Part 14 (1/2)

CHAPTER XXV AT THE STATION

So it had been the tiger, not the lady! Well, I had held to that theory all through. Jennie suddenly became a valuable person; if necessary she could prove the connection between Sullivan and the murdered man, and show a motive for the crime. I was triumphant when Hotchkiss came in. When the girl had produced a photograph of Mrs. Sullivan, and I had recognized the bronze-haired girl of the train, we were both well satisfied - which goes to prove the ephemeral nature of most human contentments.

Jennie either had nothing more to say, or feared she had said too much. She was evidently uneasy before Hotchkiss. I told her that Mrs. Sullivan was recovering in a Baltimore hospital, but she already knew it, from some source, and merely nodded. She made a few preparations for leaving, while Hotchkiss and I compared notes, and then, with the cat in her arms, she climbed into the trap from the town. I sat with her, and on the way down she told me a little, not much.

”If you see Mrs. Sullivan,” she advised, ”and she is conscious, she probably thinks that both her husband and her father were killed in the wreck. She will be in a bad way, sir.”

”You mean that she - still cares about her husband?”

The cat crawled over on to my knee, and rubbed its bead against my hand invitingly. Jennie stared at the undulating line of the mountain crests, a colossal sun against a blue ocean of sky. ”Yes, she cares,”

she said softly. ”Women are made like that. They say they are cats, but Peter there in your lap wouldn't come back and lick your hand if you kicked him. If - if you have to tell her the truth, be as gentle as you can, sir. She has been good to me - that's why I have played the spy here all summer. It's a thankless thing, spying on people.”

”It is that,” I agreed soberly.

Hotchkiss and I arrived in Was.h.i.+ngton late that evening, and, rather than arouse the household, I went to the club. I was at the office early the next morning and admitted myself. McKnight rarely appeared before half after ten, and our modest office force some time after nine. I looked over my previous day's mail and waited, with such patience as I possessed, for McKnight. In the interval I called up Mrs. Klopton and announced that I would dine at home that night. What my household subsists on during my numerous absences I have never discovered. Tea, probably, and crackers. Diligent search when I have made a midnight arrival, never reveals anything more substantial. Possibly I imagine it, but the announcement that I am about to make a journey always seems to create a general atmosphere of depression throughout the house, as though Euphemia and Eliza, and Thomas, the stableman, were already subsisting, in imagination, on Mrs. Klopton's meager fare.

So I called her up and announced my arrival. There was something unusual in her tone, as though her throat was tense with indignation. Always shrill, her elderly voice rasped my ear painfully through the receiver.

”I have changed the butcher, Mr. Lawrence,” she announced portentously. ”The last roast was a pound short, and his mutton-chops - any self-respecting sheep would refuse to acknowledge them.”

As I said before, I can always tell from the voice in which Mrs. Klopton conveys the most indifferent matters, if something of real significance has occurred. Also, through long habit, I have learned how quickest to bring her to the point.

”You are pessimistic this morning,” I returned. ”What's the matter, Mrs. Klopton? You haven't used that tone since Euphemia baked a pie for the iceman. What is it now? Somebody poison the dog?” She cleared her throat.

”The house has been broken into, Mr. Lawrence,” she said. ”I have lived in the best families, and never have I stood by and seen what I saw yesterday - every bureau drawer opened, and my - my most sacred belongings - ” she choked.

”Did you notify the police?” I asked sharply.

”Police!” she sniffed. ”Police! It was the police that did it - two detectives with a search warrant. I - I wouldn't dare tell you over the telephone what one of them said when he found the whisky and rock candy for my cough.”

”Did they take anything?” I demanded, every nerve on edge.

”They took the cough medicine,” she returned indignantly, ”and they said - ”

”Confound the cough medicine!” I was frantic. ”Did they take anything else? Were they in my dressing-room?”

”Yes. I threatened to sue them, and I told them what you would do when you came back. But they wouldn't listen. They took away that black sealskin bag you brought home from Pittsburg with you!”

I knew then that my hours of freedom were numbered. To have found Sullivan and then, in support of my case against him, to have produced the bag, minus the bit of chain, had been my intention. But the police had the bag, and, beyond knowing something of Sullivan's history, I was practically no nearer his discovery than before. Hotchkiss hoped he had his man in the house off Was.h.i.+ngton Circle, but on the very night he had seen him Jennie claimed that Sullivan had tried to enter the Laurels. Then - suppose we found Sullivan and proved the satchel and its contents his? Since the police had the bit of chain it might mean involving Alison in the story. I sat down and buried my face in my hands. There was no escape. I figured it out despondingly.

Against me was the evidence of the survivors of the Ontario that I had been accused of the murder at the time. There had been blood-stains on my pillow and a hidden dagger. Into the bargain, in my possession had been found a traveling-bag containing the dead man's pocket-book.

In my favor was McKnight's theory against Mrs. Conway. She had a motive for wis.h.i.+ng to secure the notes, she believed I was in lower ten, and she had collapsed at the discovery of the crime in the morning.

Against both of these theories, I accuse a purely chimerical person named Sullivan, who was not seen by any of the survivors - save one, Alison, whom I could not bring into the case. I could find a motive for his murdering his father-in-law, whom he hated, but again - I would have to drag in the girl.

And not one of the theories explained the telegram and the broken necklace.

Outside the office force was arriving. They were comfortably ignorant of my presence, and over the transom floated sc.r.a.ps of dialogue and the stenographer's gurgling laugh. McKnight had a relative, who was reading law with him, in the intervals between calling up the young women of his acquaintance. He came in singing, and the office boy joined in with the uncertainty of voice of fifteen. I smiled grimly. I was too busy with my own troubles to find any joy in opening the door and startling them into silence. I even heard, without resentment, Blobs of the uncertain voice inquire when ”Blake” would be back.

I hoped McKnight would arrive before the arrest occurred. There were many things to arrange. But when at last, impatient of his delay, I telephoned, I found he had been gone for more than an hour.

Clearly he was not coming directly to the office, and with such resignation as I could muster I paced the floor and waited.

I felt more alone than I have ever felt in my life. ”Born an orphan,” as Richey said, I had made my own way, carved out myself such success as had been mine. I had built up my house of life on the props of law and order, and now some unknown hand had withdrawn the supports, and I stood among ruins.

I suppose it is the maternal in a woman that makes a man turn to her when everything else fails. The eternal boy in him goes to have his wounded pride bandaged, his tattered self-respect repaired. If he loves the woman, he wants her to kiss the hurt.

The longing to see Alison, always with me, was stronger than I was that morning. It might be that I would not see her again. I had nothing to say to her save one thing, and that, under the cloud that hung over me, I did not dare to say. But I wanted to see her, to touch her hand - as only a lonely man cancrave it, I wanted the comfort of her, the peace that lay in her presence. And so, with every step outside the door a threat, I telephoned to her.

She was gone! The disappointment was great, for my need was great. In a fury of revolt against the scheme of things, I heard that she had started home to Richmond - but that she might still be caught at the station.

To see her had by that time become an obsession. I picked up my hat, threw open the door, and, oblivious of the shock to the office force of my presence, followed so immediately by my exit, I dashed out to the elevator. As I went down in one cage I caught a glimpse of Johnson and two other men going up in the next. I hardly gave them a thought. There was no hansom in sight, and I jumped on a pa.s.sing car. Let come what might, arrest, prison, disgrace, I was going to see Alison.

I saw her. I flung into the station, saw that it was empty - empty, for she was not there. Then I hurried back to the gates. She was there, a familiar figure in blue, the very gown in which I always thought of her, the one she had worn when, Heaven help me - I had kissed her, at the Carter farm. And she was not alone. Bending over her, talking earnestly, with all his boyish heart in his face, was Richey.

They did not see me, and I was glad of it. After all, it had been McKnight's game first. I turned on my heel and made my way blindly out of the station. Before I lost them I turned once and looked toward them, standing apart from the crowd, absorbed in each other. They were the only two people on earth that I cared about, and I left them there together. Then I went back miserably to the office and awaited arrest.

CHAPTER XXVI ON TO RICHMOND

Strangely enough, I was not disturbed that day. McKnight did not appear at all. I sat at my desk and transacted routine business all afternoon, working with feverish energy. Like a man on the verge of a critical illness or a hazardous journey, I cleared up my correspondence, paid bills until I had writer's cramp from signing checks, read over my will, and paid up my life insurance, made to the benefit of an elderly sister of my mother's. I no longer dreaded arrest. After that morning in the station, I felt that anything would be a relief from the tension. I went home with perfect openness, courting the warrant that I knew was waiting, but I was not molested. The delay puzzled me. The early part of the evening was uneventful. I read until late, with occasional lapses, when my book lay at my elbow, and I smoked and thought. Mrs. Klopton closed the house with ostentatious caution, about eleven, and hung around waiting to enlarge on the outrageousness of the police search. I did not encourage her.

”One would think,” she concluded pompously, one foot in the hall, ”that you were something you oughtn't to be, Mr. Lawrence. They acted as though you had committed a crime.”

”I'm not sure that I didn't, Mrs. Klopton,” I said wearily. ”Somebody did, the general verdict seems to point my way.”

She stared at me in speechless indignation. Then she flounced out. She came back once to say that the paper predicted cooler weather, and that she had put a blanket on my bed, but, to her disappointment, I refused to reopen the subject.

At half past eleven McKnight and Hotchkiss came in. Richey has a habit of stopping his car in front of the house and honking until some one comes out. He has a code of signals with the horn, which I never remember. Two long and a short blast mean, I believe, ”Send out a box of cigarettes,” and six short blasts, which sound like a police call, mean ”Can you lend me some money?” To-night I knew something was up, for he got out and rang the door-bell like a Christian. They came into the library, and Hotchkiss wiped his collar until it gleamed. McKnight was aggressively cheerful.

”Not pinched yet!” he exclaimed. ”What do you think of that for luck! You always were a fortunate devil, Lawrence.”

”Yes,” I a.s.sented, with some bitterness, ”I hardly know how to contain myself for joy sometimes. I suppose you know” - to Hotchkiss - ”that the police were here while we were at Cresson, and that they found the bag that I brought from the wreck?”

”Things are coming to a head,” he said thoughtfully ”unless a little plan that I have in mind - ” he hesitated.

”I hope so; I am pretty nearly desperate,” I said doggedly. ”I've got a mental toothache, and the sooner it's pulled the better.”

”Tut, tut,” said McKnight, ”think of the disgrace to the firm if its senior member goes up for life, or - ”

he twisted his handkerchief into a noose, and went through an elaborate pantomime.

”Although jail isn't so bad, anyhow,” he finished, ”there are fellows that get the habit and keep going back and going back.” He looked at his watch, and I fancied his cheerfulness was strained. Hotchkiss was nervously fumbling my book.