No Clue - James Hay (simple e reader txt) 📗

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