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 head 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 Washington 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 Washington 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 wishing 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 scraps 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
can crave 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 passing 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.
