Part 10 (1/2)

If I had felt pity and sorrow for her before I saw her, it was doubly poignant now.

Ruth Schuyler was one of those gentle, appealing women, helplessly feminine in emergency. Her frightened, grief-stricken eyes looked out of a small, pale face, and her bloodless lips quivered as she caught them between her teeth in an effort to preserve her self-control.

”I am Chester Calhoun,” I said, and she bowed in acknowledgment. ”I am junior partner in the firm of Bradbury and Calhoun. Mr. Bradbury is one of your husband's lawyers and also a friend, so, as circ.u.mstances brought it about, I came here, with Inspector Mason, to tell you--to tell you--”

Mrs. Schuyler sank into a seat. Still with that air of determination to be calm, she gripped the chair arms and said, ”I heard you tell Miss Schuyler that Randolph has been killed. I ask you, may it not be some one else? Why should he be at a house where people called him by a name not his own?”

She had heard, then, all I had told the older ladies. For Mrs.

Schuyler was not old. She must be, I thought at once, years younger than her husband. Perhaps a second wife. I was glad she had heard, for it saved repeating the awful narrative.

”He has not been identified, Mrs. Schuyler,” I said, ”except by the policeman of this precinct, who declares he knows him well.”

I was glad to give her this tiny loophole of possibility of mistaken ident.i.ty, and she eagerly grasped at it.

”You must make sure,” she said, looking at Inspector Mason.

”I'm afraid there's no room for doubt, ma'am, but I'm about to send the man, the valet, over to see him. Do you wish any one else to go--from the house?”

Mrs. Schuyler shuddered. ”Don't ask me to go,” she said, piteously.

”For I can't think it is really Mr. Schuyler--and if it should be--”

”Oh, no ma'am, you needn't go. None of the family, I should say.”

Mason looked at the elder ladies.

”No, no,” cried Miss Sarah, ”we couldn't think of it! But let Jepson go. He is a most reliable man.”

”Yes,” said Mrs. Schuyler, ”send Cooper and Jepson both. Oh, go quickly--I cannot bear this suspense!” She turned to me, as the two men who had been hovering in the doorway, came in to take Mason's orders. ”I thank you, Mr. Calhoun. It was truly kind of you to come.

Tibbetts, get me a wrap, please.”

This was Mrs. Schuyler's own maid, who went on the errand at once.

More servants had gathered; one or two footmen, a silly French parlor-maid or waitress, and from downstairs I heard the hushed voices of others.

Tibbetts returned, and laid a fleecy white shawl about her mistress'

shoulders. Mrs. Schuyler wore a house dress of dull blue. Her hair of an ash-blonde hue, was coiled on top of her head; and to my surprise, when I noticed it, she wore a string of large pearls round her throat, and on her hands were two rings, each set with an enormous pearl.

I must have been awkward enough to glance at the pearls, for Mrs.

Schuyler remarked, ”I dressed so hastily, I kept on my pearls. I wear them at night sometimes, to preserve their l.u.s.ter.”

Then she apparently forgot them, for without self-consciousness she turned to the detective and began asking questions. Nervously she inquired concerning minutest details, and I surmised that side by side with her grief at the tragedy was a very human and feminine dismay at the thought of her husband, stabbed to death in another woman's house!

”Who is Miss Van Allen?” she asked over and over again, unsatisfied with the scant information Lowney could give.

”And she lives near here? Just down the side street? Who _is_ she?”

”I don't think she is anyone you ever heard of,” I said to her. ”She is a pleasant young woman, and so far as I know, all that is correct and proper.”

”Then why would she have Randolph Schuyler visiting her?” flashed the retort. ”Is that correct and proper?”