. I don't have
+to!"</p>
+
+<p>In that moment, he fell to pieces. With his thick shoulders dropping
+forward, he became an inert mass bundled against the table edge. The
+blood went out of his face, so that his cheeks hollowed, and shadows
+formed under his eyes. He was like the victim of a quick consumption.</p>
+
+<p>Crown's eyes were on Hastings.</p>
+
+<p>"That's enough," the old man said shortly.</p>
+
+<p>"Too much," agreed Crown. "Judge, there's no bail&mdash;on a murder charge."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm very glad," Mrs. Brace commented, a terrible satisfaction in her
+voice. "He pays me&mdash;at last."</p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>In the music room Dr. Garnet had just given Lucille and Hastings a
+favourable report on Berne Webster's condition.</p>
+
+<p>"I should so like to tell him," she said, her glance entreating; "if
+you'll let me! Wouldn't he get well much faster if he knew it&mdash;knew the
+suspense was all over&mdash;that neither he nor father's suspected any more?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p><p>"I think," the doctor gave his opinion with exaggerated deliberation,
+"it might&mdash;in fact, it really will be his best medicine."</p>
+
+<p>She thanked him, stars swimming in her eyes.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of No Clue, by James Hay
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,8037 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of No Clue, by James Hay
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: No Clue
+       A Mystery Story
+
+Author: James Hay
+
+Release Date: August 23, 2008 [EBook #26396]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NO CLUE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D Alexander, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"NO CLUE!"
+
+_A Mystery Story_
+
+BY
+
+JAMES HAY, JR.
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE WINNING CLUE," "THE MELWOOD MYSTERY"
+
+
+[Illustration: Publisher's logo]
+
+
+NEW YORK
+DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
+1920
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1920
+BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.
+
+
+TO
+WILLIAM ("BUCK") HAY
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                 PAGE
+
+    I. THE GREY ENVELOPE                   1
+
+   II. THE WOMAN ON THE LAWN               8
+
+  III. THE UNEXPECTED WITNESS             20
+
+   IV. HASTINGS IS RETAINED               35
+
+    V. THE INTERVIEW WITH MRS. BRACE      48
+
+   VI. ACTION BY THE SHERIFF              62
+
+  VII. THE HOSTILITY OF MR. SLOANE        75
+
+ VIII. THE MAN WHO RAN AWAY               91
+
+   IX. THE BREAKING DOWN OF WEBSTER      103
+
+    X. THE WHISPERED CONFERENCE          122
+
+   XI. MOTIVES REVEALED                  138
+
+  XII. HENDRICKS REPORTS                 151
+
+ XIII. MRS. BRACE BEGINS                 161
+
+  XIV. MR. CROWN FORMS AN ALLIANCE       177
+
+   XV. IN ARTHUR SLOANE'S ROOM           195
+
+  XVI. THE BRIBE                         213
+
+ XVII. "THE WHOLE TRUTH"                 224
+
+XVIII. THE MAN WHO RODE AWAY             238
+
+  XIX. "PURSUIT!"                        246
+
+   XX. DENIAL OF THE CHARGE              261
+
+  XXI. "AMPLE EVIDENCE"                  273
+
+
+
+
+"NO CLUE!"
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE GREY ENVELOPE
+
+
+Catherine Brace walked slowly from the mantel-piece to the open window
+and back again. Within the last hour she had done that many times,
+always to halt before the mantel and gaze at the oblong, grey envelope
+that leaned against the clock. Evidently, she regarded it as a powerful
+agency. An observer would have perceived that she saw tremendous things
+come out of it--and that she considered them with mingled satisfaction
+and defiance.
+
+Her attitude, however, betrayed no hint of hesitation. Rather, the
+fixity of her gaze and the intensity of her mental concentration threw
+into high relief the hardness of her personality. She was singularly
+devoid of that quality which is generally called feminine softness.
+
+And she was a forceful woman. She had power. It was in her lean,
+high-shouldered, ungraceful figure. It was in her thin, mobile lips and
+her high-bridged nose with its thin, clean-cut nostrils. She impressed
+herself upon her environment. Standing there at the mantel, her hands
+clasped behind her, she was so caught up by the possibilities of the
+future that she succeeded in imparting to the grey envelope an almost
+animate quality.
+
+She became aware once more of voices in the next room: a man's light
+baritone in protest, followed by the taunt of her daughter's laugh.
+Although she left the mantel with lithe, swift step, it was with unusual
+deliberation that she opened the communicating door.
+
+Her voice was free of excitement when, ignoring her daughter's caller,
+she said:
+
+"Mildred, just a moment, please."
+
+Mildred came in and closed the door. Her mother, now near the window
+across the room, looked first at her and then at the grey envelope.
+
+"I thought," Mrs. Brace said, "you'd forgotten you were going to mail
+it."
+
+"Why didn't you mail it yourself?" The tone of that was cool insolence.
+
+Mother and daughter were strikingly alike--hair piled high in a wide
+wave above the forehead; black eyes too restless, but of that gleaming
+brilliance which heralds a refusal to grow old. So far, however, the
+daughter's features had not assumed an aspect of sharpness, like the
+mother's. One would have appraised the older woman
+vindictive--malevolent, possibly.
+
+But in the younger face the mouth greatly softened, almost concealed,
+this effect of calculating hardness. Mildred Brace's lips had a softness
+of line, a vividness of colouring that indicated emotional depths
+utterly foreign to her mother.
+
+They bore themselves now as if they commented on a decision already
+reached, a momentous step to which they had given immense consideration.
+
+"I didn't mail it," Mrs. Brace answered her daughter's query, "because I
+knew, if you mailed it, you'd do as you'd said you wanted to do."
+
+There was frank emphasis on the "said."
+
+"Your feet don't always follow your intelligence, you know."
+
+"I've been thinking about the thing," Mildred retorted, looking over her
+mother's shoulder into the summer night. "What's the use?"
+
+"What's the use!" Mrs. Brace echoed, incredulous.
+
+"Just that."
+
+"We've been all over it! You know what it means to you--to both of us."
+
+They spoke in low tones, careful that the man in the living room should
+not hear.
+
+"My dear mother," Mildred said, with a return of her cool insolence,
+"you display a confidence hardly warranted by your--and
+our--man-experience."
+
+She yawned slightly.
+
+There was a harsher note in her mother's reply.
+
+"He can't refuse. He can't!"
+
+Mildred stared at the grey envelope a full three minutes. Mrs. Brace,
+wordless, showing no uneasiness as to the outcome, waited for her to
+speak.
+
+"It's no use, mother," she said at last. "We can't manage it--him--this
+thing. It's too late."
+
+The flat finality, the dreariness, of that announcement angered the
+older woman. Calmness fell from her. She came away from the window
+slowly, her hands clasped tightly at her back, the upper part of her
+body bending forward a little, her thin nostrils expanding and
+contracting to the force of her hurried breathing like leaves shaken in
+the wind. The curl of her thin lips added a curious ferocity to the
+words that passed them. She spoke, only when her face was within a few
+inches of Mildred's.
+
+"No use!" she said contemptuously, her lowered voice explosive with
+passion. "Why? And why too late? Have you no self-respect, no will, no
+firmness? Are you all jelly and----"
+
+She got hold of herself with remarkable effectiveness, throwing off the
+signs of her wrath as suddenly as they had appeared. She retreated a
+step and laughed, without mirth.
+
+"Oh, well," she said, "it's your party, not mine, after all. But, in
+future, my dear, don't waste your time and mine in school-girl heroics."
+
+She completed her retreat and stood again at the window. Her
+self-restraint was, in a way, fiercer than her rage--and it affected her
+daughter.
+
+"You see," she concluded, "why I didn't mail it. I knew you wouldn't do
+the very thing you'd outlined."
+
+Mildred looked at the envelope again. The pause that followed was broken
+by the man in the other room.
+
+"Mildred," he called.
+
+Mrs. Brace laughed silently. Mildred, seeing that ridicule, recoiled.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" she demanded.
+
+Her mother pointed to the communicating door.
+
+"I was thinking of _that_," she said, "for life--and," she looked toward
+the grey envelope, "the other thing."
+
+"I don't see----" Mildred began, and checked herself, gazing again at
+the envelope.
+
+Her mother turned swiftly and stood looking into the night. The man
+called again and was not answered. The two women were motionless. There
+was no sound in the room, save the ticking of the clock on the mantel.
+Two minutes passed--three.
+
+Mildred went toward the mantel, put out her hand, withdrew it. She
+became conscious of the excessive heat and touched her forehead with her
+handkerchief. She glanced at her mother's motionless figure, started to
+speak, closed her parted lips. Indecision shook her. She put out her
+hand again, picked up the envelope and stood tapping it against her left
+palm.
+
+Mrs. Brace, without moving, spoke at last:
+
+"It's a few minutes of twelve. If you catch the midnight collection,
+he'll get it, out there, by five o'clock tomorrow afternoon."
+
+There was another pause.
+
+Mildred went slowly to the door leading into the living room, and once
+more she was on the point of speaking.
+
+Mrs. Brace was drumming her fingers on the window ledge. The action
+announced plainly that she had finished with the situation. Mildred put
+her hand on the knob, pulled the door half-open, closed it again.
+
+"I've changed my mind," she said, dreariness still in her voice. "He
+can't refuse."
+
+Her mother made no comment.
+
+Mildred went into the living room.
+
+"Gene," she said, with that indifference of tone which a woman employs
+toward a man she despises, "I'm going down to mail this."
+
+"Well, I'll swear!" he quarrelled sullenly. "Been in there all this time
+writing to him!"
+
+"Yes! Look at it!" she taunted viciously, and waved the envelope before
+his eyes. "Sloanehurst!"
+
+Taking up his hat, he went with her to the elevator.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE WOMAN ON THE LAWN
+
+
+Mr. Jefferson Hastings, unsuspecting that he was about to be confronted
+with the most brutal crime in all his experience, regretted having come
+to "Sloanehurst." He disapproved of himself unreservedly. Clad in an
+ample, antique night-shirt, he stood at a window of the guest-room
+assigned to him and gazed over the steel rims of his spectacles into the
+hot, rainy night. His real vision, however, made no attempt to pierce
+the outer darkness. His eyes were turned inward, upon himself, in
+derision of his behaviour during the past three hours.
+
+A kindly, reticent gentleman, who looked much older than his fifty-three
+years, he made it his habit to listen rather than talk. His wide fame as
+a criminologist and consulting detective had implanted no egotism in
+him. He abhorred the spotlight.
+
+But tonight Judge Wilton, by skilful use of query, suggestion and
+reminder, had tempted him into talking "shop." He had been lured into
+the role of monologuist for the benefit of his host, Arthur Sloane. He
+had talked brilliantly, at length, in detail, holding his three hearers
+in spellbound and fascinated interest while he discoursed on crimes
+which he had probed and criminals whom he had known.
+
+Not that he _thought_ he had talked brilliantly! By no means! He was
+convinced that nine-tenths of the interest manifested in his remarks had
+been dictated by politeness. Old Hastings was just that sort of person;
+he discounted himself. He was in earnest, therefore, in his present
+self-denunciation. He sighed, remembering the volume of his discourse,
+the awful length of time in which he had monopolized the conversation.
+
+But his modesty was not his only admirable characteristic. He had, also,
+a dependable sense of humour. It came to his relief now--he thought of
+his host, a chuckle throttling the beginnings of a second sigh deep down
+in his throat.
+
+This was not the first time that Arthur Broughton Sloane had provoked a
+chuckle, although, for him, life was a house of terror, a torture
+chamber constructed with fiendish ingenuity. Mr. Sloane suffered from
+"nerves." He was spending his declining years in the arduous but
+surprisingly successful task of being wretched, irritable and
+ill-at-ease.
+
+The variety of his agonies was equalled only by the alacrity with which
+he tested every cure or remedy of which he happened to hear. He agreed
+enthusiastically with his expensive physicians that he was neurasthenic,
+psychasthenic and neurotic.
+
+His eyes were weak; his voice was weak; his spirit was weak. He shivered
+all day with terror at the idea of not sleeping at night. Every evening
+he quivered with horror at the thought of not waking up next morning.
+And yet, despite these absorbing, although not entirely delightful,
+preoccupations, Mr. Sloane was not without an object in life.
+
+In fact, he had two objects in life: the happiness of his daughter,
+Lucille, and the study of crime and criminals. The latter interest had
+brought Hastings to the Sloane country home in Virginia. Judge Wilton,
+an old friend of the wrecked and wealthy Mr. Sloane, had met the
+detective on the street in Washington and urged:
+
+"Go down to Sloanehurst and spend Saturday night. I'll be there when you
+arrive. Sloane's got his mind set on seeing you; and you won't regret
+it. His library on criminology will be a revelation, even to you."
+
+And Hastings, largely because he shrank from seeming ungracious, had
+accepted Mr. Sloane's subsequent invitation.
+
+Climbing now into the old-fashioned four-poster bed, he thought again of
+his conversation-spree and longed for self-justification. He sat up,
+sheetless, reflecting:
+
+"As a week-ender, I'm a fine old chatter-box!--But young Webster got me!
+What did he say?--'The cleverer the criminal, the easier to run him
+down. The thug, acting on the spur of the moment, with a blow in the
+dark and a getaway through the night, leaves no trace behind him. Your
+"smart criminal" always overreaches himself.'--A pretty theory, but
+wild. Anyway, it made me forget myself; I talked my old fool head off."
+
+He felt himself blush.
+
+"Wish I'd let Wilton do the disproving; he was anxious enough."
+
+A mental picture of Sloane consoled him once more.
+
+"Silk socks and gingham gumption!" he thought. "But he's honest in his
+talk about being interested in crime. The man loves crime!--Good thing
+he's got plenty of money."
+
+He fell asleep, in a kind of ruminative growl:
+
+"Made a fool of myself--babbling about what _I_ remembered--what _I_
+thought! I'll go back to Washington--in the morning."
+
+Judge Wilton's unsteady voice, supplemented by a rattling of the
+doorknob, roused him. He had thrust one foot out of bed when Wilton came
+into the room.
+
+"Quick! Come on, man!" the judge instructed, and hurried into the hall.
+
+"What's wrong?" Hastings demanded, reaching for his spectacles.
+
+Wilton, on his way down the stairs, flung back:
+
+"A woman hurt--outside."
+
+From the hall below came Mr. Sloane's high-pitched, complaining tones:
+
+"Unfathomable angels! What do you say?--Who?"
+
+Drawing on shoes and trousers, the detective overtook his host on the
+front verandah and followed him down the steps and around the northeast
+corner of the house. He noticed that Sloane carried in one hand an
+electric torch and in the other a bottle of smelling salts. It was no
+longer raining.
+
+Rounding the corner, they saw, scarcely fifteen yards from the
+bay-window of the ballroom, the upturned face of a woman who lay
+prostrate on the lawn. Lights had been turned on in the house, making a
+glow which cut through the starless night.
+
+The woman did not move. Judge Wilton was in the act of kneeling beside
+her.
+
+"Hold on!" Hastings called out. "Don't disturb her--if she's dead."
+
+"She is dead!" said Wilton.
+
+"Who is she?" The detective, trying to find signs of life, put his hand
+over her heart.
+
+"I don't know," Wilton answered the question. "Do you, Sloane?"
+
+"Of course, I don't!"
+
+Hastings said afterwards that Sloane's reply expressed astonished
+resentment that he should be suspected of knowing anybody vulgar enough
+to be murdered on his lawn.
+
+The detective drew back his hand. His fingers were dark with blood.
+
+At that moment Berne Webster, Lucille Sloane's fiance, came from the
+rear of the house, announcing breathlessly:
+
+"No 'phone connection--this time of night, judge.--It's past
+midnight.--I sent chauffeur--Lally--for the sheriff."
+
+Hastings stood up, his first, cursory examination concluded.
+
+"No doubt about it," he said. "She's dead.--Bring a blanket, somebody!"
+
+Mr. Sloane's nerves had the best of him by this time. He trembled like
+a man with a chill, rattling the bottle of smelling salts against the
+metal end of his electric torch. He had on slippers and a light dressing
+gown over his pajamas.
+
+Wilton was fully dressed, young Webster collarless but wearing a black,
+light-weight lounging jacket. Hastings was struck with the different
+degrees of their dress, or undress.
+
+"Who found her?" he asked, looking at Webster.
+
+"Judge Wilton--and I," said Webster, so short of breath that his chest
+heaved.
+
+"How long ago?"
+
+Wilton answered that:
+
+"A few minutes, hardly five minutes. I ran in to call you and Sloane."
+
+"And Mr.--you, Mr. Webster?"
+
+"The judge told me to--to get the sheriff--by telephone."
+
+Hastings knelt again over the woman's body.
+
+"Here, Mr. Sloane," he ordered, "hold that torch closer, will you?"
+
+Mr. Sloane found compliance impossible. He could not steady his hand
+sufficiently.
+
+"Hold that torch, judge," Hastings prompted.
+
+"It's knocked me out--completely," Sloane said, surrendering the torch
+to Wilton.
+
+Webster, the pallor still on his face, a look of horror in his eyes,
+stood on the side of the body opposite the detective. At brief
+intervals he raised first one foot, then the other, clear of the ground
+and set it down again. He was unconscious of making any movement at all.
+
+Hastings, thoroughly absorbed in the work before him, went about it
+swiftly, with now and then brief, murmured comment on what he did and
+saw. Although his ample night-shirt, stuffed into his equally baggy
+trousers, contributed nothing but comicality to his appearance, the
+others submitted without question to his domination. There was about him
+suddenly an atmosphere of power that impressed even the little group of
+awe-struck servants who stood a few feet away.
+
+"Stabbed," he said, after he had run his hands over the woman's figure;
+"died instantly--must have. Got her heart.--Young--not over twenty-five,
+would you say?--Not dead long.--Anybody call a doctor?"
+
+"I told Lally to stop by Dr. Garnet's house and send him--at once,"
+Webster said, his voice low, and broken. "He's the coroner, too."
+
+Hastings continued his examination. The brief pause that ensued was
+broken by a woman's voice:
+
+"Pauline! Pauline!"
+
+The call came from one of the upstairs windows. Hearing it, a woman in
+the servant group hurried into the house.
+
+Webster groaned: "My God!"
+
+"Frantic fiends! It gets worse and worse!" Sloane objected shrilly. "My
+nerves! And Lucille's annoyed--shocked!"
+
+He held the smelling bottle to his nose, breathing deeply.
+
+"Here! Take this!" Hastings directed, and put up his hand abruptly.
+
+Sloane had so gone to pieces that the movement frightened him. He
+stepped back in such obvious terror that a hoarse guffaw of involuntary
+ridicule escaped one of the servants. The detective, finding that his
+kneeling posture made it difficult to put his handkerchief back into his
+trousers pocket, had thrust it toward Sloane. That gentleman having so
+suddenly removed himself out of reach, Hastings stuck the handkerchief
+into Judge Wilton's coat-pocket.
+
+Arthur Sloane, the detective said later, never forgave him that
+unexpected wave of the handkerchief--and the servant's ridiculing laugh.
+
+Hastings looked up to Wilton.
+
+"Did you find any weapon?"
+
+"I didn't look--didn't take time."
+
+"Neither did I," young Webster added.
+
+Hastings, disregarding the wet grass, was on his hands and knees,
+searching. He accomplished a complete circuit of the body, his
+round-shouldered, stooping figure making grotesque, elephantine shadows
+under the light of the torch as he moved about slowly, not trusting his
+eyes, but feeling with his hands every inch of the smallest, half-lit
+spaces.
+
+Nobody else took part in the search. Having accepted his leadership from
+the outset, they seemed to take it for granted that he needed no help.
+Mentally benumbed by the horror of the tragedy, they stood there in the
+quiet, summer night, barren of ideas. They were like children, waiting
+to be instructed.
+
+Hastings stood erect, pulling and hauling at his trousers.
+
+"Can't find a knife or anything," he said. "Glad I can't. Hope he took
+it with him."
+
+"Why?" asked Sloane, through chattering teeth.
+
+"May help us to find him--may be a clue in the end."
+
+He was silent a moment, squinting under the rims of his spectacles,
+looking down at the figure of the dead woman. He had already covered the
+face with the hat she had worn, a black straw sailor; but neither he nor
+the others found it easy to forget the peculiar and forbidding
+expression the features wore, even in death. It was partly fear, partly
+defiance--as if her last conscious thought had been a flitting look
+into the future, an exulting recognition of the certain consequences of
+the blow that had struck her down.
+
+Put into words, it might have been: "You've murdered me, but you'll pay
+for it--terribly!"
+
+A servant handed Hastings the blanket he had ordered. He looked toward
+the sky.
+
+"I don't think it will rain any more," he said. "And it's best to leave
+things as they are until the coroner arrives.--He'll be here soon?"
+
+"Should get here in half an hour or so," Judge Wilton informed him.
+
+The detective arranged the blanket so that it covered the prone form
+completely, leaving the hat over the face as he had first placed it.
+With the exception of the hat, he had disturbed no part of the apparel.
+Even the folds of the raincoat, which fell away from the body and showed
+the rain-soaked black skirt, he left as he had found them. The white
+shirtwaist, also partly exposed now, was dry.
+
+"Anybody move her hat before I came out?" he asked; "you, judge; or you,
+Mr. Webster?"
+
+They had not touched it, they said; it was on the grass, beside her
+head, when they discovered the body, and they had left it there.
+
+Again he was silent, brows drawn together as he stood over the murdered
+woman. Finally, he raised his head swiftly and, taking each in turn,
+searched sharply the countenances of the three men before him.
+
+"Does--didn't anybody here know this woman?" he asked.
+
+Berne Webster left his place at the opposite side of the body and came
+close to Hastings.
+
+"I know who she is," he said, his voice lower even than before, as if he
+wished to keep that information from the servants.
+
+Hastings' keen scrutiny had in it no intimation of surprise. Waiting for
+Webster to continue, he was addressed by the shivering Mr. Sloane:
+
+"Mr. Hast--Mr. Hastings, take charge of--of things. Will you? You know
+about these things."
+
+The detective accepted the suggestion.
+
+"Suppose we get at what we know about it--what we all know. Let's go
+inside." He turned to the servants: "Stay here until you're called. See
+that nothing is disturbed, nothing touched."
+
+He led the way into the house. Sloane, near collapse, clung to one of
+Judge Wilton's broad shoulders. It was young Webster who, as the little
+procession passed the hatrack in the front hall, caught up a raincoat
+and threw it over the half-clad Hastings.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE UNEXPECTED WITNESS
+
+
+In the library Hastings turned first to Judge Wilton for a description
+of the discovery of the body. The judge was in better condition than the
+others for connected narrative, Arthur Sloane had sunk into a morris
+chair, where he sighed audibly and plied himself by fits and starts with
+the aroma from the bottle of smelling salts. Young Webster, still
+breathing as if he had been through exhausting physical endeavour, stood
+near the table in the centre of the room, mechanically shifting his
+weight from foot to foot.
+
+Wilton, seated half-across the room from Hastings, drew, absently, on a
+dead cigar-stump. A certain rasping note in his voice was his only
+remaining symptom of shock. He had the stern calmness of expression that
+is often seen in the broad, irregularly-featured face in early middle
+age.
+
+"I can tell you in very few words," he said, addressing the detective
+directly. "We all left this room, you'll remember, at eleven o'clock. I
+found my bedroom uncomfortable, too warm. Besides, it had stopped
+raining. When I noticed that, I decided to go out and smoke my
+good-night cigar. This is what's left of it."
+
+He put a finger to the unlighted stump still between his lips.
+
+"What time did you go out?" asked Hastings.
+
+"Probably, a quarter of an hour after I'd gone upstairs--fifteen or
+twenty minutes past eleven, I should guess."
+
+"How did you go out--by what door?"
+
+"The front door. I left it unlocked, but not open. At first I paced up
+and down, on the south side of the house, under the trees. It was
+reasonably light there then--that is to say, the clouds had thinned a
+little, and, after my eyes had got accustomed to it, I had no trouble in
+avoiding the trees and shrubbery.
+
+"Then a cloud heavier than the others came up, I suppose. Anyway, it was
+much darker. There wasn't a light in the house, except in my room and
+Berne Webster's. Yours was out, I remember. I passed by the front of the
+house then, and went around to the north side. It was darker there, I
+thought, than it had been under the trees on the south side."
+
+"How long had you been out then, altogether?"
+
+"Thirty or forty minutes." He looked at his watch. "It's a quarter past
+twelve now. Let me see. I found the body a few minutes after I changed
+over to the north side. I guess I found it about five minutes before
+midnight--certainly not more than twenty minutes ago."
+
+Hastings betrayed his impatience only by squinting under his spectacles
+and down the line of his nose, eying Wilton closely.
+
+"All right, judge! Let's have it."
+
+"I was going along slowly, very slowly, not doing much more than feeling
+my way with my feet on the close-shaven grass. It was the darkest night
+I ever saw. Literally, I couldn't have seen my hand in front of me.
+
+"I had decided to turn about and go indoors when I was conscious of some
+movement, or slight sound, directly in front of me, and downward, at my
+feet. I got that impression."
+
+"What movement? You mean the sound of a fall?"
+
+"No; not that exactly."
+
+"A footstep?"
+
+"No. I hadn't any definite idea what sort of noise it was. I did think
+that, perhaps, it was a dog or a cat. Just then my foot came in contact
+with something soft. I stooped down instinctively, immediately.
+
+"At that moment, that very second, a light flashed on in Arthur's
+bedroom. That's between this room and the big ballroom--on this floor,
+of course. That light threw a long, illuminating shaft into the murky
+darkness, the end of it coming just far enough to touch me and--what I
+found--the woman's body. I saw it by that light before I had time to
+touch it with my hand."
+
+The judge stopped and drew heavily on his dead cigar.
+
+"All right. See anything else?" Hastings urged.
+
+"Yes; I saw Berne Webster. He had made the noise which attracted my
+attention."
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"He must have. He was stooping down, too, on the other side of the body,
+facing me, when the light went on----"
+
+Sloane, twisting nervously in his chair, cut into Wilton's narrative.
+
+"I can put this much straight," he said in shrill complaint: "I turned
+on the light you're talking about. I hadn't been able to sleep."
+
+"Let's have this, one at a time, if you don't mind, Mr. Sloane," the
+detective suggested, watching Webster.
+
+The young man, staring with fascinated intensity at Judge Wilton, seemed
+to experience some new horror as he listened.
+
+"He was on the other side of it," the judge continued, "and practically
+in the same position that I was. We faced each other across the body. I
+think that describes the discovery, as you call it. We immediately
+examined the woman, looking for the wound, and found it. When we saw she
+was dead, we came in to wake you--and try to get a doctor. I told Berne
+to do that."
+
+During the last few sentences Hastings had been walking slowly from his
+chair to the library door and back, his hands gouged deep into his
+trouser-pockets, folds of his night-shirt protruding from and falling
+over the waistband of the trousers, the raincoat hanging baggily from
+his shoulders. Ludicrous as the costume was, however, the old man so
+dominated them still that none of them, not even Wilton, questioned his
+authority.
+
+And yet, the thing he was doing should have appealed to them as
+noteworthy. A man of less power could not have accomplished it. Coming
+from a sound sleep to the scene of a murder, he had literally picked up
+these men who had discovered it and who must be closely touched by it,
+had overcome their agitation, had herded them into the house and, with
+amazing promptness, had set about the task of getting from them the
+stories of what they knew and what they had done.
+
+Appreciating his opportunity, he had determined to bring to light at
+once everything they knew. He devoted sudden attention now to Webster,
+whom he knew by reputation--a lawyer thirty years of age, brilliant in
+the criminal courts, and at present striving for a foothold in the more
+remunerative ranks of civil practice. He had never been introduced to
+him, however, before meeting him at Sloanehurst.
+
+"Who touched that body first--Mr. Webster?" he demanded, his slow
+promenade uninterrupted as he kept his eyes on the lawyer's.
+
+"Judge--I don't know, I believe," Webster replied uncertainly. "Who did,
+judge?"
+
+"I want your recollection," Hastings insisted, kindly in spite of the
+unmistakable command of his tone. "That's why I asked you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"For one thing, it might go far toward showing who was really first on
+the scene."
+
+"I see; but I really don't remember. I'm not sure that either of us
+touched the body--just then. I think we both drew back, instinctively,
+when the light flashed on. Afterwards, of course, we both touched
+her--looking for signs of life."
+
+The detective came to a standstill in front of Webster.
+
+"Who reached the body first? Can you say?"
+
+"No. I don't think either was first. We got there together."
+
+"Simultaneously?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But I'm overlooking something. How did you happen to be there?"
+
+"That's simple enough," Webster said, his brows drawn together, his eyes
+toward the floor, evidently making great effort to omit no detail of
+what had occurred. "I went to my room when we broke up here, at eleven.
+I read for a while. I got tired of that--it was close and hot. Besides,
+I never go to bed before one in the morning--that is, practically never.
+And I wasn't sleepy.
+
+"I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to twelve. Like the judge, I
+noticed that it had stopped raining. I thought I'd have a better night's
+sleep if I got out and cooled off thoroughly. My room, the one I have
+this time, is close to the back stairway. I went down that, and out the
+door on the north side."
+
+"Were you smoking?" Hastings put the query sharply, as if to test the
+narrator's nerves.
+
+Webster's frown deepened.
+
+"No. But I had cigarettes and matches with me. I intended to smoke--and
+walk about."
+
+"But what happened?"
+
+"It was so much darker than I had thought that I groped along with my
+feet, much as Judge Wilton did. I was making my way toward the front
+verandah. I went on, sliding my feet on the wet grass."
+
+"Any reason for doing that, do you remember? Are there any obstructions
+there, anything but smooth, open lawn?"
+
+"No. It was merely an instinctive act--in pitch dark, you know."
+
+Webster, his eyes still toward the floor, waited for another question.
+Not getting it, he resumed:
+
+"My foot struck something soft. I thought it was a wet cloak, something
+of that sort, left out in the rain. I hadn't heard a thing. And I had no
+premonition of anything wrong. I bent over, with nothing more than sheer
+idle curiosity, to put my hand on whatever the thing was. And just then
+the light went on in Mr. Sloane's bedroom. The judge and I were looking
+at each other across somebody lying on the ground, face upward."
+
+"Either of you cry out?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Say anything?"
+
+"Not much."
+
+"Well, what?"
+
+"I remember the judge said, 'Is she dead?' I said, 'How is she hurt?'
+We didn't say much while we were looking for the wound."
+
+"Did you tell Judge Wilton you knew her?"
+
+"No. There wasn't time for any explanation--specially."
+
+"But you do know her?"
+
+"I told you that, sir, outside--just now."
+
+"All right. Who is she?" Hastings put that query carelessly, in a way
+which might have meant that he had heard the most important part of the
+young lawyer's story. That impression was heightened by his beginning
+again to pace the floor.
+
+"Her name's Mildred Brace," replied Webster, moistening his lips with
+his tongue. "She was my stenographer for eight months."
+
+The detective drew up sharply.
+
+"When?"
+
+"Until two weeks ago."
+
+"She resign?"
+
+"Yes. No--I discharged her."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Incompetence."
+
+"I don't understand that exactly. You mean you employed her eight months
+although she was incompetent?"
+
+"That's pretty bald," Webster objected. "Her incompetence came, rather,
+from temperament. She was, toward the last, too nervous, excitable. She
+was more trouble than she was worth."
+
+"Ah, that's different," Hastings said, with a significance that was
+clear. "People might have thought," he elaborated, "if you had fired her
+for other reasons, this tragedy tonight would have put you in an
+unenviable position--to say the least."
+
+He had given words to the vague feeling which had depressed them all,
+ever since the discovery of the murder; that here was something vastly
+greater than the accidental finding of a person killed by an outsider,
+that the crime touched Sloanehurst personally. The foreboding had been
+patent--almost, it seemed, a tangible thing--but, until this moment,
+each had steered clear of it, in speech.
+
+Webster's response was bitter.
+
+"They'll want to say it anyway, I guess." To that he added, in frank
+resentment: "And I might as well enter a denial here: I had nothing to
+do with the--this whole lamentable affair!"
+
+The silence in which he and Hastings regarded each other was broken by
+Arthur Sloane's querulous words:
+
+"Why--why, in the name of all the inscrutable saints, this thing should
+have happened at Sloanehurst, is more than I can say! Jumping angels!
+Now, let me tell you what I----"
+
+He stopped, hearing light footfalls coming down the hall. There was the
+swish of silk, a little outcry half-repressed, and Lucille Sloane stood
+in the doorway. One hand was at her breast, the other against the
+door-frame, to steady her tall, slightly swaying figure. Her hair, a
+pyramid on her head, as if the black, heavy masses of it had been done
+by hurrying fingers, gave to her unusual beauty now an added suggestion
+of dignity.
+
+Profoundly moved as she was, there was nothing of the distracted or the
+inadequate about her. Hastings, who had admired her earlier in the
+evening, saw that her poise was far from overthrown. It seemed to him
+that she even had considered how to wear with extraordinary effect the
+brilliant, vari-coloured kimono draped about her. The only criticism of
+her possible was that, perhaps, she seemed a trifle too imperious--but,
+for his part, he liked that.
+
+"A thoroughbred!" he catalogued her, mentally.
+
+"You will excuse me, father," she said from the doorway, "but I couldn't
+help hearing." She thrust forward her chin. "Oh, I had to hear!--And
+there's something I have to tell."
+
+Her glance went at last from Sloane to Hastings as she advanced slowly
+into the room.
+
+The detective pushed forward a chair for her.
+
+"That's fine, Miss Sloane," he assured her. "I'm sure you're going to
+help us."
+
+"It isn't much," she qualified, "but I think it's important."
+
+Still she looked at neither Berne Webster nor Judge Wilton. And only a
+man trained as Hastings was to keenness of observation would have seen
+the slight but incessant tremour of her fingers and the constant,
+convulsive play of the muscles under the light covering of her black
+silk slippers.
+
+Sloane, alone, had remained seated. She was looking up to Hastings, who
+stood several feet in front of Webster and the judge.
+
+"I had gone to sleep," she said, her voice low, but musical and clear.
+"I waked up when I heard father moving about--his room is directly under
+mine; and, now that Aunt Lucy is away, I'm always more or less anxious
+about him. And I knew he had got quiet earlier, gone to sleep. It wasn't
+like him to be awake again so soon.
+
+"I sprang out of bed, really very quickly. I listened for a few seconds,
+but there was no further sound in father's room. The night was unusually
+quiet. There wasn't a sound--at first. Then I heard something. It was
+like somebody running, running very fast, outside, on the grass."
+
+She paused. Hastings was struck by her air of alertness, or of prepared
+waiting, of readiness for questions.
+
+"Which way did the footsteps go?" he asked.
+
+"From the house--down the slope, toward the little gate that opens on
+the road."
+
+"Then what?"
+
+"I wondered idly what it meant, but it made no serious impression on me.
+I listened again for sounds in father's room. There was none. Struck
+again by the heavy silence--it was almost oppressive, coming after the
+rain--I went to the window. I stood there, I don't know how long. I
+think I was day-dreaming, lazily running things over in my mind. I don't
+think it was very long.
+
+"And then father turned on the light in his room." She made a quick
+gesture with her left hand, wonderfully expressive of shock. "I shall
+never forget that! The long, narrow panel of light reached out into the
+dark like an ugly, yellow arm--reached out just far enough to touch and
+lay hold of the picture there on the grass; a woman lying on the
+drenched ground, her face up, and bending over her Judge Wilton and
+Berne--Mr. Webster.
+
+"I knew she'd been hurt dreadfully; her feet were drawn up, her knees
+high; and I could see the looks of horror on the men's faces."
+
+She paused, giving all her strength to the effort to retain her
+self-control before the assailing memory of what she had seen.
+
+"That was all, Miss Sloane?" the detective prompted, in a kindly tone.
+
+"Yes, quite," she said. "But I'd heard Berne's--what he was saying to
+you--and the judge's description of what they'd seen; and I thought you
+would like to know of the footsteps I'd heard--because they were the
+murderer's; they must have been. I knew it was important, most
+important."
+
+"You were entirely right," he agreed warmly. "Thank you, very much."
+
+He went the length of the room and halted by one of the bookcases, a
+weird, lumpy old figure among the shadows in the corner. He was scraping
+his cheek with his thumb, and looking at the ceiling, over the rims of
+his spectacles.
+
+Arthur Sloane sighed his impatience.
+
+"Those knees drawn up," Hastings said at last; "I was just thinking.
+They weren't drawn up when I saw the body. Were they?"
+
+"We'd straightened the limbs," Webster answered. "Thought I'd mentioned
+that."
+
+"No.--Then, there might have been a struggle? You think the woman had
+put up a fight--for her life?--and was overpowered?"
+
+"Well," deliberated Webster, "perhaps; even probably."
+
+"Strange," commented the detective, equally deliberate. "I hadn't
+thought so. I would have said she'd been struck down unawares--without
+the slightest warning."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+HASTINGS IS RETAINED
+
+
+Arrival of the officials, Sheriff Crown and the coroner, Dr. Garnet,
+brought the conference to an abrupt close. Hastings, seeing the look in
+the girl's eyes, left the library in advance of the other men. Lucille
+followed him immediately.
+
+"Mr. Hastings!"
+
+"Yes, Miss Sloane?"
+
+He turned and faced her.
+
+"I must talk to you, alone. Won't you come in here?"
+
+She preceded him into the parlour across the hall. When he put his hand
+on the electric switch, she objected, saying she preferred to be without
+the lights. He obeyed her. The glow from the hall was strong enough to
+show him the play of her features--which was what he wanted.
+
+They sat facing each other, directly under the chandelier in the middle
+of the spacious room. He thought she had chosen that place to avoid all
+danger of being overheard in any direction. He saw, too, that she was
+hesitant, half-regretting having brought him there. He read her doubts,
+saw how pain and anxiety mingled in her wide-open grey eyes.
+
+"Yes, I know," he said with a smile that was reassuring; "I don't look
+like a particularly helpful old party, do I?"
+
+He liked her more and more. In presence of mind, he reflected, she
+surpassed the men of the household. In spite of the agitation that still
+kept her hands trembling and gave her that odd look of fighting
+desperately to hold herself together, she had formed a plan which she
+was on the point of disclosing to him.
+
+Her courage impressed him tremendously. And, divining what her request
+would be, he made up his mind to help her.
+
+"It's not that," she said, her lips twisting to the pretence of a smile.
+"I know your reputation--how brilliant you are. I was thinking you might
+not understand what I wanted to say."
+
+"Try me," he encouraged. "I'm not that old!"
+
+It occurred to him that she referred to Berne Webster and herself,
+fearing, perhaps, his lack of sympathy for a love affair.
+
+"It's this," she began a rush of words, putting away all reluctance: "I
+think I realize more keenly than father how disagreeable this awful
+thing is going to be--the publicity, the newspapers, the questions, the
+photographs. I know, too, that Mr. Webster's in an unpleasant situation.
+I heard what he said to you in the library, every word of it.--But I
+don't have to think about him so much as about my father. He's a very
+sick man, Mr. Hastings. The shock of this, the resultant shocks lasting
+through days and weeks, may be fatal for him.
+
+"Besides," she explained, attaining greater composure, "he is so
+nervous, so impatient of discomfort and irritating things, that he may
+bring upon himself the enmity of the authorities, the investigators. He
+may easily provoke them so that they would do anything to annoy him.
+
+"I see you don't understand!" she lamented suddenly, turning her head
+away a little.
+
+He could see how her lips trembled, as if she held them together only by
+immense resolution.
+
+"I think I do," he contradicted kindly. "You want my help; isn't that
+it?"
+
+"Yes." She looked at him again, with a quick turn of her head, her eyes
+less wide-open while she searched his face. "I want to employ you. Can't
+I--what do they call it?--retain you?"
+
+"To do what, exactly?"
+
+"Oh-h-h!" The exclamation had the hint of a sob in it; she was close to
+the end of her strength. "I'm a little uncertain about that. Can't you
+help me there? I want the real criminal found soon, immediately, as soon
+as possible. I want you to work on that. And, in the meantime, I want
+you to protect us--father--do things so that we shan't be overrun by
+reporters and detectives, all the dreadful results of the discovery of a
+murder at our very front door."
+
+He was thoughtful, looking into her eyes.
+
+"The fee is of no matter, the amount of it," she added impulsively.
+
+"I wasn't thinking of that--although, of course, I don't despise fees.
+You see, the authorities, the sheriff, might not want my assistance, as
+you call it. Generally, they don't. They look upon it as interference
+and meddling."
+
+"Still, you can work independently--retained by Mr. Arthur Sloane--can't
+you?"
+
+He studied her further. For her age--hardly more than twenty-two--she
+was strikingly mature of face, and self-reliant. She had, he concluded,
+unusual strength of purpose; she was capable of large emotionalism, but
+mere feeling would never cloud her mind.
+
+"Yes," he answered her; "I can do that. I will."
+
+"Ah," she breathed, some of the tenseness going out of her, "you are
+very good!"
+
+"And you will help me, of course."
+
+"Of course."
+
+"You can do so now," he pressed this point. "Why is it that all of
+you--I noticed it in the men in the library, and when we were outside,
+on the lawn--why is it that all of you think this crime is going to hit
+you, one of you, so hard? You seem to acknowledge in advance the guilt
+of one of you."
+
+"Aren't you mistaken about that?"
+
+"No. It struck me forcibly. Didn't you feel it? Don't you, now?"
+
+"Why, no!"
+
+He was certain that she was not frank with him.
+
+"You mean," she added quickly, eyes narrowed, "I suspect--actually
+suspect some one in this house?"
+
+In his turn, he was non-committal, retorting:
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+She resented his insistence.
+
+"There is only one idea possible, I think," she declared, rising: "the
+footsteps that I heard fled from the house, not into it. The murderer is
+not here."
+
+He stood up, holding her gaze.
+
+"I'm your representative now, Miss Sloane," he said, his manner fatherly
+in its solicitude. "My duty is to save you, and yours, in every way I
+can--without breaking the law. You realize what my job is--do you?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Hastings."
+
+"And the advisability, the necessity, of utter frankness between us?"
+
+"Yes." She said that with obvious impatience.
+
+"So," he persisted, "you understand my motive in asking you now: is
+there nothing more you can tell me--of what you heard and saw, when you
+were at your window?"
+
+"Nothing--absolutely," she said, again obviously annoyed.
+
+He was close to a refusal to have anything to do with the case. He was
+sure that she did not deal openly with him. He tried again:
+
+"Nothing more, Miss Sloane? Think, please. Nothing to make you, us, more
+suspicious of Mr. Webster?"
+
+"Suspect Berne!"
+
+This time she was frank, he saw at once. The idea of the young lawyer's
+guilt struck her as out of the question. Her confidence in that was
+genuine, unalloyed. It was so emphatic that it surprised him. Why, then,
+this anxiety which had driven her to him for help? What caused the fear
+which, at the beginning of their interview, had been so apparent?
+
+He thought with great rapidity, turning the thing over in his mind as
+he stood confronting her. If she did not suspect Webster, whom did she
+suspect? Her father?
+
+That was it!--her father!
+
+The discovery astounded Hastings--and appealed to his sympathy,
+tremendously.
+
+"My poor child!" he said, on the warm impulse of his compassion.
+
+She chose to disregard the tone he had used. She took a step toward the
+door, and paused, to see that he followed her.
+
+He went nearer to her, to conclude what he had wanted to say:
+
+"I shall rely on this agreement between us: I can come to you on any
+point that occurs to me? You will give me anything, and all the things,
+that may come to your knowledge as the investigation proceeds? Is it a
+bargain, Miss Sloane?"
+
+"A bargain, Mr. Hastings," she assented. "I appreciate, as well as you
+do, the need of fair dealing between us. Anything else would be
+foolish."
+
+"Fine! That's great, Miss Sloane!" He was still sorry for her. "Now, let
+me be sure, once for all: you're concealing nothing from me, no little
+thing even, on the theory that it would be of no use to me and,
+therefore, not worth discussing? You told us all you knew--in the
+library?"
+
+She moved toward the door to the hall again.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Hastings--and I'm at your service altogether."
+
+He would have sworn that she was not telling the truth. This time,
+however, he had no thought of declining connection with the case. His
+compassion for her had grown.
+
+Besides, her fear of her father's implication in the affair--was there
+foundation for it, more foundation than the hasty thought of a daughter
+still labouring under the effects of a great shock? He thought of
+Sloane, effeminate, shrill of voice, a trembling wreck, long ago a
+self-confessed ineffective in the battle of life--he, a murderer; he,
+capable of forceful action of any kind? It seemed impossible.
+
+But the old man kept that idea to himself, and instructed Lucille.
+
+"Then," he said, "you must leave things to me. Tell your father so.
+Tomorrow, for instance--rather this morning, for it's already a new
+day--reporters will come out here, and detectives, and the sheriff. All
+of them will want to question you, your father, all the members of the
+household. Refer them to me, if you care to.
+
+"If you discuss theories and possibilities, you will only make trouble.
+To the sheriff, and anybody representing him, state the facts, the bare
+facts--that's all. May I count on you for that?"
+
+"Certainly. That's why I've em--why I want your help: to avoid all the
+unpleasantness possible."
+
+When she left him to go to her father's room, Hastings joined the group
+on the front verandah. Sheriff Crown and Dr. Garnet had already viewed
+the body.
+
+"I'll hold the inquest at ten tomorrow morning, rather this morning,"
+the coroner said. "That's hurrying things a little, but I'll have a jury
+here by then. They have to see the body before it's taken to
+Washington."
+
+"Besides," observed the sheriff, "nearly all the necessary witnesses are
+here in this house party."
+
+Aware of the Hastings fame, he drew the old man to one side.
+
+"I'm going into Washington," he announced, "to see this Mrs. Brace, the
+girl's mother. Webster says she has a flat, up on Fourteenth street
+there. Good idea, ain't it?"
+
+"Excellent," assured Hastings, and put in a suggestion: "You've heard of
+the fleeting footsteps Miss Sloane reported?"
+
+"Yes. I thought Mrs. Brace might tell me who that could have been--some
+fellow jealous of the girl, I'll bet."
+
+The sheriff, who was a tall, lanky man with a high, hooked nose and a
+pointed chin that looked like a large knuckle, had a habit of thrusting
+forward his upper lip to emphasize his words. He thrust it forward now,
+making his bristly, close-cropped red moustache stand out from his face
+like the quills of a porcupine.
+
+"I'd thought of that--all that," he continued. "Looks like a simple case
+to me--very."
+
+"It may be," said Hastings, sure now that Crown would not suggest their
+working together.
+
+"Also," the sheriff told him, "I'll take this."
+
+He held out the crude weapon with which, apparently, the murder had been
+committed. It was a dagger consisting of a sharpened nail file, about
+three inches long, driven into a roughly rounded piece of wood. This
+wooden handle was a little more than four inches in length and two
+inches thick. Hastings, giving it careful examination, commented:
+
+"He shaped that handle with a pocket-knife. Then, he drove the butt-end
+of the nail file into it. Next, he sharpened the end of the file--put a
+razor edge on it.--Where did you get this, Mr. Crown?"
+
+"A servant, one of the coloured women, picked it up as I came in. You
+were still in the library."
+
+"Where was it?"
+
+"About fifteen or twenty feet from the body. She stumbled on it, in the
+grass. Ugly thing, sure!"
+
+"Yes," Hastings said, preoccupied, and added: "Let me have it again."
+
+He took off his spectacles and, screwing into his right eye a jeweller's
+glass, studied it for several minutes. If he made an important
+discovery, he did not communicate it to Crown.
+
+"It made an ugly hole," was all he said.
+
+"You see the blood on it?" Crown prompted.
+
+"Oh, yes; lucky the rain stopped when it did."
+
+"When did it stop--out here?" Crown inquired.
+
+"About eleven; a few minutes after I'd gone up to bed."
+
+"So she was killed between eleven and midnight?"
+
+"No doubt about that. Her hat had fallen from her head and was bottom up
+beside her. The inside of the crown and all the lower brim was dry as a
+bone, while the outside, even where it did not touch the wet grass, was
+wet. That showed there wasn't any rain after she was struck down."
+
+The sheriff was impressed by the other's keenness of observation.
+
+"That's so," he said. "I hadn't noticed it."
+
+He sought the detective's opinion.
+
+"Mr. Hastings, you've just heard the stories of everybody here. Do me a
+favour, will you? Is it worth while for me to go into Washington? Tell
+me: do you think anybody here at Sloanehurst is responsible for this
+murder?"
+
+"Mr. Crown," the old man answered, "there's no proof that anybody here
+killed that woman."
+
+"Just what I thought," Mr. Crown applauded himself. "Glad you agree with
+me. It'll turn out a simple case. Wish it wouldn't. Nominating primary's
+coming on in less than a month. I'd get a lot more votes if I ran down a
+mysterious fellow, solved a tough problem."
+
+He strode down the porch steps and out to his car--for the ten-mile run
+into Washington. Hastings was strongly tempted to accompany him, even
+without being invited; it would mean much to be present when the mother
+first heard of her daughter's death.
+
+But he had other and, he thought, more important work to do. Moving so
+quietly that his footsteps made no sound, he gained the staircase in the
+hall and made his way to the second floor. If anybody had seen him and
+inquired what he intended to do, he would have explained that he was on
+his way to get his own coat in place of the one which young Webster
+had, with striking thoughtfulness, thrown over him.
+
+As a matter of fact, his real purpose was to search Webster's room.
+
+But experience had long since imbued him with contempt for the obvious.
+Secure from interruption, since his fellow-guests were still in the
+library, he did not content himself with his hawk-like scrutiny of the
+one room; he explored the back stairway which had been Webster's exit to
+the lawn, Judge Wilton's room, and his own.
+
+In the last stage of the search he encountered his greatest surprise.
+Looking under his own bed by the light of a pocket torch, he found that
+one of the six slats had been removed from its place and laid cross-ways
+upon the other five. The reason for this was apparent; it had been
+shortened by between four and five inches.
+
+"Cut off with a pocket-knife," the old man mused; "crude work, like the
+shaping of the handle of that dagger--downstairs; same wood, too. And in
+my room, from my bed----
+
+"I wonder----"
+
+With a low whistle, expressive of incredulity, he put that new theory
+from him and went down to the library.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE INTERVIEW WITH MRS. BRACE
+
+
+Gratified, and yet puzzled, by the results of his search of the upstairs
+rooms, Hastings was fully awake to the necessity of his interviewing
+Mrs. Brace as soon as possible. Lally, the chauffeur, drove him back to
+Washington early that Sunday morning. It was characteristic of the old
+man that, as they went down the driveway, he looked back at Sloanehurst
+and felt keenly the sufferings of the people under its roof.
+
+He was particularly drawn to Lucille Sloane, with whom he had had a
+second brief conference. While waiting for his coffee--nobody in the
+house had felt like breakfast--he had taken a chair at the southeast end
+of the front porch and, pulling a piece of soft wood and a knife from
+his Gargantuan coat-pockets, had fallen to whittling and
+thinking.--Whittling, he often said, enabled him to think clearly; it
+was to him what tobacco was to other men.
+
+Thus absorbed, he suddenly heard Lucille's voice, low and tense:
+
+"We'll have to leave it as it was be----"
+
+Berne Webster interrupted her, a grain of bitterness in his words:
+
+"Rather an unusual request, don't you think?"
+
+"I wanted to tell you this after the talk in the library," she
+continued, "but there----"
+
+They had approached Hastings from the south side of the house and,
+hidden from him by the verandah railing, were upon him before he could
+make his presence known. Now, however, he did so, warning them by
+standing up with a clamorous scraping of his feet on the floor.
+Instinctively, he had recoiled from overhearing their discussion of what
+was, he thought, a love-affair topic.
+
+Lucille hurried to him, not that she had additional information to give
+him, but to renew her courage. Having called upon him for aid, she had
+in the usual feminine way decided to make her reliance upon him
+complete. And, under the influence of his reassuring kindliness, her
+hesitance and misgivings disappeared.
+
+He had judged her feelings correctly during their conference in the
+parlour. At dinner, she had seen in him merely a pleasant, quiet-spoken
+old man, a typical "hick" farmer, who wore baggy, absurdly large
+clothing--"for the sake of his circulation," he said--and whose
+appearance in no way corresponded to his reputation as a learned
+psychologist and investigator of crime. Now, however, she responded
+warmly to his charm, felt the sincerity of his sympathy.
+
+Seeing that she looked up to him, he enjoyed encouraging her, was bound
+more firmly to her interests.
+
+"I think your fears are unfounded," he told her.
+
+But he did not reveal his knowledge that she suspected her father of
+some connection with the murder. In fact, he could not decide what her
+suspicion was exactly, whether it was that he had been guilty of the
+crime or that he had guilty knowledge of it.
+
+A little anxious, she had asked him to promise that he would be back by
+ten o'clock, for the inquest. He thought he could do that, although he
+had persuaded the coroner that his evidence would not be necessary--the
+judge and Webster had found the body; their stories would establish the
+essential facts.
+
+"Why do you want me here then?" he asked, not comprehending her
+uneasiness.
+
+"For one thing," she said, "I want you to talk to father--before the
+inquest. I wish you could now, but he isn't up."
+
+It was eight o'clock when Miss Davis, telephone operator in the cheap
+apartment house on Fourteenth street known as The Walman, took the old
+man's card and read the inscription, over the wire:
+
+"'Mr. Jefferson Hastings.'"
+
+After a brief pause, she told him:
+
+"She wants to know if you are a detective."
+
+"Tell her I am."
+
+"You may go up," the girl reported. "It's Number Forty-three, fourth
+floor--no elevator."
+
+After ascending the three flights of stairs, he sat down on the top
+step, to get his breath. Mr. Hastings was stout, not to say
+sebaceous--and he proposed to begin the interview unhandicapped.
+
+Mrs. Brace answered his ring. There was nobody else in the apartment.
+The moment he looked into her restless, remarkably brilliant black eyes,
+he catalogued her as cold and repellent.
+
+"One of the swift-eyed kind," he thought; "heart as hard as her head. No
+blood in her--but smart. Smart!"
+
+He relied, without question, on his ability to "size up" people at first
+glance. It was a gift with him, like the intuition of women; and to it,
+he thought, he owed his best work as a detective.
+
+Mrs. Brace, without speaking, without acknowledging his quiet "Mrs.
+Brace, I believe?" led him into the living room after waiting for him
+to close the entrance door. This room was unusually large, out of
+proportion to the rest of the apartment which included, in addition to
+the narrow entry, a bedroom, kitchen and bath--all, so far as his
+observation went, sparsely and cheaply furnished.
+
+They sat down, and still she did not speak, but studied his face. He got
+the impression that she considered all men her enemies and sought some
+intimation of what his hostility would be like.
+
+"I'm sorry to trouble you at such a time," he began. "I shall be as
+brief as possible."
+
+Her black eyebrows moved upward, in curious interrogation. They were
+almost mephistophelian, and unpleasantly noticeable, drawn thus nearer
+to the wide wave of her white hair.
+
+"You wanted to see me--about my daughter?"
+
+Her voice was harsh, metallic, free of emotion. There was nothing about
+her indicative of grief. She did not look as if she had been weeping. He
+could learn nothing from her manner; it was extremely matter-of-fact,
+and chilly. Only, in her eyes he saw suspicion--perhaps, he reflected,
+suspicion was always in her eyes.
+
+Her composure amazed him.
+
+"Yes," he replied gently; "if I don't distress you----"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+She suddenly lowered her eyebrows, drew them together until they were a
+straight line at the bottom of her forehead.
+
+Her cold self-possession made it easy, in fact necessary, for him to
+deal with facts directly. Apparently, she resented his intimated
+condolence. He could fling any statement, however sensational, against
+the wall of her indifference. She was, he decided, as free of feeling as
+she was inscrutable. She would be surprised by emotion into nothing. It
+was his brain against hers.
+
+"I want to say first," he continued, "that my only concern, outside of
+my natural and very real sympathy with such a loss as yours must be, is
+to find the man who killed her."
+
+She moved slowly to and fro on the armless, low-backed rocker, watching
+him intently.
+
+"Will you help me?"
+
+"If I can."
+
+"Thank you," he said, smiling encouragement from force of habit, not
+because he expected to arouse any spirit of cooperation in her. "I may
+ask you a few questions then?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Her thin nostrils dilated once, quickly, and somehow their motion
+suggested the beginning of a ridiculing smile. He went seriously to
+work.
+
+"Have you any idea, Mrs. Brace, as to who killed your daughter--or could
+have wanted to kill her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Who?"
+
+She got up, without the least change of expression, without a word, and,
+as she crossed the room, paused at the little table against the farther
+wall to arrange more symmetrically a pile of finger-worn periodicals.
+She went through the communicating door into the bedroom, and, from
+where he sat, he could see her go through another door--into the
+bathroom, he guessed. In a moment, he heard a glass clink against a
+faucet. She had gone for a drink of water, to moisten her throat, like
+an orator preparing to deliver an address.
+
+She came back, unhurried, imperturbable, and sat down again in the
+armless rocker before she answered his question. So far as her manner
+might indicate, there had been no interruption of the conversation.
+
+He swept her with wondering eyes. She was not playing a part, not
+concealing sorrow. The straight, hard lines of her lean figure were a
+complement to her gleaming, unrevealing eyes. There was hardness about
+her, and in her, everywhere.
+
+A slow, warm breeze brought through the curtainless window a
+disagreeable odour, sour and fetid. The apartment was at the back of the
+building; the odour came from a littered courtyard, a conglomeration of
+wet ashes, neglected garbage, little filthy pools, warmed into activity
+by the sun, high enough now to touch them. He could see the picture
+without looking--and that odour struck him as excruciatingly appropriate
+to this woman's soul.
+
+"Berne Webster killed my daughter," she said evenly, hands moveless in
+her lap. "There are several reasons for my saying so. Mildred was his
+stenographer for eight months, and he fell in love with her--that was
+the way he described his feeling, and intention, toward her. The usual
+thing happened; he discharged her two weeks ago.
+
+"He wants to marry money. You know about that, I take it--Miss Sloane,
+daughter of A. B. Sloane, Sloanehurst, where she was murdered. They're
+engaged. At least, that is--was Mildred's information, although the
+engagement hasn't been announced, formally. Fact is, he has to marry the
+Sloane girl."
+
+Her thin, mobile lips curled upward at the ends and looked a little
+thicker, giving an exaggerated impression of wetness. Hastings thought
+of some small, feline animal, creeping, anticipating prey--a sort of
+calculating ferocity.
+
+She talked like a person bent on making every statement perfectly clear
+and understandable. There was no intimation that she was so
+communicative because she thought she was obliged to talk. On the
+contrary, she welcomed the chance to give him the story.
+
+"Have you told all this to that sheriff, Mr. Crown?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes; but he seemed to attach no importance to it."
+
+She coloured her words with feeling at last--it was contempt--putting
+the sheriff beyond the pale of further consideration.
+
+"You were saying Mr. Webster had to marry Miss Sloane. What do you mean
+by that, Mrs. Brace?"
+
+"Money reasons. He had to have money. His bank balance is never more
+than a thousand dollars. He's got to produce sixty-five thousand dollars
+by the seventh of next September. This is the sixteenth of July. Where
+is he to get all that? He's got to marry it."
+
+Hastings put more intensity into his scrutiny of her smooth, untroubled
+face. It showed no sudden access of hatred, no unreasoning venom,
+except that the general cast of her features spoke generally of
+vindictiveness. She was, unmistakably, sure of what she said.
+
+"How do you know that?" he asked, hiding his surprise.
+
+"Mildred knew it--naturally, from working in his office."
+
+"Let me be exact, Mrs. Brace. Your charge is just what?"
+
+He felt the need of keen thought. He reached for his knife and piece of
+wood. Entirely unconsciously, he began to whittle, letting little
+shavings fall on the bare floor. She made no sign of seeing his new
+occupation.
+
+"It's plain enough, Mr.--I don't recall your name."
+
+"Hastings--Jefferson Hastings."
+
+"It's plain and direct, Mr. Hastings. He threw her over, threw Mildred
+over. She refused to be dealt with in that way. He wouldn't listen to
+her side, her arguments, her protests, her pleas. She pursued him; and
+last night he killed her. I understand--Mr. Crown told me--he was found
+bending over the body--it seemed to me, caught in the very commission of
+the crime."
+
+A fleeting contortion, like mirthless ridicule, touched her lips as she
+saw him, with head lowered, cut more savagely into the piece of wood.
+She noticed, and enjoyed, his dismay.
+
+"That isn't quite accurate," he said, without lifting his head. "He and
+another man, Judge Wilton, stumbled--came upon your daughter's body at
+the same moment."
+
+"Was that it?" she retorted, unbelieving.
+
+When he looked up, she was regarding him thoughtfully, the black brows
+elevated, interrogative. The old man felt the stirrings of physical
+nausea within him. But he waited for her to elaborate her story.
+
+"Do you care to ask anything more?" she inquired, impersonal as ashes.
+
+"If I may."
+
+"Why, certainly."
+
+He paused in his whittling, brought forth a huge handkerchief, passed it
+across his forehead, was aware for a moment that he was working hard
+against the woman's unnatural calmness, and feeling the heat intensely.
+She was untouched by it. He whittled again, asking her:
+
+"You a native of Washington?"
+
+"No."
+
+"How long have you been here?"
+
+"About nine months. We came from Chicago."
+
+"Any friends here--have you any friends here?"
+
+"Neither here nor elsewhere." She made that bleak declaration simply,
+as if he had suggested her possession of green diamonds. Her tone made
+friendship a myth.
+
+He felt again utterly free of the restraints and little hesitancies
+usual in situations of this nature.
+
+"And your means, resources. Any, Mrs. Brace?"
+
+"None--except my daughter's."
+
+He was unaccountably restless. Putting the knife into his pocket, he
+stood up, went to the window. His guess had been correct. The courtyard
+below was as he had pictured it. He stood there at least a full minute.
+
+Turning suddenly in the hope of catching some new expression on her
+face, he found her gazing steadily, as if in revery, at the opposite
+wall.
+
+"One thing more, Mrs. Brace: did you know your daughter intended to go
+to Sloanehurst last night?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Were you uneasy when she failed to come in--last night?"
+
+"Yes; but what could I do?"
+
+"Had she written to Mr. Webster recently?"
+
+"Yes; I think so."
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"Yes; she went out to mail a letter night before last. I recall that
+she said it was important, had to be in the box for the midnight
+collection, to reach its destination yesterday afternoon--late. I'm sure
+it was to Webster."
+
+"Did you see the address on it?"
+
+"I didn't try to."
+
+He stepped from the window, to throw the full glare of the morning sky
+on her face, which was upturned, toward him.
+
+"Was it in a grey envelope?"
+
+"Yes; an oblong, grey envelope," she said, the impassive, unwrinkled
+face unmoved to either curiosity or reticence.
+
+With surprising swiftness he took a triangular piece of paper from his
+breast pocket and held it before her.
+
+"Might that be the flap of that grey envelope?"
+
+She inspected it, while he kept hold of it.
+
+"Very possibly."
+
+Without leaving her chair, she turned and put back the lid of a rickety
+little desk in the corner immediately behind her. There, she showed him,
+was a bundle of grey envelopes, the corresponding paper beside it. He
+compared the envelope flaps with the one he had brought. They were
+identical.
+
+Here was support of her assertion that Berne Webster had been pursued by
+her daughter as late as yesterday afternoon--and, therefore, might have
+been provoked into desperate action. He had found that scrap of grey
+paper at Sloanehurst, in Webster's room.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+ACTION BY THE SHERIFF
+
+
+Mrs. Brace did not ask Hastings where he had got the fragment of grey
+envelope. She made no comment whatever.
+
+He reversed the flap in his hand and showed her the inner side on which
+were, at first sight, meaningless lines and little smears. He explained
+that the letter must have been put into the envelope when the ink was
+still undried on the part of it that came in contact with the flap, and,
+the paper being of that rough-finish, spongy kind frequently affected by
+women, the flap had absorbed the undried ink pressed against it.
+
+"Have you a hand-mirror?" he asked, breaking a long pause.
+
+She brought one from the bedroom. Holding it before the envelope flap,
+he showed her the marks thus made legible. They were, on the first line:
+"--edly de--," with the first loop or curve of an "n" or an "m"
+following the "de"; and on the second line the one word "Pursuit!" the
+whole reproduction being this:
+
+
+                                edly de
+                                Pursuit!
+
+
+"Does that writing mean anything to you, Mrs. Brace?" Hastings asked,
+keeping it in front of her.
+
+She moved her left hand, a quiet gesture indicating her lack of further
+interest in the piece of paper.
+
+"Nothing special," she said, "except that the top line seems to bear out
+what I've told you. It might be: 'repeatedly demanded'--I mean Mildred
+may have written that she had repeatedly demanded justice of him,
+something of that sort."
+
+"Is it your daughter's writing?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And the word 'Pursuit,' with an exclamation point after it? That
+suggest anything to you?"
+
+"Why, no." She showed her first curiosity: "Where did you get that piece
+of envelope?"
+
+"Not from Berne Webster," he said, smiling.
+
+"I suppose not," she agreed, and did not press him for the information.
+
+"You said," he went to another point, "that the sheriff attached no
+importance to your belief in Webster's guilt. Can you tell me why?"
+
+Her contempt was frank enough now, and visible, her lips thickening and
+assuming the abnormally humid appearance he had noticed before.
+
+"He thinks the footsteps which Miss Sloane says she heard are the
+deciding evidence. He accuses a young man named Russell, Eugene Russell,
+who's been attentive to Mildred."
+
+Hastings was relieved.
+
+"Crown's seen him, seen Russell?" he asked, not troubling to conceal his
+eagerness.
+
+On that, he saw the beginnings of wrath in her eyes. The black eyebrows
+went upward, the thin nostrils expanded, the lips set to a line no
+thicker than the edge of a knife.
+
+"You, too, will----"
+
+She broke off, checked by the ringing of the wall telephone in the
+entrance hall. She answered the call, moving without haste. It was for
+Mr. Hastings, she said, going back to her seat.
+
+He regretted the interruption; it would give her time to regain the
+self-control she had been on the point of losing.
+
+Sheriff Crown was at the other end of the wire. He was back at
+Sloanehurst, he explained, and Miss Sloane had asked him to give the
+detective certain information:
+
+He had asked the Washington police to hold Eugene Russell, or to
+persuade him to attend the inquest at Sloanehurst. Crown, going in to
+Washington, had stopped at the car barns of the electric road which
+passed Sloanehurst, and had found a conductor who had made the
+ten-thirty run last night. This conductor, Barton, had slept at the
+barns, waiting for the early-morning resumption of car service to take
+him to his home across the city.
+
+Barton remembered having seen a man leave his car at Ridgecrest, the
+next stop before Sloanehurst, at twenty-five minutes past ten last
+night. He answered Russell's description, had seemed greatly agitated,
+and was unfamiliar with the stops on the line, having questioned Barton
+as to the distance between Ridgecrest and Sloanehurst. That was all the
+conductor had to tell.
+
+"Mrs. Brace's description of Russell, a real estate salesman who had
+been attentive to her daughter," continued Crown, "tallied with Barton's
+description of the man who had been on his car. I got his address from
+her. But say! She don't fall for the idea that Russell's guilty! She
+gave me to understand, in that snaky, frozen way of hers, that I was a
+fool for thinking so.
+
+"Anyway, I'm going to put him over the jumps!" The sheriff was highly
+elated. "What was he out here for last night if he wasn't jealous of
+the girl? Wasn't he following her? And, when he came up with her on the
+Sloanehurst lawn, didn't he kill her? It looks plain to me; simple. I
+told you it was a simple case!"
+
+"Have you seen him?" Hastings was looking at his watch as he spoke--it
+was nine o'clock.
+
+"No; I went to his boarding house, waked up the place at three o'clock
+this morning. He wasn't there."
+
+Hastings asked for the number of the house. It was on Eleventh street,
+Crown informed him, and gave the number.
+
+"I searched his room," the sheriff added, his voice self-congratulatory.
+
+"Find anything?"
+
+"I should say! The nail file was missing from his dressing case."
+
+"What else?"
+
+"A pair of wet shoes--muddy and wet."
+
+"Then, he'd returned to his room, after the murder, and gone out again?"
+
+"That's it--right."
+
+"Anybody in the house hear him come in, or go out?"
+
+"Not a soul.--And I don't know where he is now."
+
+Hastings, leaving the telephone, found Mrs. Brace carefully brushing
+into a newspaper the litter made by his whittling. Her performance of
+that trivial task, the calm thoroughness with which she went about it,
+or the littleness of it, when compared with her complete indifference to
+the tragedy which should have overwhelmed her--something, he could not
+tell exactly what, made her more repugnant to him than ever.
+
+He spoke impulsively:
+
+"Did you want--didn't you feel some impulse, some desire, to go out
+there when you heard of this murder?"
+
+She paused in her brushing, looking up to him without lifting herself
+from hands and knees.
+
+"Why should I have wanted to do any such thing?" she replied. "Mildred's
+not out there. What's out there is--nothing."
+
+"Do you know about the arrangements for the removal of the body?"
+
+"The sheriff told me," she replied, cold, impersonal. "It will be
+brought to an undertaking establishment as soon as the coroner's jury
+has viewed it."
+
+"Yes--at ten o'clock this morning."
+
+She made no comment on that. He had brought up the disagreeable
+topic--one which would have been heart-breaking to any other mother he
+had ever known--in the hope of arousing some real feeling in her. And he
+had failed. Her self-control was impregnable. There was about her an
+atmosphere that was, in a sense, terrifying, something out of all
+nature.
+
+She brushed up the remaining chips and shavings while he got his hat. He
+was deliberating: was there nothing more she could tell him? What could
+he hope to get from her except that which she wanted to tell? He was
+sure that she had spoken, in reply to each of his questions, according
+to a prearranged plan, a well designed scheme to bring into high relief
+anything that might incriminate Berne Webster.
+
+And he was by no means in a mood to persuade himself of Webster's guilt.
+He knew the value of first impressions; and he did not propose to let
+her clog his thoughts with far-fetched deductions against the young
+lawyer.
+
+She got to her feet with cat-like agility, and, to his astonishment,
+burst into violent speech:
+
+"You're standing there trying to think up things to help Berne Webster!
+Like the sheriff! Now, I'll tell you what I told him: Webster's guilty.
+I know it! He killed my daughter. He's a liar and a coward--a traitor!
+He killed her!"
+
+There was no doubt of her emotion now. She stood in a strange attitude,
+leaning a little toward him in the upper part of her body, as if all her
+strength were consciously directed into her shoulders and neck. She
+seemed larger in her arms and shoulders; they, with her head and face,
+were, he thought, the most vivid part of her--an effect which she
+produced deliberately, to impress him.
+
+Her whole body was not tremulous, but, rather, vibrant, a taut mechanism
+played on by the rage that possessed her. Her eyebrows, high on her
+forehead, reminded him of things that crawled. Her eyes, brilliant like
+clear ice with sunshine on it, were darting, furtive, always in motion.
+
+She did not look him squarely in the eye, but her eyes selected and
+bored into every part of his face; her glance played on his countenance.
+He could easily have imagined that it burned him physically in many
+places.
+
+"All this talk about Gene Russell's being guilty is stuff, bosh!" she
+continued. "Gene wouldn't hurt anybody. He couldn't! Wait until you see
+him!" Her lips curled momentarily to their thickened, wet sneer.
+"There's nothing to him--nothing! Mildred hated him; he bored her to
+death. Even I laughed at him. And this sheriff talks about the boy's
+having killed her!"
+
+Suddenly, she partially controlled her fury. He saw her eyes contract to
+the gleam of a new idea. She was silent a moment, while her vibrant,
+tense body swayed in front of him almost imperceptibly.
+
+When she spoke again, it was in her flat, constrained tone. He was
+impressed anew with her capacity for making her feeling subordinate to
+her intelligence.
+
+"She's a dangerous woman," he thought again.
+
+"You're working for Webster?"
+
+Her inquiry came after so slight a pause, and it was put to him in a
+manner so different from the unrestraint of her denunciation of Webster,
+that he felt as he would have done if he had been dealing with two
+women.
+
+"I've told you already," he said, "my only interest is in finding the
+real murderer. In that sense, I'm working for Webster--if he's
+innocent."
+
+"But he didn't hire you?"
+
+"No."
+
+Seeing that he told the truth, she indulged herself in rage again. It
+was just that, Hastings thought; she took an actual, keen pleasure in
+giving vent to the anger that was in her. Relieved of the necessity of
+censoring her words and thoughts closely, she could say what she wanted
+to say.
+
+"He's guilty, and I'll prove it!" she defied the detective's disbelief.
+"I'll help to prove it. Guilty? I tell you he is--guilty as hell!"
+
+He made an abrupt departure, her shrill hatred ringing in his ears when
+he reached the street. He found it hard, too, to get her out of his
+eyes, even now--she had impressed herself so shockingly upon him. The
+picture of her floated in front of him, above the shimmering pavement,
+as if he still confronted her in all her unloveliness, the smooth, white
+face like a travesty on youth, the swift, darting eyes, the hard,
+straight lines of the lean figure, the cold deliberation of manner and
+movement.
+
+"She's incapable of grief!" he thought. "Terrible! She's terrible!"
+
+Lally drove him to his apartment on Fifteenth street, where the largest
+of three rooms served him as a combination library and office. There he
+kept his records, in a huge, old-fashioned safe; and there, also, he
+held his conferences, from time to time, with police chiefs and
+detectives from all parts of the country when they sought his help in
+their pursuit of criminals.
+
+The walls were lined with books from floor to ceiling. A large table in
+the centre of the room was stacked high with newspapers and magazines.
+Dusty papers and books were piled, too, on several chairs set against
+the bookcases, and on the floor in one corner was a pyramid of
+documents.
+
+"This place is like me," he explained to visitors; "it's loosely
+dressed."
+
+He sat down at the table and wrote instructions for one of his two
+assistants, his best man, Hendricks. Russell's room must be searched and
+Russell interviewed--work for which Hastings felt that he himself could
+not spare the time. He gave Hendricks a second task: investigation of
+the financial standing of two people: Berne Webster and Mrs. Catherine
+Brace.
+
+He noted, with his customary kindness, in his memorandum to Hendricks:
+
+"Sunday's a bad day for this sort of work, but do the best you can.
+Report tomorrow morning."
+
+That arranged, he set out for Sloanehurst, to keep his promise to
+Lucille--he would be there for the inquest.
+
+On the way he reviewed matters:
+
+"Somehow, I got the idea that the Brace woman _knew_ Russell hadn't
+killed her daughter. Funny, that is. How could she have known that? How
+can she know it now?
+
+"She's got the pivotal fact in this case. I felt it. I'm willing to bet
+she persuaded her daughter to pursue Webster. And things have gone
+'bust'--didn't come out as she thought they would. What was she after,
+money? That's exactly it! Exactly! Her daughter could hold up Webster,
+and Webster could hold up the Sloanes after his marriage."
+
+He whistled softly.
+
+"If she can prove that Webster should have married her daughter, that
+he's in need of anything like sixty-five thousand dollars--where does he
+get off? He gets off safely if the Brace woman ever sees fit to
+tell--what? I couldn't guess if my whittling hand depended on it." He
+grimaced his repugnance.
+
+"What a woman! A mania for wickedness--evil from head to foot,
+thoroughly. _She_ wouldn't stick at murder--if she thought it safe.
+She'd do anything, say anything. Every word she uttered this morning had
+been rehearsed in her mind--with gestures, even. When I beat her, I beat
+this puzzle; that's sure."
+
+That he had to do with a puzzle, he had no manner of doubt. The very
+circumstances surrounding the discovery of the girl's body--Arthur
+Sloane flashing on the light in his room at a time when his being awake
+was so unusual that it frightened his daughter; Judge Wilton stumbling
+over the dead woman; young Webster doing the same thing in the same
+instant; the light reaching out to them at the moment when they bent
+down to touch the thing which their feet had encountered--all that
+shouted mystery to his experienced mind.
+
+He thought of Webster's pronouncement: "The thug, acting on the spur of
+the moment, with a blow in the dark and a getaway through the
+night----" Here was reproduction of that in real life. Would people say
+that Webster had given himself away in advance? They might.
+
+And the weapon, what about that? It could have been manufactured in ten
+minutes. Crown had said over the wire that Russell's nail file was
+missing. What if Webster's, too, were missing? He would see--although he
+expected to uncover no such thing.
+
+He came, then, to Lucille's astounding idea, that her father must be
+"protected," because he was nervous and, being nervous, might incur the
+enmity of the authorities. He could not take that seriously. And yet the
+most fruitful imagination in the world could fabricate no motive for
+Arthur Sloane's killing a young woman he had never seen.
+
+Only Webster and Russell could be saddled with motives: Webster's,
+desperation, the savage determination to rid himself of the woman's
+pursuit; Russell's, unreasoning jealousy.
+
+So far as facts went, the crime lay between those two--and he could not
+shake off the impression that Mrs. Brace, shrilly asserting Russell's
+innocence, had known that she spoke the absolute truth.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+THE HOSTILITY OF MR. SLOANE
+
+
+Delayed by a punctured tire, Hastings reached Sloanehurst when the
+inquest was well under way. He went into the house by a side door and
+found Lucille Sloane waiting for him.
+
+"Won't you go to father at once?" she urged him.
+
+"What's the matter?" He saw that her anxiety had grown during his
+absence.
+
+"He's in one of his awfully nervous states. I hope you'll be very
+patient with him--make allowances. He doesn't seem to grasp the
+importance of your connection with the case; wants to ask questions.
+Won't you let me take you to him, now?"
+
+"Why, yes, if I can be of any help. What do you want me to say to him?"
+
+As a matter of fact, he was glad of the opportunity for the interview.
+He had long since discovered the futility of inquests in the uncovering
+of important evidence, and he had not intended to sit through this one.
+He wanted particularly to talk to Berne Webster, but Sloane also had to
+be questioned.
+
+"I thought you might explain," she continued hurriedly, preceding him
+down the hall toward her father's room, "that you will do exactly what I
+asked you to do--see that the mysterious part of this terrible affair,
+if there is any mystery in it--see that it's cleared up promptly. Please
+tell him you'll act for us in dealing with newspaper reporters; that
+you'll help us, not annoy us, not annoy him."
+
+She had stopped at Sloane's door.
+
+"And you?" Hastings delayed her knock. "If they want you to testify, if
+Dr. Garnet calls for you, I think you'd better testify very frankly,
+tell them about the footsteps you heard."
+
+"I've already done that." She seemed embarrassed. "Father asked me to
+'phone Mr. Southard, Mr. Jeremy Southard, his lawyer, about it. I know I
+told you I wanted your advice about everything. I would have waited to
+ask you. But you were late. I had to take Mr. Southard's advice."
+
+"That's perfectly all right," he reassured her. "Mr. Southard advised
+you wisely.--Now, I'm going to ask your help. The guest-rooms
+upstairs--have the servants straightened them up this morning?"
+
+They had not, she told him. Excitement had quite destroyed their
+efficiency for the time being; they were at the parlour windows,
+listening, or waiting to be examined by the coroner.
+
+"That's what I hoped," he said. "Won't you see that those rooms are left
+exactly as they are until I can have a look at them?" She nodded assent.
+"And say nothing about my speaking of it--absolutely nothing to anybody?
+It's vitally important."
+
+The door was opened by Sloane's man, Jarvis, who had in queer
+combination, Hastings thought, the salient aspects of an undertaker and
+an experienced pick-pocket. He was dismal of countenance and alert in
+movement, an efficient ghost, admirably appropriate to the twilit gloom
+of the room with its heavily shaded windows.
+
+Mr. Sloane was in bed, in the darkest corner.
+
+"Father," Lucille addressed him from the door-sill, "I've asked Mr.
+Hastings to talk to you about things. He's just back from Washington."
+
+"Shuddering saints!" said Mr. Sloane, not lifting his head from the
+pillows.
+
+Lucille departed. The ghostly Jarvis closed the door without so much as
+a click of the latch. Hastings advanced slowly toward the bed, his eyes
+not yet accustomed to the darkness.
+
+"Shuddering, shivering, shaking saints!" Mr. Sloane exclaimed again, the
+words coming in a slow, shrill tenor from his lips, as if with great
+exertion he reached up with something and pushed each one out of his
+mouth. "Sit down, Mr. Hastings, if I can control my nerves, and stand
+it. What is it?"
+
+His hostility to the caller was obvious. The evident and grateful
+interest with which the night before he had heard the detective's
+stories of crimes and criminals had changed now to annoyance at the very
+sight of him. As a raconteur, Mr. Hastings was quite the thing; as
+protector of the Sloane family's privacy and seclusion, he was a
+nuisance. Such was the impression Mr. Hastings received.
+
+At a loss to understand his host's frame of mind, he took a chair near
+the bed.
+
+Mr. Sloane stirred jerkily under his thin summer coverings.
+
+"A little light, Jarvis," he said peevishly. "Now, Mr. Hastings, what
+can I do for--tell you?"
+
+Jarvis put back a curtain.
+
+"Quivering and crucified martyrs!" the prostrate man burst forth. "I
+said a little, Jarvis! You drown my optic nerves in ink and, without a
+moment's warning, flood them with the glaring brilliancy of the noonday
+sun!" Jarvis half-drew the curtain. "Ah, that's better. Never more than
+an inch at a time, Jarvis. How many times have I told you that? Never
+give me a shock like that again; never more than an inch of light at a
+time. Frantic fiends! From cimmerian, abysmal darkness to Sahara-desert
+glare!"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Jarvis, as if on the point of digging a grave--for
+himself. "Beg pardon, sir."
+
+He effaced himself, in shadows, somewhere behind Hastings, who seized
+the opportunity to speak.
+
+"Miss Sloane suggested that you wanted certain information. In fact, she
+asked me to see you."
+
+"My daughter? Oh, yes!" The prone body became semi-upright, leaned on an
+elbow. "Yes! What I want to know is, why--why, in the name of all the
+jumping angels, everybody seems to think there's a lot of mystery
+connected with this brutal, vulgar, dastardly crime! It passes my
+comprehension, utterly!--Jarvis, stop clicking your finger-nails
+together!" This with a note of exaggerated pleading. "You know I'm a
+nervous wreck, a total loss physically, and yet you stand there in the
+corner and indulge yourself wickedly, wickedly, in that infernal habit
+of yours of clicking your finger-nails! Mute and mutilated Christian
+martyrs!"
+
+He fell back among the pillows, breathing heavily, the perfect picture
+of exhaustion. Jarvis came near on soundless feet and applied a wet
+cloth to his master's temples.
+
+The old man regarded them both with unconcealed amazement.
+
+"You'll have to excuse me, Mr. Hastings, really, I can't be annoyed!"
+the wreck, somewhat revived, announced feebly. "All I said to my
+daughter, Miss Sloane, is what I say to you now: I see no reason why we
+should employ you, or indeed why you should be connected with this
+affair. You were my guest, here, at Sloanehurst. Unfortunately, some
+ruffian of whom we never heard, whose existence we never
+suspected--Jarvis, take off this counterpane; you're boiling me,
+parboiling me; my nerves are seething, simmering, stewing! Athletic
+devils! Have you no discrimination, Jarvis?--as I was saying, Mr.
+Hastings, somebody stabbed somebody else to death on my lawn,
+unfortunately marring your visit. But that's all. I can't see that we
+need you--thank you, nevertheless."
+
+The dismissal was unequivocal. Hastings got to his feet, his indignation
+all the greater through realization that he had been sent for merely to
+be flouted. And yet, this man's daughter had come to him literally with
+tears in her eyes, had begged him to help her, had said that money was
+the smallest of considerations. Moreover, he had accepted her
+employment, had made the definite agreement and promise. Apparently,
+Sloane was in no condition to act independently, and his daughter had
+known it, had hoped that he, Hastings, might soothe his silly mind, do
+away with his objections to assistance which she knew he needed.
+
+There was, also, the fact that Lucille believed her father unaccountably
+interested, if not implicated, in the crime. He could not get away from
+that impression. He was sure he had interpreted correctly the girl's
+anxiety the night before. She was working to save her father--from
+something. And she believed Berne Webster innocent.
+
+These were some of the considerations which, flashing through his mind,
+prevented his giving way to righteous wrath. He most certainly would not
+allow Arthur Sloane to eliminate him from the situation. He sat down
+again.
+
+The nervous wreck made himself more understandable.
+
+"Perhaps, Jarvis," he said, shrinking to one side like a man in sudden
+pain, "the gentleman can't see how to reach that large door. A little
+more light, half an inch-not a fraction more!"
+
+"Don't bother," Hastings told Jarvis. "I'm not going quite yet."
+
+"Leaping crime!" moaned Mr. Sloane, digging deeper into the pillows,
+"Frantic imps!"
+
+"I hope I won't distress you too much," the detective apologized grimly,
+"if I ask you a few questions. Fact is, I must. I'm investigating the
+circumstances surrounding what may turn out to be a baffling crime, and,
+irrespective of your personal wishes, Mr. Sloane, I can't let go of it.
+This is a serious business----"
+
+The sick man sat up in bed with surprising abruptness.
+
+"Serious business! Serious saints!--Jarvis, the eau de cologne!--You
+think I don't know it? They make a slaughter-house of my lawn. They make
+a morgue of my house. They hold a coroner's inquest in my parlour.
+They're in there now--live people like ravens, and one dead one. They
+cheat the undertaker to plague me. They wreck me all over again. They
+give me a new exhaustion of the nerves. They frighten my daughter to
+death.--Jarvis, the smelling salts. Shattered saints, Jarvis! Hurry!
+Thanks.--They rig up lies which, Tom Wilton, my old and trusted friend,
+tells me, will incriminate Berne Webster. They sit around a corpse in my
+house and chatter by the hour. You come in here and make Jarvis nearly
+blind me.
+
+"And, then, then, by the holy, agile angels! you think you have to
+persuade me it's a serious business! Never fear! I know it!--Jarvis,
+the bromide, quick! Before I know it, they'll drive me to
+opiates.--Serious business! Shrivelled and shrinking saints!"
+
+Arms clasped around his legs, knees pressed against his chin, Mr. Sloane
+trembled and shook until Jarvis, more agile than the angels of whom his
+employer had spoken, gave him the dose of bromides.
+
+Still, Mr. Hastings did not retire.
+
+"I was going to say," he resumed, in a tone devoid of compassion, "I
+couldn't drop this thing now. I may be able to find the murderer; and
+you may be able to help me."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Isn't it Russell? He's among the ravens now, in my parlour. Wilton told
+me the sheriff was certain Russell was the man. Murdered martyrs!
+Sacrificed saints! Can't you let a guilty man hang when he comes forward
+and puts the rope around his own worthless neck?"
+
+"If Russell's guilty," Hastings said, glad of the information that the
+accused man was then at Sloanehurst, "I hope we can develop the
+necessary evidence against him. But----"
+
+"The necessary----"
+
+"Let me finish, Mr. Sloane, if you please!" The old man was determined
+to disregard the other's signs of suffering. He did not believe that
+they were anything but assumed, the exaggerated camouflage which he
+usually employed as an excuse for idleness. "But, if Russell isn't
+guilty, there are facts which may help me to find the murderer. And you
+may have valuable information concerning them."
+
+"Sobbing, sorrowing saints!" lamented Mr. Sloane, but his trembling
+ceased; he was closely attentive. "A cigarette, Jarvis, a cigarette!
+Nerves will be served.--I suppose the easiest way is to submit. Go on."
+
+"I shall ask you only two or three questions," Hastings said.
+
+The jackknife-like figure in the bed shuddered its repugnance.
+
+"I've been told, Mr. Sloane, that Mr. Webster has been in great need of
+money, as much as sixty-five thousand dollars. In fact, according to my
+information, he needs it now."
+
+"Well, did he kill the woman, expecting to find it in her stocking?"
+
+"The significance of his being hard-pressed, for so large an amount,"
+the old man went on, ignoring the sarcasm, "is in the further charge
+that Miss Brace was trying to make him marry her, that he should have
+married her, that he killed her in order to be free to marry your
+daughter--for money."
+
+"My daughter! For money!" shrilled Sloane, neck elongated, head thrust
+forward, eyes bulging. "Leaping and whistling cherubim!" For all his
+outward agitation, he seemed to Hastings in thorough command of his
+logical faculties; it was more than possible, the detective thought,
+that the expletives were time-killers, until he could decide what to
+say. "It's ridiculous, absurd! Why, sir, you reason as loosely as you
+dress! Are you trying to prostrate me further with impossible theories?
+Webster marry my daughter for money, for sixty-five thousand dollars? He
+knows I'd let him have any amount he wanted. I'd give him the money if
+it meant his peace of mind and Lucille's happiness.--Dumb and dancing
+devils! Jarvis, a little whiskey! I'm worn out, worn out!"
+
+"Did you ever tell Mr. Webster of the extent of your generous feeling
+toward him, Mr. Sloane--in dollars and cents?"
+
+"No; it wasn't necessary. He knows how fond of him I am."
+
+"And you would let him have sixty-five thousand dollars--if he had to
+have it?"
+
+"I would, sir!--today, this morning."
+
+"Now, one other thing, Mr. Sloane, and I'm through. It's barely possible
+that there was some connection between this murder and a letter which
+came to Sloanehurst yesterday afternoon, a letter in an oblong grey
+envelope. Did----"
+
+The nervous man went to pieces again, beat with his open palms on the
+bed covering.
+
+"Starved and stoned evangels, Jarvis! Quit balling your feet! You stand
+there and see me harassed to the point of extinction by a lot of crazy
+queries, and you indulge yourself in that infernal weakness of yours of
+balling your feet! Leaping angels! You know how acute my hearing is; you
+know the noise of your sock against the sole of your shoe when you ball
+your feet is the most exquisite torture to me! A little whiskey, Jarvis!
+Quick!" He spoke now in a weak, almost inaudible voice to Hastings: "No;
+I got no such letter. I saw no such letter." He sank slowly back to a
+prone posture.
+
+"I was going to remind you," the detective continued, "that I brought
+the five o'clock mail in. Getting off the car, I met the rural carrier;
+he asked me to bring in the mail, saving him the few steps to your box.
+All there was consisted of a newspaper and one letter. I recall the
+shape and colour of the envelope--oblong, grey. I did not, of course,
+look at the address. I handed the mail to you when you met me on the
+porch."
+
+Mr. Sloane, raising himself on one elbow to take the restoring drink
+from Jarvis, looked across the glass at his cross-examiner.
+
+"I put the mail in the basket on the hall table," he said in high-keyed
+endeavour to express withering contempt. "If it had been for me, Jarvis
+would have brought it to me later. I seldom carry my reading glasses
+about the house with me."
+
+Hastings, subjecting the pallid Jarvis to severe scrutiny, asked him:
+
+"Was that grey letter addressed to--whom?"
+
+"I didn't see it," replied Jarvis, scarcely polite.
+
+"And yet, it's your business to inspect and deliver the household's
+mail?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"What became of it, then--the grey envelope?"
+
+"I'm sure I can't say, sir, unless some one got it before I reached the
+mail basket."
+
+Hastings stood up. Interrogation of both master and man had given him
+nothing save the inescapable conviction that both of them resented his
+questioning and would do nothing to help him. The reason for this
+opposition he could not grasp, but it was a fact, challenging his
+analysis. Arthur Sloane rejected his proffered help in the pursuit of
+the man who had brought murder to the doors of Sloanehurst. Why? Was
+this his method of hiding facts in his possession?
+
+Hastings questioned him again:
+
+"Your waking up at that unusual hour last night--was it because of a
+noise outside?"
+
+The neurasthenic, once more recumbent, succeeded in voicing faint denial
+of having heard any noises, outside or inside. Nor had he been aware of
+the murder until called by Judge Wilton. He had turned on his light to
+find the smelling-salts which, for the first time in six years, Jarvis
+had failed to leave on his bed-table,--terrible and ill-trained apes!
+Couldn't he be left in peace?
+
+The hall door opened, admitting Judge Wilton. The newcomer, with a word
+of greeting to Hastings, sat down on the bedside and put a hand on
+Sloane's shoulder.
+
+Hastings turned to leave the room.
+
+"Any news?" the judge asked him.
+
+"I've just been asking Mr. Sloane that," Hastings said, in a tone that
+made Wilton look swiftly at his friend's face.
+
+"I told Arthur this morning," he said, "how lucky he was that you'd
+promised Lucille to go into this thing."
+
+"Apparently," Hastings retorted drily, "he's unconvinced of the extent
+of his good fortune."
+
+Mr. Sloane, quivering from head to foot, mourned softly: "Unfathomable
+fate!"
+
+Wilton, his rugged features softening to frank amusement, stared a
+moment in silence at Sloane's thin face, at the deeply lined forehead
+topped by stringy grey hair.
+
+"See here, Arthur," he protested, nodding Hastings an invitation to
+remain; "you know as much about crime as Hastings and I. If you've
+thought about this murder at all, you must see what it is. If Russell
+isn't guilty--if he's not the man, that crime was committed shrewdly,
+with forethought. And it was a devilish thing--devilish!"
+
+"Well, what of it?" Sloane protested shrilly, not opening his eyes.
+
+"Take my advice. Quit antagonizing Mr. Hastings. Be thankful that he's
+here, that he's promised to run down the guilty man."
+
+Mr. Sloane turned his face to the wall.
+
+"A little whiskey, Jarvis," he said softly. "I'm exhausted, Tom. Leave
+me alone."
+
+Wilton waved his hand, indicative of the futility of further argument.
+
+"Judge," announced Hastings, at the door, "I'll ask you a question I put
+to Mr. Sloane. Did you receive, or see, a letter in an oblong, grey
+envelope in yesterday afternoon's mail?"
+
+"No. I never get any mail while I'm here for a week-end."
+
+Wilton followed the detective into the hall.
+
+"I hope you're not going to give up the case, Hastings. You won't pay
+any attention to Arthur's unreasonable attitude, will you?"
+
+"I don't know," Hastings said, still indignant. "I made my bargain with
+his daughter. I'll see her."
+
+"If you can't manage any other way, I--or she--will get any information
+you want from Arthur."
+
+"I hope to keep on. It's a big thing, I think." The old man was again
+intent on solving the problem. "Tell me, judge; do you think Berne
+Webster's guilty?" Seeing the judge's hesitance, he supplemented: "I
+mean, did you notice anything last night, in his conduct, that would
+indicate guilt--or fear?"
+
+Later, when other developments gave this scene immense importance,
+Hastings, in reviewing it, remembered the curious little flicker of the
+judge's eyelids preceding his reply.
+
+"Absolutely not," he declared, with emphasis. "Are you working on
+that"--he hesitated hardly perceptibly--"idea?"
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE MAN WHO RAN AWAY
+
+
+Ancestors of the old family from whom Arthur Sloane had purchased this
+colonial mansion eight years ago still looked out of their gilded frames
+on the parlour walls, their high-bred calm undisturbed, their
+aristocratic eyes unwidened, by the chatter and clatter of the strangers
+within their gates. Hastings noticed that even the mob and mouthing of a
+coroner's inquest failed to destroy the ancient atmosphere and charm of
+the great room. He smiled. The pictured grandeur of a bygone age, the
+brocaded mahogany chairs, the tall French mirrors--all these made an
+incongruous setting for the harsh machinery of crime-inquiry.
+
+The detective had completed his second and more detailed search of the
+guest-rooms in time to hear the words and study the face of the last
+witness on Dr. Garnet's list. That was Eugene Russell.
+
+"One of life's persimmons--long before frost!" Hastings thought, making
+swift appraisal. "A boneless spine--chin like a sheep--brave as a
+lamb."
+
+Russell could not conceal his agitation. In fact, he referred to it.
+Fear, he explained in a low, husky voice to the coroner and the jury,
+was not a part of his emotions. His only feeling was sorrow, varied now
+and then by the embarrassment he felt as a result of the purely personal
+and very intimate facts which he had to reveal.
+
+His one desire was to be frank, he declared, his pale blue eyes roving
+from place to place, his nervous fingers incessantly playing with his
+thin, uncertain lips. This mania for truthfulness, he asserted, was
+natural, in that it offered him the one sure path to freedom and the
+establishment of his innocence of all connection with the murder of the
+woman he had loved.
+
+He was, he testified, thirty-one years old, a clerk in a real-estate
+dealer's office and a native of Washington. Mildred Brace had been
+employed for a few weeks by the same firm for which he worked, and it
+was there that he had met her. Although she had refused to marry him on
+the ground that his salary was inadequate for the needs of two people,
+she had encouraged his attentions. Sometimes, they had quarrelled.
+
+"Speak up, Mr. Russell!" Dr. Garnet directed. "And take your time. Let
+the jury hear every word you utter."
+
+After that, the witness abandoned his attempt to exclude the family
+portraits from his confidence, but his voice shook.
+
+"Conductor Barton is right," he said, responding to the coroner's
+interrogation. "I did come out on his car, the car that gets to the
+Sloanehurst stop at ten-thirty, and I did leave the car at the
+Ridgecrest stop, a quarter of a mile from here. I was following
+Mil--Miss Brace. I saw her leave her apartment house, the Walman. I
+followed her to the transfer station at the bridge, and I saw her take
+the car there. I followed on the next car. I knew where she was going,
+knew she was going to Sloanehurst."
+
+"How did you know that, Mr. Russell?"
+
+"I mean I was certain of it. She'd told me Mr. Berne Webster, the lawyer
+she'd been working for, was out here spending the week-end; and I knew
+she was coming out to meet him."
+
+"Why did she do that?"
+
+Mr. Russell displayed pathetic embarrassment and confusion before he
+answered that. He plucked at his lower lip with spasmodic fingers. His
+eyes were downcast. He attempted a self-deprecatory smile which ended in
+an unpleasant grimace.
+
+"She wouldn't say. But it was because she was in love with him."
+
+"And you were jealous of Mr. Webster?"
+
+"We-ell--yes, sir; that's about it, I guess."
+
+"Did Miss Brace tell you she was coming to Sloanehurst?"
+
+"No, sir. I suspected it."
+
+"And watched her movements?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And followed her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why did you think she was in love with Mr. Webster, Mr. Russell? And
+please give us a direct answer. You can understand the importance of
+what you're about to say."
+
+"I do. I thought so because she had told me that he was in love with
+her, and because of her grief and anger when he dismissed her from his
+office. And she did everything to make me think so, except declaring it
+outright. She did that because she knew I hated to think she was in love
+with him."
+
+"All right, Mr. Russell. Now, tell us what happened during
+your--ah--shadowing Miss Brace the night she was killed."
+
+"I got off the car at Ridgecrest and walked toward Sloanehurst. It was
+raining then, pretty hard. I thought she had made an appointment to
+meet Mr. Webster somewhere in the grounds here. It was a quarter to
+eleven when I got to the little side-gate that opens on the lawn out
+there on the north side of the house."
+
+"How did you know that?"
+
+"I looked at my watch then. It's got a luminous dial."
+
+"You were then at the gate near where she was found, dead?"
+
+"Yes. And she was at the gate."
+
+"Oh! So you saw her?"
+
+"I saw her. When I lifted the latch of the gate, she came toward me.
+There was a heavy drizzle then. I thought she had been leaning on the
+fence a few feet away. She whispered, sharp and quick, 'Who's that?' I
+knew who she was, right off. I said, 'Gene.'
+
+"She caught hold of my arm and shook it. She told me, still whispering,
+if I didn't get away from there, if I didn't go back to town, she'd
+raise an alarm, accuse me of trying to kill her--or she'd kill me. She
+pressed something against my cheek. It felt like a knife, although I
+couldn't see, for the darkness."
+
+The witness paused and licked his dry lips. He was breathing fast, and
+his restless eyes had a hunted look. The people in the room leaned
+farther toward him, some believing, some doubting him.
+
+Hastings thought: "He's scared stiff, but telling the truth--so far."
+
+"All right; what next?" asked Dr. Garnet, involuntarily lowering his
+voice to Russell's tone.
+
+"I accused her of having an appointment to meet Webster there. I got
+mad. I hate to have to tell all this, gentlemen; but I want to tell the
+truth. I told her she was a fool to run after a man who'd thrown her
+over.
+
+"'It's none of your look-out what I do!' she told me. 'You get away from
+here, now--this minute! You'll be sorry if you don't!' There was
+something about her that frightened me, mad as I was. I'd never seen her
+like that before."
+
+"What do you mean?" Garnet urged him.
+
+"I thought she would kill me, or somebody else would, and she knew it. I
+got the idea that she was like a crazy woman, out of her head about
+Webster, ready to do anything desperate, anything wild. I can't explain
+it any better than that."
+
+"And did you leave her?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"At once?"
+
+"Practically. A sort of panic got hold of me. I can't explain it,
+really."
+
+Russell, seeking an illuminative phrase, gave vent to a long-drawn,
+anxious sigh. He appeared to feel no shame for his flight. His fear was
+that he would not be believed.
+
+"Just as she told me a second time to leave her, I thought I heard
+somebody coming toward us, a slushy, dull sound, like heavy footsteps on
+the wet grass. Mildred's manner, her voice, had already scared me.
+
+"When I heard those footsteps, I turned and ran. My heart was in my
+mouth. I ran out to the road and back toward Washington. I ran as fast
+as I could. Twice I fell on my hands and knees. I can't tell you exactly
+how it was, why it was. I just knew something terrible would happen if I
+stayed there. I never had a feeling like that before. I was more afraid
+of her than I was of the man coming toward us."
+
+Members of the jury pushed back their chairs, were audible with subdued
+exclamations and long breaths, relieved of the nervous tension to which
+Russell's story of the encounter at the gate had lifted them. They were,
+however, prejudiced against him, a fact which he grasped.
+
+One of them asked him:
+
+"Can you tell us why you followed her out here?"
+
+"Why?" Russell echoed, like a man seeking time for deliberation.
+
+"Yes. What did you think you'd do after you'd overtaken her?"
+
+"Persuade her to go back home with me. I wanted to save her from doing
+anything foolish--anything like that, you know."
+
+"But, from what you've told us here this morning, it seems you never had
+much influence on her behaviour. Isn't that true?"
+
+"I suppose it is.--But," Russell added eagerly, "I can prove I had no
+idea of hurting her, if that's what you're hinting at. I can prove I
+never struck her. At twenty minutes past eleven last night I was four
+miles from here. Mr. Otis, a Washington commission merchant, picked me
+up in his automobile, six miles outside of Washington and took me into
+town. I couldn't have made that four miles on foot, no matter how I ran,
+in approximately fifteen or twenty minutes.
+
+"It's been proved that she was struck down after eleven anyway.--You
+said the condition of the body showed that, doctor.--You see, I would
+have had to make the four miles in less than twenty minutes--an
+impossibility. You see?"
+
+His eagerness to win their confidence put a disagreeable note, almost a
+whimper, into his voice. It grated on Dr. Garnet.
+
+It affected Hastings more definitely.
+
+"Now," he decided, "he's lying--about something. But what?" He noted a
+change in Russell's face, a suggestion of craftiness, the merest shadow
+of slyness over his general attitude of anxiety. And yet, this part of
+his story seemed straight enough.
+
+Dr. Garnet's next question brought out the fact that it would be
+corroborated.
+
+"This Mr. Otis, Mr. Russell; where is he?"
+
+"Right there, by the window," the witness answered, with a smug smile
+which gave him a still more unprepossessing look.
+
+Jury and spectators turned toward the man at the window. They saw a
+clean-shaven, alert-looking person of middle age, who nodded slightly in
+Russell's direction as if endorsing his testimony. There seemed no
+possible grounds for doubting whatever Otis might say. Hastings at once
+accepted him as genuine, an opinion which, it was obvious, was shared by
+the rest of the assemblage.
+
+Russell sensed the change of sentiment toward himself. Until now, it had
+been a certainty that he would be held for the murder. But his producing
+an outsider, incontestably a trustworthy man, to establish the truth of
+his statement that he had been four miles away from the scene of the
+crime a quarter of an hour after it had been committed--that was
+something in his favour which could not be gainsaid.
+
+Granting even that he had had an automobile at his disposal--a
+supposition for which there was no foundation--his alibi would still
+have been good, in view of the rain and the fact that one of the four
+miles in question was "dirt road."
+
+With the realization of this, the jury swung back to the animus it had
+felt against Webster, the incredulity with which it had received his
+statement that there had been between him and the dead woman no closer
+relationship than that of employer and employe.
+
+Webster, seated near the wall furthest from the jury, felt the inquiry
+of many eyes upon him, but he was unmoved, kept his gaze on Russell.
+
+Dr. Garnet, announcing that he would ask Mr. Otis to testify a little
+later, handed Russell the weapon with which Mildred Brace had been
+murdered.
+
+"Have you ever seen that dagger before?" he asked.
+
+Russell said he had not. Reminded that Sheriff Crown had testified to
+searching the witness's room and had discovered that a nail file was
+missing from his dressing case, a file which, judging by other articles
+in the case, must have been the same size as the one used in making the
+amateur dagger, Russell declared that his file had been lost for three
+years. He had left it in a hotel room on the only trip he had ever taken
+to New York.
+
+He gave way to Mr. Otis, who described himself as a commission merchant
+of Washington. Returning from a tour to Lynchburg, Virginia, he said, he
+had been hailed last night by a man in the road and had agreed to take
+him into town, a ride of six miles. Reaching Washington shortly before
+midnight, he had dropped his passenger at Eleventh and F streets.
+
+"Who was this passenger?" inquired Garnet.
+
+"He told me," said Otis, "his name was Eugene Russell. I gave him my
+name. That explains how he was able to find me this morning. When he
+told me how he was situated, I agreed to come over here and give you
+gentlemen the facts."
+
+"Notice anything peculiar about Mr. Russell last night?"
+
+"No; I think not."
+
+"Was he agitated, disturbed?"
+
+"He was out of breath. And he commented on that himself, said he'd been
+walking fast. Oh, yes! He was bareheaded; and he explained that--said
+the rain had ruined a cheap straw hat he had been wearing; the glue had
+run out of the straw and down his neck, he had thrown the hat away."
+
+"And the time? When did you pick him up?"
+
+"It was twenty minutes past eleven o'clock. When I stopped, I glanced at
+my machine clock; I carry a clock just above my speedometer."
+
+Mr. Otis was positive in his statements. He realized, he said, that his
+words might relieve one man of suspicion and bring it upon another.
+Unless he had been absolutely certain of his facts, he would not have
+stated them. He was sure, beyond the possibility of doubt, that he had
+made no mistake when he looked at his automobile clock; it was running
+when he stopped and when he reached Washington; yes, it was an accurate
+timepiece.
+
+Russell's alibi was established. His defence appealed to the jurymen as
+unassailable. When, after a conference of less than half an hour, they
+brought in a verdict that Mildred Brace had been murdered by a thrust of
+the "nail-file dagger" in the hands of a person unknown, nobody in the
+room was surprised.
+
+And nobody was blind to the fact that the freeing of Eugene Russell
+seriously questioned the innocence of Berne Webster.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE BREAKING DOWN OF WEBSTER
+
+
+Hastings, sprawling comfortably in a low chair by the south window in
+the music room, stopped his whittling when Berne Webster came in with
+Judge Wilton. "Meddlesome Mike!" thought the detective. "I sent for
+Webster."
+
+"Berne asked me to come with him," the judge explained his presence at
+once. "We've talked things over; he thought I might help him bring out
+every detail--jog his memory, if necessary."
+
+Hastings did not protest the arrangement. He saw, almost immediately,
+that Webster had come with no intention of giving him hearty
+cooperation. The motive for this lack of frankness he could not
+determine. It was enough that he felt the younger man's veiled
+antagonism and appreciated the fact that Wilton accompanied him in the
+role of protector.
+
+"If I'm to get anything worth while out of this talk," he decided, "I've
+got to mix up my delivery, shuffle the cards, spring first one thing and
+then another at him--bewilder him."
+
+He proceeded with that definite design: at an opportune time, he would
+guide the narrative, take it out of Webster's hands, and find out what
+he wanted to know, not merely what the young lawyer wanted to tell. He
+recognized the necessity of breaking down the shell of self-control that
+overlaid the suspected man's uneasiness.
+
+That it was only a shell, he felt sure. Webster, leaning an elbow
+lightly on the piano, looked down at him out of anxious eyes, and
+continually passed his right hand over his smooth, dark-brown hair from
+forehead to crown, a mechanical gesture of his when perplexed.
+
+His smile, too, was forced, hardly more than a slight, fixed twist of
+the lips, as if he strove to advertise his ability to laugh at danger.
+His customary dash, a pleasing levity of manner, was gone, giving place
+to a suggestion of strain, so that he seemed always on the alert against
+himself, determined to edit in advance his answer to every question.
+
+Wilton had chosen a chair which placed him directly opposite Hastings
+and at the same time enabled him to watch Webster. He was smoking a
+cigar, and, through the haze that floated up just then from his lips, he
+gave the detective a long, searching look, to which Hastings paid no
+attention.
+
+Webster talked nearly twenty minutes, explaining his eagerness to be
+"thoroughly frank as to every detail," reviewing the evidence brought
+out by the inquest, and criticising the action of the jury, but
+producing nothing new. Occasionally he left the piano and paced the
+floor, smoking interminably, lighting the fresh cigarette from the stub
+of the old, obviously strung to the limit of his nervous strength.
+Hastings detected a little twitching of the muscles at the corners of
+his mouth, and the too frequent winking of his eyes.
+
+Judge Wilton had told him, Webster continued, of Mrs. Brace's charge
+that he wanted to marry Miss Sloane because of financial pressure; there
+was not a word of truth in it; he had already arranged for a loan to
+make that payment when it fell due. He was, however, aware of his
+unenviable position, and he wanted to give the detective every
+assistance possible, in that way assuring his own prompt relief from
+embarrassment.
+
+By this time, Hastings had mapped out his line of questioning, his
+assault on Webster's reticence.
+
+"That's the right idea!" he said, getting to his feet. "Let's go to
+work."
+
+They saw the change in him. Instead of the genial, drawling, slow-moving
+old fellow who had seemed thankful for anything he might chance to
+hear, they were confronted now by an aroused, quick-thinking man whose
+words came from him with a sharp, clipped-off effect, and whose
+questions scouted the whole field of their possible and probable
+information. He stood leaning his elbows on the other end of the piano,
+facing Webster across the polished length of its broad top. His
+dominance of the night before, in the library, had returned.
+
+"Now, Mr. Webster," he began, innocent of threat, "as things stack up at
+present, only two people had the semblance of a motive for killing
+Mildred Brace--either Eugene Russell killed her out of jealousy of you;
+or you killed her to silence her demands. Do you see that?"
+
+He had put back his head a little and was peering at Webster under his
+spectacle-rims, down the line of his nose. He saw how the other fought
+down the impulse to deny, hesitating before answering, with a laugh on a
+high note, like derision:
+
+"I suppose that's what a lot of people will say."
+
+"Precisely. Now, I've just had a talk with this Russell--caught him
+after the inquest. I believe there's something rotten about that alibi
+of his; but I couldn't shake him; and the Otis testimony's sound. So
+we'll have to quit counting on Russell's proving his own guilt. We've
+got that little job on our hands, and the best way to handle it is to
+prove your innocence. See that?"
+
+The bow with which Webster acknowledged this statement was a curious
+mingling of grace and mockery. The detective ignored it.
+
+"And," he continued, "there's only one way for you to come whole out of
+this muddle--frankness. I'm working for you; you know that. Tell me
+everything you know, and we've got a chance to win. The innocent man who
+tries to twist black into white is an innocent fool." He looked swiftly
+to Wilton, who was leaning far back in his chair, head lolling slowly
+from side to side, the picture of indifference. "Isn't that so, judge?"
+
+"Quite," Wilton agreed, pausing to remove his cigar from his mouth.
+
+"Of course, it's so," Webster said curtly. "I've just told you so.
+That's why I've decided--the judge and I have talked it over--to give
+you something in confidence."
+
+"One moment!" Hastings warned him. "Maybe, I won't take it in
+confidence--if it's something incriminating you."
+
+"Yes; you've phrased that unfortunately, Berne," the judge put in,
+tilting his head on the chair-back to meet the detective's look.
+
+Webster was nonplussed. Apparently, his surprise came from the judge's
+remark rather than from the detective's refusal to assume the role of
+confidant. Hastings inferred that Wilton, agreeing beforehand to the
+proposal being advanced, had changed his mind after entering the room.
+
+"Hastings is right," the judge concluded; "even if he's on your side,
+you can't expect him to be tied up blind that way by a suspected
+man--and you're just that, Berne."
+
+Seeing Webster's uncertainty, Hastings took another course.
+
+"I think I know what you're talking about, Mr. Webster," he said,
+matter-of-fact. "Your nail-file's missing from your dressing
+case--disappeared since yesterday morning."
+
+"You know that!" Berne flashed, suddenly angry. "And you're holding it
+over me!"
+
+Open hostility was in every feature of his face; his lips twitched to
+the sharp intake of his breath.
+
+"Why don't you look at it another way?" the old man countered quickly.
+"If I'd told the coroner about it--if I'd told him also that the size of
+that nail-file, judging from the rest of the dressing case, matched that
+of the one used for the blade of the dagger, matched it as well as
+Russell's--what then?"
+
+"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 fiance, 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 high-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."
+
+"It didn't matter at all," Hastings matched Wilton's cordial tone; "and
+I appreciate your offer, judge. Suppose you tell me anything that occurs
+to you, anything that will throw light on this case any time; and I'll
+act as go-between for you with the authorities--if necessary."
+
+"You mean----?"
+
+"I'd like to do the talking for this family and its friends. I can work
+better if I can handle things myself. The half of my job is to save the
+Sloanes from as many wild rumours as I can."
+
+Wilton nodded approval.
+
+"How about Arthur? You want me to take any questions to him for you?"
+
+"No; thanks.--But," Hastings added, "you might make him see the
+necessity of telling me what he saw last night. If he doesn't come out
+with it, he'll make it all the harder on Webster."
+
+"I don't think he saw anything."
+
+"Didn't he? Why'd he refuse to testify before the coroner, then?"
+
+Sheriff Crown's car came whirling up the driveway; and Hastings spoke
+hurriedly:
+
+"You know he's not as sick as he makes out. He's got to tell me what he
+knows, judge! He's holding back something. That's why he wants to make
+me so mad I'll quit the case. Who's he shielding? That's what people
+will want to know."
+
+Wilton pondered that.
+
+"I'll see what I can do," he finally agreed. "According to you, it may
+appear--people may suspect--that Webster's guilty or shielding somebody
+else; and Arthur's guilty or shielding Webster!"
+
+When Mr. Crown reached the porch, they were discussing Webster's
+condition, and Hastings, with the aid of the judge's penknife, was
+tightening a screw in his big barlowesque blade. They were careful to
+say nothing that might arouse the sheriff's suspicion of their
+compact--an agreement whereby a private detective, and not the law's
+representative, was to have the benefit of all the judge's information
+bearing on the murder.
+
+Mr. Crown, however, was dissatisfied.
+
+"I'm tied up!" he complained, nursing with forefinger and thumb his
+knuckle-like chin. "The only place I can get information is at the wrong
+end--Russell!"
+
+"What's the matter with me?" the detective asked amiably. "I'll be glad
+to help--if you think I can."
+
+"What good's that to me?" He wore his best politician's smile, but there
+was resentment in his voice. "Your job is keeping things quiet--for
+Sloanehurst. Mr. Sloane's ill, too ill to see me without endangering his
+life, so his funeral-faced valet tells me. Miss Lucille says, politely
+enough, she's told all she knows, told it on the stand, and I'm to go to
+you if I want anything more from her. The judge here knows nothing about
+the inside relationships of the family and Webster, or of Webster and
+the Brace girl. And Webster's down and out, thoroughly and
+conveniently! If all that don't catch your uncle Robert where the hair's
+short, I'll quit!"
+
+"What do you want to know?" Hastings countered. "You've had access to
+everything, far as I can see."
+
+Reply to that was delayed by the appearance of Jarvis, summoning the
+judge to Arthur Sloane's room.
+
+"I want to get at Webster," Crown told Hastings. "And here's why: if
+Russell didn't kill her, Webster did."
+
+"Why, you've weakened!" the old man guyed head bent over his whittling.
+"You had Russell's goose cooked this morning--roasted to a rich, dark
+brown!"
+
+"Yes; and if I could break down his alibi, I'd still have him cooked!"
+
+"You accept the alibi, then?"
+
+"Sure, I accept it."
+
+"I don't."
+
+"Why don't you?" objected Crown. "He didn't have an aeroplane in his hip
+pocket, did he? That's the only way he could have covered those four
+miles in fifteen minutes.--Or does his alibi have to fall in order to
+save Miss Sloane's fiance?"
+
+He slapped his thigh and thrust out his bristly moustache. "You're paid
+to fasten the thing on Russell," he said, clearly pugnacious. "I don't
+expect you to help me work against Webster! I'm not that simple!"
+
+The old man, with a gesture no more arresting than to point at the
+sheriff with the piece of wood in his left hand, made the official jaw
+drop almost to the official chest.
+
+"Mr. Crown," he said, "get this, once and for all: a man ain't
+necessarily a crook because he's once worked for the government. I'm as
+anxious to find the guilty man now, every time, as when I was in the
+Department of Justice. And I intend to. From now on, you'll give me
+credit for that!--Won't you, Mr. Sheriff?"
+
+Crown apologized. "I'm worried; that's what. I'm up a gum stump and
+can't get down."
+
+"All right, but don't try to make a ladder out of me! Why don't you look
+into that alibi?"
+
+Crown was irritated again. "What do you stick to that for?"
+
+"Because," Hastings declared, "I'm ready to swear-and-cross-my-heart he
+lied when he said he ran that four miles. I'm ready to swear he was here
+when the murder was done. When a man's got as good an alibi as he said
+he had, his adam's-apple don't play 'Yankee Doodle' on his windpipe."
+
+"Is that so!"
+
+"It is--and here's another thing: when's Mrs. Brace going to break
+loose?"
+
+"Now, you're talking!" agreed Crown, with momentary enthusiasm. "She
+told me this morning she'd help me show up Webster--she wouldn't have it
+that Russell killed the girl. Foxy business! Mixed up in it herself, she
+runs to the rescue of the man she----"
+
+The sheriff paused, unable to bring that reasoning to its logical
+conclusion.
+
+"No," he said, dejected; "I can't believe she put him up to murdering
+her daughter."
+
+"That woman," Hastings said, "is capable of anything--anything! We're
+going to find she's terrible, I tell you, Crown. She's mixed up in the
+murder somehow--and, if you don't find out how, I will!"
+
+"How can we get her?" Crown argued. "She was in her flat when the
+killing was done. We've searched these grounds, and found nothing to
+incriminate anybody. All we've got is a strong suspicion against two
+men. She's out and away."
+
+"Not if we watch her. She's promised to make trouble--she'll be lucky if
+she makes none for herself. Let's keep after her."
+
+"I'm on! But," the sheriff reminded, again half-hearted, "that won't get
+us anything soon. She won't leave her flat before the funeral."
+
+"That won't keep her quiet very long," Hastings contended. "She told me
+the funeral would be at nine o'clock tomorrow morning--from an
+undertaker's.--Anyway, I've instructed one of my assistants to keep
+track of her. I'm not counting on her grief absorbing her, even for
+today."
+
+But he saw that Crown was not greatly impressed with the possibility of
+finding the murderer through Mrs. Brace. The sheriff was engrossed in
+mental precautions against being misled by "the Sloanehurst detective."
+
+He was still in that mood when Miss Sloane sent for Hastings.
+
+The detective found her in the music room. She had taken the chair which
+Judge Wilton had occupied an hour before, and was leaning one elbow on
+an arm of it, her chin resting in the cup of her hand. Her dress--a
+filmy lavender so light that it shaded almost to pink, and magically
+made to bring out the grace of her figure--drew his attention to the
+slight sag of her shoulders, suggestive of great weariness.
+
+But he was captivated anew by her grave loveliness, and by her
+fortitude. She betrayed her agitation only in the fine tremour in her
+hands and a certain slowness in her words.
+
+On the porch, talking to Judge Wilton, he had wondered, in a moment of
+irritation, why he continued on the case against so much apparent
+opposition in the very household which he sought to help. He knew now
+that neither his sense of duty nor his fee was the deciding influence.
+He stayed because this girl needed him, because he had seen in her eyes
+last night the haggard look of an unspeakable suspicion.
+
+"You wanted to see me--is there anything special?" she asked him,
+immediately alert.
+
+"Yes; there is, Miss Sloane," he said, careful to put into his voice all
+the sympathy he felt for her.
+
+"Yes?" She was looking at him with steady eyes.
+
+"It's this, and I want you to bear in mind that I wouldn't bring it up
+but for my desire to put an end to your uncertainty: I'm afraid you
+haven't told me everything you know, everything you saw last night
+in----"
+
+When she would have spoken, he put up a warning hand.
+
+"Let me explain, please. Don't commit yourself until you see what I
+mean. Judge Wilton and Mr. Webster seem to think I'm not needed here. It
+may be a natural attitude--for them. They're both lawyers, and to
+lawyers a mere detective doesn't amount to much."
+
+"Oh, I'm sure it isn't that," she flashed out, apologizing.
+
+"Oh, I don't mind, personally," he said, with a smile for which she
+felt grateful. "As I say, it's natural for them to think that way,
+perhaps. Your father, however, is not a lawyer; and, when I went into
+his room at your request, he took pains to offend me, insult me, several
+times." That brought a faint flush to her face. "So, that leaves only
+you to give me facts which I must have--if they exist."
+
+He became more urgent.
+
+"And you employed me, Miss Sloane; you appealed to me when you were at a
+loss where to turn. I'm only fair to myself as well as to you when I
+tell you that your distress, far more than financial considerations,
+persuaded me to undertake this work without first consulting your
+father."
+
+She leaned toward him, bending from the waist, her eyes slightly
+widened, so that their effect was to give her a startled air.
+
+"You don't mean you'll give it up!" she said, plainly entreating. "You
+won't give it up!"
+
+"Are you quite sure you don't want me to give it up? Judge Wilton has
+asked me twice, out of politeness, not to give it up. Are you merely
+being polite?"
+
+She smiled, looking tired, and shook her head.
+
+"Really, Mr. Hastings, if you were to desert us now, I should be
+desperate--altogether. Desperate! Just that."
+
+"I can't desert you," he said gently. "As I told Mr. Webster, I know too
+little and I suspect too much to do that."
+
+Before she spoke again, she looked at him intently, drawing in her under
+lip a little against her teeth.
+
+"What, Mr. Hastings?" she asked, then. "What do you suspect?"
+
+"Let me answer that with a question," he suggested. "Last night, your
+one idea was that I could protect you and your father, everybody in the
+house here, by acting as your spokesman. I think you wanted to set me up
+as a buffer between all of you on the one side and the authorities and
+the reporters on the other. You wanted things kept down, nothing to get
+out beyond that which was unavoidable. Wasn't that it?"
+
+"Yes; it was," she admitted, not seeing where his question led.
+
+"You were afraid, then, that something incriminating might be divulged,
+weren't you?"
+
+"Oh, no!" she denied instantly.
+
+"I mean something which might seem incriminating. You trusted the person
+whom it would seem to incriminate; and you wanted time for the murderer
+to be found without, in the meantime, having the adverse circumstance
+made public. Isn't that it, Miss Sloane?"
+
+"Yes--practically."
+
+"Let's be clear on that. Your fear was that too much questioning of you
+or the other person might result in a slip-up--might make you or him
+mention the apparently damaging incident, with disastrous effect. Wasn't
+that it?"
+
+"Yes; that was it."
+
+"Now, what was that apparently incriminating incident?"
+
+She started. He had brought her so directly to the confession that she
+saw now the impossibility of withholding what he sought.
+
+"It may be," he tried to lighten her responsibility, "the very thing
+that Webster and the judge have concealed--for I'm sure they're keeping
+something back. Perhaps, if I knew it, things would be easier. People
+closely affected by a crime are the last to judge such things
+accurately."
+
+She gave a long breath of relief, looking at him with perplexity
+nevertheless.
+
+"Yes--I know. That was why I came to you--last night--in the beginning."
+
+"And it was about them, Webster and Wilton," he drew the conclusion for
+her, still encouraging her with his smile, regarding her over the rims
+of his spectacles with a fatherly kindness.
+
+She turned from him and looked out of the window. It was the middle of a
+hot, still day, no breeze stirring, and wonderfully quiet. For the
+moment, there was no sound, in the house or outside.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, her voice a revelation of the extent to which her
+doubts had oppressed her. "It was like that, out there--quiet, still! If
+you could only understand!"
+
+"My dear child," he said, "rely on me. The sheriff is bound to assert
+himself, to keep in the front of things; he's that kind of a man. He'll
+make an arrest any time, or announce that he will. Don't you see the
+danger?" He leaned forward and took her hand, a move to which she seemed
+oblivious. "Don't you see I must have facts to go on--if I'm to help
+you?"
+
+At that, she disengaged her hand, and sat very straight, her face again
+a little turned from him. A twitch, like a shudder cut short, moved her
+whole body, so that the heel of her slipper rapped smartly on the floor.
+
+"I wish," she whispered dully, "I wish I knew what to do!"
+
+"Tell me," he urged, as if he spoke to a child.
+
+She showed him her face, very white, with sudden shadows under the
+eyes.
+
+"I must, I think; I must tell you," she said, not much louder than the
+previous whisper. "You were right. I didn't tell the whole story of what
+I saw. Believe me, I didn't think it mattered. I thought, really, things
+would right themselves and explanations be unnecessary. But you
+knew--didn't you?"
+
+"Yes. I knew." He realized her ordeal, helping her through it. "What
+were they doing?"
+
+She held her chin high.
+
+"It was all true, what I told you in the library, my being waked up by
+father's moving about, my going to the window, my seeing Berne and the
+judge facing each other across--her--there at the end of the awful
+yellow arm of light. But that wasn't all. The moment the light flashed
+on, the judge threw back his head a little, like a man about to cry out,
+shout for help. I am sure that was it.
+
+"But Berne was too quick for that. Berne put out his hand; his arm shot
+across her; and his hand closed the judge's mouth. The judge made no
+noise whatever, but he shook his head from side to side two or three
+times--I'm not certain how many--while Berne leant over the body and
+whispered to him. It seemed to me I could almost hear the words, but I
+didn't.
+
+"Then Berne took his hand from the judge's mouth. I think, before that,
+the judge made a sign, tried to nod his head up and down, to show he
+would do as Berne said. Then, when they saw she was dead, they both
+hurried around the corner to the front of the house, and I heard them
+come in; I heard the judge call to father and run up to your room."
+
+She was alarmed then by the amazement and disapproval in his face.
+
+"Oh!" she said, and this time she took his hand. "You see! You see! You
+don't understand! You think Berne killed her!"
+
+"I don't know," he said, wondering. "I must think." For the moment,
+indignation swept him. "Wilton! A judge, a judge!--keeping quiet on a
+thing like that! I must think."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+MOTIVES REVEALED
+
+
+She let go his hand and, still leaning toward him, waited for him to
+speak. A confusion of misgivings assailed her--she regretted having
+confided in him. If his anger embraced Berne as well as Judge Wilton,
+she had done nothing but harm!
+
+Seeing her dismay, he tried again to reassure her.
+
+"But no matter!" he minimized his own sense of shock. "I'm sure I'll
+understand if you'll tell me more--your explanation."
+
+Obviously, the only inference he could draw from her story as she had
+told it was that Webster had killed the woman and, found bending over
+her body, had sprung forward to silence the man who had discovered him.
+Nevertheless, it was equally evident that she was sincere in attributing
+to Webster a different motive for preventing the judge's outcry.
+Consideration of that persuaded Hastings that she could give him facts
+which would change the whole aspect of the crime.
+
+Her hesitance now made him uneasy; he recognized the necessity of
+increasing her reliance upon him. If she told him only a part of what
+she knew, he would be scarcely in a better position than before.
+
+"Naturally," he added, "you can throw light on the whole incident--light
+by which I must be guided, to a great degree."
+
+"If Berne were not ill," she responded to that, "I wouldn't tell.--It's
+because he's lying up there, his lips closed, unable to keep a look-out
+for developments, at the mercy of what the sheriff may do or
+say!--That's why I feel so dreadfully the need of help, Mr. Hastings!"
+
+She slid back in her chair, moving farther from him, as if his kindly
+gaze disconcerted her.
+
+"If he hadn't suffered this collapse, I should have left the matter to
+him, I think. But now--now I can't!" She straightened again, her chin
+up, the signal with her of final decision. "He acted on his impulsive
+desire to prevent my being shocked by that discovery--that horror out
+there on the lawn. Things had happened to convince him that such a
+thing, shouted through the night, would be a terrific blow to me. I'm
+sure that that was the only idea he had when he put his hand over Judge
+Wilton's mouth."
+
+"I can believe that," he said. "Tell me why you believe it."
+
+"Oh!" she protested, hands clenched on her knees; "if it affected only
+him and me!"
+
+Her suspicion of her father recurred to him. It was, he thought, back of
+the terror he saw in her eyes now.
+
+"But it does affect only him and me, after all!" she continued fiercely,
+as much to strengthen herself in what she wanted to believe as to force
+him to that belief. "Let me tell you the whole affair, from beginning to
+end."
+
+She proceeded in a low tone, the words slower, as if she laboured for
+precision and clarity.
+
+"I must go back to Friday--the night before last--it seems months ago! I
+had heard that Berne had become involved in some sort of relationship
+with his stenographer--that she had been dismissed from his office and
+refused to accept the dismissal as final. I mean, of course, I heard she
+was in love with him, and he'd been in love with her--or should have
+been.
+
+"It was told me by a friend of mine in Washington, Lucy Carnly. It seems
+another stenographer overheard the conversation between Berne and
+Miss--Miss Brace. It got out that way. It was very circumstantial; I
+couldn't help believing it, some of it; Lucy wouldn't have brought me
+idle gossip--I thought."
+
+She drew in her under lip, to hide its momentary tremour, and shook her
+head from side to side once.
+
+"All that, Mr. Hastings, came up, as a matter of course, when Berne
+reached here evening before last for the week-end. I'd just heard it
+that day. He denied it, said there had been nothing remotely resembling
+a love affair.--He was indignant, and very hurt!--He said she'd
+misconstrued some of his kindnesses to her. He couldn't explain how she
+had misconstrued them. At any rate, the result was that I broke our
+engagement. I----"
+
+"Friday night!" Hastings exclaimed involuntarily.
+
+He grasped on the instant how grossly Webster, by withholding all this,
+had deceived him, left him in the dark.
+
+"Yes; and I told father about it," she hurried her words here, the
+effect of her manner being the impression that she hoped this fact would
+not bulk too large in the detective's thoughts. "The three of us had a
+talk about it Friday night. Father's wonderfully fond of Berne and tried
+to persuade me I was foolishly ruining my life. I refused to change my
+mind. When I went upstairs, they stayed a long time in the library,
+talking.
+
+"I think they decided the best thing for Berne was to stay on here,
+through yesterday and today, in the hope that he and father might change
+my mind. Father tried to, yesterday morning. He was awfully upset.
+That's one reason he's so worn out and sick today.--I love my father so,
+Mr. Hastings!" She held her lips tight-shut a moment, a sob struggling
+in her throat. "But my distress, my own hurt pride----"
+
+"What did your father say about Mildred Brace?" Hastings asked, when she
+did not finish that sentence.
+
+She looked at him, again with widened eyes, a startled air, putting both
+her hands to her throat.
+
+"There!" she said, voice falling to a whisper.
+
+Then, turning her face half from him, she whispered so low that he heard
+her with difficulty: "I wish I were dead!"
+
+Her words frightened him, they had so clearly the ring of truth, as if
+she would in sober fact have preferred death to the thought which was
+breaking her heart--suspicion of her father.
+
+"That was why Berne stopped the judge's outcry," she said at last,
+turning her white face to him; "he had the sudden wild idea that I'm
+afraid you have--that father might have killed her. And Berne did not
+want that awful fact screamed through the night at me. Oh, can't you
+see--can't you see that, Mr. Hastings?"
+
+"It's entirely possible; Mr. Webster may have thought that.--But let's
+keep the story straight. What had your father said about Mildred
+Brace--to arouse any such suspicion?"
+
+"He was angry, terribly indignant. You know I made no secret to you of
+his high temper. His rages are fierce.--Once, when he was that way, I
+saw him kill a dog. If it had--but I think all men who're unstrung
+nervously, as he is, have high tempers. He felt so indignant because she
+had come between Berne and myself. He blamed neither Berne nor me. He
+seemed to concentrate all his anger upon her.
+
+"He said--you see, Mr. Hastings, I tell you everything!--he threatened
+to go to her and---- He had, of course, no definite idea what he would
+do. Finally, he did say he would buy her off, pay her to leave this part
+of the country. After that, he said, he knew I would 'see things
+clearly,' and Berne and I would be reconciled."
+
+Hastings remembered Russell's assertion that Mildred had her ticket to
+Chicago.
+
+"Did he buy her off?" he asked quickly.
+
+"Oh, no; he was merely wishing that he could, I think."
+
+"But he made no attempt to get in touch with her yesterday? You're
+sure?"
+
+"Quite," she said. "But don't you see. Mr. Hastings? Father was so
+intense in his hatred of her that Berne thought of him the moment he
+found that body--out there. He thought father must have encountered her
+on the lawn in some way, or she must have come after him, and he, in a
+fit of rage, struck her down."
+
+"Has Webster told you this?"
+
+"No--but it's true; it is!"
+
+"But, if your supposition is to hold good, how did your father happen to
+be in possession of that dagger, which evidently was made with malice
+aforethought, as the lawyers say?"
+
+"Exactly," she said, her lips quivering, hands gripping spasmodically at
+her knees. "He didn't do it! He didn't do it! Berne's idea was a
+mistake!"
+
+"Who, then?" he pressed her, realizing now that she was so unstrung she
+would give him her thoughts unguarded.
+
+"Why, that man Russell," she said, her voice so low and the words so
+slow that he thought her at the limit of her endurance. "But I've said
+all this to show you why Berne put his hand over the judge's mouth. I
+want to make it very clear that he feared father--think of it, Mr.
+Hastings!--had killed her! At first, I thought----"
+
+She bowed her face in both her hands and wept unrestrainedly, without
+sobs, the tears streaming between her fingers and down her wrists.
+
+The old man put one hand on her hair, and with the other brought forth
+his handkerchief, being bothered by the sudden mistiness of his
+spectacles.
+
+"A brave girl," he said, his own voice insecure. "What a woman! I know
+what you mean. At first, you feared your father might have been
+concerned in the murder. I saw it in your eyes last night. You had the
+same thought that young Webster had--rather, that you say he had."
+
+Her weeping ceased as suddenly as it had begun. She looked at him
+through tears.
+
+"And I've only injured Berne in your eyes; I think, irreparably! This
+morning I thought you heard me when I asked him not to let it be known
+that our engagement was broken? Don't you remember? You were on the
+porch as we came around the corner."
+
+For the first time since its utterance, he recalled her statement then,
+"We'll have to leave it as it was," and Webster's significant rejoinder.
+He despised his own stupidity. Had he magnified Webster's desire to keep
+that promise into guilty knowledge of the crime itself? And had not the
+mistake driven him into false and valueless interpretations of his
+entire interview with Webster?
+
+"He promised," Lucille pursued, "for the same reason I had in asking
+it--to prevent discovery of the fact that father might have had a motive
+for wishing her dead! It was a mistake, I see now, a terrible mistake!"
+
+"Can you tell me why you didn't have the same thoughts about Berne?" He
+was sorry he had to make that inquiry. If he could, he would have spared
+her further distress. "Why wouldn't he have had the same motive, hatred
+of Mildred Brace, a thousand times stronger?"
+
+"I don't know," she said. "I simply never thought of it--not once."
+
+Fine psychologist that he was, Hastings knew why that view had not
+occurred to her. Her love for Webster was an idealizing sentiment,
+putting him beyond even the possibility of wrong-doing. Her love for her
+father, unusual in its devotion as it was, recognized his weaknesses
+nevertheless.
+
+And, while seeking to protect the two, she had told a story which, so
+far as bald facts went, incriminated the lover far more than the father.
+She had attributed to Sloane, in her uneasiness, the motive which would
+have been most natural to the discarded Webster. Even now, she could not
+suspect Berne; her only fear was that others, not understanding him as
+she did, might suspect him! Although she had broken with him, she still
+loved him. More than that: his illness and consequent helplessness
+increased her devotion for him, brought to the surface the maternal
+phase of it.
+
+"If she had to choose between the two," Hastings thought, "she'd save
+Webster--every time!"
+
+"I know--I tell you, Mr. Hastings, I _know_ neither Berne nor father is
+at all responsible for this crime. I tell you," she repeated, rising to
+her feet, as if by mere physical height she hoped to impress her
+knowledge upon him, "I _know_ they're innocent.--Don't _you_ know it?"
+
+She stood looking down at him, her whole body tense, arms held close
+against her sides, the knuckles of her fingers white as ivory. Her eyes
+now were dry, and brilliant.
+
+He evaded the flat statement to which she pressed him.
+
+"But your knowledge, Miss Sloane, and what we must prove," he said, also
+standing, "are two different things just now. The authorities will
+demand proofs."
+
+"I know. That's why I've told you these things." Somehow, her manner
+reproached him. "You said you had to have them in order to handle
+this--this situation properly. Now that you know them, I'm sure you'll
+feel safe in devoting all your time to proving Russell's guilt." She
+moved her head forward, to study him more closely. "You know he's
+guilty, don't you?"
+
+"I'm certain Mrs. Brace figured in her daughter's murder," he said. "She
+was concerned in it somehow. If that's true, and if your father
+approached neither her nor her daughter yesterday, it does seem highly
+possible that Russell's guilty."
+
+He turned from her and stood at the window, his back to her a few long
+moments. When he faced her again, he looked old.
+
+"But the facts--if we could only break down Russell's alibi!"
+
+"Oh!" she whispered, in new alarm. "I'd forgotten that!"
+
+All the tenseness went out of her limbs. She sank into her chair, and
+sat there, looking up to him, her eyes frankly confessing a panic fear.
+
+"I think I'm sorry I told you," she said, desperately. "I can't make you
+understand!" Another consideration forced itself upon her. "You won't
+have to tell anybody--anybody at all--about this, will you--now?"
+
+He was prepared for that.
+
+"I'll have to ask Judge Wilton why he acted on Mr. Webster's advice--and
+what that advice was, what they whispered to each other when you saw
+them."
+
+"Why, that's perfectly fair," she assented, relieved. "That will stop
+all the secrecy between them and me. It's the very thing I want. If
+that's assured, everything else will work itself out."
+
+Her faith surprised him. He had not realized how unqualified it was.
+
+"Did you ask the judge about it?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes; just before I came in here--after Berne's collapse. I felt so
+helpless! But he tried to persuade me my imagination had deceived me; he
+said they had had no such scene. You know how gruff and hard Judge
+Wilton can be at times. I shouldn't choose him for a confidant."
+
+"No; I reckon not. But we'll ask him now--if you don't mind."
+
+Willis, the butler, answered the bell, and gave information: Judge
+Wilton had left Sloanehurst half an hour ago and had gone to the
+Randalls'. He had asked for Miss Sloane, but, learning that she was
+engaged, had left his regrets, saying he would come in tomorrow, after
+the adjournment of court.
+
+"He's on the bench tomorrow at the county-seat," Lucille explained the
+message. "He always divides his time between us and the Randalls when
+he comes down from Fairfax for his court terms. He told me this morning
+he'd come back to us later in the week."
+
+"On second thought," Hastings said, "that's better. I'll talk to him
+alone tomorrow--about this thing, this inexplicable thing: a judge
+taking it upon himself to deceive the sheriff even! But," he softened
+the sternness of his tone, "he must have a reason, a better one than I
+can think of now." He smiled. "And I'll report to you, when he's told
+me."
+
+"I'm glad it's tomorrow," she said wearily. "I--I'm tired out."
+
+On his way back to Washington, the old man reflected: "Now, she'll
+persuade Sloane to do the sensible thing--talk." Then, to bolster that
+hope, he added a stern truth: "He's got to. He can't gag himself with a
+pretended illness forever!"
+
+At the same time the girl he had left in the music room wept again,
+saying over and over to herself, in a despair of doubt: "Not that! Not
+that! I couldn't tell him that. I told him enough. I know I did. He
+wouldn't have understood!"
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+HENDRICKS REPORTS
+
+
+In his book-lined, "loosely furnished" apartment Sunday afternoon
+Hastings whittled prodigiously, staring frequently at the flap of the
+grey envelope with the intensity of a crystal-gazer. Once or twice he
+pronounced aloud possible meanings of the symbols imprinted on the scrap
+of paper.
+
+"'--edly de--,'" he worried. "That might stand for 'repeatedly demanded'
+or 'repeatedly denied' or 'undoubtedly denoted' or a hundred---- But
+that 'Pursuit!' is the core of the trouble. They put the pursuit on him,
+sure as you're knee-high to a hope of heaven!"
+
+The belief grew in him that out of those pieces of words would come
+solution of his problem. The idea was born of his remarkable instinct.
+Its positiveness partook of superstition--almost. He could not shake it
+off. Once he chuckled, appreciating the apparent absurdity of trying to
+guess the criminal meaning, the criminal intent, back of that writing.
+But he kept to his conjecturing.
+
+He had many interruptions. Newspaper reporters, instantly impressed by
+the dramatic possibilities, the inherent sensationalism, of the murder,
+flocked to him. Referred to him by the people at Sloanehurst, they asked
+for not only his narration of what had occurred but also for his opinion
+as to the probability of running down the guilty man.
+
+He would make no predictions, he told them, confining himself to a
+simple statement of facts. When one young sleuth suggested that both
+Sloane and Webster feared arrest on the charge of murder and had relied
+on his reputation to prevent prompt action against them by the sheriff,
+the old man laughed. He knew the futility of trying to prevent
+publication of intimations of that sort.
+
+But he took advantage of the opportunity to put a different
+interpretation on his employment by the Sloanes.
+
+"Seems to me," he contributed, "it's more logical to say that their
+calling in a detective goes a long way to show their innocence of all
+connection with the crime. They wouldn't pay out real money to have
+themselves hunted, if they were guilty, would they?"
+
+Afterwards, he was glad he had emphasized this point. In the light of
+subsequent events, it looked like actual foresight of Mrs. Brace's
+tactics.
+
+Soon after five Hendricks came in, to report. He was a young man,
+stockily built, with eyes that were always on the verge of laughter and
+lips that sloped inward as if biting down on the threatened mirth. The
+shape of his lips was symbolical of his habit of discourse; he was of
+few words.
+
+"Webster," he said, standing across the table from his employer and
+shooting out his words like a memorized speech, "been overplaying his
+hand financially. That's the rumour; nothing tangible yet. Gone into
+real estate and building projects; associated with a crowd that has the
+name of operating on a shoestring. Nobody'd be surprised if they all
+blew up."
+
+"As a real-estate man, I take it," Hastings commented, slowly shaving
+off thin slivers of chips from his piece of pine, "he's a brilliant
+young lawyer. That's it?"
+
+"Yes, sir," Hendricks agreed, the slope of his lips accentuated.
+
+"Keep after that, tomorrow.--What about Mrs. Brace?"
+
+"Destitute, practically; in debt; threatened with eviction; no
+resources."
+
+"So money, lack of it, is bothering her as well as Webster!--How much is
+she in debt?"
+
+"Enough to be denied all credit by the stores; between five and seven
+hundred, I should say. That's about the top mark for that class of
+trade."
+
+"All right, Hendricks; thanks," the old man commended warmly. "That's
+great work, for Sunday.--Now, Russell's room?"
+
+"Yes, sir; I went over it."
+
+"Find any steel on the floor?"
+
+Hendricks took from his pocket a little paper parcel about the size of a
+man's thumb.
+
+"Not sure, sir. Here's what I got."
+
+He unfolded the paper and put it down on the table, displaying a small
+mass of what looked like dust and lint.
+
+"Wonderful what a magnet will pick up, ain't it?" mused his employer: "I
+got the same sort of stuff at Sloanehurst this morning.--I'll go over
+this, look for the steel particles, right away."
+
+"Anything else, sir--special?"
+
+The assistant was already half-way to the door. He knew that a floor an
+inch deep in chips from his employer's whittling indicated laborious
+mental gropings by the old man. It was no time for superfluous words.
+
+"After dinner," Hastings instructed, "relieve Gore--at the Walman.
+Thanks."
+
+As Hendricks went out, there was another telephone call, this time from
+Crown, to make amends for coolness he had shown Hastings at
+Sloanehurst.
+
+"I was wrong, and you were right," he conceded, handsomely; "I mean
+about that Brace woman. Better keep your man on her trail."
+
+"What's up?" Hastings asked amicably.
+
+"That's what I want to know! I've seen her again. I couldn't get
+anything more from her except threats. She's going on the warpath. She
+told me: 'Tomorrow I'll look into things for myself. I'll not sit here
+idle and leave everything to a sheriff who wants campaign contributions
+and a detective who's paid to hush things up!' You can see her saying
+that, can't you? Wow!"
+
+"That all?"
+
+"That's all, right now. But I've got a suspicion she knows more than we
+think. When she makes up her mind to talk, she'll say something!--Mr.
+Hastings," Crown added, as if he imparted a tremendous fact, "that
+woman's smart! I tell you, she's got brains, a head full of 'em!"
+
+"So I judged," the detective agreed, drily. "By the way, have you seen
+Russell again?"
+
+"Yes. There's another thing. I don't see where you get that stuff about
+his weak alibi. It's copper-riveted!"
+
+"He says so, you mean."
+
+"Yes; and the way he says it. But I followed your advice. I've
+advertised, through the police here and up and down the Atlantic coast,
+for any automobile party or parties who went along that Sloanehurst road
+last night between ten-thirty and eleven-thirty."
+
+"Fine!" Hastings congratulated. "But get me straight on that: I don't
+say any of them saw him; I say there's a chance that he was seen."
+
+The old man went back, not to examination of Hendricks' parcel, but to
+further consideration of the possible contents of the letter that had
+been in the grey envelope. Russell, he reflected, had been present when
+Mildred Brace mailed it, and, what was more important, when Mildred
+started out of the apartment with it.
+
+He made sudden decision: he would question Russell again. Carefully
+placing Hendricks' package of dust and lint in a drawer of the table, he
+set out for the Eleventh street boarding house.
+
+It was, however, not Russell who figured most prominently in the
+accounts of the murder published by the Monday morning newspapers. The
+reporters, resenting the reticence they had encountered at Sloanehurst,
+and making much of Mrs. Brace's threats, put in the forefront of their
+stories an appealing picture of a bereaved mother's one-sided fight for
+justice against the baffling combination of the Sloanehurst
+secretiveness and indifference and the mysterious circumstances of the
+daughter's death. Not one of them questioned the validity of Russell's
+alibi.
+
+"With the innocence of the dead girl's fiance established," said one
+account, "Sheriff Crown last night made no secret of his chagrin that
+Berne Webster had collapsed at the very moment when the sheriff was on
+the point of putting him through a rigid cross-examination. The young
+lawyer's retirement from the scene, coupled with the Sloane family's
+retaining the celebrated detective, Jefferson Hastings, as a buffer
+against any questioning of the Sloanehurst people, has given Society,
+here and in Virginia, a topic for discussion of more than ordinary
+interest."
+
+Another paragraph that caught Hastings' attention, as he read between
+mouthfuls of his breakfast, was this:
+
+"Mrs. Brace, discussing the tragedy with a reporter last night, showed a
+surprising knowledge of all its incidents. Although she had not left her
+apartment in the Walman all day, she had been questioned by both Sheriff
+Crown and Mr. Hastings, not to mention the unusually large number of
+newspaper writers who besieged her for interviews.
+
+"And it seemed that, in addition to answering the queries put to her by
+the investigators, she had accomplished a vast amount of keen inquiry on
+her own account. When talking to her, it is impossible for one to escape
+the impression that this extraordinarily intelligent woman believes she
+can prove the guilt of the man who struck down her daughter."
+
+"Just what I was afraid of," thought the detective. "Nearly every paper
+siding with her!"
+
+His face brightened.
+
+"All the better," he consoled himself. "More chance of her overreaching
+herself--as long as she don't know what I suspect. I'll get the meaning
+of that grey letter yet!"
+
+But he was worried. Berne Webster's collapse, he knew, was too
+convenient for Webster--it looked like pretence. Ninety-nine out of
+every hundred newspaper readers would consider his illness a fake, the
+obvious trick to escape the work of explaining what seemed to be
+inexplicable circumstances.
+
+To Hastings the situation was particularly annoying because he had
+brought it about; his own questioning had turned out to be the straw
+that broke the suspected man's endurance.
+
+"Always blundering!" he upbraided himself. "Trying to be so all-shot
+smart, I overplayed my hand."
+
+He got Dr. Garnet on the wire.
+
+"Doctor," he said, in a tone that implored, "I'm obliged to see Webster
+today."
+
+"Sorry, Mr. Hastings," came the instant refusal; "but it can't be done."
+
+"For one question," qualified Hastings; "less than a minute's talk--one
+word, 'yes' or 'no'? It's almost a matter of life and death."
+
+"If that man's excited about anything," Garnet retorted, "it will be
+entirely a matter of death. Frankly, I couldn't see my way clear to
+letting you question him if his escaping arrest depended on it. I called
+in Dr. Welles last night; and I'm giving you his opinion as well as my
+own."
+
+"When can I see him, then?"
+
+"I can't answer that. It may be a week; it may be a month. All I can
+tell you today is that you can't question him now."
+
+With that information, Hastings decided to interview Judge Wilton.
+
+"He's the next best," he thought. "That whispering across the woman's
+body--it's got to be explained, and explained right!"
+
+As a matter of fact, he had refrained from this inquiry the day before,
+so that his mind might not be clouded by anger. His deception by the
+judge had greatly provoked him.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+MRS. BRACE BEGINS
+
+
+Court had recessed for lunch when Hastings, going down a second-story
+corridor of the Alexandria county courthouse, entered Judge Wilton's
+anteroom. His hand was raised to knock on the door of the inner office
+when he heard the murmur of voices on the other side. He took off his
+hat and sat down, welcoming the breeze that swept through the room, a
+refreshing contrast to the forenoon's heat and smother downstairs.
+
+He reached for his knife and piece of pine, checked the motion and
+glanced swiftly toward the closed door. A high note of a woman's voice
+touched his memory, for a moment confusing him. But it was for a moment
+only. While the sound was still in his ears, he remembered where he had
+heard it before--from Mrs. Brace when, toward the close of his interview
+with her, she had shrilly denounced Berne Webster.
+
+Mrs. Brace, her daughter's funeral barely three hours old, had started
+to make her threats good.
+
+While he was considering that, the door of the private office swung
+inward, Judge Wilton's hand on the knob. It opened on the middle of a
+sentence spoken by Mrs. Brace:
+
+"--tell you, you're a fool if you think you can put me off with that!"
+
+Her gleaming eyes were so furtive and so quick that they traversed the
+whole of Wilton's countenance many times, a fiery probe of each separate
+feature. The inflections of her voice invested her words with ugliness;
+but she did not shriek.
+
+"You bully everybody else, but not me! They don't call you 'Hard Tom
+Wilton' for nothing, do they? I know you! I know you, I tell you! I was
+down there in the courtroom when you sentenced that man! You had cruelty
+in your mind, cruelty on your face. Ugh! And you're cruel to me--and
+taking an ungodly pleasure in it! Well, let me tell you, I won't be
+broken by it. I want fair dealing, and I'll have it!"
+
+At that moment, facing full toward Hastings, she caught sight of him.
+But his presence seemed a matter of no importance to her; it did not
+break the stream of her fierce invective. She did not even pause.
+
+He saw at once that her anger of yesterday was as nothing to the
+storming rage which shook her now. Every line of her face revealed
+malignity. The eyebrows were drawn higher on her forehead, nearer to the
+wave of white hair that showed under her black hat. The nostrils dilated
+and contracted with indescribable rapidity. The lips, thickened and
+rolling back at intervals from her teeth, revealed more distinctly that
+animal, exaggerated wetness which had so repelled him.
+
+"You were out there on that lawn!" she pursued, her glance flashing back
+to the judge. "You were out there when she was killed! If you try to
+tell me you----"
+
+"Stop it! Stop it!" Wilton commanded, and, as he did so, turned his head
+to an angle that put Hastings within his field of vision.
+
+The judge, with one hand on the doorknob, had been pressing with the
+other against the woman's shoulders, trying to thrust her out of the
+room--a move which she resisted by a hanging-back posture that threw her
+weight on his arm. He put more strength now into his effort and
+succeeded in forcing her clear of the threshold. His eyes were blazing
+under the shadow of his heavy, overhanging brows; but there was about
+him no suggestion of a loss of self-control.
+
+"I'm glad to see you!" he told Hastings, speaking over Mrs. Brace's
+head, and smiling a deprecatory recognition of the hopelessness of
+contending with an infuriated woman.
+
+She addressed them both.
+
+"Smile all you please, now!" she threatened. "But the accounts aren't
+balanced yet! Wait for what I choose to tell--what I intend to do!"
+
+Suddenly she got herself in hand. It was as unexpected and thorough a
+transformation as the one Hastings had seen twenty-four hours before
+during her declaration of Webster's guilt. She had the same appearance
+now as then, the same tautness of body, the same flat, constrained tone.
+
+She turned to Wilton:
+
+"I ask you again, will you help me as I asked you? Are you going to deny
+me fair play?"
+
+He looked at her in amazement, scowling.
+
+"What fair play?" he exclaimed, and, without waiting for her reply, said
+to Hastings: "She insists that I know young Webster killed her daughter,
+that I can produce the evidence to prove it. Can you disabuse her mind?"
+
+She surprised them by going, slowly and with apparent composure, toward
+the corridor door. There she paused, looking at first one and then the
+other with an evil smile so openly contemptuous that it affected them
+strongly. There was something in it that made it flagrantly insulting.
+Hastings turned away from her. Judge Wilton gave her look for look, but
+his already flushed face coloured more darkly.
+
+"Very well, Judge Wilton!" she gave him insolent good-bye, in which
+there was also unmistakable threat. "You'll do the right thing sooner or
+later--and as I tell you. You're--get this straight--you're not through
+with me yet!"
+
+She laughed, one low note, and, impossible as it seemed, proclaimed with
+the harsh sound an absolute confidence in what she said.
+
+"Nor you, Mr. Hastings!" she continued, taking her time with her words,
+and waiting until the detective faced her again, before she concluded:
+"You'll sing a different tune when you find I've got this affair in my
+hands--tight!"
+
+Still smiling her contempt, as if she enjoyed a feeling of superiority,
+she left the room. When her footsteps died down the corridor, the two
+men drew long breaths of relief.
+
+Wilton broke the ensuing silence.
+
+"Is she sane?"
+
+"Yes," Hastings said, "so far as sanity can be said to exist in a mind
+consecrated to evil."
+
+The judge was surprised by the solemnity of the other's manner. "Why do
+you say that?" he asked. "Do you know that much about her?"
+
+"Who wouldn't?" Hastings retorted. "It's written all over her."
+
+Wilton led the way into his private office and closed the door.
+
+"I'm glad it happened at just this time," he said, "when everybody's
+out of the building." He struck the desk with his fist. "By God!" he
+ground out through gritted teeth. "How I hate these wild, unbridled
+women!"
+
+"Yes," agreed Hastings, taking the chair Wilton rolled forward for him.
+"She worries me. Wonder if she's going to Sloanehurst."
+
+"That would be the logical sequel to this visit," Wilton said. "But
+pardon my show of temper. You came to see me?"
+
+"Yes; and, like her, for information. But," the detective said, smiling,
+"not for rough-house purposes."
+
+The judge had not entirely regained his equanimity; his face still wore
+a heightened colour; his whole bearing was that of a man mentally
+reviewing the results of an unpleasant incident. Instead of replying
+promptly to Hastings, he sat looking out of the window, obviously
+troubled.
+
+"Her game is blackmail," he declared at last.
+
+"On whom?" the detective queried.
+
+"Arthur Sloane, of course. She calculates that he'll play to have her
+cease annoying his daughter's fiance. And she'll impress Arthur, if
+Jarvis ever lets her get to him. Somehow, she strangely compels
+credence."
+
+"Not for me," Hastings objected, and did not point out that Wilton's
+words might be taken as an admission of Webster's guilt.
+
+The judge himself might have seen that.
+
+"I mean," he qualified, "she seems too smart a woman to put herself in a
+position where ridicule will be sure to overtake her. And yet, that's
+what she's doing--isn't she?"
+
+The detective was whittling, dropping the chips into the waste-basket.
+He spoke with a deliberateness unusual even in him, framing each
+sentence in his mind before giving it utterance.
+
+"I reckon, judge, you and I have had some four or five talks--that is,
+not counting Saturday evening and yesterday at Sloanehurst. That's about
+the extent of our acquaintance. That right?"
+
+"Why, yes," Wilton said, surprised by the change of topic.
+
+"I mention it," Hastings explained, "to show how I've felt toward
+you--you interested me. Excuse me if I speak plainly--you'll see why
+later on--but you struck me as worth studying, deep. And I thought you
+must have sized me up, catalogued me one way or the other. You're like
+me: waste no time with men who bore you. I felt certain, if you'd been
+asked, you'd have checked me off as reliable. Would you?"
+
+"Unquestionably."
+
+"And, if I was reliable then, I'm reliable now. That's a fair
+assumption, ain't it?"
+
+"Certainly." The judge laughed shortly, a little embarrassed.
+
+"That brings me to my point. You'll believe me when I tell you my only
+interest in this murder is to find the murderer, and, while I'm doing
+it, to save the Sloanes as much as possible from annoyance. You'll
+believe me, also, when I say I've got to have all the facts if I'm to
+work surely and fast. You recognize the force of that, don't you?"
+
+"Why, yes, Hastings." Wilton spoke impatiently this time.
+
+"Fine!" The old man shot him a genial glance over the steel-rimmed
+spectacles. "That's the introduction. Here's the real thing: I've an
+idea you could tell me more about what happened on the lawn Saturday
+night."
+
+After his involuntary, immediate start of surprise, Wilton tilted his
+head, slowly blowing the cigar smoke from his pursed lips. He had a fine
+air of reflection, careful thought.
+
+"I can elaborate what I've already told you," he said, finally, "if
+that's what you mean--go into greater detail."
+
+He watched closely the edge of the detective's face unhidden by his
+bending over the wood he was cutting.
+
+"I don't think elaboration could do much good," Hastings objected. "I
+referred to new stuff--some fact or facts you might have omitted,
+unconsciously."
+
+"Unconsciously?" Wilton echoed the word, as a man does when his mind is
+overtaxed.
+
+Hastings took it up.
+
+"Or consciously, even," he said quickly, meeting the other's eyes.
+
+The judge moved sharply, bracing himself against the back of the chair.
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"Skilled in the law yourself, thoroughly familiar, with the rules of
+evidence, it's more than possible that you might have reviewed matters
+and decided that there were things which, if they were known, would do
+harm instead of good--obscure the truth, perhaps; or hinder the hunt for
+the guilty man instead of helping it on. That's clear enough, isn't it?
+You might have thought that?"
+
+The look of sullen resentment in the judge's face was unmistakable.
+
+"Oh, say what you mean!" he retorted warmly. "What you're insinuating is
+that I've lied!"
+
+"It don't have to be called that."
+
+"Well, then, that I, a judge, sworn to uphold the law and punish crime,
+have elected to thwart the law and to cheat its officials of the facts
+they should have. Is that what you mean?"
+
+"I'll be honest with you," Hastings admitted, unmoved by the other's
+grand manner. "I've wondered about that--whether you thought a judge had
+a right to do a thing of that sort."
+
+Wilton's hand, clenched on the edge of the desk, shook perceptibly.
+
+"Did you think that, judge?" the detective persisted.
+
+The judge hesitated.
+
+"It's a point I've never gone into," he said finally, with intentional
+sarcasm.
+
+Hastings snapped his knife-blade shut and thrust the piece of wood into
+his pocket.
+
+"Let's get away from this beating about the bush," he suggested, voice
+on a sterner note. "I don't want to irritate you unnecessarily, judge. I
+came here for information--stuff I'm more than anxious to get. And I go
+back to that now: won't you tell me anything more about the discovery of
+the woman's body by the two of you--you and Webster?"
+
+"No; I won't! I've covered the whole thing--several times."
+
+"Is there anything that you haven't told--anything you've decided to
+suppress?"
+
+Wilton got up from his chair and struck the desk with his fist.
+
+"See here, Hastings! You're getting beside yourself. Representing Miss
+Sloane doesn't warrant your insulting her friends. Suppose we consider
+this interview at an end. Some other time, perhaps----"
+
+Hastings also had risen.
+
+"Just a minute, judge!" he interrupted, all at once assuming the
+authoritative air that had so amazed Wilton the night of the murder.
+"You're suppressing something--and I know it!"
+
+"That's a lie!" Wilton retorted, the flush deepening to crimson on his
+face.
+
+"It ain't a lie," Hastings contradicted, holding his self-control. "And
+you watch yourself! Don't you call me a liar again--not as long as you
+live! You can't afford the insult."
+
+"Then, don't provoke it. Don't----"
+
+"What did Webster whisper to you, across that corpse?" Hastings
+demanded, going nearer to Wilton.
+
+"What's this?" Wilton's tone was one of consternation; the words might
+have been spoken by a man stumbling on an unsuspected horror in a dark
+room.
+
+They stared at each other for several dragging seconds. The detective
+waved a hand toward the judge's chair.
+
+"Sit down," he said, resuming his own seat.
+
+There followed another pause, longer than the first. The judge's
+breathing was laboured, audible. He lowered his eyes and passed his hand
+across their thick lids. When he looked up again, Hastings commanded him
+with unwavering, expectant gaze.
+
+"I've made a mistake," Wilton began huskily, and stopped.
+
+"Yes?" Hastings said, unbending. "How?"
+
+"I see it now. It was a matter of no importance, in itself. I've
+exaggerated it, by my silence, into disproportionate significance." His
+tone changed to curiosity. "Who told you about--the whispering?"
+
+The detective was implacable, emphasizing his dominance.
+
+"First, what was it?" When Wilton still hesitated, he repeated: "What
+did Webster say when he put his hand over your mouth--to prevent your
+outcry?"
+
+The judge threw up his head, as if in sudden resolve to be frank. He
+spoke more readily, with a clumsy semblance of amiability.
+
+"He said, 'Don't do that! You'll frighten Lucille!' I tried to nod my
+head, agreeing. But he misunderstood the movement, I think. He thought
+I meant to shout anyway; he tightened his grip. 'Keep quiet! Will you
+keep quiet?' he repeated two or three times. When I made my meaning
+clear, he took his hand away. He explained later what had occurred to
+him the moment Arthur's light flashed on. He said it came to him before
+he clearly realized who I was. It----
+
+"I swear, Hastings, I hate to tell you this. It suggests unjust
+suspicions. Of what value are the wild ideas of a nervous man, all to
+pieces anyway, when he stumbles on a dead woman in the middle of the
+night?"
+
+"They were valuable enough," Hastings flicked him, "for you to cover
+them up--for some reason. What were they?"
+
+Wilton was puzzled by the detective's tone, its abstruse insinuation.
+But he answered the question.
+
+"He said his first idea, the one that made him think of Lucille, was
+that Arthur might have had something to do with the murder."
+
+"Why? Why did he think Sloane had killed Mildred Brace?"
+
+"Because she had been the cause of Lucille's breaking her engagement
+with Berne--and Arthur knew that. Arthur had been in a rage----"
+
+"All right!" Hastings checked him suddenly, and, getting to his feet,
+fell to pacing the room, his eyes, always on Wilton. "I'm acquainted
+with that part of it."
+
+He paid no attention to Wilton's evident surprise at that statement. He
+had a surprise of his own to deal with: the unexpected similarity of the
+judge's story with Lucille Sloane's theorizing as to what Webster had
+whispered across the body in the moment of its discovery. The two
+statements were identical--a coincidence that defied credulity.
+
+He caught himself doubting Lucille. Had she been theorizing, after all?
+Or had she relayed to him words that Wilton had put into her mouth?
+Then, remembering her grief, her desperate appeals to him for aid, he
+dismissed the suspicion.
+
+"I'd stake my life on her honesty," he decided. "Her intuition gave her
+the correct solution--if Wilton's not lying now!"
+
+He put the obvious question: "Judge, am I the first one to hear
+this--from you?" and received the obvious answer: "You are. I didn't
+volunteer it to you, did I?"
+
+"All right. Now, did you believe Webster? Wait a minute! Did you believe
+his fear wasn't for himself when he gagged you that way?"
+
+"Yes; I did," replied Wilton, in a tone that lacked sincerity.
+
+"Do you believe it now?"
+
+"If I didn't, do you think I'd have tried for a moment to conceal what
+he said to me?"
+
+"Why did you conceal it?"
+
+"Because Arthur Sloane was my friend, and his daughter's happiness would
+have been ruined if I'd thrown further suspicion on him. Besides, what I
+did conceal could have been of no value to any detective or sheriff on
+earth. It meant nothing, so long as I knew the boy's sincerity--and his
+innocence as well as Arthur's."
+
+"But," Hastings persisted, "why all this concern for Webster, after his
+engagement had been broken?"
+
+"How's that?" Wilton countered. "Oh, I see! The break wasn't permanent.
+Arthur and I had decided on that. We knew they'd get together again."
+
+Hastings halted in front of the judge's chair.
+
+"Have you kept back anything else?" he demanded.
+
+"Nothing," Wilton said, with a return of his former sullenness. "And,"
+he forced himself to the avowal, "I'm sorry I kept that back. It's
+nothing."
+
+Hastings' manner changed on the instant. He was once more cordial.
+
+"All right, judge!" he said heartily, consulting his ponderous watch.
+"This is all between us. I take it, you wouldn't want it known by the
+sheriff, even now?" Wilton shook his head in quick negation. "All right!
+He needn't--if things go well. And the person I got it from won't spread
+it around.--That satisfactory?"
+
+The judge's smile, in spite of his best effort, was devoid of
+friendliness. The dark flush that persisted in his countenance told how
+hardly he kept down his anger.
+
+Hastings put on his hat and ambled toward the door.
+
+"By the way," he proclaimed an afterthought, "I've got to ask one more
+favour, judge. If Mrs. Brace troubles you again, will you let me know
+about it, at the earliest possible moment?"
+
+He went out, chuckling.
+
+But the judge was as mystified as he was resentful. He had detected in
+Hastings' manner, he thought, the same self-satisfaction, the same quiet
+elation, which he and Berne had observed at the close of the music-room
+interview. Going to the window, he addressed the summer sky:
+
+"Who the devil does the old fool suspect--Arthur or Berne?"
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+MR. CROWN FORMS AN ALLIANCE
+
+
+"If you've as much as five hundred dollars at your disposal--pin-money
+savings, perhaps--anything you can check on without the knowledge of
+others, you can do it," Hastings urged, ending a long argument.
+
+"I! Take it to her myself?" Lucille still protested, although she could
+not refute his reasonings.
+
+"It's the only way that would be effective--and it wouldn't be so
+difficult. I had counted on your courage--your unusual courage."
+
+"But what will it accomplish? If I could only see that, clearly!"
+
+She was beginning to yield to his insistence.
+
+They were in the rose garden, in the shade of a little arbor from whose
+roof the great red flowers drooped almost to the girl's hair. He was
+acutely aware of the pathetic contrast between her white, ravaged face
+and the surrounding scene, the fragrance, the roses of every colour
+swaying to the slow breeze of late afternoon, the long, cool shadows. He
+found it hard to force her to the plan, and would have abandoned it but
+for the possibilities it presented to his mind.
+
+"I've already touched on that," he applied himself to her doubts. "I
+want you to trust me there, to accept my solemn assurance that, if Mrs.
+Brace accepts this money from you on our terms, it will hasten my
+capture of the murderer. I'll say more than that: you are my only
+possible help in the matter. Won't you believe me?"
+
+She sat quite still, a long time, looking steadily at him with unseeing
+eyes.
+
+"I shall have to go to that dreadful woman's apartment, be alone with
+her, make a secret bargain," she enumerated the various parts of her
+task, wonder and repugnance mingling in her voice. "That horrible woman!
+You say, yourself, Mr. Hastings, she's horrible."
+
+"Still," he repeated, "you can do it."
+
+A little while ago she had cried out, both hands clenched on the arm of
+the rustic bench, her eyes opening wide in the startled look he had come
+to know: "If I could do something, _anything_, for Berne! Dr. Welles
+said only an hour ago he had no more than an even chance for his life.
+Half the time he can't speak! And I'm responsible. I am! I know it. I
+try to think I'm not. But I am!"
+
+He recurred to that.
+
+"Dr. Welles said the ending of Mr. Webster's suspense would be the best
+medicine for him. And I think Webster would see that nobody but you
+could do this--in the very nature of things. The absolute secrecy
+required, the fact that you buy her silence, pay her to cease her
+accusations against Berne--don't you see? He'd want you to do it."
+
+That finished her resistance. She made him repeat all his directions,
+precautions for secrecy.
+
+"I wish I could tell you how important it is," he said. "And keep this
+in mind always: I rely on your paying her the money without even a
+suspicion of it getting abroad. If accidents happen and you're seen
+entering the Walman, what more natural than that you want to ask this
+woman the meaning of her vague threats against--against
+Sloanehurst?--But of money, your real object, not a word! Nobody's to
+have a hint of it."
+
+"Oh, yes; I see the necessity of that." But she was distressed. "Suppose
+she refuses?"
+
+Her altered frame of mind, an eagerness now to succeed with the plan she
+had at first refused, brought him again his thought of yesterday: "If
+she were put to it--if she could save only one and had to choose between
+father and fiance, her choice would be for the fiance."
+
+He answered her question. "She won't refuse," he declared, with a
+confidence she could not doubt. "If I thought she would, I'd almost be
+willing to say we'd never find the man who killed her daughter."
+
+"When I think of Russell's alibi----"
+
+"Have we mentioned Russell?" he protested, laughing away her fears.
+"Anyway, his old alibi's no good--if that's what's troubling you. Wait
+and see!"
+
+He was in high good humour.
+
+
+In that same hour the woman for whom he had planned this trap was busy
+with a scheme of her own. Her object was to form an alliance with
+Sheriff Crown. That gentleman, to use his expressive phrase, had been
+"putting her over the jumps" for the past forty minutes, bringing to the
+work of cross-questioning her all the intelligence, craftiness and logic
+at his command. The net result of his fusillade of interrogatories,
+however, was exceedingly meagre.
+
+As he sat, caressing his chin and thrusting forward his bristly
+moustache, Mrs. Brace perceived in his eyes a confession of failure.
+Although he was far from suspecting it, he presented to her keen
+scrutiny an amusing figure. She observed that his shoulders drooped, and
+that, as he slowly produced a handkerchief and mopped his forehead, his
+movements were eloquent of gloom.
+
+In fact, Mr. Crown felt himself at a loss. He had come to the end of his
+resourcefulness in the art of probing for facts. He was about to take
+his departure, with the secret realization that he had learned nothing
+new--unless an increased admiration of Mrs. Brace's sharpness of wit
+might be catalogued as knowledge.
+
+She put his thought into language.
+
+"You see, Mr. Crown, you're wasting your time shouting at me, bullying
+me, accusing me of protecting the murderer of my own daughter."
+
+There was a new note in her voice, a hint, ever so slight, of a
+willingness to be friendly. He was not insensible to it. Hearing it, he
+put himself on guard, wondering what it portended.
+
+"I didn't say that," he contradicted, far from graciousness. "I said you
+knew a whole lot more about the murder than you'd tell--tell me anyway."
+
+"But why should I want to conceal anything that might bring the man to
+justice?"
+
+"Blessed if I know!" he conceded, not without signs of irritation.
+
+So far as he could see, not a feature of her face changed. The lifted
+eyebrows were still high upon her forehead, interrogative and mocking;
+the restless, gleaming eyes still drilled into various parts of his
+person and attire; the thin lips continued their moving pictures of
+contempt. And yet, he saw, too, that she presented to him now another
+countenance.
+
+The change was no more than a shadow; and the shadow was so light that
+he could not be sure of its meaning. He thought it was friendliness, but
+that opinion was dulled by recurrence of his admiration of her
+"smartness." He feared some imposition.
+
+"You've adopted Mr. Hastings' absurd theory," she said, as if she
+wondered. "You've subscribed to it without question."
+
+"What theory?"
+
+"That I know who the guilty man is."
+
+"Well?" He was still on guard.
+
+"It surprises me--that's all--a man of your intellect, your
+originality."
+
+She sighed, marvelling at this addition to life's conundrums.
+
+"Why?" he asked, bluntly.
+
+"I should never have thought you'd put yourself in that position before
+the public. I mean, letting him lead you around by the
+nose--figuratively."
+
+Mr. Crown started forward in his chair, eyes popped. He was indignant
+and surprised.
+
+"Is that what they're saying?" he demanded.
+
+"Naturally," she said, and with the one word laid it down as an
+impossibility that "they" could have said anything else. "That's what
+the reporters tell me."
+
+"Well, I'll be--dog-goned!" The knuckle-like chin dropped. "They're
+saying that, are they?"
+
+Disturbed as he was, he noticed that she regarded him with apparently
+genuine interest--that, perhaps, she added to her interest a regret that
+he had displayed no originality in the investigation, a man of his
+intellect!
+
+"They couldn't understand why you were playing Hastings' game," she
+proceeded, "playing it to his smallest instructions."
+
+"Hastings' game! What the thunder are they talking about? What do they
+mean, his game?"
+
+"His desire to keep suspicion away from the Sloanes and Mr. Webster.
+That's what they hired him for--isn't it?"
+
+"I guess it is--by gravy!" Mr. Crown's long-drawn sigh was distinctly
+tremulous.
+
+"That old man pockets his fee when he throws Gene Russell into jail.
+Why, then, isn't it his game to convince you of Gene's guilt? Why isn't
+it his game to persuade you of my secret knowledge of Gene's guilt?
+Why----"
+
+"So, that's----"
+
+"Let me say what I started," she in turn interrupted him. "As one of
+the reporters pointed out, why isn't it his game to try to make a fool
+of you?"
+
+The smile with which she recommended that rumour to his attention
+incensed him further. It patronized him. It said, as openly as if she
+had spoken the words: "I'm really very sorry for you."
+
+He dropped his hands to his widespread knees, slid forward to the edge
+of his chair, thrust his face closer to hers, peered into her hard face
+for her meaning.
+
+"Making a fool of me, is he?" he said in the brutal key of unrepressed
+rage.
+
+A quick motion of her lifted brows, a curve of her lower
+lip--indubitably, a new significance of expression--stopped his
+outburst.
+
+"By George!" he said, taken aback. "By George!" he repeated, this time
+in a coarse exultation. He thrust himself still closer to her, certain
+now of her meaning.
+
+"What do you know?" He lowered his voice and asked again: "Mrs. Brace,
+what do you know?"
+
+She moved back, farther from him. She was not to be rushed
+into--anything. She made him appreciate the difficulty of "getting next"
+to her. He no longer felt fear of her imposing on him--she had just
+exposed, for his benefit, how Hastings had played on his credulity! He
+felt grateful to her for that. His only anxiety now was that she might
+change her mind, might refuse him the assistance which that new and
+subtle expression had promised a moment ago.
+
+"If I thought you'd use----" she began, broke off, and looked past his
+shoulder at the opposite wall, the pupils of her eyes sharp points of
+light, lips drawn to a line almost invisible.
+
+Her evident prudence fired his eagerness.
+
+"If I'd do what?" he asked. "If you thought I'd--what?"
+
+"Let me think," she requested.
+
+He changed his posture, with a great show of watching the sunset sky,
+and stole little glances at her smooth, untroubled face. He believed now
+that she could put him on the trail of the murderer. He confessed to
+himself, unreservedly, that Hastings had tricked him, held him up to
+ridicule--to the ridicule of a nation, for this crime held the interest
+of the entire country. But here was his chance for revenge! With this
+"smart" woman's help, he would outwit Hastings!
+
+"If you'd use my ideas confidentially," she said at last, eying him as
+if she speculated on his honesty; "if I were sure that----"
+
+"Why can't you be sure of it?" he broke in. "My job is to catch the man
+who killed your daughter. I've got two jobs. The other is to show up
+old Hastings! Why wouldn't I do as you ask--exactly as you ask?"
+
+She tantalized him.
+
+"And remember that what I say is ideas only, not knowledge?"
+
+"Sure! Certainly, Mrs. Brace."
+
+"And, even when you arrest the right man, say nothing of what you owe me
+for my suggestions? You're the kind of man to want to do that sort of
+thing--give me credit for helping you."
+
+Even that pleased him.
+
+"If you specify silence, I give you my word on it," he said, with a
+fragment of the pompous manner he had brought into the apartment more
+than an hour ago.
+
+"You'll take my ideas, my theory, work on it and never bring me into
+it--in any way? If you make that promise, I'll tell you what I think,
+what I'm certain is the answer to this puzzle."
+
+"Win or lose, right or wrong idea, you have my oath on it."
+
+"Very well!" She said that with the air of one embarking on a tremendous
+venture and scorning all its possibilities of harm. "I shall trust you
+fully.--First, let me sketch all the known facts, everything connected
+with the tragedy, and everything I know concerning the conduct of the
+affected individuals since."
+
+He was leaning far toward her once more, a child-like impatience stamped
+on his face. As she proceeded, his admiration grew.
+
+For this, there was ample ground. The newspaper paragraph Hastings had
+read that morning commenting on her mastery of all the details of the
+crime had scarcely done her justice. Before she concluded, Crown had
+heard from her lips little incidents that had gone over his head. She
+put new and accurate meaning into facts time and time again, speaking
+with the particularity and vividness of an eye-witness.
+
+"Now," she said, having reconstructed the crime and described the
+subsequent behaviour of the tragedy's principal actors; "now who's
+guilty?"
+
+"Exactly," echoed Crown, with a click in his throat. "Who's guilty?
+What's your theory?"
+
+She was silent, eyes downcast, her hands smoothing the black, much-worn
+skirt over her lean knees. Recital of the gruesome story, the death of
+her only child, had left her unmoved, had not quickened her breathing.
+
+"In telling you that," she resumed, her restless eyes striking his at
+rapid intervals, "I think I'll put you in a position to get the right
+man--if you'll act."
+
+"Oh, I'll act!" he declared, largely. "Don't bother your head about
+that!"
+
+"Of course, it's only a theory----"
+
+"Yes; I know! And I'll keep it to myself."
+
+"Very well. Arthur Sloane is prostrated, can't be interviewed. He can't
+be interviewed, for the simple reason that he's afraid he'll tell what
+he knows. Why is he afraid of that? Because he knows too much, for his
+own comfort, and too much for his daughter's comfort. How does he know
+it? Because he saw enough night before last to leave him sure of the
+murderer's identity.
+
+"He was the man who turned on the light, showing Webster and Judge
+Wilton bending over Mildred's body. It occurred at a time when usually
+he is in his first sound sleep--from bromides. Something must have
+happened to awake him, an outcry, something. And yet, he says he didn't
+see them--Wilton and Webster."
+
+"By gravy!" exclaimed the sheriff, awe-struck.
+
+"Either," she continued, "Arthur Sloane saw the murder done, or he
+looked out in time to see who the murderer was. The facts substantiate
+that. They are corroborated by his subsequent behaviour. Immediately
+after the murder he was in a condition that couldn't be explained by
+the mere fact that he's a sufferer from chronic nervousness. When
+Hastings asked him to take a handkerchief, he would have fallen to the
+ground but for the judge's help. He couldn't hold an electric torch.
+And, ever since, he's been in bed, afraid to talk. Why, he even refused
+to talk to Hastings, the man he's retained for the family's protection!"
+
+"He did, did he! How do you know that, Mrs. Brace?"
+
+"Isn't it enough that I know it--or advance it as a theory?"
+
+"Did--I thought, possibly, Jarvis, the valet, told you."
+
+She ignored that.
+
+"Now, as to the daughter of the house. There was only one possible
+reason for Lucille Sloane's hiring Hastings: she was afraid somebody in
+the house, Webster, of course, would be arrested. Being in love with
+him, she never would have suspected him unless there had been concrete,
+undeniable evidence of his guilt. Do you grasp that reasoning?"
+
+"Sure, I do!" Mr. Crown condemned himself. "What I'm wondering is why I
+didn't see it long ago."
+
+"She, too, you recall, was looking out of a window--on that side of the
+house--scarcely fifteen yards from where the crime was done. It's not
+hard to believe that she saw what her father saw: the murder or the
+murderer.
+
+"Mr. Crown, if you can make her or her father talk, you'll get the truth
+of this thing, the truth and the murderer.
+
+"And look at Judge Wilton's part. You asked me why I went to his office
+this morning. I went because I'm sure he knows the truth. Didn't he stay
+right at Webster's side when old Hastings interviewed Webster yesterday?
+Why? To keep Webster from letting out, in his panic, a secret which both
+of them knew."
+
+The sheriff's admiration by this time was boundless. He felt driven to
+give it expression.
+
+"Mrs. Brace, you're a loo-loo! A loo-loo, by gravy! Sure, that was his
+reason. He couldn't have had any other!"
+
+"As for Webster himself," she carried on her exposition, without
+emotion, without the slightest recognition of her pupil's praise, "he
+proves the correctness of everything we've said, so far. That secret
+which the judge feared he would reveal, that secret which old Hastings
+was blundering after--that secret, Mr. Crown, was such a danger to him
+that, to escape the questioning of even stupid old Hastings, he could do
+nothing but crumple up on the floor and feign illness, prostration. Why,
+don't you see, he was afraid to talk!"
+
+"Everything you say hits the mark!" agreed Crown, smiling happily.
+"Centre-shots! Centre-shots! You've been right from the very beginning.
+You tried to tell me all this yesterday morning, and, fool that I
+was--fool that Hastings was!" He switched to a summary of what she had
+put into his mind: "It's right! Webster killed her, and Sloane and his
+daughter saw him at it. Even Wilton knows it--and he a judge! It seems
+impossible. By gravy! he ought to be impeached."
+
+A new idea struck him. Mrs. Brace, imperturbable, exhibiting no elation,
+was watching him closely. She saw his sudden change of countenance. He
+had thought: "She didn't reason this out. Russell saw the murder--the
+coward--and he's told her. He ran away from----"
+
+Another suspicion attacked him: "But that was Jarvis' night off. Has she
+seen Jarvis?"
+
+Impelled to put this fresh bewilderment into words, he was stayed by the
+restless, brilliant eyes with which she seemed to penetrate his
+lumbering mind. He was afraid of losing her cooperation. She was too
+valuable an ally to affront. He kept quiet.
+
+She brought him back to her purpose.
+
+"Then, you agree with me? You think Webster's guilty?"
+
+"Think!" He almost shouted his contempt of the inadequate word. "Think!
+I know! Guilty? The man's black with guilt."
+
+"I'm sure of it," she said, curiously skilful in surrendering to him all
+credit for that vital discovery. "What are you going to do--now that you
+know?"
+
+"Make him talk, turn him inside out! Playing sick, is he! I'm going back
+to Sloanehurst this evening. I'm going to start something. You can take
+this from me: Webster'll loosen that tongue of his before another sun
+rises!"
+
+But that was not her design.
+
+"You can't do it," she objected, her voice heavy with disappointment.
+"Dr. Garnet, your own coroner, says questioning will kill him. Dr.
+Garnet's as thoroughly fooled as Hastings, and," she prodded him with
+suddenly sharp tone, "you."
+
+"That's right." He was crestfallen, plucking at his chin. "That's hard
+to get around. But I've got to get around it! I've got to show results,
+Mrs. Brace. People, some of the papers even, are already hinting that
+I'm too easy on a rich man and his friend."
+
+"Yes," she said, evenly. "And you told--I understood you'd act, on our
+theory."
+
+"I've got to! I've got to act!"
+
+His confusion was manifest. He did not know what to do, and he was
+silent, hoping for a suggestion from her. She let him wait. The pause
+added to his embarrassment.
+
+"What would--that is," he forced himself to the appeal, "I was
+wondering--anything occur to you? See any way out of it?"
+
+"Of course, I know nothing about such procedure," she replied to that,
+slowly, as if she groped for a new idea. "But, if you got the proof from
+somewhere else, enough to warrant the arrest of Webster----" Her smile
+deprecated her probable ineptness. "If Arthur Sloane----"
+
+He fairly fell upon the idea.
+
+"Right!" he said, clapping his hands together. "Sloane's no dying man,
+is he? And he knows the whole story. Right you are, Mrs. Brace! He can
+shake and tremble and whine all he pleases, but tonight he's my meat--my
+meat, right! Talk? You bet he'll talk!"
+
+She considered, looking at the opposite wall. He was convinced that she
+examined the project, viewing it from the standpoint of his interest,
+seeking possible dangers of failure. Nevertheless, he hurried her
+decision.
+
+"It's the thing to do, isn't it?"
+
+"I should think so," she said at last. "You, with your mental
+forcefulness, your ability as a questioner--why, I don't see how you can
+fail to get at what he knows. Beside, you have the element of surprise
+on your side. That will go far toward sweeping him off his feet."
+
+He was again conscious of his debt of gratitude to this woman, and tried
+to voice it.
+
+"This is the first time," he declared, big with confidence, "I've felt
+that I had the right end of this case."
+
+When she had closed the door on him, she went back to the living room
+and set back in its customary place the chair he had occupied. Her own
+was where it always belonged. From there she went into the bathroom and,
+as Hastings had seen her do before, drew a glass of water which she
+drank slowly.
+
+Then, examining her hard, smooth face in the bedroom mirror, she said
+aloud:
+
+"Pretty soon, now, somebody will talk business--with me."
+
+There was no elation in her voice. But her lips were, for a moment,
+thick and wet, changing her countenance into a picture of inordinate
+greed.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+IN ARTHUR SLOANE'S ROOM
+
+
+Hastings went back to Sloanehurst that evening for another and more
+forceful attempt to argue Arthur Sloane into frankness. Like Mrs. Brace,
+he could not get away from the definite conclusion that Lucille's father
+was silent from fear of telling what he knew. Moreover, he realized
+that, without a closer connection with Sloane, his own handling of the
+case was seriously impeded.
+
+Lucille was on the front porch, evidently waiting for him, although he
+had not notified her in advance of his visit. She went hurriedly down
+the steps and met him on the walk. When he began an apology for having
+to annoy her so frequently, she cut short his excuses.
+
+"Oh, but I'm glad you're here--so glad! We need your help. The sheriff's
+here."
+
+She put her hand on his coat sleeve; he could feel the tremour of it as
+she pulled, unconsciously, on the cloth. She turned toward the verandah
+steps.
+
+"What's he doing?" he asked, detaining her.
+
+"He's in father's room," she said in feverish haste, "asking him all
+sorts of questions, saying ridiculous things. Really, I'm afraid--for
+father's health! Can't you go in now?"
+
+"Couldn't Judge Wilton manage him? Isn't the judge here?"
+
+"No. He came over at dinner time; but he went back to the Randalls'.
+Father didn't feel up to talking to him."
+
+Crown, she explained, had literally forced his way into the bedroom,
+disregarding her protests and paying no attention to the pretence of
+physical resistance displayed by Jarvis.
+
+"The man seems insane!" she said. "I want you to make him leave father's
+room--please!"
+
+She halted near the library door, leaving the matter in Hastings' hands.
+Since entering the house he had heard Crown's voice, raised to the key
+of altercation; and now, when he stepped into Sloane's room, the rush of
+words continued.
+
+The sheriff, unaware of the newcomer, stood near the bed, emphasizing
+his speech with restless arms and violent motions of his head, as if to
+galvanize into response the still and prostrate form before him. On the
+opposite side of the bed stood the sepulchral Jarvis, flashing malign
+looks at Crown, but chiefly busy, with unshaking hands, preparing a
+beverage of some sort for the sick man.
+
+Sloane lay on his back, eyes closed, face under the full glare of the
+reading light. His expression indicated both boredom and physical
+suffering.
+
+"--have to make an arrest!" Crown was saying. "You're making me take
+that action--ain't you? I come in here, considerate as I know how to be,
+and I ask you for a few facts. Do you give 'em to me? Not by a long
+shot! You lie there in that bed, and talk about leaping angels, and say
+I bore you! Well, Mr. Sloane, that won't get you a thing! You're where I
+said you were: it's either Webster that will be arrested--or yourself!
+Now, I'm giving you another chance. I'm asking you what you saw; and you
+can tell me--or take the consequences!"
+
+Hastings thought: "He's up that gum stump of his again, and don't know
+how to quit talking."
+
+Sloane made no answer.
+
+"Well," thundered Crown. "I'm asking you!"
+
+"Moaning martyrs!" Sloane protested in a thin, querulous tone. "Jarvis,
+the bromide."
+
+"All right!" the sheriff delivered his ultimatum. "I'll stick to what I
+said. Webster may be too sick to talk, but not too sick to have a
+warrant served on him. He'll be arrested because you won't tell me----"
+
+Hastings spoke then.
+
+"Gentlemen!" he greeted pleasantly. "Mr. Sloane, good evening. Mr.
+Sheriff--am I interrupting a private conference?"
+
+"Fiery fiends!" wailed Sloane. "Another!"
+
+Hastings gave his attention to Crown. He was certain that the man,
+balked by Sloane's refusal to "talk," would welcome an excuse for
+leaving the room.
+
+"Let me see you a moment, will you?" He put a hand on the sheriff's
+shoulder, persuading: "It's important, right now."
+
+"But I want to know what Mr. Sloane's going to say," Crown blustered.
+"If he'll tell----"
+
+Hastings stopped him with a whisper: "That's exactly what he'll
+do--soon!"
+
+He led the sheriff into the hall. They went into the parlour.
+
+"Now," Hastings began, in genial tone; "did you get anything from him?"
+
+"Not a dad-blamed thing!" Crown was still blustery. "But he'll talk
+before I'm through! You can put your little bets down on that!"
+
+"All right. You've had your chance at him. Better let me see him."
+
+Crown looked his distrust. He was thinking of Mrs. Brace's warning that
+this man had made a fool of him.
+
+"I'm not trying to put anything over on you," the detective assured
+him. "Fact is, I'm out here for the newspaper men. They've had nothing
+from him; they've asked me to get his story. I'll give it to you before
+I see them. What do you say?"
+
+Crown still hesitated.
+
+"If, after you've heard it," Hastings added, "you want to question him
+further, you can do it, of course. But this way we take two shots at
+it."
+
+To that, the other finally agreed.
+
+Hastings found Sloane smoking a cigarette, his eyes still closed. Jarvis
+was behind a screen near the door, now and then clinking glass against
+glass as he worked.
+
+The old man took a chair near the bed and waited for Sloane to speak. He
+waited a long time. Finally, the invalid looked at him from under
+lowered lids, slyly, like a child peeping. Hastings returned the look
+with a pleasant smile, his shrewd eyes sparkling over the rims of his
+spectacles.
+
+"Well!" Sloane said at last, in a whiney tone. "What do you want?"
+
+"First," Hastings apologized, "I want to say how sorry I am I didn't
+make myself clearly understood night before last when I told Miss Sloane
+I'd act as mouthpiece for this household. I didn't mean I could invent
+a statement for each of you, or for any of you. What I did mean amounts
+to this: if you, for instance, would tell me what you know--all you
+know--about this murder, I could relay it to the reporters--and to the
+sheriff, who's been annoying you so this evening. As----"
+
+"Flat-headed fiends!" Sloane cut in, writhing under the light coverlet.
+"Another harangue!"
+
+Hastings kept his temper.
+
+"No harangue about it. But it's to come to this, Mr. Sloane: you're
+handicapping me, and the reporters and the sheriff don't trust you."
+
+"Why? Why don't they trust me?" shrilled Sloane, writhing again.
+
+"Ill tell you in a very few words: because you refused to testify at the
+inquest yesterday, giving illness as an excuse. That's one reason.
+The----"
+
+"Howling helions! Wasn't I ill? Didn't I have enough to make me
+ill?--Jarvis, a little whiskey!"
+
+"Dr. Garnet hasn't told them so--the reporters. He won't tell them so.
+In fact," Hastings said, with less show of cordiality, "from all he said
+to me, I gather he doesn't think you an ill man--that is, dangerously
+ill."
+
+"And because of that, they say what, these reporters, this sheriff?
+What?"
+
+"They're in ugly mood, Mr. Sloane. They're saying you're trying to
+protect--somebody--by keeping still about a thing which you should be
+the first to haul into daylight. That's it--in a nutshell."
+
+Sloane had stopped trembling. He sat up in the bed and stared at the
+detective out of steady, hard eyes. He waved away the whiskey Jarvis
+held toward him.
+
+"And you want what, Mr. Hastings?" he inquired, a curiously effective
+sarcasm in his voice.
+
+"A statement covering every second from the time you waked up Saturday
+night until you saw the body."
+
+"A statement!--Reporters!" He was snarling on that. "What's got into
+you, anyway? What are you trying to do--make people suspect me of the
+murder-make 'em suspect Berne?"
+
+He threw away the cigarette and shook his fist at Hastings. He gulped
+twice before he could speak again; he seemed on the point of choking.
+
+"In an ugly mood, are they? Well, they can stay in an ugly mood. You,
+too! And that hydrophobiac sheriff! Quivering and crucified saints! I've
+had enough of all of you--all of you, understand! Get out of here! Get
+out!"
+
+Although his voice was shrill, there was no sound of weakness in it.
+The trembling that attacked him was the result of anger, not of
+nervousness.
+
+Hastings rose, astounded by the outbreak.
+
+"I'm afraid you don't realize the seriousness of----"
+
+"Oh, get out of here!" Sloane interrupted again. "You've imposed on my
+daughter with your talk of being helpful, and all that rot, but you
+can't hoodwink me. What the devil do you mean by letting that sheriff
+come in here and subject me to all this annoyance and shock? You'd save
+us from unpleasantness!"
+
+He spoke more slowly now, as if he cudgelled his brain for the most
+biting sarcasm, the most unbearable insolence.
+
+"Don't realize the seriousness!--Flat-headed fiends!--Are you any nearer
+the truth now than you were at the start?--Try to understand this, Mr.
+Hastings: you're discharged, fired! From now on, I'm in charge of what
+goes on in this house. If there's any trouble to be avoided, I'll attend
+to it. Get that!--and get out!"
+
+Hastings, opening his mouth for angry retort, checked himself. He stood
+a moment silent, shaken by the effort it cost him to maintain his
+self-control.
+
+"Humph!" Sloane's nasal, twangy exclamation was clearly intended to
+provoke him further.
+
+But, without a word, he turned and left the room. Passing the screen
+near the door, he heard Jarvis snicker, a discreet echo of Sloane's
+goading ridicule.
+
+On his way back to the parlour, the old man made up his mind to discount
+Sloane's behaviour.
+
+"I've got to take a chance," he counselled himself, "but I know I'm
+right in doing it. A big responsibility--but I'm right!"
+
+Then he submitted this report:
+
+"He says nothing new, Crown. Far as I can make out, nothing unusual
+waked him up that night--except chronic nervousness; he turned on that
+light to find some medicine; he knew nothing of the murder until Judge
+Wilton called him."
+
+"Humph!" growled Crown. "And you fall for that!"
+
+Hastings eyed him sternly. "It's the statement I'm going to give to the
+reporters."
+
+The sheriff was silent, irresolute. Hastings congratulated himself on
+his earlier deduction: that Crown, unable to frighten Sloane into
+communicativeness, was thankful for an excuse to withdraw.
+
+Hendricks had reported the two-hour conference between Crown and Mrs.
+Brace late that afternoon. Hastings decided now: "The man's in cahoots
+with her. His ally! And he won't act until he's had another session with
+her.--And she won't advise an arrest for a day or two anyway. Her game
+is to make him play on Sloane's nerves for a while. She advises threats,
+not arrests--which suits me, to a T!"
+
+He fought down a chuckle, thinking of that alliance.
+
+Crown corroborated his reasoning.
+
+"All right, Hastings," he said doggedly. "I'm not going back to his
+room. I gave him his chance. He can take the consequences."
+
+"What consequences?"
+
+"I'd hardly describe 'em to his personal representative, would I? But
+you can take this from me: they'll come soon enough--and rough enough!"
+
+Hastings made no reference to having been dismissed by Sloane. He was
+glad when Crown changed the subject.
+
+"Hastings, you saw the reporters this afternoon--I've been
+wondering--they asked me--did they ask you whether you suspected the
+valet--Jarvis?"
+
+"Of what?"
+
+"Killing her."
+
+"No; they didn't ask me."
+
+"Funny," said Crown, ill at ease. "They asked me."
+
+"So you said," Hastings reminded, looking hard at him.
+
+"Well!" Crown blurted it out. "Do you suspect him? Are you working on
+that line--at all?"
+
+Hastings paused. He had no desire to mislead him. And yet, there was no
+reason for confiding in him--and delay was at present the Hastings plan.
+
+"I'll tell you, Crown," he said, finally; "I'll work on any line that
+can lead to the guilty man.--What do you know?"
+
+"Who? Me?" Crown's tone indicated the absurdity of suspecting Jarvis.
+"Not a thing."
+
+But it gave Hastings food for thought. Was Mrs. Brace in communication
+with Jarvis? And did Crown know that? Was it possible that Crown wanted
+to find out whether Hastings was having Jarvis shadowed? How much of a
+fool was the woman making of the sheriff, anyway?
+
+Another thing puzzled him: why did Mrs. Brace suspect Arthur Sloane of
+withholding the true story of what he had seen the night of the murder?
+Hastings' suspicion, amounting to certainty, came from his knowledge
+that the man's own daughter thought him deeply involved in the crime.
+But Mrs. Brace--was she clever enough to make that deduction from the
+known facts? Or did she have more direct information from Sloanehurst
+than he had thought possible?
+
+He decided not to leave the sheriff entirely subject to her schemes and
+suggestions. He would give Mr. Crown something along another line--a
+brake, as it were, on impulsive action.
+
+"You talk about arresting Webster right away--or Sloane," he began,
+suddenly confiding. "You wouldn't want to make a mistake--would you?"
+
+Crown rose to that. "Why? What do you know--specially?"
+
+"Well, not so much, maybe. But it's worth thinking about. I'll give you
+the facts--confidentially, of course.--Hub Hill's about a hundred yards
+from this house, on the road to Washington. When automobiles sink into
+it hub-deep, they come out with a lot of mud on their wheels--black,
+loamy mud. Ain't any other mud like that Hub Hill mud anywhere near
+here. It's just special and peculiar to Hub Hill. That so?"
+
+"Yes," agreed Crown, absorbed.
+
+"All right. How, then, did Eugene Russell keep black, Hub Hill mud on
+his shoes that night if he went the four miles on foot to where Otis
+picked him up?"
+
+"Eh?" said Crown, chin fallen.
+
+"By the time he'd run four miles, his shoes would have been covered with
+the red mud of that mile of 'dirt road' or the thin, grey mud of the
+three miles of pike--wouldn't they? They'd have thrown off that Hub Hill
+mud pretty quick, wouldn't they?"
+
+"Thunder!" marvelled Crown. "That's right! And those shoes were in his
+room; I saw 'em." He gurgled, far back in his throat. "Say! How did he
+get from Hub Hill to where Otis picked him up?"
+
+"That's what I say," declared Hastings, very bland. "How?"
+
+To Lucille, after Crown's departure, the detective declared his
+intention to "stand by" her, to stay on the case. He repeated his
+statement of yesterday: he suspected too much, and knew too little, to
+give it up.
+
+He told her of the responsibility he had assumed in giving the sheriff
+the fictitious Sloane statement. "That is, it's not fictitious, in
+itself; it's what your father has been saying. But I told Crown, and I'm
+going to tell the newspaper men, that he says it's all he knows, really.
+And I hate to do it--because, honestly, Miss Sloane, I don't think it
+is all. I'm afraid he's deceiving us."
+
+She did not contradict that; it was her own opinion.
+
+"However," the old man made excuse, "I had to do it--in view of things
+as they are. And he's got to stick to it, now that I've made it
+'official,' so to speak. Do you think he will?"
+
+She did not see why not. She would explain to him the importance, the
+necessity, of that course.
+
+"He's so mistaken in what he's doing!" she said. "I don't understand
+him--really. You know how devoted to me he is. He called me into his
+room again an hour or two ago and tried to comfort me. He said he had
+reason to know everything would come out as it should. But he looked
+so--so uncertain!--Oh, Mr. Hastings, who did kill that woman?"
+
+"I think I'll be able to prove who did it--let's see," he spoke with a
+light cheerfulness, and at the same time with sincerity; "I'll be able
+to prove it in less than a week after Mrs. Brace takes that money from
+you."
+
+She said nothing to that, and he leaned forward sharply, peering at her
+face, illegible to him in the darkness of the verandah.
+
+"So much depends on that, on you," he added. "You won't fail
+me--tomorrow?"
+
+"I'll do my best," she said, earnestly, struggling against depression.
+
+"She must take that money," he declared with great emphasis. "She must!"
+
+"And you think she will?"
+
+"Miss Sloane, I know she will," he said, a fatherly encouragement in his
+voice. "I'm seldom mistaken in people; and I know I've judged this woman
+correctly. Money's her weakness. Love of it has destroyed her already.
+Offering this bribe to anybody else situated as she is would be
+ridiculous--but she--she'll take it."
+
+Lucille sat a long time on the verandah after Hastings had gone. She was
+far more depressed than he had suspected; she had to endure so much, she
+thought--the suspense, which grew heavier as time went by; the
+notoriety; Berne Webster still in danger of his life; her father's
+inexplicable pose of indifference toward everything; the suspicions of
+the newspapers and the public of both her father and Berne; and the
+waiting, waiting, waiting--for what?
+
+A little moan escaped her.
+
+What if Mrs. Brace did take the marked money? What would that show? That
+she was acting with criminal intent, Hastings had said. But he had
+another and more definite object in urging her to this undertaking; he
+expected from it a vital development which he had not explained--she was
+sure. She worried with that idea.
+
+Her confidence in Hastings had been without qualification. But what was
+he doing? Anything? Judge Wilton was forever saying, "Trust Hastings;
+he's the man for this case." And that was his reputation; people
+declared that, if anybody could get to the bottom of all this mystery,
+he could. Yet, two whole days had passed since the murder, and he had
+just said another week might be required to work out his plan of
+detection--whatever that plan was.
+
+Another week of this! She put her hot palms to her hotter temples,
+striving for clarity of thought. But she was dazed by her terror--her
+isolated terror, for some of her thoughts were such that she could share
+them with nobody--not even Hastings.
+
+"If the sheriff makes no arrest within the next few days, I'll be out of
+the woods," he had told her. "Delay is what I want."
+
+There, again, was discouragement, for here was the sheriff threatening
+to serve a warrant on Berne within the next twenty-four hours! She had
+heard Crown make the threat, and to her it had seemed absolutely final:
+unless her father revealed something which Crown wanted, whether her
+father knew it or not, Berne was to be subjected to this humiliation,
+this added blow to his chance for recovery!
+
+She sprang up, throwing her hands wide and staring blindly at the stars.
+
+The woman whom she was to bribe cast a deep shadow on her imagination.
+Sharing the feeling of many others, she had reached the reluctant
+conclusion that Mrs. Brace in some way knew more than anybody else about
+the murder and its motives. It was, she told herself, a horrid feeling,
+and without reason. But she could not shake it off. To her, Mrs. Brace
+was a figure of sinister power, an agent of ugliness, waiting to do
+evil--waiting for what?
+
+By a great effort, she steadied her jangled nerves. Hastings was
+counting on her. And work--even work in the dark--was preferable to this
+idleness, this everlasting summing-up of frightful possibilities without
+a ray of hope. She would do her best to make that woman take the money!
+
+Tomorrow she would be of real service to Berne Webster--she would atone,
+in some small measure, for the sorrow she had brought upon him,
+discarding him because of empty gossip!--Would he continue to love
+her?--Perhaps, if she had not discarded him, Mildred Brace would not
+have been murdered.
+
+A groan escaped her. She fled into the house, away from her thoughts.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE BRIBE
+
+
+It was nine o'clock the following evening when Lucille Sloane, sure that
+she had entered the Walman unobserved, rang the bell of Mrs. Brace's
+apartment. Her body felt remarkably light and facile, as if she moved in
+a tenuous, half-real atmosphere. There were moments when she had the
+sensation of floating. Her brain worked with extraordinary rapidity. She
+was conscious of an unusually resourceful intelligence, and performed a
+series of mental gymnastics, framing in advance the sentences she would
+use in the interview confronting her.
+
+The constant thought at the back of her brain was that she would
+succeed; she would speak and act in such a way that Mrs. Brace would
+take the money. She was buoyed by a fierce determination to be repaid
+for all the suspense, all the agony of heart, that had weighed her down
+throughout this long, leaden-footed day--the past twenty-four hours
+unproductive of a single enlightening incident.
+
+Mrs. Brace opened the door and, with a scarcely perceptible nod of the
+head, motioned her into the living room. Neither of them spoke until
+they had seated themselves on the chairs by the window. Even then, the
+silence was prolonged, until Lucille realized that her tongue was dry
+and uncomfortably large for her mouth. An access of trembling shook her.
+She tried to smile and knew that her lips were twisting in a ghastly
+grin.
+
+Mrs. Brace moved slowly to and fro on the armless rocker, her swift,
+appraising eyes taking in her visitor's distress. The smooth face wore
+its customary, inexpressive calm. Lucille, striving desperately to
+arrive at some opinion of what the woman thought, saw that she might as
+well try to find emotion in a statue.
+
+"I--I," the girl finally attained a quick, flurried utterance, "want to
+thank you for--for having this--this talk with me."
+
+"What do you want to talk about, Miss Sloane?"
+
+The low, metallic voice was neither friendly nor hostile. It expressed,
+more than anything else, a sardonic, bullying self-sufficiency.
+
+It both angered and encouraged Lucille. She perceived the futility of
+polite, introductory phrases here; she could go straight to her purpose,
+be brutally frank. She gave Mrs. Brace a brilliant, disarming smile, a
+proclamation of fellowship. Her confidence was restored.
+
+"I'm sure we can talk sensibly together, Mrs. Brace," she explained,
+dissembling her indignation. "We can get down to business, at once."
+
+"What business?" inquired the older woman, with some of the manner
+Hastings had seen, an air of lying in wait.
+
+"I said, on the 'phone, it was something of advantage to you--didn't I?"
+
+"Yes; you said that."
+
+"And, of course, I want something from you."
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"I'll tell you what it is." Lucille spoke now with cool precision, as
+yet untouched by the horror she had expected to feel. "It's a matter of
+money."
+
+Mrs. Brace's tongue came out to the edge of the thin line of her lips.
+Her nostrils quivered, once, to the sharply indrawn breath. Her eyes
+were more furtive.
+
+"Money?" she echoed. "For what?"
+
+"There's no good of my making long explanations, Mrs. Brace," Lucille
+said. "I've read the newspapers, every line of them, about--our trouble.
+And I saw the references to your finances, your lack of money."
+
+"Yes?" Mrs. Brace's right hand lay on her lap; the thumb of it began to
+move against the forefinger rapidly, the motion a woman makes in
+feeling the texture of cloth--or the trick of a bank clerk separating
+paper money.
+
+"Yes. I read, also, what you said about the tragedy. Today I noticed
+that the only note of newness in the articles in the papers came from
+you--from your saying that 'in a few days, three or four at the
+outside'--that was your language, I'm quite sure--you'd produce evidence
+on which an arrest would be made. I've intelligence enough to see that
+the public's interest in you is so great, the sympathy for you is so
+great, that your threats--I mean, predictions, or opinions--colour
+everything that's written by the reporters. You see?"
+
+"Do I see what?"
+
+Despite her excellent pose of waiting with nothing more than a polite
+interest, Lucille saw in her a pronounced alteration. That was not so
+much in her face as in her body. Her limbs had a look of rigidity.
+
+"Don't you see what I mean?" Lucille insisted. "I see that you can make
+endless trouble for us--for all of us at Sloanehurst. You can make
+people believe Mr. Webster guilty, and that father and I are shielding
+him. People listen to what you say. They seem to be on your side."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I wondered if you wouldn't stop your interviews--your accusations?"
+
+The younger woman's eagerness, evident now in the variety of her
+gestures and the rapid procession of pallour and flush across her
+cheeks, persuaded Mrs. Brace that Lucille was acting on an impulse of
+her own, not as an agent to carry out another's well designed scheme.
+The older woman, at that idea, felt safe. She asked:
+
+"And you want--what?"
+
+"I've come here to ask you to tell me all you know, or to be quiet
+altogether."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't understand--fully," returned Mrs. Brace, with an
+exaggerated bewilderment. "Tell all I know?"
+
+"That is, if you do know anything you haven't told!" Lucille urged her.
+"Oh, don't you see? I'm saying to you that I want to put an end to this
+dreadful suspense!"
+
+Mrs. Brace laughed disagreeably; her face was harder, less human. "You
+mean I'm amusing myself, exerting myself needlessly, as a matter of
+spite? Do you mean to tell me that?"
+
+"No! No!" Lucille denied, impatient with herself for lack of clearness.
+"I mean I'm sure you're attacking an innocent man. And I'm willing, I'm
+anxious--oh, I hope so much, Mrs. Brace--to make an agreement with
+you--a financial arrangement----" She paused the fractional part of a
+second on that; and, seeing that the other did not resent the term, she
+added: "to pay you to stop it. Isn't that clear?"
+
+"Yes; that's clear."
+
+"Understand me, please. What I ask is that you say nothing more to the
+reporters, the sheriff or the Washington police, that will have the
+effect of hounding them on against Mr. Webster. I want to eliminate from
+the situation all the influence you've exerted to make Mr. Crown believe
+Mr. Webster's guilty and my father's protecting him."
+
+"Let me think," Mrs. Brace said, coolly.
+
+Lucille exulted inwardly, "She'll do it! She'll do it!" The hard eyes
+dissected her eager face. The girl drew back in her chair, thinking now:
+"She suspects who sent me!"
+
+At last, the older woman spoke:
+
+"The detective, Hastings, would never have allowed you to come here,
+Miss Sloane.--Excuse my frankness," she interjected, with a smile she
+meant to be friendly; "but you're frank with me; we're not mincing
+matters; and I have to be careful.--He'd have warned you that your
+errand's practical confession of your knowledge of something
+incriminating Berne Webster. If you didn't suspect the man even more
+strongly than I do, you'd never have been driven to--this."
+
+She leaned the rocker back and crossed her knees, the movement throwing
+into high relief the hard lankness of her figure. She gazed at the wall,
+over Lucille's head, as she dealt with the possibilities that presented
+themselves to her analysis. Her manner was that of a certain gloating
+enjoyment, a thinly covered, semi-orderly greediness.
+
+"She's not even thinking of her daughter," Lucille thought, and went
+pale a moment. "She's as bad as Mr. Hastings said--worse!"
+
+"Then, too," Mrs. Brace continued, "your father discharged him last
+night."
+
+Lucille remembered the detective's misgivings about Jarvis; how else had
+this woman found that out?
+
+"And you've taken matters into your own hands.--Did your father send you
+here--to me?"
+
+"Why, no!"
+
+The other smiled slyly, the tip of her tongue again visible, her
+eyebrows high in interrogation. "Of course," she said; "you wouldn't
+tell me if he had. He would have warned you against that admission."
+
+"It's Mr. Webster about whom I am most concerned," Lucille reminded,
+sharpness in her vibrant young voice. "My father's being annoyed is
+merely incidental."
+
+"Oh, of course! Of course," Mrs. Brace grinned, with broad sarcasm.
+
+Lucille started. The meaning of that could not be misunderstood; she
+charged that the money was offered at Arthur Sloane's instigation and
+that the concern for Berne Webster was merely pretence.
+
+Mrs. Brace saw her anger, and placated it:
+
+"Don't mind me, Miss Sloane. A woman who's had to endure what I
+have--well, she doesn't always think clearly."
+
+"Perhaps not," Lucille assented; but she was aware of a sudden longing
+to be done with the degrading work. "Now that we understand each other,
+Mrs. Brace, what do you say?"
+
+Mrs. Brace thought again.
+
+"How much?" she asked at last, her lips thickening. "How much, Miss
+Sloane, do you think my silence is worth?"
+
+Lucille took a roll of bills from her handbag. The woman's chair slid
+forward, answering to the forward--leaning weight of her new posture.
+She was lightly rubbing her palms together, as, with head a little
+bowed, she stared at the money in the younger woman's hand.
+
+"I have here five hundred dollars," Lucille began.
+
+"What!"
+
+Mrs. Brace said that roughly; and, in violent anger, drew back, the
+legs of her chair grating on the floor.
+
+For a moment Lucille gazed at her, uncomprehending.
+
+"Oh!" she said, uncertainly. "You mean--it isn't enough?"
+
+"Enough!" Mrs. Brace's rage and disappointment grew, her lowered brows a
+straight line close down to her eyes.
+
+"But I could get more!" Lucille exclaimed, struggling with disgust.
+"This," she added, with ready invention, "can serve as a part payment, a
+promise of----"
+
+"Ah-h!" the older woman exclaimed. "That's different. I misunderstood."
+
+She put down the signals of her wrath, succeeding in that readjustment
+so promptly that Lucille stared at her in undisguised amazement.
+
+"You must pardon me, Miss Sloane. I thought you were making me the
+victim of your ridicule, some heartless joke."
+
+"Then, we can come to an agreement? That is, if this money is the
+first----"
+
+She broke the sentence. Mrs. Brace had put up her hand, and now held her
+head to one side, listening.
+
+There was a step clearly audible outside, in the main hall. The next
+moment the doorbell rang. They sat motionless. When the bell rang
+again, Mrs. Brace informed her with a look that she would not answer it.
+
+But the ringing continued, became a prolonged jangle. It got on
+Lucille's already strained nerves.
+
+"Suppose you slip into the bedroom," Mrs. Brace whispered.
+
+"Oh, no!" Lucille whispered back.
+
+She was weighed down by black premonition; she hoped Mrs. Brace would
+not open the door.
+
+The bell rang again.
+
+"You'll have to!" Mrs. Brace said at last. "I won't let anybody in. I
+have to answer it!"
+
+"You'll send them away--whoever it is--at once?"
+
+"At once. I don't want you seen here, any more than you want to be
+seen!"
+
+Lucille started toward the bedroom. At the first step she took, Mrs.
+Brace put a hand on her arm.
+
+"That money!" she demanded, in a low whisper. "I'll take it."
+
+"And do what I asked--stop attacking us?"
+
+"Yes. Yes!"
+
+Lucille gave her the money.
+
+There were no lights in the bedroom. Lucille, for fear of stumbling or
+making a noise, stood to one side of the door-frame, close to the wall.
+
+Mrs. Brace's footsteps stopped. There was the click of the opening
+door. Then, there came to Lucille the high-pitched, querulous voice
+which she had been afraid she would hear.
+
+It was her father's.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+"THE WHOLE TRUTH"
+
+
+"Mrs. Brace, good evening.--May I come in?"
+
+Then followed the sound of footsteps, and the closing of the door.
+
+"I shan't detain you long, Mrs. Brace." They were still in the hall.
+"May I come in?"
+
+"Certainly." The tardy assent was the perfection of indifference.
+
+They entered the living room. Lucille, without using her eyes, knew that
+her father was standing just within the doorway, glancing around with
+his slight squint, working his lips nervously, his head thrust forward.
+
+"Ah-h!" his shrill drawl, although he kept it low, carried back to
+Lucille. "All alone--may I ask?" He went toward the chairs by the
+window. "That is, I hope to have--well--rather a confidential little
+talk with you."
+
+Mrs. Brace resumed her place on the armless rocker after she had moved a
+chair forward for him. Lucille heard it grate on the floor. Certain that
+he had taken it, she looked into the room. Her intuition was correct;
+Mrs. Brace had placed it so that his back was turned to both the bedroom
+door and the door into the entry. This made her escape possible.
+
+The relief she got from the thought was of a violent nature. It came to
+her like a blow, almost forcing a gasp from her constricted throat. If
+she could tiptoe without sound a distance of eighteen feet, a matter of
+six or seven steps, she could leave the apartment without his knowledge.
+
+To that she was doubly urged. In the first place, Hastings' warning
+drummed upon her brain; he had specified the importance of keeping even
+her father in ignorance of her errand.
+
+Upon that came another reason for flight, her fear of hearing what her
+father would say. A wave of nausea weakened her. She bowed down, there
+in the dark, under the burden of her suspicion: he had come to do, for
+quite a different reason, what she had done! She kept away from definite
+analysis of his motive. Fear for Berne, or fear for himself, it was
+equally horrible to her consideration.
+
+"I admire your spirit, Mrs. Brace," he was saying, in ingratiating tone;
+"and your shrewdness. I've followed all you said, in the papers. And I'm
+in hopes that we may----"
+
+He stopped, and Lucille, judging from the thin edges of sounds that she
+caught, had a mental picture of his peering over his shoulder. He
+resumed:
+
+"I must apologize, I'm sure. But you'll realize my concern for
+secrecy--after I've explained. May I--ah-h-h--do you mind if I look
+about, for possible hearers?"
+
+"It's unnecessary," came the calm, metallic assurance. "I've no
+objection to your searching my apartment, if you insist." She laughed, a
+mirthless deprecation of his timidity, and coolly put herself at his
+disposal in another sentence: "I've sense enough to form an idea of what
+you'll propose; and I'd scarcely want others to hear it--would I?"
+
+"Ah-h-h!" he drawled, expressing a grudging disposition to accept her
+assurance. "Certainly not.--Well, that's very reasonable--and obliging,
+I'm sure."
+
+Again by the thin fringes of sound, Lucille got information of his
+settling into his chair.
+
+"Why," he began; "why, in the name of all the unfathomable, inscrutable
+angels----"
+
+"First, Mr. Sloane," Mrs. Brace interrupted him--and Lucille heard the
+rattle of a newspaper; "as a preface to our--shall we say
+conference?--our conference, then, let me read you this summary of my
+position.--That is, if you care to understand my position thoroughly."
+
+She was far from her habitual quietness, rattling the newspaper
+incessantly. The noise, Lucille realized, would hang as a curtain
+between her father's ears and the possible sounds of her progress from
+the bedroom door to the entry.
+
+Stealing a glance into the living room, she saw his back and, over his
+stooped shoulders, Mrs. Brace's calm face. In that instant, the
+newspaper shook more violently--enough, she thought, to signal
+cooperation.
+
+She sickened again at sight of that woman about to dispense bought
+favours to her father. The impulse to step forth and proclaim her
+presence rose strongly within her; but she was turned from it by fear
+that her interruption might produce disastrous results. After all, she
+was not certain of his intention.
+
+She knew, however, that at any moment he might insist on satisfying
+himself, by a tour of inspection, that he was safe from being overheard.
+She hesitated no longer. She would try to get away.
+
+"Look at this, Mr. Sloane, if you please," Mrs. Brace was saying;
+"notice how the items are made to stand out, each in a paragraph of
+large type."
+
+She held the paper so that Sloane bent forward, and, against his will,
+was held to joint perusal while she read aloud. The curtain of
+protecting noise thus was thickened.
+
+"'That Mrs. Brace has knowledge of the following facts,'" the harsh,
+colourless voice was reading.
+
+Lucille began her escape. She moved with an agony of precaution, taking
+steps only a few inches long, her arms held out from her sides to avoid
+unnecessary rustling of her clothing. She went on the balls of her feet,
+keeping the heels of her shoes always free of the floor, each step a
+slow torture.
+
+Her breathing stopped--a hysterical contraction of her chest prevented
+breathing. Her face burned like fire. Her head felt crowded, as if the
+blood tried to ooze through the confining scalp. There was a great
+roaring in her ears. The pulse in her temples was like the blows of
+sledges.
+
+Once, midway of the distance, as she stood lightly balanced, with arms
+outstretched, something went wrong with her equilibrium. She started
+forward as she had often done when a child, with the sensation of
+falling on her face. Her skirt billowed out in front of her. If she had
+had any breath in her, she would have cried out.
+
+But the automatisms of her body worked better than her overtaxed brain.
+Her right foot went out easily and softly--she marvelled at that
+independent motion of her leg--and, taking up the falling weight of her
+body, restored her balance.
+
+Mrs. Brace's voice had not faltered, although she must have seen the
+misstep. Arthur Sloane's bowed shoulders had not stirred. Mrs. Brace
+continued the printed enumeration of her stores of knowledge.
+
+Lucille took another step. She was safe!--almost. There remained but a
+yard of her painful progress. One more step, she comforted herself,
+would put her on the threshold of the entry door, and from there to the
+corridor door, shielded by the entry wall from possible observation by
+her father, would be an easy business.
+
+She completed that last step. On the threshold, she had to turn her body
+through an arc of ninety degrees, unless she backed out of the door.
+This she was afraid to do; her heel might meet an obstruction; a raised
+plank of the flooring, even, would mean an alarming noise.
+
+She began to turn. The reading continued. The whole journey from door to
+door, in spite of the anguished care of every step, had consumed
+scarcely a minute. She was turning, the balancing arms outstretched.
+Deep down in her chest there was the beginning of a sensation, muscles
+relaxing, the promise of a long breath of relief.
+
+Her left hand--or, perhaps, her elbow; in the blinding, benumbing flash
+of consternation, she did not know which--touched the pile of magazines
+on the table that was set against the door-frame. The magazines did not
+fall to the floor, but the fluttering of the loose cover of the one on
+top made a noise.
+
+She fled, taking with her the flashing memory of the first stirring of
+her father's figure and the crackle of the paper in Mrs. Brace's hand.
+In two light steps she was at the corridor door. Her hands found the
+latch and turned it. She ran down the stairs with rapid, skimming steps,
+the door clicking softly shut as she made the turn on the next landing.
+
+Her exit had been wonderfully quiet. She knew this, in spite of the fact
+that her straining senses had exaggerated the flutter of the magazine
+cover and the click of the door into a terrifying volume of sound. It
+was entirely possible that Mrs. Brace had been able to persuade her
+father that he had heard nothing more than some outside noise. She was
+certain that he had not seen her.
+
+She crossed the dim, narrow lobby of the Walman so quickly, and so
+quietly, that the girl at the telephone board did not look in her
+direction.
+
+Once in the street, she was seized by desire to confide to Hastings the
+story of her experience. She decided to act on the impulse.
+
+
+He was at first more concerned with her physical condition than with
+what she had to tell. He saw how near she was to the breaking point.
+
+"My dear child!" he said, in the tone of fatherly solicitude which she
+had learned to like. "Comfort before conference! Here, this chair by the
+window--so--and this wreck of a fan, can you use it? Fine! Now, cool
+your flushed face in this thin, very thin stream of a breeze--feel it? A
+glass of water?--just for the tinkling of ice? That's better, isn't it?"
+
+The only light in the room was the reading lamp, under a dark-green
+shade, and from this little island of illumination there ran out a
+chaotic sea of shadows, huge waves of them, mounting the height of the
+book-shelves and breaking irregularly on the ceiling.
+
+In the dimness, as he walked back and forth hunting for the fan or
+bringing her the water, he looked weirdly large--like, she thought
+dully, a fairy giant curiously draped. But the serenity of his
+expression touched her. She was glad she had come.
+
+While she told her story, he stood in front of her, encouraging her
+with a smile or a nod now and then, or ambled with soft step among the
+shadows, always keeping his eyes upon her. For the moment, her tired
+spirit was freshened by his lavish praise of the manner in which she had
+accomplished her undertaking. Following that, his ready sympathy made it
+easier for her to discuss her fear that her father had planned to bribe
+Mrs. Brace.
+
+Nevertheless, the effort taxed her severely. At the end of it, she
+leaned back and closed her eyes, only to open them with a start of
+fright at the resultant dizziness. The sensation of bodily lightness had
+left her. Her limbs felt sheathed in metal. An acute, throbbing pain
+racked her head. She was too weary to combat the depression which was
+like a cold, freezing hand at her heart.
+
+"You don't say anything!" she complained weakly.
+
+He stood near her chair, gazing thoughtfully before him.
+
+"I'm trying to understand it," he said; "why your father did that.
+You're right, of course. He went there to pay her to keep quiet. But
+why?"
+
+He looked at her closely.
+
+"Could it be possible," he put the inquiry at last, "that he knew her
+before the murder?"
+
+"I've asked him," she said. "No; he never had heard of her--neither he
+nor Judge Wilton. I even persuaded him to question Jarvis about that. It
+was the same; Jarvis never had--until last Sunday morning."
+
+"You think of everything!" he congratulated her.
+
+"No! Oh, no!"
+
+Some quick and overmastering emotion broke down the last of her
+endurance. Whether it was a new and finer appreciation of his
+persistent, untiring search for the guilty man, or the realization of
+how sincerely he liked her, giving her credit for a frankness she had
+not exercised--whatever the pivotal consideration was, she felt that she
+could no longer deceive him.
+
+She closed her lips tightly, to keep back the rising sobs, and regarded
+him with questioning, fearful eyes.
+
+"What is it?" he asked gently, reading her appealing look.
+
+"I've a confession to make," she said miserably.
+
+He refused to treat it as a tragedy.
+
+"But it can't be very bad!" he exclaimed pleasantly. "When we're
+overwrought, imagination's like a lantern swinging in the wind, changing
+the size of everything every second."
+
+"But it is bad!" she insisted. "I haven't been fair. I couldn't bring
+myself to tell you this. I tried to think you'd get along without it!"
+
+"And now?"
+
+She answered him with an outward calmness which was, in reality,
+emotional dullness. She had suffered so much that to feel vividly was
+beyond her strength.
+
+"You have the right to know it," she said, looking at him out of
+brilliant, unwinking eyes. "It's about father. He was out there--on the
+lawn--before he turned on the light in his room. I heard him come in, a
+minute before Berne went down the back stairs and out to the lawn. And I
+heard him go to his window and stand there, looking out, at least five
+long minutes before he flashed on his light."
+
+He waited, thinking she might have more to tell. Construing his silence
+as reproof, she said, without changing either her expression or her
+voice:
+
+"I know--it's awful. I should have told you. Perhaps, I've done great
+harm."
+
+"You've been very brave," he consoled her, with infinite tenderness.
+"But it happens that I'd already satisfied myself on that point. I knew
+he'd been out there."
+
+She was dumb, incapable of reacting to his words. Even the fact that he
+was smiling, with genuine amusement, did not affect her.
+
+"Here comes the grotesque element, the comical, that's involved in so
+many tragedies," he explained. "Your father's weakness for 'cure' of
+nervousness, and his shrinking from the ridicule he's suffered because
+of it--there's the explanation of why he was out there that night."
+
+She could not see significance in that, but neither could she summon
+energy to say so. She wondered vaguely why he thought it funny.
+
+"That night--rather, the early morning hours following--while the rest
+of you were in the library, I looked through his room, and I found a
+pair of straw sandals in the closet--such as a man could slip on and off
+without having to bend down to adjust them. And they were wet, inside
+and out.
+
+"Sunday morning, when Judge Wilton and I were at his bedside, I saw on
+the table a 'quack' pamphlet on the 'dew' treatment for nervousness, the
+benefit of the 'wet, cooling grass' upon the feet at night. You know the
+kind of thing. So----"
+
+"Oh-h-h!" she breathed, tremulous and weak. "So that's why he was out
+there! Why didn't I think? Oh, how I've suspected him of----"
+
+"But remember," he warned; "that's why he went out. We still don't know
+what he--what happened after he got out there--or why he's refused to
+say that he ever was out there. When we think of this, and other things,
+and, too, his call tonight on Mrs. Brace, for bribery--leaving what we
+thought was a sickbed--"
+
+"But he's been up all day!" she corrected.
+
+"And yet," he said, and stopped, reflecting.
+
+"Tell me," she implored; "tell me, Mr. Hastings, do you suspect my
+father--or not--of the----?"
+
+He answered her unfinished question with a solemn, painstaking care:
+
+"Miss Sloane, you're not one who would want to be misled. You can bear
+the truth. I'd be foolish to say that he's not under suspicion. He is.
+Any one of the men there that night may have committed the murder.
+Webster, your father, Wilton--only there, suspicion seems totally
+gratuitous--Eugene Russell, Jarvis--I've heard things about him--any one
+of them may have struck that blow--may have."
+
+"And father," she said, in a grieved bewilderment, "has paid Mrs. Brace
+to stop saying she suspects Berne," she shuddered, facing the
+alternative, "or himself!"
+
+"You see," he framed the conclusion for her, "how hard he makes it for
+us to keep him out of trouble--if that gets out. He's put his hand on
+the live wire of circumstantial evidence, a wire that too often
+thrashes about, striking the wrong man."
+
+"And Berne?" she cried out. "I think I could stand anything if only I
+knew----"
+
+But this time the mutinous sobs came crowding past her lips. She could
+not finish the inquiry she had begun.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+THE MAN WHO RODE AWAY
+
+
+It was early in the afternoon of Wednesday when Mr. Hastings, responding
+to the prolonged ringing of his telephone, took the receiver off the
+hook and found himself in communication with the sheriff of Alexandria
+county. This was not the vacillating, veering sheriff who had spent
+nearly four days accepting the hints of a detective or sitting,
+chameleon-minded, at the feet of a designing woman. Here was an
+impressive and self-appreciative gentleman, one who delighted in his own
+deductive powers and relished their results.
+
+He said so. His confidence fairly rattled the wire. His words
+annihilated space grandly and leaped into the old man's receptive ear
+with sizzling and electric effect. Mr. Crown, triumphant, was glad to
+inform others that he was making a hit with himself.
+
+"Hello! That you, Hastings? Well, old fellow, I don't like to annoy you
+with an up-to-date rendition of 'I told you so!'--but it's come out, to
+the last syllable, exactly as I said it would--from the very first!"
+
+Ensued a pause, for dramatic effect. The detective did not break it.
+
+"Waiting, are you? Well, here she goes; Russell's alibi's been knocked
+into a thousand pieces! It's blown up! It's gone glimmering!--What do
+you think of that?"
+
+Hastings refrained from replying that he had regarded such an event as
+highly probable. Instead, he inquired:
+
+"And that simplifies things?"
+
+"Does it!" exploded Mr. Crown. "I'm getting to you a few minutes ahead
+of the afternoon papers. You'll see it all there." An apologetic laugh
+came over the wire. "You'll excuse me, I know; I had to do this thing up
+right, put on the finishing touches before you even guessed what was
+going on. I've wound up the whole business. The Washington police nabbed
+Russell an hour ago, on my orders.
+
+"'Simplifies things?' I should say so! I guess you can call 'em
+'simplified' when a murder's been committed and the murderer's waiting
+to step into my little ring-tum-fi-diddle-dee of a country jail! 'No
+clue to this mystery,' the papers have been saying! What's the use of a
+clue when you _know_ a guy's guilty? That's what I've been whistling all
+along!"
+
+"But the alibi?" Hastings prompted. "You say it's blown up?"
+
+"Blown! Gone! Result of my sending out those circulars asking if any
+automobile parties passed along the Sloanehurst road the murder night.
+Remember?"
+
+"Yes." The old man recalled having made that suggestion, but did not say
+so.
+
+"This morning the chief of police of York--York, Pennsylvania--wired me.
+I got him by long-distance right away. He gave me the story, details
+absolutely right and straight, all verified--and everything. A York man,
+named Stevens, saw a newspaper account, for the first time this morning,
+of the murder. He and four other fellows were in a car that went up Hub
+Hill that night a little after eleven--a few minutes after.--Hear that?"
+
+"Yes. Go on."
+
+"Stevens was on the back seat. They went up the hill on low--terrible
+piece of road, he calls it--they were no more than crawling. He says he
+was the only sober man in the crowd--been out on a jollification tour of
+ten days. He saw a man slide on to the running board on his side of the
+car as they were creeping up the hill. The rest of the party was
+singing, having a high old time.
+
+"Stevens said he never said a word, just watched the guy on the running
+board, and planned to crack him on the head with an empty beer bottle
+when they got on the straight road and were hitting up a good clip--just
+playing, you understand.
+
+"After he'd watched the guy a while and was trying to fish up a beer
+bottle from the bottom of the car, the chauffeur slowed down and
+hollered back to him on the back seat that he wanted to stop and look at
+his radiator--it was about to blow up, too hot. He'd been burning the
+dust on that stretch of good road.
+
+"When he slowed down, the guy on the running board slipped off. Stevens
+says he rolled down a bank."
+
+The jubilant Mr. Crown stopped, for breath.
+
+"That's all right, far as it goes," Hastings said; "but does he identify
+that man as Russell?"
+
+"To the last hair on his head!" replied the sheriff. "Stevens'
+description of the fellow is Russell all over--all over! Just to show
+you how good it is, take this: Stevens describe the clothes Russell
+wore, and says what Otis said: he'd lost his hat."
+
+"Stevens got a good look at him?"
+
+"Says the headlights were full on him as he stood on one side of the
+road, there on Hub Hill, waiting to slide on the running board.--And
+this Stevens is a shrewd guy, the York chief says. I guess his story
+plugs Russell's lies, shoots that alibi so full of holes it makes a
+sifter look like a piece of sheet-iron!
+
+"That car went up Hub Hill at seven minutes past eleven--that means
+Russell had plenty of time to kill the girl after the rain stopped and
+to get out on the road and slip on to that running board. And the car
+slowed up, where he rolled off the running board, at eighteen minutes
+past eleven.
+
+"Time's right, location's right, identification's right!--Pretty sweet,
+ain't it, old fellow? Congratulate me, don't you? Congratulate me, even
+if it does step on all those mysterious theories of yours--that right?"
+
+Hastings bestowed the desired felicitations upon the exuberant conqueror
+of crime.
+
+Turning from the telephone, he gazed a long time at the piece of grey
+envelope on the table before him. He had clung to his belief that, in
+those fragments of words, was to be found a clue to the solution of the
+mystery. He picked up his knife and fell to whittling.
+
+Outside in the street a newsboy set up an abrupt, blaring din, shouting
+sensational headlines:
+
+
+  "SLOANEHURST MYSTERY SOLVED!--RUSSELL THE MURDERER!--ALIBI A FAKE!"
+
+
+The old man considered grimly, the various effects of this development
+in the case--Lucille Sloane's unbounded relief mingled with censure of
+him for having added to her fears, and especially for having subjected
+her to the ordeal of last night's experience with Mrs. Brace--the
+adverse criticism from both press and public because of his refusal to
+join in the first attacks upon Russell, Arthur Sloane's complacency at
+never having treated him with common courtesy.
+
+His thoughts went to Mrs. Brace and her blackmail schemes, as he had
+interpreted or suspected them.
+
+"If I'd had a little more time," he reflected, "I might have put my hand
+on----"
+
+His eyes rested on the envelope flap. His mind flashed to another and
+new idea. His muscles stiffened; he put his hands on the arms of his
+chair and slowly lifted himself up, the knife dropping from his fingers
+and clattering on the floor. He stood erect and held both hands aloft, a
+gesture of wide and growing wonder.
+
+"Cripes!" he said aloud.
+
+He picked up the grey paper with a hand that trembled. His pendent
+cheeks puffed out like those of a man blowing a horn. He stared at the
+paper again, before restoring it to its envelope, which he put back into
+one of his pockets.
+
+"Cripes!" he said again. "It's a place! Pursuit! That's where the----"
+
+He became a whirlwind of action, covered the floor with springy step.
+Taking a book of colossal size from a shelf, he whirled the pages,
+running his finger down a column while he murmured,
+"Pursuit--P-u-r--P-u--P-u----"
+
+But there was no such name in the postal directory. He went back to
+older directories. He began to worry. Was there no such postoffice as
+Pursuit? He went to other books, whirling the pages, running down column
+after column. And at last he got the information he sought.
+
+Consulting a railroad folder, he found a train schedule that caused him
+to look at his watch.
+
+"Twenty-five minutes," he figured. "I'm going!"
+
+He telephoned for a cab.
+
+Then, seating himself at the table, he tore a sheet from a scratch-pad
+and wrote:
+
+"Don't lose sight of Mrs. Brace. Disregard Russell's arrest.
+
+"Hendricks: the Sloanehurst people are members of the Arlington Golf
+Club. Get a look at golf bags there. Did one, or two, contain piece or
+pieces of a bed-slat?
+
+"Gore: check up on Mrs. B.'s use of money.
+
+"I'll be back Sunday."
+
+He sealed the envelope into which he put that, and, addressing it to
+Hendricks, left it lying on the table.
+
+At the station he bought the afternoon newspapers and turned to Eugene
+Russell's statement, made to the reporters immediately after his arrest.
+It ran:
+
+"I repeat that I'm innocent of the murder. Of course, I made a mistake
+in omitting all mention of my having ridden the first four miles from
+Sloanehurst. But, being innocent and knowing the weight of the
+circumstantial evidence against me, I could not resist the temptation to
+make my alibi good. I neither committed that murder nor witnessed it.
+The story I told at the inquest of what happened to me and what I did at
+Sloanehurst stands. It is the truth."
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+"PURSUIT!"
+
+
+Returning from his trip Sunday morning, the detective, after a brief
+conference with Hendricks, had gone immediately to Mrs. Brace's
+apartment. She sat now, still and watchful, on the armless rocker by the
+window, waiting for him to disclose the object of his visit. Except the
+lifted, faintly interrogating eyebrows, there was nothing in her face
+indicative of what she thought.
+
+He caught himself comparing her to a statue, forever seated on the
+low-backed, uncomfortable chair, awaiting without emotion or alteration
+of feature the outcome of her evil scheming. Her hardness gave him the
+impression of something hammered on, beaten into an ugly pattern.
+
+Having that imperturbability to overcome, he struck his first blow with
+surprising directness.
+
+"I'm just back from Pursuit," he said.
+
+That was the first speech by either of them since the monosyllabic
+greeting at the door. He saw that she had prepared herself for such an
+announcement; but the way she took it reminded him of a door shaken by
+the impact of a terrific blow. A little shiver, for all her force of
+repression, moved her from head to foot.
+
+"You are?" she responded, her voice controlled, the hard face untouched
+by the shock to which her body had responded.
+
+"Yes; I got back half an hour ago, and, except for one of my assistants,
+you're the first person I've seen." When that drew no comment from her,
+he added: "I want you to remember that--later on."
+
+He began to whittle.
+
+"Why?" she asked with genuine curiosity, after a pause.
+
+"Because it may be well for you to know that I'm dealing with you alone,
+and fairly.--I got all the facts concerning you."
+
+"Concerning me?" Her tone intimated doubt.
+
+"Now, Mrs. Brace!" he exclaimed, disapproving her apparent intention.
+"You're surely not going to pretend ignorance--or innocence!"
+
+She crossed her knees, and, putting her left forearm across her body,
+rested her right elbow in that hand. She began to rock very gently, her
+posture causing her to lean forward and giving her a look of continual
+but polite questioning.
+
+"If you want to talk to me," she said, her voice free of all feeling,
+"you'll have to tell me what it's about."
+
+"All right; I will," he returned. "You'll remember, I take it, my asking
+you to tell me the meaning of the marks on the flap of the grey
+envelope. I'll admit I was slow, criminally slow, in coming to the
+conclusion that 'Pursuit!' referred to a place rather than an act. But I
+got it finally--and I found Pursuit--not much left of it now; it's not
+even a postoffice.
+
+"But it's discoverable," he continued on a sterner note, and began to
+shave long, slender chips from his block of wood. "I'll give you the
+high lights: young Dalton was killed--his murderer made a run for
+it--but you, a young widow then, in whose presence the thing was done,
+smoothed matters out. You swore it was a matter of self-defence. The
+result was that, after a few half-hearted attempts to locate the
+fugitive, the pursuit was given up."
+
+"Very well. But why bring that story here--now? What's its
+significance?"
+
+He stared at her in amazement. Her thin, sensitive lips were drawn back
+at the corners, enough to make her mouth look a trifle wider--and enough
+to suggest dimly that their motion was the start of a vindictive
+grimace. Otherwise, she was unmoved, unresponsive to the open threat of
+what he had said.
+
+"Let me finish," he retorted. "An unfortunate feature, for you, was
+that you seemed to have made money out of the tragedy. In straitened
+circumstances previously, you began to spend freely--comparatively
+speaking--a few days after the murderer's disappearance. In fact,
+bribery was hinted; you had to leave the village. See any significance
+in that?" he concluded, with irony.
+
+"Suppose you explain it," she said, still cool.
+
+"The significance is in the strengthening of the theory I've had
+throughout the whole week that's passed since your daughter was killed
+at Sloanehurst."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+She stopped rocking; her eyes played a fiery tattoo on every feature of
+his face.
+
+"Your daughter's death was the unexpected result of your attempts to
+blackmail young Dalton's murderer. You, being afraid of him, and not
+confessing that timidity to Mildred, persuaded her to approach him--in
+person."
+
+"I! Afraid of him!" she objected, aroused at last.
+
+Her brows were lowered, a heavy line above her furtive, swift eyes; her
+nostrils fluttered nervously.
+
+"Granting your absurd theory," she continued, "why should I have feared
+him? What had he done--except strike to save his own life?"
+
+"You forget, Mrs. Brace," he corrected. "That body showed twenty-nine
+wounds, twenty-eight of them unnecessary--if the first was inflicted in
+mere self-defence. It was horrible mutilation."
+
+"So!" she ridiculed, with obvious effort. "You picture him as a
+butcher."
+
+"Precisely. And you, having seen to what lengths his murderous fury
+could take him, were afraid to face him--even after your long, long
+search had located him again. Let's be sensible, Mrs. Brace. Let's give
+the facts of this business a hearing.
+
+"You had come to Washington and located him at last. But, after
+receiving several demands from you, he'd stopped reading your
+letters--sent them back unopened. Consequently, in order for you to make
+an appointment with him, he had to be communicated with in a handwriting
+he didn't know. Hence, your daughter had to write the letter making that
+appointment a week ago last night. Then, however----"
+
+"What makes you think----"
+
+"Then, however," he concluded, overbearing her with his voice, "you
+hadn't the courage to face him--out there, in the dark, alone. You
+persuaded Mildred to go--in your place. And he killed her."
+
+"Ha!" The mocking exclamation sounded as though it had been pounded out
+of her by a blow upon her back. "What makes you say that? Where do you
+get that? Who put that into your head?"
+
+She volleyed those questions at him with indescribable rapidity, her
+lips drawn back from her teeth, her brows straining far up toward the
+line of her hair. The profound disgust with which he viewed her did not
+affect her. She darted to and fro in her mind, running about in the
+waste and tumult of her momentary confusion, seeking the best thing to
+say, the best policy to adopt, for her own ends.
+
+He had had time to determine that much when her gift of self-possession
+reasserted itself. She forced her lips back to their thin line, and
+steadied herself. He could see the vibrant tautness of her whole body,
+exemplified in the rigidity with which she held her crossed knees, one
+crushed upon the other.
+
+"I know, I think, what misled you," she answered her own question.
+"You've talked to Gene Russell, of course. He may have heard--I think he
+did hear--Mildred and me discussing the mailing of a letter that Friday
+night."
+
+"He did," Hastings said, firmly.
+
+"But he couldn't have heard anything to warrant your theory, Mr.
+Hastings. I merely made fun of her wavering after she'd once said she'd
+confront Berne Webster again with her appeal for fair play."
+
+He inspected her with an emotion that was a mingling of incredulity and
+repugnant wonder.
+
+"It's no use, Mrs. Brace," he told her. "Russell didn't see the name of
+the man to whom the letter was addressed. I saw him last Sunday
+afternoon. He told me he took the name for granted, because Mildred had
+taunted him, saying it went to Webster. As a matter of fact, he wanted
+to see if Webster was at Sloanehurst and fastened his eyes for a
+fleeting glimpse on that word--and on that alone. Besides, there are
+facts to prove that the letter did not go to Webster.--Do you see how
+your fancied security falls away?"
+
+"Let me think," she said, her tone flat and impersonal.
+
+She was silent, her restless eyes gazing at the wall over his head. He
+watched her, and glanced only at intervals at the wood he was aimlessly
+shaving.
+
+"Of course," she said, after a while, looking at him with a speculative,
+deliberating air, "you've deduced and pieced this together. You've a
+woman's intuition--comprehension of motives, feelings."
+
+She was silent again.
+
+"Pieced what together?" he asked.
+
+"It's plain enough, isn't it? You began with your suspicion that my need
+of money was heavier in my mind than grief at Mildred's death. On that,
+you built up--well, all you've just said."
+
+"It was more than a suspicion," he corrected. "It was knowledge--that
+everything you did, after her death, was intended to help along your
+scheme to--we'll say, to get money."
+
+"Still," she persisted shrewdly, "you felt the necessity of proving I'd
+blackmail--if that's the word you want to use."
+
+"How?" he put in quickly. "Prove it, how?"
+
+"That's why you sent that girl here with the five hundred. I see it now;
+although, at the time, I didn't." She laughed, a short, bitter note.
+"Perhaps, the money, or my need of it, kept me from thinking straight."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Of course," she made the admission calmly, "as soon as I took the hush
+money, your theory seemed sound--the whole of it: my motives and
+identity of the murderer."
+
+She was thinking with a concentration so intense that the signs of it
+resembled physical exertion. Moisture beaded the upper part of her
+forehead. He could see the muscles of her face respond to the locking of
+her jaws.
+
+"But there's nothing against me," she began again, and, moved by his
+expression, qualified: "nothing that I can be held for, in the courts."
+
+"You've decided that, have you?"
+
+"You'll admit it," she said. "There's nothing--there can be nothing--to
+disprove my statement that Dalton's death was provoked. I hold the key
+to that--I alone. That being true, I couldn't be prosecuted in Pursuit
+as 'accessory after the fact.'"
+
+"Yes," he agreed. "That's true."
+
+"And here," she concluded, without a hint of triumph, even without a
+special show of interest, "I can't be proceeded against for blackmail.
+That money, from both of them, was a gift. I hadn't asked for it, much
+less demanded it. I," she said with an assured arrogance, "hadn't got
+that far.--So, you see, Mr. Hastings, I'm far from frightened."
+
+He found nothing to say to that shameless but unassailable declaration.
+Also, he was aware that she entertained, and sought solution of, a
+problem, the question of how best to satisfy her implacable
+determination to make the man pay. That purpose occupied all her mind,
+now that her money greed was frustrated.
+
+It was on this that he had calculated. It explained his going to her
+before confronting the murderer. He had felt certain that her perverted
+desire to "get even" would force her into the strange position of
+helping him.
+
+He broke the silence with a careful attempt to guide her thoughts:
+
+"But don't fool yourself, Mrs. Brace. You've got out of this all you'll
+ever get, financially--every cent. And you're in an unpleasant
+situation--an outcast, perhaps. People don't stand for your line of
+stuff, your behaviour."
+
+She did not resent that. Making a desperate mental search for the best
+way to serve her hard self-interest, he thought, she was impervious to
+insult.
+
+"I know," she said, to his immense relief. "I've been considering the
+only remaining point."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"The sure way to make him suffer as horribly as possible."
+
+He pretended absorption in his carving.
+
+"Why shouldn't he have provided me with money when I asked it?" she
+demanded, at last.
+
+The new quality of her speech brought his head up with a jerk. Instead
+of colourless harshness, it had a warm fury. It was not that she spoke
+loudly or on a high key; but it had an unbridled, self-indulgent sound.
+He got the impression that she put off all censorship from either her
+feeling or her expression.
+
+"That wasn't much to ask--as long as he continued his life of ease, of
+luxury, of safety--as long as I left out of consideration the debt he
+couldn't pay, the debt that was impossible of payment."
+
+Alien as the thing seemed in connection with her, he grasped it. She
+thought that she had once loved the man.
+
+"The matter of personal feeling?" he asked.
+
+"Yes. When he left Pursuit, he destroyed the better part of me--what you
+would call the good part."
+
+She said that without sentimentalism, without making it a plea for
+sympathy; she had better sense, he saw, than to imagine that she could
+arouse sympathy on that ground.
+
+"And," she continued, with intense malignity, "what was so monstrous in
+my asking him for money? I asked him for no payment of what he really
+owes me. That's a debt he can't pay! My beauty, destroyed, withered and
+covered over with the hard mask of the features you see now; my
+capacity for happiness, dead, swallowed up in my long, long devotion to
+my purpose to find him again--those things, man as you are, you realize
+are beyond the scope of payment or repayment!"
+
+Without rising to a standing position, she leaned so far forward that
+her weight was all on her feet, and, although her figure retained the
+posture of one seated on a chair, she was in fact independent of support
+from it, and held herself crouching in front of him, taut, a tremor in
+her limbs because of the strain.
+
+Her hands were held out toward him, the tips of her stiffened,
+half-closed fingers less than a foot from his face. Her brows were drawn
+so high that the skin of her forehead twitched, as if pulled upward by
+another's hand. It was with difficulty that he compelled himself to
+witness the climax of her rage. Only his need of what she knew kept him
+still.
+
+"Money!" she said, her lean arms in continual motion before him. "You're
+right, there. I wanted money. I made up my mind I'd have it. It was such
+a purpose of mine, so strongly grown into my whole being, that even
+Mildred's death couldn't lessen or dislodge it. And there was more than
+the want of money in my never letting loose of my intention to find
+him. He couldn't strip me bare and get away! You've understood me pretty
+well. You know it was written, on the books, that he and I should come
+together again--no matter how far he went, or how cleverly!
+
+"And I see now!" she gave him her decision, and, as she did so, rose to
+an upright position, her hands at her sides going half-shut and open,
+half-shut and open, as if she made mental pictures of the closing in of
+her long pursuit. "I'll say what you want me to say. Confront him; put
+me face to face with him, and I'll say the letter went to him. Oh, never
+fear! I'll say the appropriate thing, and the convincing
+thing--appropriately convincing!"
+
+Her eyes glittered, countering his searching glance, as she stood over
+him, her body flung a little forward from the waist, her arms busy with
+their quick, angular gesticulation.
+
+"When?" he asked. "When will you do that?"
+
+"Now," she answered instantly. "Now!--Now!--Oh, don't look surprised.
+I've thought of this possibility. My God!" she said with a bitterness
+that startled him. "I've thought of every possibility, every possible
+crook and quirk of this business."
+
+She was struck by his slowness in responding to her offer.
+
+"But you," she asked; "are you sure--have you the proof?"
+
+"Thanks," he said drily. "You needn't be uneasy about that.--Now, if I
+may do a little telephoning, we'll start."
+
+He went a step from her and turned back.
+
+"By the way," he stipulated, "that little matter of the five
+hundred--you needn't refer to it. I mean it will have to be left out.
+It's not necessary."
+
+"No; it isn't," she agreed, with perfect indifference. "And it's spent."
+
+When he had telephoned to Sloanehurst and the sheriff's office, he found
+her with her hat on, ready to accompany him.
+
+As they stepped out of the Walman, she saw the automobile waiting for
+them. She stopped, a new rage darting from her eyes. He thought she
+would go back. After a brief hesitation, however, she gave a short, ugly
+laugh.
+
+"You were as sure as that, were you!" she belittled herself. "Had the
+car wait--to take me there!"
+
+"By no means," he denied. "I hoped you'd go--that's all."
+
+"That's better," she said, determined to assert her individuality of
+action. "You're not forcing me into this, you know. I'm doing it, after
+thinking it out to the last detail--for my own satisfaction."
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+DENIAL OF THE CHARGE
+
+
+Hastings, fully appreciating the value of surprise, had instructed Mrs.
+Brace to communicate none of the new developments to anybody until he
+asked for them. Reaching Sloanehurst, he went alone to the library,
+leaving her in the parlour to battle as best she might with the
+sheriff's anxious curiosity.
+
+Arthur Sloane and Judge Wilton gave him cool welcome, parading for his
+benefit an obvious and insolent boredom. Although uninvited to sit down,
+he caught up a chair and swung it lightly into such position that, when
+he seated himself, he faced them across the table. He was smiling,
+enough to indicate a general satisfaction with the world.
+
+There was in his bearing, however, that which carried them back to their
+midnight session with him immediately following the discovery of Mildred
+Brace's body. The smile did not lessen his look of unquestionable power;
+his words were sharp, clipped-off.
+
+"I take it," he said briskly, untouched by their demeanour of
+indifference, "you gentlemen will be interested in the fact that I've
+cleared up this mystery."
+
+"Ah-h-h!" drawled Sloane. "Again?"
+
+"What do you mean by 'again'?" he asked, good-naturedly.
+
+"Crown, the sheriff, accomplished it four days ago, I'm credibly
+informed."
+
+"He made a mistake."
+
+"Ah?" Sloane ridiculed.
+
+"Yes. 'Ah!'" Hastings took him up curtly, and, with a quick turn of his
+head, addressed himself to Wilton: "Judge, I've been to Pursuit."
+
+When he said that, his head was thrown back so that he squinted at
+Wilton down the line of his nose, under the rims of his spectacles.
+
+"Pursuit!"
+
+Wilton's echo of the word was explosive. He had been leaning back in his
+chair, eying the detective from under lowered lids, and drawing deep,
+prolonged puffs from his cigar. But, with the response to Hastings'
+announcement, he sat up and leaned forward, putting his elbows on the
+rim of the table. It was an awkward attitude, compelling him to extend
+his neck and turn his face upward in order to meet the other's glance.
+
+"Yes," Hastings said, after a measurable pause. "Interested in that?"
+
+"Not at all," Wilton replied, plainly alarmed, and fubbed out his cigar
+with forefinger and thumb, oblivious to the fact that he dropped a
+little shower of fire on the table cover.
+
+"I'll trouble you to observe, Mr. Sloane," Hastings put in, "that, being
+excited, the judge's first impulse is to extinguish his cigar: it's a
+habit of his.--Now, judge, in Pursuit I heard a lot about you--a lot."
+
+"All right--what?"
+
+He made the inquiry reluctantly, as if under compulsion of the
+detective's glance.
+
+"The Dalton case--and your part in it."
+
+"You know about that, do you?"
+
+"All about it," Hastings said, in a way that made doubt impossible;
+Sloane, even, bewildered as he was, got the impression of his ruthless
+certainty.
+
+Wilton did not contest it.
+
+"I struck in self-defence," he excused himself wearily, like a man
+taking up a task against his will. "It would be ridiculous to call that
+murder. No jury would have convicted me--none would now, if given the
+truth."
+
+"But the body showed twenty-nine wounds," Hastings pressed him, "the
+marks of twenty-nine separate thrusts of that knife."
+
+"Yes; that's true.--Yes, I'll tell you about that, you and Arthur--if
+you'd care to hear?"
+
+"That's what I'm here for," Hastings said, settling in his chair. He was
+thinking: "He didn't expect this. He's unprepared!"
+
+Sloane, who had been on the point of resenting this unbelievable attack
+on his friend, was struck dumb by Wilton's calm acknowledgment of the
+charge. From long habit, he took the cap off the smelling-salts with
+which he had been toying when Hastings came in, but his shaking hand
+could not lift the bottle to his nose. Wilton guilty of a murder, years
+ago! He drew a long, shuddering breath and huddled in his chair.
+
+Wilton rose clumsily and walked heavily to the door opening into the
+hall. He put his hand on the knob but did not turn it. He repeated the
+performance at the door opening into Sloane's room. In all this he was
+unconscionably slow, moving in the manner of a blind man, feeling his
+way about and fumbling both knobs.
+
+When he came back to the table, his shoulders were hunched to the front
+and downward, crowding his chest. His face looked larger, each separate
+feature of it throbbing coarsely to the pumping of his heart. Pink
+threads stood out on the white of his eyeballs. When the back of his
+neck pressed against his collar, the effect was to give the lower half
+of the back of his head an odd appearance of inflation or puffiness.
+
+Hastings had never seen a man struggle so to contain himself.
+
+"Suffering angels!" Sloane sympathized shrilly. "What's the matter,
+Tom?"
+
+"All right--it's all right," he assured, his voice still low, but so
+resonant and harsh that it sounded like the thrumming of a viol string.
+
+He seated himself, moving his chair several times, adjusting it to a
+proper angle to the table. In the end, he sat close to the table rim,
+hunched heavily on his elbows, and looked straight at Hastings.
+
+"But, since you've been to Pursuit, what do you imply, or say?" he
+asked, the words scraping, as though his throat had been roughened with
+a file.
+
+"That you killed Mildred Brace," Hastings answered, also leaning
+forward, to give the accusation weight.
+
+"I! I killed her!" Wilton's teeth went together with a sharp click; the
+table sagged under his weight. "I deny it. I deny it!" He ripped out an
+oath. "This man's crazy, Arthur! He's dragged up a mistake, a tragedy,
+of my youth, and now has the effrontery to use it as a reason for
+suspecting me of murder!"
+
+"Exactly!" chimed Sloane, in tremulous relief. "Shivering saints! Why
+haven't you said so long ago, Tom?"
+
+"I didn't give him credit for the wild insanity he's showing," said
+Wilton thickly.
+
+Whatever had been his first impulse, however near he had been to trying
+to explain away all blame in the Dalton murder, it was clear to Hastings
+now that he intended to rely on flat denial of his connection with the
+death of Mildred Brace. He had, perhaps, decided that explanation was
+too difficult.
+
+Seeing his indecision, Hastings turned on Sloane.
+
+"You've been exceedingly offensive to me on several occasions, Mr.
+Sloane. And I've had enough of it. Now, I've got the facts to show that
+you're as foolish in the selection of your friends as in making enemies.
+I'm about to charge this man Wilton with murder. He killed Mildred
+Brace, and I can prove it. If you want to hear the facts back of this
+mystery; if you want the stuff that will enable you to decide whether
+you'll stand by him or against him, you can have it!"
+
+Before Sloane could recover from his surprise at the old man's hot
+resentment, Wilton said, with an air of careless contempt:
+
+"Oh, we've got to deal with what he says, Arthur. I'd rather answer it
+here than with an audience."
+
+"The reading public, for instance?" Hastings retorted, and added: "It
+may interest you, Mr. Sloane, to know that you gave me my first
+suspicion of him. When you stepped back from the handkerchief I held out
+to you--remember, as I was kneeling over the body, and the servant
+laughed at you?--I jammed it into Wilton's right-hand coat-pocket.
+
+"Later, when I got it back from him, I saw clinging to it a few cigar
+ashes and two small particles of wet tobacco. He had had in that pocket
+a cigar stump wet from his saliva.
+
+"When he began then his story of finding the body, he said, 'I'd been
+smoking my good-night cigar; this is what's left of it.' As he said
+that, he pointed to the unlit--remember that, unlit--cigar stump between
+his teeth. He made it a point to emphasize the fact that so little time
+had elapsed between his finding the body and his giving the alarm that
+he hadn't smoked up the cigar, and also he hadn't taken time to put his
+hand to his mouth, take out the cigar and throw it away.
+
+"It was one of the over-fine little touches that a guilty man tries to
+pile on his scheme for appearing innocent. But what are the facts?
+
+"Just now, as soon as he got excited, he mechanically fubbed out his
+cigar. It's a habit of his--whenever he's in a close corner. He did it
+during the interview I had with him and Webster in the music room last
+Sunday morning--when, in fact, something dangerous to him came up. He
+did it again when I was talking to him in his office, following a visit
+from Mrs. Brace.
+
+"There you have the beginning of my suspicion. Why had he gone out of
+his way to put a cigar stump into his pocket that night, and to explain
+that he had had it in his mouth all the time? When he came into my room,
+to wake me up, he had no cigar in his mouth. But, when you and I rounded
+the corner of the porch and first saw him kneeling over the body, he had
+one hand in his right-hand coat-pocket. And, when we stood beside him,
+he had put a half-smoked, unlit cigar into his mouth.
+
+"You see my point, clearly? Instead of having had the cigar in his mouth
+and having kept it there while he found the body and reported the
+discovery to us, the truth is this: he had fubbed out the cigar when he
+met Mildred Brace on the lawn, and it had occurred to his calculating
+mind that it would be well, when he chose to give the alarm, to use the
+cigar stunt as evidence that he hadn't been engaged in quarrelling with
+and murdering a woman.
+
+"He was right in his opinion that the average man doesn't go on calmly
+smoking while engaged in such activities. He was wrong in letting us
+discover where he'd carried the stump until he needed it.
+
+"He had put it into that pocket, but, after committing the murder, he
+wasn't quite as calm as he'd expected to be--something had gone wrong;
+Webster had appeared on the scene--and the cigar wasn't restored to his
+mouth until you and I first reached the body.
+
+"Here's my handkerchief, showing the ashes and the pieces of cigar
+tobacco on it, just as it was when he handed it back to me."
+
+He took from one of his pockets a tissue-paper parcel, and, unwrapping
+it, handed it to Sloane.
+
+"Ah-h-h-that's what it shows," Sloane admitted, bending over the
+handkerchief.
+
+Wilton welcomed that with a laugh which he meant to be lightly
+contemptuous.
+
+"See here, Arthur!" he objected. "I'm perfectly willing to listen to any
+sane statement this man may make, but----"
+
+"You said you wanted to hear this!" Hasting stopped him. "I'm fair about
+it. I've told you why I began to watch you. I've got more."
+
+"You need it," Sloane complained. "If it's all that thin----"
+
+"Don't shout too soon," Hastings interrupted again. "Mr. Sloane, this
+man's been working against me from the start. Think a moment, and you'll
+realize it. While he was telling your daughter and a whole lot of other
+people that I was the only man to handle the case, he was slipping you
+the quiet instruction to avoid me, not to confide in me, not to tell me
+a single thing. Isn't that true?"
+
+"We-ell, he did say the best way for me to avoid all possibility of
+being involved in the thing was not to talk to anybody."
+
+"I knew it!" Hastings declared, giving his contempt full play. "And he
+persuaded you that you might have seen--_might_, mind you--and he gave
+you the suggestion skilfully, more by indirection than by flat
+statement--that you might have seen Berne Webster out there on the lawn
+that night, when you were uncertain, when you feared it yourself--a
+little. Isn't that true?"
+
+Sloane looked at him with widening eyes, his lips trembling.
+
+"Come, Mr. Sloane! Let's play fair, didn't he?"
+
+"We-ell, yes."
+
+"And," Hastings continued, thumping the table with a heavy hand to drive
+home the points of his statement, "he persuaded you to offer that money
+to Mrs. Brace--last Tuesday night.--Didn't he?--And that matches his
+slippery cunning in pretending he was saving Webster by hiding the fact
+that Webster's hand had gagged him when they found the body. He figured
+his willingness to help somebody else would keep suspicion away from
+him. I----"
+
+"Rot! All rot!" Wilton broke in. "Where do you think you are, Arthur, on
+the witness stand? He'll have you saying white's black in a minute."
+
+"Mr. Sloane," the detective said, getting to his feet, "he induced you
+to pay money to Mrs. Brace--while it's the colour of blackmail, it won't
+be a matter for prosecution; you gave it to her, in a sense,
+unsolicited--but he induced you to do that because he knew she was out
+for blackmail. He hoped that, if you bought her off, she wouldn't pursue
+him farther."
+
+"Farther!" echoed Sloane. "What do you mean by that?"
+
+"Why, man! Don't you see? Money was back of all that tragedy. He
+murdered the girl because she had come here to renew her mother's
+attempts at blackmail on him! Not content with duping you, with handling
+you as if you'd been a baby, he put you up to buying off the woman who
+was after him--and he did it by fooling you into thinking that you were
+saving the name, if not the very life, of your daughter's fiance!
+He----"
+
+"Lies! Wild lie!" thundered Wilton, pushing back from the table. "I'm
+through with----"
+
+"No! No!" shrilled Sloane. "Wait! Prove that, Hastings! Prove it--if you
+can! Shuddering saints! Have I----?"
+
+He looked once at Wilton's contorted face, and recoiled, the movement
+confessing at last his lack of faith in the man.
+
+"I will," Hastings answered him, and moved toward the door; "I'll prove
+it--by the girl's mother."
+
+He threw open the door, and, sure now of holding Sloane's attention,
+went in search of Mrs. Brace and the sheriff.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+"AMPLE EVIDENCE"
+
+
+The two men in the library waited a long time for his return. Wilton,
+elbows on the table, stared straight in front of him, giving no sign of
+knowledge of the other's presence. Sloane fidgeted with the
+smelling-salts, emitting now and then long-drawn, tremulous sighs that
+were his own special vocabulary of dissatisfaction. He spoke once.
+
+"Mute and cringing martyrs!" he said, in suspicious remonstrance. "If
+he'd say something we could deny! So far, Tom, you're mixed up in----"
+
+"Why can't you wait until he's through?" Wilton objected roughly.
+
+They heard people coming down the hall. Lucille, following Mrs. Brace
+into the room, went to her father. They could see, from her look of
+grieved wonder, that Hastings had told her of the charge against Wilton.
+The sheriff's expression confirmed the supposition. His mouth hung open,
+so that the unsteady fingers with which he plucked at his knuckle like
+chin appeared also to support his fallen jaw. He made a weak-kneed
+progress from the door to a chair near the screened fireplace.
+
+For a full half-minute Hastings was silent, as if to let the doubts and
+suspense of each member of the group emphasize his dominance of the
+situation. He reviewed swiftly some of the little things he had used to
+build up in his own mind the certainty of Wilton's guilt: the man's
+agitation in the music room at the discovery, not that a part of the
+grey envelope had been found, but that it contained some of the words of
+the letter--his obvious alarm when found quarrelling with Mrs. Brace in
+his office--his hardly controlled impulses: once, outside Sloane's
+bedroom, to accuse Berne Webster without proof, and, on the Sloanehurst
+porch last Sunday, to suggest that Sloane was guilty.
+
+The detective observed now that he absolutely ignored Mrs. Brace, not
+even looking in her direction. He perceived also how she reacted to that
+assumed indifference. The tightening of her lips, the flutter of her
+mobile nostrils, left him no longer any doubt that she was in the mood
+to give him the cooperation she had so bitterly promised.
+
+"To be dragged down by such a woman!" he thought.
+
+"Mrs. Brace," he said, "I've charged Judge Wilton with the murder of
+your daughter. I say now he killed her, with premeditation, having
+planned it after receiving a letter from her."
+
+"Yes?" she responded, a certain tenseness in her voice.
+
+She had gone to a chair by the window; and, like the sheriff, she faced
+the trio at the table: Wilton, Sloane, and Lucille, who stood behind her
+father, a hand on his shoulder.
+
+Hastings slowly paced the floor as he talked, his hands clasped behind
+him and now and then moving the tail of his coat up and down. He glanced
+at Mrs. Brace over the rims of his spectacles, his eyes shrewd and keen.
+He showed an unmistakable self-satisfaction, like the elation Wilton had
+detected in his bearing on two former occasions.
+
+"Now," he asked her, "what can you tell us about that letter?"
+
+Wilton, his chest pressed so hard against the edge of the table that his
+breathing moved his body, turned his swollen face upon her at last, his
+eyes flaming under the thatch of his down-drawn brows.
+
+Mrs. Brace, her high-shouldered, lean frame silhouetted against the
+window, began, in a colourless, unemotioned tone:
+
+"As you know, Mr. Hastings, I thought this man Wilton owed me money,
+more than money. I'd looked for him for twenty-six years. Less than a
+year ago I located him here in Virginia, and I came to Washington. He
+refused my requests. Then, he stopped reading my letters--sent them back
+unopened at first; later, he destroyed them unread, I suppose."
+
+She cleared her throat lightly, and spoke more rapidly. The intensity of
+her hate, in spite of her power of suppression, held them in a
+disagreeable fascination.
+
+"I was afraid of him, afraid to confront him alone. I'd seen him kill a
+man. But I was in desperate need. I thought, if my daughter could talk
+to him, he would be brought to do the right thing. I suppose," she said
+with a wintry smile, "you'd call it an attempt to blackmail--if he had
+let it go far enough.
+
+"She wrote him a letter, on grey paper, and sent it, in an oblong, grey
+envelope, to him here at Sloanehurst last Friday night. He got it
+Saturday afternoon. If he hadn't received it, he'd never have been out
+on the lawn--with a dagger he'd made for the occasion--at eleven or
+eleven-fifteen, which was the time Mildred said in her letter she'd see
+him there. She had added that, if he did not keep the appointment, she'd
+expose him--his crime in Pursuit."
+
+"I see," Hastings said, on the end of her cold, metallic utterance, and
+took from his pocket the flap of grey envelope. "Is this the flap of
+that envelope; or, better still, are these fragments of words and the
+word 'Pursuit' in your daughter's handwriting?"
+
+"I've examined them already," she said. "They are my daughter's
+writing."
+
+Her lips were suddenly thick, taking on that appearance of abnormal
+wetness which had so revolted him before.
+
+"And I say what you've just said!" she supplemented, her eyebrows high
+upon her forehead. "Tom Wilton killed my daughter. And, when I went to
+his office--I was sure then that he'd be afraid to harm me so soon after
+Mildred's death--I accused him of the murder. He took it with a laugh.
+He said I could look at it as a warning that----"
+
+"Wait!"
+
+The interruption came from Wilton.
+
+"I'm going to make a statement about this thing!" he ground out, his
+voice coarse and rasping.
+
+Hastings hung upon him with relentless gaze.
+
+"What have you got to say?"
+
+"Much!" returned Wilton. "I'm not going to let myself be ruined on this
+charge because of a mistake of my youth--mistake, I say! I'm about to
+tell you the story of such suffering, such misfortune, as no man has
+ever had to endure. It explains that tragedy in Pursuit; it explains my
+life; it explains everything. I didn't murder that boy Dalton. I struck
+in self-defence. But the twenty-nine wounds on his body----"
+
+He paused, preoccupied; he was thinking less of his hearers than of
+himself. It was at that point, Hastings thought afterwards, that he
+began to lose himself in the ugly enjoyment of describing his cruelty.
+It was as if the horrors to which he gave voice subjected him to a
+specious and irresistible charm, equipped him with a spurious courage, a
+sincere indifference to common opinion.
+
+"There is," he said, "a shadow on my soul. My greatest enemy is hidden
+in my own mind.
+
+"But I've fought it, fought it all my life. You may say the makeshifts
+I've adopted, the strategy of my resistance, my tactics to outwit this
+thing, do me little credit. I shall leave it to you to decide. Results
+speak for themselves. I have broken no law; there is against me nothing
+that would bring upon me the penalty of man's laws."
+
+He wedged himself more closely against the edge of the table, and struck
+his left palm with his clenched right hand.
+
+"I tell you, Hastings, to have fought this thing, in whatever way, has
+been a task that called for every ounce of strength I had. I've lived in
+hell and walked with devils, against my will. Not a day, not a night,
+have I been free of this curse, or my fear of it. There have been times
+when, every night for months, my slumbers were broken or impossible! The
+devilish thing reached down into the depths of sleep and with its foul
+and muddy grasp poisoned even those clear, white pools--clear and white
+for other men! But no matter----
+
+"You've heard of obsessions--of men seized every six months with an
+irresistible desire to drink--of kleptomaniacs who, having all they need
+or wish, must steal or go mad--of others driven by inexplicable impulse,
+mania, to set fire to buildings, for the thrill they get out of seeing
+the flames burst forth. Well, from my earliest childhood until that
+moment when Roy Dalton attacked me, I had fought an impulse even more
+terrible than those. God, what a tyranny! It drove me, drove me, that
+obsession, at times amounting to mental compulsion, to strike, to stab,
+to make the blood flow!"
+
+He rose, getting to his feet slowly, so that his burly bulk gained in
+size, like the slow upheaval of a hillside. Swollen as his face had
+been, it expanded now a trifle more. His nostrils coarsened more
+perceptibly. The puffiness that had been in the back of his neck
+extended entirely around his throat. He hung forward over the table,
+giving all his attention to Hastings, who was unmoved, incredulous.
+
+"The Brace woman will tell you I had to kill him," he proceeded more
+swiftly, displaying a questionable ardour, like a man foreseeing defeat.
+"The mistake I made was in running away--a bitter mistake! But those
+unnecessary wounds, twenty-eight that need not have been made! The
+obsession to see the blood flow drove me to acts which a jury, I
+thought, would not understand. And, if you don't see the force of my
+explanation, Hastings, if you don't understand, I shall be in little
+better plight--after all these years!"
+
+He put, there, a sorrowful appeal into his voice; but a sly
+contradiction of it showed faintly in his face, a hint that he took a
+crafty pleasure in dragging into the light the depravity he had kept in
+darkness for a lifetime.
+
+"I got away. I drifted to Virginia, working hard, studying much. I
+became a lawyer. But always I had that affliction to combat; all my
+life, man!--always! There were periods months long when devils came up
+from the ugly corners of my soul to torture and tempt me.
+
+"It wasn't the ordinary temptation, not a weak, pale idea of 'I'd like
+to kill and see the blood!'--but an uproar, an imperial voice, an
+endless command: 'Kill! Draw blood! Kill!'--What it did to me----
+
+"But to this day I've beaten it! I've been a good citizen. I've observed
+the law. I've refused to let that involuntary lust for blood ruin me or
+cast me out.
+
+"Let me tell you how. I decided that, if I had a hand in awarding just
+punishments, my affliction would be abated enough for me to live in some
+measure of security. There you have the explanation of my being on the
+bench. I cheated the obsession to murder by helping to imprison or
+execute those who did murder!
+
+"That's why I can tell you of my innocence of the Brace murder. Do you
+think I'd tell it unless I knew there could be not even an excuse for
+suspecting me? On the other hand, if I had kept silent as to the true
+motive that drove my hand to those unnecessary mutilations of young
+Dalton--the only time, remember, that my weakness ever got the better,
+or the worse, of me!--if I had kept silent on that, you would have had
+ground for suspecting me of a barbarous murder then, and, arguing from
+that, of the Brace murder now.
+
+"Do I make myself clear?--Do you want me to go into further detail?"
+
+He sank slowly back to his chair, spent by the strain of supreme effort.
+His breathing was laboured, stertorous.
+
+"That, Crown," Hastings denounced, "is a confession! Knowing he's
+caught, he's got the insolence to whine for mercy because of his
+'sufferings'! Think of it! The thing of which he boasts is the thing for
+which he deserves death--since death is supposed to be the supreme
+punishment. He tells us, in self-congratulatory terms, that he curbed
+his inhuman longings, satisfied his lust for blood, by going on the
+bench and helping to 'punish those who did murder!'
+
+"Too cowardly to strike a blow, he skulked behind the protection of his
+position. He made of the judicial robe an assassin's disguise. On the
+bench, he was free to sate his thirst for others' sufferings--adding to
+a sentence five undeserved years here, ten there; slipping into his
+instructions to juries a phrase that would mean the death penalty!
+
+"He revelled in judicial murders. He gloated over the helpless people
+who, looking to him for justice, were merely the victims of his
+abhorrent cruelty. He loved the look of sick surprise in their starting
+eyes. He got a filthy joy out of seeing a man turn pale. He rubbed his
+hands in glee when a woman swooned. He----"
+
+"I can't stand that--can't stand it!" Sloane protested, hands over his
+eyes.
+
+"What more do you want, to prove his guilt, his abominable guilt?"
+Hastings swept on. "You have the motive, hatred of this woman here and
+her daughter--you have the proof of the letter sent to him making the
+compulsory appointment--you have his own crazy explanation of his
+homicidal impulse, from which, by the way, he never sought relief, a
+queer 'impulse' since it gave him time, hours, to plan the crime and
+manufacture the weapon with which he killed!"
+
+"I said at the start," Wilton put in hoarsely, "this man Hastings was
+only theorizing. If he had anything to connect me with----"
+
+"I have!" Hastings told him, and came to a standstill in front of the
+sheriff, bending over him, as if to drive each statement into Crown's
+reluctant mind.
+
+"He got that letter a little after five in the afternoon. He left me
+here, in this room, with Sloane and Webster, and was gone three-quarters
+of an hour. That was just before dinner. He had the second floor, on
+that side of the house, entirely to himself. He took a nail-file from
+Webster's dressing case, and in Webster's room put a sharper point on it
+by filing it roughly with the file-blade of his own pen knife.
+
+"That's doubly proved: first, my magnet, with which I went over the
+floor in Webster's room, picked up small particles of steel. Here they
+are."
+
+He produced a small packet and, without unwrapping it, handed it to
+Crown.
+
+"Again: you'll find that the file-blade of his knife retained particles
+of the steel in the little furrows of its corrugated surface. I know,
+because last Sunday, as your car came up the driveway, I borrowed his
+knife, on the pretext of tightening a screw in the blade of mine. And I
+examined it."
+
+He put up a silencing hand as Wilton forced a jeering laugh.
+
+"But there's more to prove his manufacture and ownership of the weapon
+that killed the woman. He made the handle from the end of a slat on the
+bed in the room which I occupied that night. The inference is obvious:
+he didn't care to risk going outside the house to hunt for the wood he
+needed; he wouldn't take it from an easily visible place; and, having
+stolen something from one room, he paid his attention to mine. All this
+is the supercaution of the so-called 'smart criminal.' It matches the
+risk he took in returning to the body to hunt for the weapon. That was
+why he was there when Webster found the body.
+
+"The handle of the dagger matches the wood of the slat I've just
+mentioned. You won't find that particular slat upstairs now. It was
+taken out of the house the next day, broken into sections and packed in
+his bag of golf-sticks. But there is proof in this room of the fact that
+he and he only made the dagger.
+
+"You'll find in the edge of the large blade of his penknife a nick,
+triangular in shape, which left an unmistakable groove in the wood every
+time he cut into it. That little groove shows, to the naked eye, on the
+end of the shortened slat and on the handle of the dagger. If you doubt
+it----"
+
+"Thunder!" Crown interrupted, in an awed tone. "You're right!"
+
+He had taken the dagger from his pocket and given it minute scrutiny. He
+handed it now to Sloane.
+
+Wilton, watching the scene with flaming eyes, sat motionless, his chin
+thrust down hard upon his collar, his face shining as if it had been
+polished with a cloth.
+
+Sloane gave the dagger back to Crown before he spoke, in a wheezy,
+shrill key: "They're there, the marks, the grooves!"
+
+He did not look at Wilton.
+
+Hastings straightened to his full stature, and looked toward Wilton.
+
+"Now, Judge Wilton," he challenged, "you said you preferred to answer
+the accusation here and now. Do you, still?"
+
+Wilton, slowly raising the heavy lids of his eyes, like a man coming out
+of a trance, presented to him and to the others a face which, in spite
+of its flushed and swollen aspect, looked singularly bleak.
+
+"It's not an accusation," he said in his roughened, grating voice. "It's
+a network of suppositions, of theories, of impossibilities--a crazy
+structure, all built on the rotten foundation of a previous misfortune."
+
+"Arrest him, Crown!" Hastings commanded sharply.
+
+Wilton tried to laugh, but his heavy lips merely worked in a crazy
+barrenness of sound. With a vague, clumsy idea of covering up his
+confusion, he started to light a cigar.
+
+He stopped, hands in mid-air, when Crown, shambling to his feet, said:
+
+"Judge, I've got to act. He's proved his case."
+
+"Proved it!" Wilton made weak protest.
+
+"If he hasn't, let's see your penknife."
+
+Wilton put his hand into his trousers pocket, began the motion that
+would have drawn out the knife, checked it, and withdrew his hand empty.
+He managed a mirthless, dreary laugh, a rattling sound that fell, dead
+of any feeling, from his grimacing lips.
+
+"No, by God!" he refused. "I'll give it to neither of you. I don't have
+to!"
+
+In that moment, he fell to pieces. With his thick shoulders dropping
+forward, he became an inert mass bundled against the table edge. The
+blood went out of his face, so that his cheeks hollowed, and shadows
+formed under his eyes. He was like the victim of a quick consumption.
+
+Crown's eyes were on Hastings.
+
+"That's enough," the old man said shortly.
+
+"Too much," agreed Crown. "Judge, there's no bail--on a murder charge."
+
+"I'm very glad," Mrs. Brace commented, a terrible satisfaction in her
+voice. "He pays me--at last."
+
+
+In the music room Dr. Garnet had just given Lucille and Hastings a
+favourable report on Berne Webster's condition.
+
+"I should so like to tell him," she said, her glance entreating; "if
+you'll let me! Wouldn't he get well much faster if he knew it--knew the
+suspense was all over--that neither he nor father's suspected any more?"
+
+"I think," the doctor gave his opinion with exaggerated deliberation,
+"it might--in fact, it really will be his best medicine."
+
+She thanked him, stars swimming in her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of No Clue, by James Hay
+
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