Part 11 (2/2)
It required some effort on the part of the policeman to gather his thoughts. The quick succession of events had woven a fog before his brain, leaving him with but a misty perception of what had occurred.
”I--I don't know exactly where to begin,” he stammered.
”Did you follow her to the house?” Britz gave him an opening.
”Yes,” he replied. ”I got a taxicab and trailed her machine. She got out in front of the door and went upstairs. About ten minutes later this gentleman came and must have gone to her apartment. I waited downstairs.
Presently the elevator boy rushed into the street yelling 'Murder!
Police!' I asked him what happened and he said he heard a shot and a sound like a body falling to the floor. He took me upstairs and I rapped on the door. This man here opened it and let me in. He said the woman had killed herself. As I knew you were coming here, I made sure that she was dead and remained to see that nothing was disturbed.”
”This man was in the room when the shot was fired?” asked Britz, as if to make Beard realize the significance of it.
”Yes,” responded the policeman.
”Mr. Beard, have you anything to add to the officer's story?” curtly inquired the detective.
Beard faced his inquisitor, trying to meet his steady gaze with equal steadiness. But the consciousness that he was in a serious predicament, that he might be compelled to meet a serious charge, made him waver. He was struggling furiously to maintain his composure, but his inward excitement reacted on his outer frame, rendering him speechless. When, finally, he found his voice, he turned an appealing glance on the detective.
”She did commit suicide,” he declared as if protesting his innocence before a hostile judge. ”I delivered the letter which you have in your pocket. She read it, then crumpled it in her hand and threw it on the floor.
”'Mr. Beard,' she said, 'I've betrayed George to the police. I have denounced him as the murderer. They have my statement. They'll send George to the electric chair. I told them all I knew.'
”I informed her that her statement to the police was not competent evidence and that unless she repeated her testimony in court, it could not be used against Collins.
”'They'll never make me repeat it!' she exclaimed. Opening a drawer of the writing table she produced a pistol and before I was able to interfere, the weapon exploded and she was dead. My account of the suicide is absolutely true,” he declared impressively,--”I swear it is true.”
His face now was as solemn as the tone in which he had uttered the last sentence. Beard recognized that he was facing a grave moment in his life, that it was within the power of the man to whom he had spoken, irretrievably to mar his future, to stain him with an accusation which, even though disproved before a jury, he could never hope to live down entirely.
The harrowing fear and uncertainty written in the secretary's face, produced no quiver of compa.s.sion in the detective. Britz was measuring the man with cool, calculating eyes, that shone in their sockets like b.a.l.l.s of chilled steel. Long ago he had learned to turn an indifferent ear to protestations of innocence. Such pleas drop with equal fervor from the lips of the innocent and the guilty. And the shrewdest judge of human nature is incapable of judging between them.
”I am innocent--before G.o.d I swear it!” cries the guilty wretch in a voice calculated to wring tears from the Accusing Spirit itself.
”I am innocent--before G.o.d I swear it!” protests the wrongfully accused person despairingly.
The experienced detective, or prosecutor, or judge, places as much faith in the protestation of the one as in the other. He reserves judgment until sufficient evidence shall have been developed to establish which of the accused is telling the truth. For, he knows that while the guilty man's lie may sound entirely plausible, it will collapse like a perforated gas-bag in the end. Likewise, truth coming from the innocent man's lips may be utterly lacking in plausibility. Yet, it will establish itself by reason of its own indestructible qualities.
Regardless of the statement so solemnly delivered by the secretary, Britz believed that the woman had committed suicide. Not because Beard said she had, but because of the convincing nature of the attendant circ.u.mstances. It was obvious that between the woman's death and the murder of Herbert Whitmore was an intimate connection, a chain whose links were undoubtedly forged by those involved in the Whitmore crime.
Beard's conduct proclaimed him antagonistic to the police investigation of his employer's death. To place him behind bars would mean the end of his immediate activities. Apparently he was bent on destroying evidence.
Nor was it beyond the range of probability that he was the a.s.sa.s.sin and was busy erecting safeguards for himself.
Yet Britz was reluctant to order his arrest, for he believed implicitly in the theory of giving a guilty man sufficient rope wherewith to hang himself. The activities of a man in jail are necessarily circ.u.mscribed.
Moreover, his vigilance is never relaxed. Permitted to roam at will, however, he is invariably his own most relentless enemy, working unconsciously to encompa.s.s his own destruction.
For some minutes Britz debated with himself as to the most profitable course to pursue with regard to the secretary. Finally an idea flashed across his mind, and he resolved to carry it into effect.
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