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The Winning Clue

by James Hay · English · Gutenberg #20152 · 404,791 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Winning Clue

Author: James Hay


        
Release date: December 20, 2006 [eBook #20152]
                Most recently updated: October 22, 2010

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20152

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WINNING CLUE ***


E-text prepared by David Garcia, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg
Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/c/)



THE WINNING CLUE

by

JAMES HAY, Jr.

Author of The Man Who Forgot, Etc.







Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers New York
Copyright, 1919
By Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc.



TO GRAHAM B. NICHOL
AS A LITTLE TOKEN OF MY ADMIRATION AND AFFECTION




CONTENTS

CHAPTER

      I. Strangled

     II. "Something Big in It"

    III. The Ruby Ring

     IV. Two Trails

      V. The Husband's Story

     VI.  Morley Is in a Hurry

    VII. Miss Fulton Is Hysterical

   VIII. The Breath of Scandal

     IX. Women's Nerves

      X. Eyes of Accusation

     XI. The $1,000 Check

    XII. The Man with the Gold Tooth

   XIII. Lucy Thomas Talks

    XIV. The Pawn Broker Takes the Trail

     XV. Braceway Sees a Light

    XVI. A Message from Miss Fulton

   XVII. Miss Fulton's Revelation

  XVIII. What's Braceway's Game?

    XIX. At the Anderson National Bank

     XX. The Discovery of the Jewels

    XXI. Bristow Solves a Problem

   XXII. A Confession

  XXIII. On the Rack

   XXIV.  Miss Fulton Writes a Letter

    XXV. A Mystifying Telegram

   XXVI. Wanted: Vengeance

  XXVII. The Revelation

 XXVIII. Confession Voluntary

   XXIX. The Last Card




THE WINNING CLUE




CHAPTER I

STRANGLED


When a woman's voice, pitched to the high note of utter terror, rang out
on the late morning quiet of Manniston Road, Lawrence Bristow looked up
from his newspaper quickly but vaguely, as if he doubted his own ears. He
was reading an account of a murder committed in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and
the shrieks he had just heard fitted in so well with the paragraph then
before his eyes that his imagination might have been playing him tricks.
He was allowed, however, little time for speculation or doubt.

"Murder! Help!" cried the woman in a staccato sharpness that carried the
length of many blocks.

Bristow sprang to his feet and started down the short flight of stairs
leading from his porch to the street. Before he had taken three steps, he
saw the frightened girl standing on the porch of No. 5, two doors to his
left. Although he was lame, he displayed surprising agility. His left
leg, two inches shorter than the right and supported by a steel brace
from foot to thigh, did not prevent his being the first to reach the
young woman's side.

Late as it was, half-past ten, she was not fully dressed. She wore a
kimono of light, sheer material which, clutched spasmodically about her,
revealed the slightness and grace of her figure. Her fair hair hung down
her back in a long, thick braid.

Neighbours across the street and further up Manniston Road were out on
their porches now or starting toward No. 5. All of them were women.

The girl--she was barely past twenty, he thought--stopped screaming, and,
her hands pressed to her throat and cheeks, stared wildly from him toward
the front door, which was standing open. He entered the living room of
the one-story bungalow. A foot within the doorway, he stood stock still.
On the sofa against the opposite wall he saw another woman. He knew at
first glance that she was dead.

The body was in a curious position. Apparently, before death had come,
the victim had been sitting on the sofa, and, in dying, her body had
crumpled over from the waist toward the right, so that now the lower part
of her occupied the attitude of sitting while the upper half reclined as
if in the posture of natural sleep. One thing which, perhaps, added to
the gruesomeness of the sight was that she had on evening dress, a gown
of pale blue satin embellished in unerring taste with real old Irish
lace.

Although the face had been beautiful under its crown of luxuriant black
hair, it now was distorted. While the eyes were closed, the mouth was
open, very wide--an ugly, repulsive gape.

He was aware that the woman in the kimono was just behind him--he could
feel her hot breath against the back of his neck--and that behind her
pressed the neighbours, their number augmented by the arrival of two men.
He turned and faced them.

"Call a doctor--and the police, somebody, will you?" he said sharply.

"They have a telephone back there in the dining room," volunteered one of
the women on the porch.

Another, a Mrs. Allen who lived in No. 6, had put her arms around the
terrified girl and was forcing her into an armchair on the porch.

The others started into the living room.

"Wait a moment," cautioned Bristow. "Don't come in here yet. The police
will want to find things undisturbed. It looks like murder."

They obeyed him without question. He was about forty years old, of medium
height and with good shoulders, but his chest was too flat, and his face
showed an unnatural flush. His mere physique was not one to force
obedience from others. It was in his eyes, dark-brown and lit with a
peculiar flaming intensity, that they read his right to command.

"Please go through this room to the telephone and call a doctor," he
said, singling out the woman who had spoken.

His voice, a deep barytone with a pleasant note, was perfectly steady. He
seemed to hold their excitement easily within bounds.

The woman he had addressed complied with his suggestion. While she was
doing so, he crossed over to the sofa and put his hand to the wrist of
the murdered woman. In order to do that, he had to move a fold of the
gown which partially concealed it. The flesh was cold, and he shivered
slightly, readjusting the satin to exactly the fold in which he had found
it.

"Too late for a doctor to help now," he threw back over his shoulder.

They watched him silently. Low moans were coming constantly from the
woman in the chair on the porch.

Bristow took the telephone in his turn and called up police headquarters.

The chief of police, whom he knew, answered the call.

"Hello! Captain Greenleaf?" asked the lame man.

"Yes."

"There's been a murder at Number Five, Manniston Road. This is Lawrence
Bristow, of Number Nine."

"Aw, quit your kiddin'," laughed Greenleaf. "What do you want to do, get
me up there to hear another of your theories about----"

"This is no joke," snapped Bristow. "I tell you one of the women in
Number Five has been murdered. Come----"

But the chief, recognizing the urgency in the summons, had left the
telephone and was on his way.

As Bristow turned toward the living room, Mrs. Allen and another woman
were carrying the hysterical, moaning girl from the front porch to one
of the two bedrooms in the bungalow. Some of the others again started
into the living room.

"Let's wait," he cautioned once more. "If we get to moving around in here
we may destroy any clues that could be used later."

When they fell back a little, he joined them on the porch, standing
always so that he could watch the body and see that no one changed its
attitude or even approached it. His eyes studied keenly all the furniture
in the room. Save for one overturned stiff-backed chair, it apparently
had not been disturbed.

The doctor arrived and, waiting for no information, approached the
murdered woman. As Bristow had done, he touched her wrist, and then
slipped his hand beneath her corsage so that it rested above her heart.
He straightened up almost immediately.

"Dead," he said to Bristow; "dead for hours."

The physician became conscious of the hysterical girl's moans, took a
step toward the bedrooms and paused.

"That's right, doctor," Bristow told him. "They need you back there."

The doctor hurried out.

"That is--that was Mrs. Withers, wasn't it?" Bristow, looking at the dead
body, asked of the group.

"Yes; and the other is her sister, Miss Fulton," one of them answered.

Bristow had seemed to all of them a peculiar man--too quiet and
reserved--ever since he had come to No. 9 four months before. They
remembered this now, when he seemed scarcely conscious of the identity of
the two girls who had lived almost next door to him during all that time.

Different members of the crowd gave him information: Miss Maria Fulton,
like nearly everybody else on Manniston Road, had tuberculosis, and Mrs.
Withers had been living with her. They had plenty of money--not rich,
perhaps, but able to have all the comforts and most of the luxuries of
life. They were here in the hope that Furmville's climate would restore
Miss Fulton's health.

Their coloured cook-and-maid had not come to work that morning, it
seemed, and Miss Fulton, who was the younger of the two sisters, was on
the "rest" cure, ordered by the doctor to stay in bed day and night.
Perhaps that was why she had not discovered Mrs. Withers' body earlier in
the day.

They gossiped on.

It was like a lesson in immortality--the dead body, with distorted face
and twisted limbs, just inside the room; and outside, in the low-toned
phrases of the awed women, swift and vivid pictures of what she; when
alive, had said and done and seemed.

"Everybody liked her. If somebody had come and told me a woman living on
Manniston Road had been killed, she would have been the last one I'd have
thought of as the victim." "All the other beautiful women I ever knew
were stupid; she wasn't." "Her husband couldn't come to Furmville very
often." "Loveliest black hair I _ever_ saw." "She used to be----"

Then followed quick glimpses of her life as they had seen or heard it: a
dance at Maplewood Inn where she had been the undisputed belle; a novel
she had liked; a big reception at the White House in Washington when,
during the year of her debut, the French ambassador had called her "the
most beautiful American," and the newspapers had made much of it; an
emerald ring she had worn; the unfailing good humour she had always shown
in the tedious routine of nursing her sister--and so on, a mass of facts
and impressions which were, simultaneously, a little biography of her and
an unaffected appreciation of the way she had touched and coloured their
lives.

Captain Greenleaf, with one of the plain-clothes men of his force, came
hurrying up the steps. The crowd fell back, gave them passage, and closed
in again.

"Nothing's been disturbed, captain," said Bristow.

"Where is she?" asked Greenleaf anxiously. He was not accustomed to
murder cases.

He caught sight of the body on the sofa.

"God!" he said in a low tone, and turned toward the plain-clothes man:

"Come on in, Jenkins--you, too, Mr. Bristow."

The three entered the living room, and Greenleaf, with a muttered word of
apology to the on-lookers, closed the door in their faces.

He, too, did what Bristow had done--put his fingers on the dead woman's
wrist. He was breathing rapidly, and his hand shook. Jenkins stood
motionless. He also was overwhelmed by the tragedy. Besides, he was not
cut out for work of this kind. In looking for illicit distillers and
boot-leggers, or negroes charged with theft, he was in his element, but
this sort of thing was new to him. He had no idea of where to turn or
what to do.

"She's dead," Bristow said to the captain. "The doctor says she has been
dead a long time--hours."

"Where's the doctor?"

"Back there. Miss Fulton, the sister, is hysterical with fright."

"Who sent for the doctor?"

"I did. I asked one of the women here to telephone."

"Then I'll call the coroner."

He stepped through the open folding doors into the dining room and
took down the receiver, looking, as he did so, at the body and its
surroundings.

Bristow stooped down, picked up something from the floor near the sofa
and dropped it into his vest pocket.

The doctor--Dr. Braley--returned as the captain hung up the telephone
receiver.

"Miss Fulton is quieter now," he announced.

"Doctor," requested Greenleaf, "look at this body, will you? What caused
death?"

Braley, a thin, quick-moving little man of thirty-five, bent over the
dead woman, lifted one of her eyelids, and examined her throat as far as
was possible without moving the head.

"She was choked to death," he gave his opinion. "Although the eyes are
closed, you see the effect they produce of almost starting from their
sockets. And the tongue protrudes. Besides, there are the marks on her
throat. You can see them there on the left side."

"How long has she been dead?"

"I can't say definitely. I should guess about eight or ten hours anyway."

That staggered Greenleaf, the idea of this woman dead here in the front
room of a bungalow on Manniston Road for eight or ten hours--and nobody
knew anything about it! His agitation grew. He felt the need of doing
something, starting something.

"How about Miss Fulton?" he asked. "Can I get a statement from her?"

"Not just yet. Give her a little more time to get herself together.
Besides, she told me something about the--er--affair. Most remarkable
statement--most remarkable."

"What was it?"

"She says," related Braley, "that she only discovered the dead body of
her sister a few minutes before she was heard crying for help. Her
sister, Mrs. Withers, went to a dance, one of the regular Monday night
dances at the inn--Maplewood Inn. She went with Mr. Campbell, Douglas
Campbell, the real estate man here. You know him. They left the house at
nine o'clock last night. That was the last time Miss Fulton saw Mrs.
Withers alive.

"In the meantime, Miss Fulton herself, who is under my orders to stay in
bed all the time, was up and dressed so that she might spend the evening
with a friend of hers from Washington. His name is Henry Morley. He left
this house a little after eleven o'clock, and he left Furmville on the
midnight train for Washington.

"Miss Fulton, thoroughly tired out, went to bed and was asleep by
half-past eleven. As she has something which she uses when she wants a
good sleep, she took some of it last night and did not wake up until
after ten this morning. She didn't even hear her sister come in last
night.

"When she awoke this morning, she called her sister. Amazed by receiving
no answer, she got up to investigate. Mrs. Withers' bed had not been
occupied. She then came in here and found the body."

"You mean to say," put in Bristow, "that this sick girl was here all
night and heard nothing?"

"That's what she says," confirmed the physician.

"Did she give any idea who the murderer might be?" queried Greenleaf.

"No; she's not sufficiently clear in her mind to advance any theories
yet--naturally."

"Let me look around," suggested the captain.

He did so, followed by Bristow and the doctor. Save for the overturned
chair, between the sofa and the dining room door, the furniture, for the
most part the mission stuff generally found in the furnished-for-rent
cottages in Furmville, had not been knocked about in a struggle. That was
evident. The two rugs on the floor had not been disturbed. None of the
three men touched the overturned chair.

All the windows of the living room and the dining room were closed but
not locked, as there was on the outside of each the usual covering of
mosquito wiring. The shades were down. The front door did not have the
inside "catch" thrown on.

Greenleaf examined the kitchen, the unoccupied bedroom, the bathroom, and
the sleeping porch at the back of the house. This last, like the windows,
was inclosed in stout wire screens, and nowhere, on either the windows or
the sleeping porch, had this screening been broken. The kitchen door was
locked. There was no sign of a struggle anywhere. These negative facts
were gathered quickly.

Mrs. Allen, summoned from the sister's side, reported that there were no
signs of an entrance having been made through any of the three windows
in the bedroom in which Miss Fulton now lay quiet.

They made their way back to the living room. In spite of the most
painstaking examination of the floor, walls, and furniture of the entire
bungalow, they were, so far, without a clue. The murderer had left not
the slightest trace of his identity or his manner of entrance to the
death chamber.

"As I see it," said the captain when they rejoined Jenkins, "nobody broke
into this house last night. But two men had admission to it. They were
Mr. Douglas Campbell, the real estate man, and Mr. Henry Morley, who was
calling on Miss Fulton. It's up to those two to tell what they know."

"But," objected the doctor, "Miss Fulton says Morley left town last
night."

"Humph! Maybe that makes it look all the worse for Morley."

"But," suggested Bristow, "if we find that the front door was unlocked
all night, the possibilities broaden."

"How will we find that out?"

"Miss Fulton might remember about it."

"She did mention that," put in Braley; "it was unlocked."

"All the same," insisted Greenleaf, "Morley's got to come back here.
Wouldn't you say so?" This question was addressed to Bristow.

The telephone bell rang in the dining room. The chief went to answer it.

"What's that?" Those in the living room heard him. "You? I'm the chief of
police. Where are you now? Oh, I see. Come up here, will you? There's
been a murder here. Mrs. Withers. Right away? All right; I'll wait for
you."

He came back to the living room.

"That was Mr. Henry Morley," he said, "Didn't leave town last night. What
do you think of that?"




CHAPTER II

"SOMETHING BIG IN IT"


Before the question was answered the coroner arrived. While Chief
Greenleaf told him the circumstances confronting them, Dr. Braley
telephoned for a trained nurse for Miss Fulton. In the absence of anybody
else to perform the unpleasant task, the doctor went back to take up with
the bereaved girl the matter of telegraphing to her family and the
details of preparing the murdered woman's body for burial as soon as
would be compatible with the plans of the coroner.

"I wonder, Mr. Bristow," suggested Greenleaf, "if I couldn't walk up to
your place with you and talk this thing over."

"Glad to have you," agreed Bristow.

The crowd on the porch and in the street began to disperse slowly after
the chief had told them none of them could be admitted. In small groups,
they made their way to porches or into houses where they lingered,
speculating, wondering, advancing impossible theories.

Why had death singled _her_ out? Who would ever have suspected that there
had been in her life any foothold for tragedy? The secrecy with which she
had been struck down, the ease of the murderer's coming and going safely,
roused their resentment. They sympathized with themselves as well as with
the dead woman.

Confusedly, but at the same time with striking unanimity, they felt that
this was not merely a mystery, but a mystery made ugly and shocking by
base motives and despicable agents. In common with all mankind, they
resented mystery. It emphasized their own dependence on chance. They
began to guess at the best method for capturing the guilty.

The chief of police and the lame man had reached the porch of No. 9.
There Bristow picked up from a table a scrapbook and a bundle of
newspaper clippings. Following him into the living room, Greenleaf
brought a paste pot and a pair of shears which the other evidently had
been using in placing the clippings in the big book. He put them down on
a table in one corner near Bristow's typewriter.

"Still figuring 'em out, I see," he said grimly.

He referred to Bristow's habit of reading murder mysteries in the
newspapers and working them out to satisfactory solutions. That was
Bristow's way of amusing himself while set down in Furmville for the long
struggle to overcome the tuberculosis with which he was afflicted. In
fact, as a result of this recreation, he had become known to Greenleaf,
who had visited him several times.

He had rendered the captain considerable assistance in a minor case
shortly after his arrival in the town, and Greenleaf was really amazed by
the correctness of the lame man's solutions of most of the murder cases
chronicled. He knew that Bristow had been right on an average of nine
times out of ten, often clearing up the affairs on paper many days or
even weeks ahead of the authorities in various parts of the country.

Bristow had his records in his scrapbooks to prove his contentions. Under
each clipping descriptive of a baffling murder he had written a brief
outline of his solving of the case and dated it, following this with the
date of the correct or incorrect solutions by the authorities.

"But now," the chief added, as they sat down before the open fire, which
earlier had fought against the chill of the cool May morning, "you can
work one out right on the ground. And I'll be mighty glad to have your
help--if you will help."

"Of course," said Bristow. "I'll be more than glad to make any
suggestions I can."

The chief went out on the porch and called across the yard of No. 7 to
one of his men on guard at No. 5:

"Simpson, when a young man--name's Morley--gets there and asks for me,
tell him to come up here to Number Nine."

He came back and referred to Bristow's offer of help:

"For instance?"

"Well," Bristow answered, "as we see it now, there are three
possibilities: Campbell, or Morley, or some unknown man or woman,
coloured or white, bent on robbery."

"So far, though, we haven't found any signs of robbery."

"I have."

"What were they?"

"The middle, third and little fingers of Mrs. Withers' left hand were
scratched, badly scratched, as if rings had been pulled from them by
force. And there was a deep line on the back of her neck. It looked black
just now, but it was red when it was inflicted. It was too thin to have
been made by a finger, but it might have been caused by somebody's having
tugged at a chain about her neck until it broke."

"The thunder you say! I didn't notice any of that."

"I'll show you the marks when we go back there."

"But," objected Greenleaf, "I know Mr. Campbell. He's not the sort to
steal. And I don't suppose Morley is."

"They say the same thing about bank presidents," Bristow replied with a
slight smile, "but some of them get caught at it, nevertheless."

"Yes; but this is different--unless the murdered woman had extremely
valuable jewelry."

"That's true. Besides, if the front door was unlocked all night, or, even
if somebody knocked at the door and Mrs. Withers answered it, there is
your third possibility, any ordinary robbery and murder."

"I believe that's what will come out," Greenleaf said, his troubled face
showing his worried consciousness of inability to handle the situation;
"but how will we--how will I prove it?"

"Morley and Campbell can make their own statements."

Bristow, going to the dining room door, called toward the kitchen:

"Mattie!"

Replying to his summons, a middle-aged coloured woman appeared.

"Mattie, didn't I hear Perry tell you yesterday that he was to go to work
this morning for Mrs. Withers, 'making' her garden?"

"Yas, suh," answered Mattie, still breathing heavily from her hurried
return from No. 5.

"Has he been around this morning?"

"Naw, suh."

"Do you know where Mrs. Withers' servant lives?"

"Yas, suh."

"What's her name?"

"Lucy Thomas, suh."

"Well, I want you to go there right away and find out what's the matter
with her, why she didn't show up for work this morning. Take your time.
Dinner can wait."

When Mattie had gone, Bristow explained:

"This Perry--Perry Carpenter--is a young negro who does odd jobs in this
section. He's about twenty-five, I guess. Each of these bungalows has a
garden back of it, you know. There are no houses behind us. I don't like
Perry's looks. He did some gardening for me Saturday and yesterday."

"You think he----?"

"He's got a bad face. If neither Campbell nor Morley killed Mrs. Withers,
why shouldn't we find out where Perry and the servant woman of Number
Five are now, and where they were all last night?"

"I reckon that's right," chimed in Greenleaf. "It looks something like a
common darky job at that."

"And this," added Bristow, taking something from his vest pocket and
handing it to the chief of police, "looks more like it, doesn't it?"

Greenleaf examined the object the other had put into his hand. It was a
metal button of the kind ordinarily worn on overall jumpers, and clinging
to it were a few fragments of the dark blue stuff of which overalls are
commonly made. On the back of the button were stamped in white the words:
"National Overalls Company."

"Where did you get this?" asked the chief.

"I picked it up in the room where the dead girl was; and I'd forgotten it
until this minute. It was on the floor a few yards from the body. You saw
me when I picked it up. You were at the telephone."

"That's right. I remember now. By cracky! That came off of some darky's
working clothes. That's sure!"

"The only trouble is," puzzled Bristow, "your negro doesn't wear overalls
at night after he has finished work. He dresses up and loafs down town."

"That's true on Saturday nights. Other nights they don't take the trouble
to change. And last night was Monday night. No, sir! That's our first
clue, that button; the first sign we've had of the murderer."

"Keep it," Bristow told him. "I'm not as confident as you are, but you
might have a look at the blouse of Perry's suit of overalls. We can't
over-look anything now."

Deep in thought he gazed at the fire. Greenleaf got up and walked to the
window, which gave a magnificent view of the great Carolina mountains in
the distance. He was not admiring the mountains, however. He was
wondering why Mr. Morley had not arrived.

"By the way," he said, "can't I get a drink of water?"

He was in the dining room on his way to the kitchen before Bristow roused
himself from his reverie.

"Wait!" he called to the chief. "Let me get it for you."

Greenleaf, however, had gone into the kitchen. Bristow followed him and
took a tumbler from a rack on the wall.

The chief drew the tumbler full twice from the faucet and gulped down the
water. His hand shook. He was very nervous.

As they turned to leave the kitchen, he uttered an exclamation and,
stooping down swiftly, pulled something from under the stove. When he
straightened up, he had in his hand another metal button. He turned it
about in his fingers, studying it.

"It looks like the one you found in Number Five," he said.

They compared the two. They were identical. The two men stared at each
other.

"What do you make of that?" asked Greenleaf.

"I was wondering," Bristow replied, thinking quickly, "when--how that got
there." He paused and added: "Mattie doesn't wear overalls."

They returned to the living room.

"But," he continued, "Perry was working for me yesterday. He was in the
kitchen talking to Mattie. I wonder--Well, there's one thing; if Perry's
blouse has two buttons missing, he'll be confronted with the job of
establishing an alibi for all of last night."

"By cracky!" The captain slapped his hands together in evident relief.
"I believe we've got him! I'm going to send a man after him."

He went out to the porch and signalled another of his men.

"Drake," he said, "I want you to find a young negro--name's Perry
Carpenter--about twenty-five years old. He does odd jobs around here. Any
of these other niggers can tell you where he lives. When you find him,
take him to headquarters. Keep him there until I come. Get him. Don't
lose him!"

When he stepped back into the house, Bristow was regarding him with a
smile.

"I hope you're right," he told the chief, "but I've a hunch you're wrong.
I believe this murder is more than an ordinary robbery by a darky.
Somehow, I have the impression that there's something big mixed up in
it."

"Why?"

"I can't say exactly. Perhaps it's because I've been thinking of the
beauty of the victim. Or it may be that I was impressed by what the women
said about her when we were waiting for you on the porch."

He thought a while, and decided that he had no explanation of why he
had made the remark. He had not meant to say it. It had come from him
spontaneously, like an endorsement of what all Manniston Road was saying
at that very moment: the "the something big in it" loomed up, intangible
but demanding notice.

Greenleaf himself, for all his apparent certainty about the guilt of the
negro Perry, sensed vaguely the possibility, the hint, that this crime
was even worse than it appeared to be. But he would not admit it. He
preferred to keep before his mind the easier answer to the puzzle.

"No," he contradicted Bristow; "I believe Perry's the fellow we want.
Here we are dealing with facts, not story-book romances."

Just then a young man sprang up the steps of No. 9 and knocked on the
door. It was Henry Morley, come to give weight to Bristow's "hunch."




CHAPTER III

THE RUBY RING


Although it was Chief Greenleaf who opened the door, it was to Bristow
that Morley turned, as if he instinctively recognized the superiority of
the lame man's personality. Greenleaf, of average height and weight, had
nothing of command or domination about him. With his red, weatherbeaten
face and mild, expressionless blue eyes, he looked like a well-to-do
farmer. He was suggestive of no acquaintance with Tarde, Lombroso or any
other authorities on crime and criminals.

"Won't you sit down?" invited Bristow.

The new-comer was tall and slender. In spite of a straight, high-bridged
nose and thin lips, his face indicated weakness. His dark-gray eyes had
in them either a great deal of worry or undisguised fear. As he took the
chair pointed out to him, he was being catalogued by Bristow as showing
too much uncertainty, even a womanish timidity. Bristow noticed also that
his thick, soft blond hair was carefully parted and brushed, and that his
fingers were much manicured.

He breathed in short, quick gasps.

"What is it? How--how did it happen?" he asked, his gaze still on
Bristow.

Greenleaf took a seat so that Morley sat between him and Bristow.

"We don't know how it happened," said the chief. "We wanted to know if
you could tell us anything."

"I didn't see Mrs. Withers late last night," Morley replied, a nervous
tremor in his voice.

"Nobody said you did," commented Bristow.

"No; I know that," Morley agreed in a queer, high voice.

"But you were in the house, Number Five, last evening, weren't you?"
Bristow inquired.

"Yes."

"Well, tell us about it."

"I came down here from Washington Saturday," the young man began. "I
didn't come to see Mrs. Withers. I came to see Miss Fulton, her sister.
Of course, I've seen Mrs. Withers since I've been here; I saw her early
last night. You see, last night she went up to the Maplewood Inn for the
dinner dance, and, when I called, she was just leaving with a Mr.
Campbell. Miss Fulton and I sat on the front porch and in the parlour
talking until a little after eleven."

"We understood," put in Bristow, "that Miss Fulton was confined to her
bed."

"She was, that is--er--she was supposed to be; but she got up last
evening and dressed to receive me."

"I beg your pardon," again interrupted his questioner, "but everything is
important here now, and we need information. We have so little of it as
yet. I really apologize, but may I ask what your relations with Miss
Fulton are?"

Morley hesitated a full minute before he answered.

"If it is to go no further than you gentlemen," he began.

"Of course," the other two agreed.

"Well, then, Miss Fulton and I are engaged to be married."

"Ah! Go ahead." This from the lame man.

"As I said, we talked until a little after eleven. Then I had to leave to
catch the midnight train back to Washington."

"But you didn't catch it."

"No. You see, I was stopping at the Maplewood. That's more than a mile
from Manniston Road, and it's fully two miles from the railroad station.
Somehow, I didn't allow myself enough time, and I missed the train by a
bare two minutes."

"What did you do then?"

"What did I do then?"

"Yes--what then?"

"I didn't go back to Maplewood Inn. I took a room for the night at the
Brevord Hotel. It's near the station, you know, and I intended to catch
the midday train today. Besides, it was late, and I didn't want to take
the trouble of walking back or getting a machine to take me back to
Maplewood."

He drew out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead, which, as a matter
of fact, was perfectly dry. He was tremendously unstrung. Bristow
realized this and saw that now, more than at any subsequent time, he
would be able to make the young man talk.

"That," he said easily, "accounts for you, doesn't it? Now, I'll tell
you. Chief Greenleaf and I are anxious to get some information about
the Fulton family. As you know, we people here, being invalids, live
pretty much to ourselves. We don't have the strength for much social
life, and we don't know much about each other. What can you tell us?"

"Miss Fulton and Mrs. Withers are--were sisters," Morley responded.
"Their father, William T. Fulton, is a real estate man in Washington. By
the way, Mar--Miss Fulton expects him here this afternoon. She told me so
yesterday. Last fall, just before Miss Fulton was taken sick with
tuberculosis, he failed, failed for a very large amount of money."

"He was wealthy then?"

"Yes; quite. Mrs. Withers was twenty-five. She married Withers, George S.
Withers, of Atlanta, Georgia, when she was twenty-one. But, when Miss
Fulton had to come here for her health, Mrs. Withers agreed to come, too,
and look after her. Withers isn't wealthy. He's a lawyer in Atlanta, but
he hasn't a big income."

"How old is Miss Fulton?" asked Bristow.

"Twenty-three."

"Do you know whether Mrs. Withers had any valuable jewelry--rings, stuff
of that kind?"

Morley was for a moment visibly disturbed.

"Why, yes," he answered after a little pause. "When Mr. Fulton failed,
Miss Fulton gave up all her jewels, everything, to help meet his debts.
Mrs. Withers refused to do this--at least, she didn't do it."

Both Bristow and Greenleaf caught the note of criticism in his voice.

"Just what was the feeling between the two sisters?" pursued Bristow.

Again Morley paused.

"Oh, all right, if you don't feel like discussing that," his interrogator
said smoothly. "It's of no consequence. We'll find out about it
elsewhere."

"I suppose I might as well," said Morley. "It really doesn't amount to
anything much. There has been considerable coolness between the two
women."

"Even when Mrs. Withers was here nursing Miss Fulton?"

"Yes. You see, Mrs. Withers was and always has been Mr. Fulton's
favourite. Miss Maria Fulton felt this, and she knew that Mrs. Withers
came here only because Mr. Fulton asked her to do it. Also, Miss Fulton
never forgave Mrs. Withers for not coming forward with her jewels, jewels
which her father had given her--for not coming forward with them when he
failed."

"Did they ever quarrel?"

"Well, yes. Sometimes, I think, they did. You know how it is with two
women, particularly sisters, who are on what might be called bad terms.
Then, as I was about to say, Mrs. Withers wasn't making any sacrifice by
being here with her sister. Mr. Fulton, in spite of his reduced means,
paid her expenses, all of them. Besides, Mrs. Withers had quite a good
time here, going to the dances, and so on."

"Do you know, Mr. Morley, whether they had a quarrel yesterday?"

"They didn't so far as I know."

"Miss Fulton said nothing to you about a quarrel?"

"No."

Bristow was silent a few seconds.

"I think that's all, Mr. Morley. We're much obliged to you. Isn't that
all, chief?"

"Yes, for the present," Greenleaf answered with a long breath, thankful
the other had been there to do the questioning. "That seems to cover
everything."

"I wonder if I could see Miss Fulton," Morley said, rising.

"If the doctor will allow it," Greenleaf told him. "You might go down
there and see."

Morley put his hand on the doorknob.

"By the way," interjected Bristow once more, and this time his voice was
cold, steely; "Mr. Morley, did you wear rubbers last night?"

"Rubbers?" parroted Morley.

"Yes--rubbers."

Morley stared a moment, as if calculating something.

"Why, yes; I believe I did," he said finally.

Greenleaf, glancing down at Morley's feet, noticed what Bristow had seen
three seconds after Morley had entered the room--his feet were large,
abnormally large for a man of his build. He must have worn a number ten
or, perhaps, a number eleven shoe.

"I thought so," Bristow observed carelessly. "I sleep out on my sleeping
porch at the back of the house here, and I knew it rained hard from early
in the night until seven this morning."

Morley, without commenting on this, looked at the two men.

"Is there anything more?" he inquired.

"No, nothing more; thanks," said Bristow.

The young man went out quickly, slamming the door in his haste.

Bristow answered Greenleaf's questioning look:

"There was no use in our looking round the outside of the house for
possible footprints this morning. If there had been any, the rain would
have cleared them away. But, when I first ran up on the porch--it's
roofed, like mine here--I noticed the dried marks made by a wet shoe
hours before, a large shoe, by a large shoe with a rubber sole, or
by a rubber shoe."

"The devil you did!"

"I did.--But it may turn out that Perry, or somebody else, or several
other people, wore rubber shoes, or rubber-soled shoes last night.
Negroes always have large feet."

"Well, I hope my man's found this Perry nigger," said the chief. "He's
the fellow we want."

"And yet," ruminated Bristow, "what young Morley said is interesting
enough--two quarreling sisters living together--one decked in jewels, the
other deprived of them--the jewels gone this morning." He smiled and
waved his hands comprehensively. "As long as it _is_ a mystery, let's
have it a real mystery. Let's look at all sides of it. There's Perry.
There's Morley. And--there's Miss Maria Fulton."

"Miss Fulton!"

"Yes--a possibility."

"Oh, I don't connect her up with it any." The chief's voice was tinged
with ridicule.

Bristow answered a knock on the door and opened to admit a uniformed
policeman.

"Beg your pardon, chief," said the officer, "but I had something for a
Mr. Morley. The men on guard down there at Number Five wouldn't let me
in to see him--said I'd better see you."

"What have you got, Avery?" asked Greenleaf.

"It's a little package. You know, I'm on that beat down there. Takes in
the Brevord Hotel. The clerk said this Mr. Morley had sent his grips to
the station, but had said he was coming up to Number Five, Manniston
Road. He said there had been a murder up here. The clerk said he didn't
know what to do with this property but turn it over to the police. As
soon as I saw what it was, I hurried up here."

"What is it?"

"It's a ring, sir."

"A ring!" exclaimed Bristow. "Let's see it."

Policeman Avery handed Bristow a tissue paper package.

The lame man unwound the paper and discovered a woman's ring, the setting
a tremendous pigeon's-blood ruby flanked on each side by a diamond. It
was an exceedingly handsome and very valuable piece of jewelry.

"Where did the clerk get this?" Bristow asked swiftly.

For the first time, he was visibly excited.

"A maid found it under the bed on the floor of Mr. Morley's room at the
Brevord," answered Avery.

Greenleaf needed no hint from Bristow this time.

"Avery," he said, "your beat takes in the railroad station. Go down to
Number Five and get a good look at this man Morley. After that, if he
attempts to leave Furmville, arrest him."




CHAPTER IV

TWO TRAILS


"I'm afraid," said Bristow, after the policeman had hurried out, "we made
a mistake in permitting Morley to talk to Miss Fulton just at present."

"I can go down there and interrupt them," Greenleaf volunteered.

The lame man reflected, a forefinger against the right side of his nose,
the attitude emphasizing the fact that this feature was perceptibly
crooked, bent toward the left.

"No," he concluded. "We'd probably be too late." Then he added, "And we
didn't find out Morley's employment or profession in Washington--but
we can do that later."

The chief of police prepared to leave, saying he was going to call at
Douglas Campbell's office and from there go to headquarters in the hope
that Perry had been found.

"Can't you come with me?" he invited.

"It's against the doctor's orders," Bristow replied. "He tells me not to
leave this house or its porches. If I started to run around with you, I'd
be exhausted in an hour. But I'll tell you what: this afternoon, after
you've talked to Campbell and the darky, suppose you come back here, and
we'll drop down to interview Miss Fulton ourselves."

This surprised Greenleaf.

"You mean you suspect----"

Bristow laughed.

"Oh," he countered lightly, "we've enough suspecting to do already.
There's Perry--and there's Morley. Don't let's complicate it too much.
But what Miss Fulton has to say may be valuable. By the way, if I should
need to do so, how can I persuade anybody that I have authority to ask
questions, or to do anything else in this matter?"

The captain thought a moment.

"I'll appoint you to the plain-clothes squad. I appoint you now, and the
city commissioners will confirm it. They meet tonight. You're on the
force--at a nominal salary--say ten dollars a week. That suit you?"

"Perfectly," consented Bristow. "What I want is the power to help in case
I have the opportunity."

Greenleaf went out to the porch, followed by Bristow, and started down
the steps.

"By the way," his new employee said in a cautious tone, "don't forget to
stop at Number Five and look for those scratches, on the fingers and the
neck."

"By cracky!" exclaimed the chief. "I'd forgotten all about it. I'll do
that right away."

Looking toward No. 5, Bristow saw a hearse-like wagon drawing up in front
of the door. The coroner had already made arrangements for the removal of
the body of Mrs. Withers to an undertaking establishment.

The lame man went slowly into the house and stood at the window, staring
at the mountains. In the clear, newly washed air, they looked like the
soft, tumbling waves of some magically blue sea.

Like most retiring, secluded men, he had his vanity in pronounced degree.
He saw himself now, the dominant figure in this city of thirty thousand
people, the man who had been selected by the chief of police as the one
able to unravel the web of mystery surrounding this startling murder. The
thought pleased him, and he smiled. He began to think about himself and
about life as a general proposition.

Everything was always so mixed up, so involved. People talked of a divine
providence, of the law that virtue is rewarded, of the rule that to do
good is to have good done to one. He smiled again. If all that was true,
what explanation was there for the murder of this woman, this beauty
whose good nature, kindness, and cleverness had endeared her to all with
whom she came in contact?

He had heard the women on the porch of No. 5 say that everybody had loved
her. Why, then, had some ignorant negro or some white man bent on robbery
been permitted to steal up on her in the dead of night and crush out her
life? Was there any reason, any logic, any mercy in that?

He drummed on the window-pane with his fingertips and whistled, scarcely
audibly, a fragment of tune. His pursed up mouth made it clear that he
was not a handsome man--the lower lip was heavy, somewhat protuberant.

Pshaw! There was only one rule of life that held good, so far as he had
been able to see. Strength and persistence accomplished things and
brought success and security. Weakness and foolish prating about
righteousness and virtue were never worth a dollar.

That was it! If you were mighty and clever, you stayed on top. If you
were sentimental and looking after other people's interests, you went
down. You had no time to bother about the safety and happiness of others.
Look out for yourself. Never relent in the fierce battle against the odds
of life. That was the only way to conquer and avoid catastrophe.

He was sure of it when he thought about himself. He had a brilliant
brain. It was not particularly egotistic for him to think that. It was
merely a fact. But he had not used it relentlessly and incessantly.
He had relaxed his hold too often when seeking pleasure. Although he had
done things which had been applauded by his friends, he had nothing much
to show in the way of lasting results.

That was why he was here now, with scarcely enough resources to pay the
rent of his bungalow and the expenses of living. A little dabbling in
real estate, some third-rate work for the magazines, a passing notoriety
as a guesser of crime riddles--it was not a record that promised a bright
future.

He sighed. Well, that was the way of life. He might yet accomplish big
things although he was under a terrific handicap--and he might not. He
would try, and see.

His future was much like the probable outcome of this murder. How
would the circumstances shape themselves? What would be the result of
circumstantial evidence?

It was all a gamble. Some murderers were lucky and got away. And some
innocent men were not lucky. These were like the blundering, illiterate
negro Perry. There was an even chance that the guilty man would be
caught--and there was an even chance that an innocent man would hang.
Life was like that!

He caressed with his forefinger his protruding lip. He wouldn't say the
negro was guilty. In spite of the evidence of the buttons, he would
advance no such theory yet. And as to Morley--nobody could think that
a man with such a weak face would have the nerve to do murder. He knew
this. There must be somebody else. It might be that the sister, Maria
Fulton, in an excess of rage--But why reason about that before he had
talked to her?

It was up to him to fasten the guilt on the guilty man--or woman. That
was what was expected of him. And it was a task which----

He turned toward the table and began methodically to paste into their
proper places the clippings he had cut from the newspapers concerning
other "big" murder cases. He would study them later.

He looked up and saw a very fat man standing just outside the door.

"Hello, Overton," he said, without cordiality, and joined him on the
porch.

"I picked out an interesting time to visit you," observed the fat man,
still puffing from the exertion of climbing the Manniston Road hill;
"what with murder and----"

"And I'm going to be frank with you," Bristow put in. "I'm helping the
police a little, and I haven't the time to gossip now. I know you'll
understand----"

"Surely, surely!" said Overton. "I'll come some other time. This sort
of stuff's right in your line. You used to be an authority on it in
Cincinnati, I remember."

He said good-bye and lumbered awkwardly down the steps. He and Bristow
had been good friends in Cincinnati, and he seemed now not at all
offended by the summary dismissal.

The door leading from the kitchen to the dining room opened. Mattie had
returned. Bristow reentered the house.

"Well?" he said in the low, kindly tone he used in speaking to her.

"I foun' Lucy Thomas, Mistuh Bristow," she said, breathless and
indignant. "She is sho' one sorry nigger. She wuz drunk--layin' out in de
parluh uv dat little house uv her'n. Dead drunk."

"Did you wake her up, Mattie?"

"Yas, suh; but she ain' fit to come do no wuk. Dis ole rotten blockade
whisky dese niggers drink jes' knocked her out--knocked her out fuh
fair."

"Did she say when she got drunk?"

"Las' night, suh, late, wid dat Perry. You know, Mistuh Bristow; he been
doin' some wuk fuh you."

"Was Perry drunk last night? Did she tell you?"

"He wuz a little lit up, she says, but he warn't drunk. She didn't have
no idea whar he wuz jes' now."

Bristow made no comment on this, and Mattie, turning slowly away from
him, began to mumble something.

"What's that, Mattie?" he asked, only half curious.

"I wuz jes' sayin', Mistuh Bristow, it 'pears to me marveelyus how some
uv dese niggers behave. Dey don' look arter de white folks dey wuk fuh.
Seems to me marveelyus how a lot uv dem keeps out uv jail."

He was curious enough now.

"What do you mean?" he asked sharply. "What are you talking about?"

"It's jes' dis, suh: when I gits ovuh to Lucy's house, de fus' thing I
sees is a key layin' on de flo'. When I ast her 'bout it, she says it
mus' be de key to Number Five--she mus' uv drapped it."

"I see," said Bristow thoughtfully. "Yes, you're right, Mattie. There are
a lot of careless people in the world."

When she had gone back to the kitchen, the full force of what she had
said struck him. How simple it would have been for Perry to have taken
the key from the drunken Lucy and gone to No. 5! After the commission of
the crime, what would have been easier than for him to throw the key on
the floor in Lucy's house, thus apparently proving that he had had no way
of gaining entrance to the bungalow?

"I didn't foresee this," he meditated. "There's only one thing more
needed to hang that darky. That is the discovery that he has in his
possession, or has hidden, the jewelry."

He seemed suddenly reminded of something else by this thought. He went to
the telephone and called up the Brevord Hotel.

"A Mr. Morley, Mr. Henry Morley, registered there last night, didn't he?"
he inquired of the clerk.

"Yes," the clerk replied.

"I wonder," continued Bristow suavely, "if you'd mind looking at the
register and telling me exactly at what time he did register. This is
Chief Greenleaf's office talking."

"I see. Yes, sir; very glad to. Just hold the wire a moment while I
look."

Bristow waited. The Brevord was scarcely four minutes' walk from the
railroad station. Morley, having missed the midnight train by two
minutes, should have registered at the hotel certainly not later than ten
minutes past midnight.

"I have it," came the clerk's voice. "Mr. Henry Morley, of Washington, D.
C., registered here at five minutes past two this morning."

Bristow was astonished, but his voice was uncoloured by surprise when he
inquired:

"Are you sure of that?"

"Quite," said the clerk laconically. "We always put down opposite each
guest's name the time of arrival and registering."

"Thanks ever so much." Bristow hung up the receiver slowly.

It was now after one o'clock, and, following the routine prescribed by
his doctor, he made his way to the sleeping porch to lie down for half an
hour before dinner, his midday meal.

"From midnight until two o'clock this morning," he reflected, revolving a
dozen different facts in his mind. "Mr. Morley failed to mention how he
amused himself during all that time. If he's not a criminal, he's
criminally stupid."




CHAPTER V

THE HUSBAND'S STORY


Mr. Bristow, however, was not allowed to rest half an hour. Instead, he
was called upon to consider a phase of the Withers murder more amazing
than any of those so far uncovered. Barely ten minutes after his
conversation with the clerk of the Brevord, Mattie announced that two
gentlemen were waiting to see him, one of them being the chief of police.

When Bristow stepped into the living room, Greenleaf introduced the
stranger. He was Mr. Withers--Mr. George S. Withers, husband of the
murdered woman. He was of the extreme brunette type, his hair
blue-black, his black eyes keen and piercing and always on the move.
Bristow got the impression in looking at him that all his features,
the aquiline nose, the firm, compressed mouth, the large ears, were
remarkably sharp-cut.

The man's excitement was almost beyond his control. He apparently made no
attempt to hide the fact that his hands trembled like leaves in the wind
and that, every now and then, his legs quivered perceptibly. As soon as
he had shaken hands, he sank into a chair.

"Mr. Withers," the chief explained, "caught me at Number Five before I
had started down town. I have explained how you are helping me in
this--er distressing matter. So we came up here."

"I see," said Bristow, betraying no surprise that Withers had appeared so
suddenly.

In fact, he had not thought of the husband previously, except to
calculate that, in answer to the telegram Dr. Braley had undoubtedly
sent, he could not reach Furmville from Atlanta before far into the
night.

"He only heard of the tragedy half an hour ago," Greenleaf added.

"I didn't know you were in town or even expected," Bristow said casually.
"I thought you were in Atlanta."

"I--I wasn't expected." Withers hurried his words.

"You mean nobody expected you?"

"That's it, I wasn't expected. But I've been in--in town here since
yesterday morning."

"And Mrs. Withers didn't know of it?"

"Nobody knew of it. I didn't want anybody to know of it."

Bristow purposely remained silent, awaiting some explanation. He looked
down, studying the pattern of the scratches he made by rubbing his right
shoe against the side of the built-up sole, two inches thick, of his left
shoe. The shortness of his crippled leg made this heavy sole necessary;
and the awkwardness of it worried him. He seemed always conscious of it.

Greenleaf, taking his cue from Bristow, said nothing.

"I came in without notifying anybody," Withers felt himself obliged to
continue, "and I registered under an assumed name."

"Where?" the lame man asked swiftly.

"At the Brevord."

"What name--under what name?"

"Waring, Charles B. Waring."

"And you've been in Furmville since yesterday morning? Got here on the
eight o'clock train yesterday morning?"

"Yes."

Bristow gave him the benefit of another long pause and studied him more
closely. He saw that this bereaved husband was of the high-strung,
Southern-gentleman type, hot-tempered, impulsive, one of those apt to
believe that "shooting" is the remedy for one's personal ills or
injuries. The lines of his mouth betrayed selfishness and peevishness.

The interrogator broke the silence at last:

"Of course, Mr. Withers, there's some good explanation
for your secret trip to Furmville?"

"Well--er--yes."

"What is it?"

Withers hesitated.

"I--I don't know that I care to say now--to discuss it yet."

Bristow shot Greenleaf a prompting glance.

"You see, it's this way," the chief acted on the silent suggestion; "I'm
in charge of this matter, the capture of the murderer, and Mr. Bristow is
helping me. In fact, he's the man in command. His abilities fit him for
the work. If the man who killed your wife is caught, it will be through
the work of Mr. Bristow. I'm confident of that. Moreover, every minute we
lose now may be disastrous to us. Consequently, we want to hear your
story. You appreciate our position, I know."

Withers licked his dry lips with the tip of his dry tongue.

"How about the newspapers?" he asked.

"You'll be talking only for our information," cut in Bristow crisply. "We
won't give it to the papers. We want to use it for our own benefit."

"Ah, I see. Well, then----"

Withers got up and paced the length of the floor several times in silence
while they watched him. He gave the impression of framing up in advance
in his mind what he would say. He seemed to want to talk without talking
too much--to tell a part of a story, not all.

"I tell you, gentlemen," he said, going back to his chair, his voice
trembling, "this is a hard thing to get to. I mean I don't like to say
what I must say. But I see there's no way out but this. The truth of the
matter is, I came up here to satisfy myself as to what my wife was doing
in regard to a certain matter."

"You mean you were suspicious of her--jealous of her?" Bristow
interpolated.

"No, not that," returned the husband.

"He's lying!" was the thought of both Greenleaf and Bristow.

"No. Let me make that very clear. I never doubted her in that way."

"Well, how did you doubt her?"

Withers winced.

"I don't mean I doubted her at all. I mean I thought she was being
imposed upon financially. In fact, I was sure of it. I'm sure of it now."

"You mean blackmail?" Bristow narrowed down the inquiry.

"Just that. And I'll tell you about it." He rasped his dry lips again.
"This sort of thing, this blackmail, had happened to her twice before
this. Once it was when she was at Atlantic City for a month with her
sister, Miss Maria Fulton.

"That was a year after our marriage. Then, two years later--just about a
year ago now--when she was in Washington visiting her father and sister.
Both those times things happened as they had begun to happen here, in
fact as they've been happening here for the past two months."

"Well," Bristow urged him on, "what happened?"

"She got away with too much money, more money than she could possibly
have used for herself in any legitimate way. First, she got her father to
give her all she could get out of him. Her second step would be to write
to me for all I could spare, making flimsy excuses for her need of it.

"Her third resource was to pawn all her jewels. She pawned them on these
first two occasions I've described. I say she pawned them, but I never
had definite proof of it. However, I was sure of it. I don't know that
she had come to this in Furmville. If she hadn't she would have."

"What were Mrs. Withers' jewels worth?"

"Originally, I should say, they cost about fifteen thousand dollars. She
had no difficulty, I suppose, in raising six or seven thousand dollars on
them--even more than that."

"They were worth so much as all that?"

"Yes. Her father had given her most of them before his business failure.
He failed last fall, I forgot to mention."

"Now," Bristow said persuasively, "about this blackmailing proposition.
What was--what is your idea about that?"

Withers produced and lit a cigarette, handling it with quivering fingers.

"Somebody, some man, had a hold of some sort on her. Whenever he needed
money, had to have money, he got it from her. That is, he did this
whenever he could find her away from home. So far as I know, he never
tried to operate in Atlanta."

"What do you think this hold was?"

"Well," Withers began, and paused.

"Your theories are perfectly safe with us," Bristow reassured him.

"I thought, naturally, that it had something to do with her life previous
to the time I met her."

"How?"

"I didn't know. That's what worried me." All of a sudden, his hearers got
a clear idea of what the man had suffered. It was plainly to be detected
in his voice. "It might have been a harmless love affair, a flirtation,
with letters involved, letters which she thought would distress me if I
ever saw them."

"Nothing more than that?"

"I never thought she had been guilty of anything--well, immoral,
heinous."

"You say," Bristow changed the course of questioning, "she pawned her
jewels twice. How did she do that? Where did she get the money to redeem
them after the first pawning?"

"I don't know. I never could find out."

"You had no six or seven thousand dollars to give her for that purpose,
as I understand it?"

"No."

"Where did she get it, then?" Bristow's questions, despite their
directness, were free from offense.

"I--I thought," Withers began again and paused. "I thought that, perhaps,
her father helped her out, got the jewels out of pawn both times for
her."

"Did you ever ask him?"

"Yes; and he denied having done so. But, you see, my theory is borne out.
Before, when she pawned them, her father was wealthy; and she was his
favourite child. She knew he would help her. But now his money is gone.
He's failed. Consequently, she has not pawned them this time. She knew
there would be no chance to redeem them."

Bristow leaned forward in his chair.

"Mr. Withers," he asked, "as a matter of fact, did you ever know that
your wife had pawned her jewels?"

"Well," he said, as if making an admission, "she would never confess it
to me. I assumed it from the fact that on both occasions the jewels were
missing for a good while. They were certainly not in her possession. She
couldn't produce them when called upon to do so."

"I see. Now, Mr. Withers, what did you do yesterday, all day yesterday,
after reaching here?"

"I went to the Brevord and registered under the name of Waring. After I
had had breakfast, I went straight to Abrahamson's pawnshop. It's the
only pawnshop in town. I told him I was looking for some stolen jewelry
and I expected that an attempt might be made to pawn it with him. He
agreed to let me wait there, well concealed by the heavy hangings at the
back of his shop. I spent the day there except for a few minutes in the
afternoon when I went out for a quick lunch."

"Yes? Did you find out anything?"

Once more Withers found it hard to speak.

"Yes"; he said finally. "A man came in and pawned one of my wife's rings.
It had a setting of three diamonds. It was worth about seven hundred and
fifty dollars, I should say. Abrahamson let him have only a hundred on
it."

"Why only a hundred?"

"I had asked him to do that, so as to prove that the man was a thief--you
know, willing to take anything offered to him."

"And he did take the hundred?"

"He did."

"What happened after that?"

"I followed him from the shop--for half a block. When he had gone that
distance, I lost him. He stepped into a store, and I waited for him to
come out. He never did. It was the old dodge. The store extended the
width of a block. He made his escape through the other entrance."

Greenleaf was more excited even than Withers.

"This man," the chief put in; "what did he look like?"

"He was of average weight, medium height. He had a gold tooth, the upper
left bicuspid gold. His nose was aquiline. He wore a long, dark gray
raincoat, and he had a cap with its long visor pulled well over his face.
Then, too, he wore a beard, chestnut-brown in colour. That's about the
best description I can give you of him. You see, this happened late in
the afternoon."

"All right," Bristow kept to the main thread of the story. "Now, about
last night. What then?"

Withers threw away his cigarette and sighed.

"I came up here and watched Number Five. I had an idea that this fellow
might show up."

"Did he?"

"No."

"Where did you watch from?"

"Most of the time I sat on the steps of Number Four, almost directly
across the road from Number Five. You know how it is on this street.
Nearly everybody is in the back of the house after dark. The invalids are
on the sleeping porches behind the houses. Besides, it was in deep shadow
where I was. I was not observed when my--when Mrs. Withers left the house
with an escort, a man, early in the evening."

"And you waited until she returned?"

"Yes; I waited."

"Very well." There was for the first time a hint of sharpness in
Bristow's voice. "You waited. What did you see?"

For the past few minutes a change had been taking place in the bearing of
Withers. It was as if, having recovered slightly from the terrific shock
of his wife's death, he was gradually stiffening, gaining the strength
necessary to withstand the swift volley of Bristow's questions.

The questioner, sensing this alteration in the other, made his queries
all the quicker and more peremptory. He wanted to profit as much as
possible from the other's lack of control.

"I saw her return with her escort," Withers answered. "She shook hands
with him and went into the house and closed the door. He got into his
machine, turned it and went back toward town."

"Was his machine noisy?"

"No."

"Did you try to enter Number Five?"

"No. I wasn't ready to disclose my presence. I wanted more time."

He put his hand to his watch pocket and was surprised to find that no
watch was there; he had been making nervous little movements like that
throughout the interview; but he kept his keen glance on his questioner.

"Then, tell us this, please," Bristow demanded, the sharpness in his tone
pronounced: "have you and your wife been on the best of terms lately?
And another thing: have you ever had any lasting, distressing
disagreements with her?"

The effect of this upon Withers was entirely surprising. He sprang from
his chair, his features suddenly working with rage.

"Dammit!" he exclaimed in a tense, vibrant voice, as his glance rested
first on Bristow and then on Greenleaf. "What does all this amount to
anyway? Here you are, asking me questions as if you thought I had killed
my own wife! What I want is results, not a lot of hot air and bluff!"

He snapped his fingers under Bristow's nose.

"Why, dammit!" he shrilled. "Haven't you any idea yet where to look for
the murderer? Are you groping around here helplessly after all this time?
Dammit! I want a real detective on this job, and I'm going to get one."

He clapped his felt hat to his head and started toward the door.

"You can bet your last dollar on that! I'm going to get one, and he'll be
here tomorrow if telegrams can bring him. I'll have Sam Braceway, the
cleverest fellow in this business in the South, here tomorrow! I intend
to have punishment for the devil who killed my wife. Punishment!--the
worst kind!"

His lips were trembling, and he dashed the back of his hand across his
face, as if he feared the formation of tears in his eyes.

"You two boneheads can put that in your pipes and smoke it! I mean
business!"

He slammed the door, and was gone, taking the steps to the street in two
bounds.

"By cracky!" said Greenleaf. "What do you make of that?"

"Nothing," Bristow answered contemptuously; "nothing except that it may
be well for us to find out a whole lot more about Mr. Withers and his
peculiarities of temper and temperament."

"I should say so," the chief chimed agreement.

"Of course," Bristow added, "that was the easiest way for him to break
off our inquiry. I don't think he was on the level with all that storming
and raging. It might have been just a great big bluff--that's all. And
yet, that Braceway he talked about is good, a wonder. He's done some
wonderful work."

"Here's one point," Greenleaf advanced: "why didn't he ask for help from
the police yesterday afternoon when he lost track of that fellow with the
gold tooth?"

"Yes," the other returned absent-mindedly; "why didn't he?"




CHAPTER VI

MORLEY IS IN A HURRY


Bristow looked at his watch. It was nearly half-past two o'clock.

"Hear anything about Perry?" he asked.

"Yes," Greenleaf informed him. "My man found him. They've got him down at
headquarters. I phoned from Number Five and got this. He'd been drinking.
I gather that he's about half-drunk now."

"Good! If he'll talk at all, it will be easier for you to get the truth
out of him that way than if he were cold sober. Suppose you see him and
Douglas Campbell; and later on this afternoon you and I can talk to Miss
Fulton and her father."

"Her father won't be here today. He wired that a little while ago. He'll
get here early in the morning."

"Very well. It's of no consequence just now. Come back here for me at
four, will you?"

When the chief had gone, Bristow sat down to his delayed dinner. As he
ate, he went over the facts so far discovered, and catalogued them:

Perry, the negro--incriminated, probably, by the buttons from his
overalls jacket; by the ease with which he could have obtained from Lucy
Thomas the kitchen key to No. 5; by the possible motive of robbery; and
by the brutal means, choking, employed to inflict death.

Morley--incriminated by his unknown whereabouts during the two hours
following his missing the midnight train, and by the discovery of the
ring (possibly Mrs. Withers') in his room at the Brevord.

Withers--involved by the probable motive of jealousy and rage, and by his
secret trip to Furmville.

Maria Fulton--well, he would see.

"Just now," he concluded in his own mind, "it looks worse for the negro
than anybody else. There's one thing certain: the man against whom the
most evidence rests by the time they have the inquest tomorrow will be
the one held for the action of the grand jury. That's the thing to
do--get the one who seems most probably guilty."

He thought of Douglas Campbell and immediately dismissed him as a
possibility in the list of probable murderers. The young real estate
dealer had been completely exonerated by the statement of the dead
woman's husband; that, upon bringing her back to the bungalow, he had at
once said good night to her and gone home.

Nor did he puzzle his mind about the unknown individual with the gold
tooth, he who had appeared in Abrahamson's pawnshop and a few minutes
later miraculously disappeared. If the ring pawned had belonged to Mrs.
Withers, why should this man return to No. 5 and murder her? If he had
obtained nothing from her beforehand, he might have had a real motive for
the crime. But, since he had already got the ring, it seemed folly to
assume that he would later kill her.

In spite of his growing belief that the onus of proof must fall upon the
negro, Bristow could not keep his thoughts away from young Morley. He,
more than any of the other suspects, had told an unsatisfactory story.
Besides, he had a bad face.

The latest addition to the Furmville plain-clothes squad remembered how
carefully Morley's hands had been manicured. He----

With a quick motion, he went to the telephone and called for Greenleaf.

"Chief, are you still holding Perry?"

"Sure, I'm holding him. I'll continue to hold him for some time, I'm
thinking. His story don't suit me. He says----"

"All right. Ill get that from you when I see you this afternoon. In the
meantime, I wish you'd have his finger nails carefully cleaned. I
want----"

But the request had instantly overwhelmed Greenleaf.

"What!" he yelled. "Clean his finger nails!"

"Yes," Bristow continued smoothly, disregarding the other's evident
distaste and surprise. "If I were down there, I'd do it myself. In fact,
it would be better for you to do it. Don't leave it to some careless
subordinate."

The chief laughed his sarcasm.

"You know," this still with laughter, "we Southerners are none too strong
on acting as manicures to these coloured folks."

"It's absolutely necessary," was the insistent answer. "And, when you do
clean them, save every bit of dirt thus obtained. Now, will you do it?"

"Why, yes," Greenleaf assented with reluctance. "If you say it's
absolutely necessary, I'll do it--I'll do it myself."

"Good. I'll depend on you for it. By the way, can't you have somebody,
your man Jenkins or some one as good as he is, go out on a real hunt for
the fellow with the gold tooth? You remember Withers' description of
him?"

"Yes. I'd thought of that."

"That's good. If he can't spot him at any of the hotels, have him make
the rounds of the boarding houses. I think you'd like to get your hands
on a customer as slippery as Withers says that man is."

"I'll send Jenkins at once," the chief took his directions in good part.

"Good again. By the way, you'll be up here at four?"

"No; five. Dr. Braley told me we'd have to wait until then; said we'd
better. He wants her to get that extra hour's sleep."

Bristow started to say something further, hesitated and then hung up the
receiver with a word of assent.

Mattie had come in to clear off the table.

"Go down to Number Six," he told her, "and ask Mrs. Allen if she will be
so kind as to come up here at her earliest convenience. Explain to her
that it's against the doctor's orders for me to leave this house, and
that the excitement of this morning has tired me out."

Mrs. Allen appeared in less than a quarter of an hour. He received her in
the living room and introduced himself, apologizing for not having been
able to call on her. She understood perfectly, she said.

She was a woman about forty years of age, her face a little thin and
worn, a good deal of gray in her dark hair. She had been nursing her
husband for two years, and the strain had begun to tell. Nevertheless,
he soon saw that she was a woman of refinement, possessed of a keen
intelligence.

"I wish," he requested, after he had explained his connection with the
murder, "you'd tell me all you know about these sisters. I gathered this
morning that you were well acquainted with them."

He had always found it easy to gain the confidence of women. They liked
his manners, his air of deference, his manifest interest in everything
they said.

"I can't say that I've been intimate with them," Mrs. Allen explained in
her soft, pleasing voice; "but Mrs. Withers and I knew each other pretty
well. She came over to my house quite frequently, and I was in the habit
of running in to see her."

"Don't you know the other, Miss Fulton, equally well?"

"No. You see, she was always in, or on, the bed, and she never seemed to
want to talk. Besides, she was different from Mrs. Withers--not so bright
and attractive, and not so neighbourly."

"Mrs. Withers was always a laughing, sparkling sort of a person, wasn't
she?"

"She gave that impression to some people," Mrs. Allen answered
thoughtfully, "but not to me. It was her nature to be free and happy.
Most of the time she seemed that way. But there were other times when
I could see that she had something weighing on her mind, something
depressing her."

"Ah!" Bristow said with deeper interest. "That's just what we want to
find out about."

Mrs. Allen sat silent for a moment pursing her lips.

Bristow let her reflect.

"I don't think," she said at last, "Mrs. Withers ever was in fear of
anybody or any thing. She wasn't that kind."

"Did she ever tell you anything to make you think that she wasn't happy?"

"I was trying to recall just what it was. Once, I remember, when she was
sitting out on the sleeping porch--she sometimes came out there to talk
to my husband, who is always in bed--we had been discussing the care with
which every woman had to live her life.

"'Women are like politicians,' Mr. Allen said. 'They can't afford to have
a dark spot in their past. If they do, somebody will drag it out.'

"At that Mrs. Withers cried out:

"'Oh! how awfully true that is! And how unfair! It never seems to matter
with men, but with women it means heaven, or the other thing. I wish
I knew----' She broke off with a gasp, and I saw her lip tremble.

"It was funny, but at the time I thought she was referring to her sister,
not to herself."

"What made you think that?"

"I don't know. I had no real reason for it. Perhaps it was just because
unhappiness seemed so foreign to Mrs. Withers herself."

"Was there anything else?"

"Once, when I ran into Number Five, I found her crying. She was in the
living room, all doubled up in a rocking chair, crying silently."

"Did she say why?"

"No; but, while I was trying to soothe her, she said, 'Life's so
hard--it's so hard to straighten out a tangle when once you've made it.
If one could just go back and do things over again!' When I asked her if
I could help her, she said I couldn't. 'Nobody can,' she sobbed out on my
shoulder. 'It doesn't concern me alone. I'll have to fight it out the
best way I can.'"

Bristow was greatly interested.

"What did you conclude from all that, Mrs. Allen?" he asked.

"My impression was very vague," Mrs. Allen returned frankly. "I don't
think it is of much value now. I got, somehow, the idea that there was in
her life something which she had to conceal, something which might at any
moment be discovered. I thought she was worrying about its effect on her
husband. Of course, though, that was just my idea."

"I see. Now, just one other thing: what did you think, what do you think,
of Miss Fulton?"

"Oh, merely that she's bad-tempered and impatient, always complaining.
She was totally without any appreciation of all that Mrs. Withers did
for her. Nobody likes Miss Fulton particularly. I think all of us, as we
came to know the two, were amazed that Mrs. Withers could have such a
disagreeable sister."

Mrs. Allen's recital, while interesting and valuable as to Mrs. Withers'
acknowledgment that she felt compelled to keep secret some part of her
life, threw no practical light on the situation.

Bristow was silent, thoughtful, for a few moments.

"I've never seen Miss Fulton, except for the glance I had at her this
morning," he said. "Was it possible for anybody to mistake one for the
other? I mean this: if a man had known that last night Miss Fulton was up
and dressed, could it have been possible for him, in a dim light and
under the stress of terrific agitation, to have attacked Mrs. Withers
under the impression that he was attacking Miss Fulton?"

"Oh, no!" Mrs. Allen said emphatically, and then added: "Oh, I see what
you mean. Well, they were of about the same build, although Mrs. Withers
wasn't so thin as Miss Fulton is. Then, their hair is different, Mrs.
Withers' black, Miss Fulton's blond. I don't know. I should say it all
depended on how dark it was."

When Mrs. Allen had gone, Bristow took from a bookcase one of his
scrapbooks and went to work pasting into place the clippings he had been
reading that morning when interrupted by the cry of murder.

For nine years he had been studying murder cases and the methods of
murderers. People had laughed at his fad, but now he was more pleased
with himself as a result of it than ever before. He was still pleasantly
aware of the prominence he would enjoy in Furmville because of
Greenleaf's having called on him for assistance.

"Every murderer," he had said many times, "makes some mistake, big or
little, which will lead to his destruction if the authorities have brains
enough to find it."

He thought the rule might apply too widely to this case. In fact, his own
trouble now was that too many mistakes had been made, too many clues had
been left lying around. In order to determine the guilty person, much
chaff would have to be sifted from the wheat of truth.

He was closing his scrapbook when the chief of police arrived a few
minutes before five o'clock.

"Henry Morley," Greenleaf announced at once, "is a receiving teller in a
bank in Washington--the Anderson National Bank."

"And receiving tellers," put in Bristow quickly, "sometimes need
money--need it to make good other money they have 'borrowed' from the
bank. How did you find this out?"

"He told me when I met him at Number Five after leaving you this
afternoon."

"Was he still there then?"

"Yes. It seems that Miss Fulton refused at first to see him. When she did
see him, it was for only a minute or two. He was very much agitated when
he came from her room."

"There's another thing," added Bristow. "Morley has two hours of last
night to account for. He told us he missed the midnight train and went to
the Brevord to spend the night. As a matter of fact, he registered at the
Brevord a little after two o'clock this morning."

The chief's jaw dropped.

"How do you know that?"

"I called up the Brevord and got the information from the clerk."

"That settles it, then," Greenleaf said, his jaw set. "That young man
will have to remain with us for a while."

"Yes; quite properly."

"I guess it's time for us to move." The chief turned toward the door.

"One moment," said the other. "Somehow, I have the impression that we may
get important stuff from Maria Fulton. She may not give it to us directly
and willingly, but we may get it all the same. And I was thinking this:
you and I have got to keep our heads. We don't want to get rattled with
the idea that we're up against an unsolvable mystery.

"As you know, I've lived in New York and Chicago and Cincinnati. For the
past eight or nine years I've gotten a lot of fun out of watching and
studying these cases. And the thing I've learned above all others is that
the best way for a criminal to escape is for the authorities to lose
their heads and think they are up against something that's really much
bigger than it is.

"You see what I mean? What we want to do is to go ahead with our eyes
open, knowing that at any moment we may stumble against the one act that
will make everything clear and definite."

"That's good talk, and I'll try to act on it," replied the chief, "but,
gee whiz! I'm not used to stuff of this sort. It kinder makes me sick."

They went out to the porch.

"By the way," Bristow asked, "what about the two buttons we found?"

"They belonged to Perry," Greenleaf answered. "There's no getting around
that. He had the two middle buttons of his overalls jacket missing.
What's more, one of the buttons, the one that had a little piece of the
cloth clinging to it, fitted exactly into the hole made in the jacket
when the button was pulled out."

"Which button was that?"

"The first one--the one you found in Number Five."

They started down the steps.

"You saw the scratches on Mrs. Withers' hand, didn't you?" said Bristow.

"Yes."

"Well, if Perry did the scratching, we can prove it. Any good laboratory
man can tell us whether the stuff that was under his nails contains
particles of the human skin, the epidermis. If those particles are found,
the case is settled, it seems to me."

"By cracky!" exclaimed Greenleaf, his admiration of his assistant
growing. "You've solved the problem--gone to the very bottom of it."

"What did Perry have to say? What was his story?"

"Oh, it amounted to nothing. Said he wasn't near Number Five; said he was
drunk last night and thought he was at the house of this Lucy Thomas all
the time."

"Then, the proof rests upon what the laboratory analysis of the finger
nail stuff shows. When can we get that report?"

Bristow was a little surprised by the embarrassment Greenleaf showed
before answering:

"We can get it tomorrow--by wire."

"Why can't we get it tonight--or tomorrow at the latest? The Davis
laboratory here can do the work. It does laboratory work for all these
doctors here."

"It can't do any work for me," objected Greenleaf stubbornly. "Dr. Davis
and I aren't on speaking terms, personally or politically. I'll send the
stuff down to a laboratory at Charlotte. It will reach there tomorrow
morning if I get it off on the midnight train. We can get the telegraphed
report on it late tomorrow or the day after."

"All right; I guess that will do," agreed Bristow.

As they started up the steps to the Fulton bungalow, Morley came out to
the porch and charged down toward them. His face was convulsed as if by
anger or fear. He did not seem to see the two men. Bristow caught him by
the arm and put the query:

"Where are you going, Mr. Morley?"

Morley shook off his hand and answered curtly:

"To Washington. I've barely got time to catch my train."

"Don't hurry," Bristow said with a touch of sarcasm. "You're too good at
missing trains anyway. Besides, we want to know what you did between
midnight and two-ten this morning, and why you failed to tell us this
morning that you didn't register at the Brevord until after two."

Morley's face went white.

"There wasn't anything to that," he explained. "I didn't mean to conceal
anything. I didn't go anywhere--anywhere specially."

"Where did you go?" insisted Bristow.

"I took a walk. That was all. I didn't feel like sleeping."

"Did you see anybody while you were walking?"

"Not that I remember. Why?"

"Because, if you did, it might be advisable for you to remember. It may
become necessary for you to prove an alibi."

"Oh, that!" the young man said with a nervous laugh.

"Yes. Can't you tell us where you went?"

"I wandered around, up and down the down-town streets. That was all."

"Well, remember," Bristow cautioned him. "If you can produce two or three
people who saw you down there, it may help you a whole lot."

"Oh, that's all right, I haven't done anything against the law. The
idea's absurd."

"Mr. Bristow's right," Greenleaf put in. "We'll have to know more about
how you spent those two hours. Really, we will. If you try to leave town,
you'll be arrested. My men have their orders."

Greenleaf had forgotten about the ring found in the young man's hotel
room, but Bristow hadn't.

Morley went slowly down Manniston Road. There was a cold moisture upon
his forehead.




CHAPTER VII

MISS FULTON IS HYSTERICAL


The chief and his assistant were received by Miss Kelly, the trained
nurse. Bristow wasted no time in what he considered to be the crucial
search for more evidence. In speaking to her he exercised all his
persuasiveness, all the suggestion of power and authority that he could
force into his voice and expression. And yet, he gave her, as he had
given Mrs. Allen, the impression that he deferred to her and prized her
opinions.

"Isn't there something you can tell us?" he asked, holding her glance
with his own.

"What do you mean?"

She was a strong, capable-looking woman of twenty-six years or so.

"Like every good citizen," he answered smoothly, "you want exactly what
we want, a clearing up of all this muddle. I thought, perhaps, there
might be something you'd heard or seen. Isn't there?"

"No; nothing, sir," she returned, true to her professional teaching that
a nurse is forbidden to reveal the secrets of the sickroom.

"You'll be called as a witness at the inquest," he hazarded, and was
rewarded by a look of uncertainty in her eyes. "Your duty to the law is
above everything else," he added.

"I've heard Miss Fulton say only one thing," she admitted reluctantly.
"She's said it several times while under the influence of the sedatives
she's had."

"What was it?"

"Nothing that made any sense. It was, 'When he--say--I--asleep.' There
were long pauses between each of the words. She said it four or five
times. But she hasn't said anything since she waked up."

"How long has she been awake?"

"About fifteen minutes. Mr. Morley saw her five minutes ago, but he
wasn't in there more than a minute or two."

"Morley's seen her a second time!"

"Yes; but each time she hasn't wanted to talk to him. The truth is, she
drove him out of the room."

"You didn't hear what they said?"

Miss Kelly drew herself up indignantly.

"I wasn't in the room," she said coldly. "Of course, I didn't hear."

Bristow apologized for the implication that she had overheard
intentionally.

When he and Greenleaf were shown into Miss Fulton's room, he had made up
his mind in lightning-like manner that what she had said in her delirium,
meant: "When he (her father or the police) asks me about last night, I
shall say I was asleep all night." It came to him like an intuition,
without his even trying to reason it out; and he decided to act on it.

They found Maria Fulton propped up against pillows in the bed. Although
her pupils were still enlarged by the sedatives she had had, she was
plainly labouring under the stress of great emotion.

Bristow was pleased by that. It would make it easier to learn what she
knew. It is difficult, he reflected, for a person under the partial
effects of a drug to lie intelligently or convincingly.

He and Greenleaf, taking the chairs that had been placed near the bed by
Miss Kelly, regretted the necessity of their intrusion.

"Oh, it's all right," Miss Fulton said petulantly. "I know it's
essential. Dr. Braley told me so."

Bristow studied her intently. He saw that Mrs. Allen had been right.
Maria Fulton was a dissatisfied, peevish woman. She had the heavy,
slightly pendent lower lip that goes with much pouting. There was the
constant trace of a frown between her eyebrows, and in the eyes
themselves was the look of complaint and protest which the "martyr-type"
woman always shows.

She was of the infantile, spoiled class, he decided, one who, remembering
that her childhood tears and fits of temper had always resulted in her
getting what she wanted, had brought the habit into her adult years. He
noted, too, that her gorgeous ash-blond hair had been carefully "done,"
piled in high masses above her petulant face.

"There are just a few questions which we thought it imperative to ask
you," he said, trying to convey to her his desire to be as considerate as
possible. "We shall make them as brief as we can."

Miss Fulton plucked impatiently at the coverlet, but said nothing.

Bristow, acting on his belief that life with this girl must always be
more or less stormy, took a chance.

"Now," he said, fixing his keen glance upon her, "about this quarrel you
and your sister had yesterday?"

She frowned and waved her right hand in careless dismissal of the
subject.

"Oh, that," she said, "didn't amount to anything."

"What was it about?"

"I really don't know. You see, my sister and I didn't get along very well
together."

Bristow put out his hand, and Greenleaf handed him the ring that had been
found in Morley's room at the Brevord.

"This ring," he said; "whose is it?"

She sat up straight and gasped. Her pallor grew. Even her lips went
thoroughly white.

"Where did you get that?" she asked huskily.

"It doesn't matter. Whose is it?"

"It--it was my sister's," she said, almost in a whisper.

"Do you know who gave it to Mr. Morley?"

She stared, speechless, at Bristow.

"Don't you know?" he persisted.

"Yes," she said with obvious effort; "I--I lent it to him."

"When?"

"Yest--last night."

"Why?"

She tried to smile, but her features were moulded more nearly to a
grimace.

"Mr. Morley and I--and I--have been engaged," she laboured to explain.
"He said he wanted to wear it for a while just because it belonged to
me."

"But he knew it didn't belong to you, didn't he?"

"I suppose," she corrected herself, "he meant he wanted to wear it
because I had worn it."

"I see," commented Bristow, and added very quickly: "How much of your
sister's jewelry is in this house now?"

Miss Fulton stared at him again, and did not answer.

"Can't you tell me?" he urged. "How much?"

She turned her head from him and looked out of the window.

"None of it," she replied finally. "I had Miss Kelly look for it. It's
all--gone."

"Why did you have Miss Kelly look for it? What made you suspect that it
was gone?"

She turned to him and frowned more deeply, angrily.

"It was, I suppose," she said shortly, "the first and most natural
suspicion for any one to have; that, since she had been killed, she had
been robbed. It was the only motive of which I could think."

"Yes," he agreed pleasantly, handing the ring back to the chief; "I think
you're right there."

He was silent for a full minute while the girl in the bed plucked at the
coverlet and eyed first him and then Greenleaf.

"Miss Fulton," he demanded more sharply than he had yet spoken, "did you
see or hear anything last night in connection with this tragedy, the
death of your sister?"

"No; nothing," she answered, her voice now approaching firmness. It was a
firmness, however, that was forced.

"How do you explain that?"

"I went to bed before my sister returned from the dinner dance, and I
had taken something Dr. Braley had given me that breaks up the severe
coughing attacks to which I am subject and that also puts me to sleep."

"Makes you sleep soundly?"

"Very."

"It was a hypodermic injection, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"And you took it--administered it to yourself?"

"Yes."

"Do you know what it was?"

"Yes; morphine."

"A sixteenth of a grain, wasn't it? That's what is always given to
tuberculars to prevent violent spells of coughing, isn't it?"

She hesitated, but finally assented.

"But that's very little to make one sleep so soundly, that one couldn't
hear the cries of a woman being murdered and all the noises that must
have accompanied the attack upon her. Don't you think so?"

"But, you must remember," she said tartly, "I'm not accustomed to taking
morphine. Anyway, that's the way it affected me."

"You heard absolutely nothing and saw nothing until you discovered your
sister's body at ten o'clock this morning?"

"That's true. Yes; that's true." She looked out of the window, paying him
no more attention.

Bristow, in his turn, was silent. Greenleaf took up the inquiry:

"Several times today, while you were asleep or delirious, you said the
words: 'When he--say--I--asleep,' Can you explain that for us, Miss
Fulton?"

Her pallor deepened. This time terror flourished in her eyes as she
turned sharply toward Greenleaf.

"Who says I said that?" she demanded, husky again.

"Things are heard pretty easily in these bungalows," he said. "One of my
men heard it."

"Oh, I understand," she replied, a hint of craftiness creeping into her
voice. "No; I can't explain it. One can't often explain one's ravings."

"It merely suggested something that we had thought impossible," Bristow
interjected soothingly: "that you might have wanted to deny having heard
something which you really did hear; that you were protecting somebody."

"Oh," she said angrily, "that's absurd--utterly."

"Quite," lied Bristow suavely. "That was what I told Chief Greenleaf."
Then, with sharp directness, he asked her: "Who do you think killed your
sister?"

"I don't know! Oh, I don't know!" she cried shrilly, more than ever
suggestive of the spoiled child.

"It must have been some burglar. She was very popular, everybody said.
She had no enemies."

"None at all?"

"None that I know of."

"But Mr. Morley didn't like her, did he?"

"No," she said slowly. "He didn't like her, but you couldn't have called
him her enemy."

Bristow moved his chair toward her several inches.

"Miss Fulton," he asked, "you and Mr. Morley are engaged to be married,
aren't you?"

"No!" she surprised him. "No; we're not!"

He did not tell her that Morley had said they were.

Greenleaf was now clearly conscious of what he had vaguely felt while
listening to Bristow's questioning of Withers: the lame man had the
faculty of seeming entirely inoffensive in his queries but at the same
time putting into his voice an irritating, challenging quality which was
bound to work on the feelings of the person to whom he talked. He had
begun to have this effect on Miss Fulton.

"I understood," he informed her, "that you were--er--quite fond of each
other."

"Not at all! Not at all!" she denied with increasing vehemence. "I'm not
engaged to him now. Nothing could induce me to marry him!"

"Mr. Morley declared this morning that you and he were to be married."

She caught herself up quickly, anger evident in her eyes, and at the same
time, also, a look of caution. Bristow decided she wanted to tell
nothing, to give him no advantage, no actual insight into the clouded
situation.

"I see what you mean," she said. "We were engaged, but I finally decided
that our marriage was impossible--because of this--my illness."

"And you told him so?"

She thought a long moment before she answered:

"Yes."

"When?"

"Yesterday."

"Then, when did you give him--let him have Mrs. Withers' ring?"

She showed signs of weakening.

"Yesterday," she declared. "No! Last night, I've already told you."

"And why did he want the ring last night when you had broken with him
earlier yesterday?"

His subtle irritation of her by his manner and tone had unstrung her at
last.

"I don't know," she cried, hysterics in her voice. "Oh, I don't know! Why
do you ask me all these foolish little questions?" She tore unconsciously
at the counterpane, her fingers writhing against one another. "Please,
please don't bother me any more! Leave me! Leave me now, won't you?"

The high, shrill quality of her tone brought Miss Kelly into the room.

"I think," the nurse said, "you gentlemen will have to put off further
conversation with Miss Fulton--if you can. The doctor said she was not
to be subjected to too much excitement."

They already had risen.

"We've very much obliged to you, Miss Fulton," Bristow said in his
pseudo-pleasant way. "It may be useful to us to know about you and Mr.
Mor----"

He was interrupted by a cry from the girl. Without the slightest warning,
she had lost the last shred of her self-control. She began to beat on the
covering of her bed with clenched fists. He could see how her whole body
moved and twisted.

Greenleaf, startled by the girl's demeanour, moved further from her.
Bristow stood his ground, watching her closely.

She glared at him with the wild look that frequently comes to the
hysterical or neurotic woman's eyes. She did not seem to be suffering.
She was angry, carried away by her rage, and giving vent to it without
any attempt at restraint!

In two or three seconds she had become suggestive of an animal, her
nostrils distended, the upper lip drawn back from her teeth. Bristow,
going beyond surface indications, estimated her at her true worth: "Too
much indulged; overshadowed, perhaps, by some older member of the family;
but capable of big things, even charm. She's far from being a nonentity.
She may help me yet."

He regarded her calmly, and smiled.

"Don't mention him to me again!" she screamed. "I won't have it! I won't
have it, I tell you! I never want to see him again--never! Don't speak
the name of Henry Morley in----"

But Miss Kelly had quickly motioned them out and closed the door. Even on
the outside, however, they could hear her shrill, whining protest against
any mention of Morley.

"Now!" said Greenleaf as they went through the living room. "What do you
make of that?"

They left the house and stood on the sidewalk outside.

"Not much," Bristow replied, thinking deeply. "What with Withers throwing
a fit, and then this girl having, or shamming, hysterics, it's
disappointing. But here's a question: what has Morley done since last
evening to make her hate him--at least, to make her look frightened when
his name is mentioned to her?"

"What do you think?"

"I should say murder, or something just a little short of
murder--wouldn't you?"

Greenleaf looked his bewilderment.

"No," he objected. "I don't believe she'd protect him if she knew he'd
killed her sister."

"Not if she knew, perhaps," Bristow pursued ruminatively. "But if she
suspected, merely suspected?"

The chief did not answer this. He was clinging now to the theory of
Perry's guilt. It seemed to him the easiest one to prove.

"By the way, Mr. Bristow," he suggested, "wouldn't it be a good idea for
us to search the yard and garden back of this house?"

"What for?"

"There's always the chance that the murderer, in running away, dropped
something, even a part of the plunder. Then, too, remember the buttons."

"Yes; I see what you mean, but it's getting late now. The light's none
too good--and I'm tired, chief, tired out. Suppose we let that go until
tomorrow--or you do it alone."

"No; I'll wait for you tomorrow. We can do it together."

"Oh," Bristow asked, as if suddenly remembering an important item, "what
kind of shoes is Perry wearing?"

"An old pair of high-topped tennis shoes--black canvas."

"Rubber soles?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry," observed Bristow. "That's another complication. Morley wore
rubbers last night. Either he or Perry might have made that footprint on
the porch."

"How about Withers?" Greenleaf advanced a new idea. "He didn't tell us
anything he did after seeing Campbell leave here last night."

"That's true. You'd better see him tonight. Ask him about that; and find
out what time he returned to the Brevord. If you don't get it out of him
tonight, you probably never will. By tomorrow, his detective, Braceway,
will be on the scene, and the chances are that Withers will talk to him
and not to us--that is, if he talks at all."

"Then I'll see you in the morning?"

"Yes; any time. I'll get up early. But, if you get anything out of
Withers tonight, telephone me--or if your man Jenkins reports on his
search for the fellow with the gold tooth."

"O. K.," agreed the chief, and swung off down the hill.

Bristow, whom he had left absorbed in thought, turned after a few minutes
and went back to the door of No. 5. Miss Kelly answered his ring.

"I'm sorry to disturb you," he said, his smile a compliment, "but there's
something I'm very anxious for you to do for me. Will you clean Miss
Fulton's finger nails as soon as you can? And I want you to keep
everything you get as a result of that process."

"Do her nails!" The nurse was amazed.

"Yes; please. I'll explain later. And another thing: don't cut the
cuticle. Don't bother with that at all. Just get what's under the nails.
You'd better use merely an orange stick, I think. Will you do that for me
carefully--very carefully? It's of the greatest importance."

Miss Kelly finally said she would.

He went back to his own porch and sat a long time watching the last,
fading rays of the sunset.

But he was not thinking about the landscape.

"This man Withers," he was reflecting, "and his getting this detective,
Braceway. Let me think. I mustn't look at these things in the light of my
theories only. Too much theorizing is confusing.

"I want to get the angle of the ordinary man in the street. How would it
look to him? Why, this way: either Withers is on the level and wants
to do everything possible to have the murderer caught--or he's smart
enough to employ Braceway in the knowledge that neither Braceway nor
anybody else can get anything from him that he doesn't want to tell--I
wonder."




CHAPTER VIII

THE BREATH OF SCANDAL


A telegraph messenger laboured up to the hill on his bicycle and climbed
the steps to the porch of No. 5, displaying in his hand several
telegrams. Two other boys had preceded him within the last hour. Friends
of the Fulton family, having read of the tragedy in afternoon papers
throughout the country, were wiring their messages of sympathy.

This was no little local, isolated affair, Bristow reflected. The
prominence of the victim in Washington and in the South, together with
the mystery surrounding the crime, made it a matter of national interest.
If he could bring the thing to a successful issue, the capture and
punishment of the right man, there would be fame in it for him. The
thought stimulated him.

A few minutes later Withers came up Manniston Road and went into No. 5.
Soon after that Miss Kelly brought Bristow a little paper packet.

"I'm not sure I ought to do this," she said, "but, as long as the
authorities have ordered it, I guess I'm safe. This is what I get as a
result of 'doing' Miss Fulton's nails."

He thanked her and reassured her.

Mattie appeared at the door to tell him his supper was ready. Before he
sat down at the table, he telephoned Greenleaf.

"There's something else I want you to send to Charlotte with the Perry
package."

"Same sort of thing?" inquired the chief.

"Yes--Miss Fulton's."

"Wow!" barked Greenleaf over the wire. "I never thought of that."

"That's all right, I nearly forgot it myself. How will you send for it?"

The chief thought a moment.

"I'll come after it myself," he said. "I'll be up there as soon as I see
Withers. I want to talk to you about the inquest. It will be held at
eleven o'clock tomorrow morning."

"Come ahead," Bristow invited. "You'll have to be up here in this
neighbourhood anyway if you want to see Withers. He came up to Number
Five just a few minutes ago. You can catch him there."

After supper he went back to the front porch in time to see in the dusk
the white uniform and cap of a trained nurse as she came down the hill.
He surmised that she was one of the six nurses who lived in No. 7, the
house between his and that of the murdered woman. These nurses were
employed throughout the day at the big sanitarium located just over the
brow of the hill at the end of Manniston Road.

Perhaps, she could tell him what he wanted to know.

"I beg your pardon," he called to her persuasively, "but may I trouble
you to come up here for a moment?"

She obeyed the summons with slow, hesitant steps.

He pushed forward a chair for her and bowed.

"Unfortunately," he apologized, "I don't know your name."

She enlightened him: "Rutgers; Miss Emily Rutgers." In his turn, he told
her briefly of his connection with the murder.

"I was wondering," he began, "whether you had ever heard anything unusual
from Number Five."

Miss Rutgers, who was blond and too fat, had a heavy, peculiarly hoarse
voice. She wanted to be certain that he had authority to "question
people" about the case. He made that clear to her.

"Well, yes," she finally said. "Mrs. Withers and Miss Fulton quarreled a
good deal. We girls had remarked on it. And yesterday they had an awful
row. I heard some of it because it was in the middle of the day, and I
had run down here from the sanitarium to fix up the laundry we'd
forgotten early in the morning."

"What did you hear?"

"It was something about money. I didn't really try to listen, but I
couldn't help hearing some of it, they talked so loud."

"Yes?"

"I got the idea that Miss Fulton wanted to borrow some money from Mrs.
Withers for a purpose that Mrs. Withers didn't approve of. 'Well,' I
heard Mrs. Withers say after Miss Fulton had almost screamed about it,
'you can't have any more. I haven't got it. That's all there is to that.
I can't let you have it when I haven't got it!'

"Miss Fulton said something--I think it was about Mr. Withers or about
asking him for the money.

"'You'd better not do that,' Mrs. Withers warned her. 'I tried that once,
and he flew into a perfect rage. He was so worked up that he looked like
a crazy man, like a man who would do anything. He looked as if he might
kill me, choke me to death, anything!'"

"Did Miss Fulton answer that?"

"If she did, I didn't hear it. I just got the impression that they were
both angry and mixed up in a terrific quarrel."

"Have you ever heard anything else like that at any other time?"

"Oh, we often heard them fussing. Miss Fulton did the fussing. Mrs.
Withers was almost always gentle and calm. One other time I did hear Mrs.
Withers say she'd lent Miss Fulton all she could afford."

"When was that?"

"Some time ago--a month or six weeks ago; maybe two months."

"Money, always money," the lame man said.

He was silent, thoughtful, for several minutes.

"I'm ever so much obliged, Miss Rutgers," he said at last. "Every bit of
evidence we can get will help us--perhaps."

Miss Rutgers had risen.

"There's one other thing, Mr. Bristow," she volunteered. "There was a
man hanging around Number Five last night; rather, it was early this
morning."

"How do you know that?" His voice was at once urgent.

"Bessie--Miss Hardesty and I have our beds on the sleeping porch. Hers is
the one nearest to Number Five. She told me about it this morning. At
about one o'clock--or between one and two--she thought she heard a sloppy
footstep near the sleeping porch. At that time it was raining, but
not hard--just a fine drizzle.

"She went to the wiring that walls the sleeping porch on the end toward
Number Five, and she made out the figure of a man coming from the front
of Number Five and going toward the back fence. He had just passed the
sleeping porch. She turned on the little flashlight we keep out there and
saw him."

"Who was it? Could she make him out at all?"

"She said it was a negro."

"Did she see his face?"

"Not enough to recognize him, but enough to make her sure he was a black
man."

"She didn't try to identify him?"

"Well, she thought it was the darky Perry who does so much work in this
neighbourhood. She said she thought so because the figure of the man she
saw in the rain reminded her of Perry's general appearance."

"Did she call out to him?"

"No; and he didn't run. He just walked fast and was out of sight in a
moment. When I heard of the murder early this afternoon, I was up at the
sanitarium, and I went to the matron and told her what I've just told
you. It was her advice that, as soon as I got off duty, I should come
down here and telephone what I knew to the police. She didn't want me to
do it from the sanitarium because the patients might have heard it and
become too much excited."

"I see. Where's Miss Hardesty now?"

"This is her night on duty at the sanitarium."

"I see. Well, she'll have to testify at the inquest tomorrow. You might
tell her that. Never mind, though. The police will notify her."

"I know she won't like that much," Miss Rutgers declared; "but, of
course, she'll tell what she knows. How about me?"

"I can't say yet, but I don't think we'll need you at the inquest. We may
need you later."

"Very well," she consented. "Let me know when the time comes. Good
night, Mr. Bristow."

He went inside and picked up a novel. He wanted to "clear his brain" for
the talk with the chief of police.

Greenleaf came in, looking downcast.

"What did you get from Withers?" Bristow asked.

"Nothing but a good bawling out," the chief said testily. "We won't get
anything more from him for some time. He told me so. He said: 'You
fellows have been carrying things with a high hand today, questioning and
frightening everybody with your hidden threats and third degrees. Get
out! I'll do my talking to Sam Braceway tomorrow.' But I did ask him one
question--the thing you wanted to know. I asked him whether he had worn
rubber shoes last night."

"What did he say?" Bristow was inwardly amused by Greenleaf's
pertinacity.

"He said it was none of my business; and he flew into a rage about
it--worse than he was in here this morning. He looked like a crazy man.
I watched him gesticulate and get red in the face and foam and splutter.
Why, he looked like a man who might commit murder any moment."

At that, Bristow started. The chief's words were strikingly like what
Miss Rutgers had told him she had heard Mrs. Withers say: "He looked as
if he might kill me, choke me to death, anything!"

"He's going to spend the night in Number Five," Greenleaf concluded; "he
and Miss Fulton and the nurse, Miss Kelly."

Bristow tossed his novel into a vacant chair and spread out his hands.

"Well, chief," he said, "what do you make out of all this? What do you
intend to do at the inquest tomorrow? By the way, here's something you'll
need."

He related what Miss Rutgers had told him.

"I'm willing to take your advice," Greenleaf announced, "but this is my
idea: we'll present all we have against Perry, and have him held for the
grand jury. We've got enough to do that--the buttons evidence, his
failure to present anything like an alibi, the mark of the rubber sole on
the front porch, the inability of the woman, Lucy Thomas, to say whether
or not she gave Perry the kitchen key to Number Five."

"She can't remember that, can she?"

"No; not even when we've got her locked up in jail."

"Chief, do you think Perry killed and robbed Mrs. Withers?"

"I think this," he replied: "it's an even chance he did. If he didn't,
it's a sure thing that his being accused of it and locked up for it may
make the real criminal more careless and give us a better chance to catch
him."

"Yes; you're right. What reports have you had on the mysterious man
Withers says he saw, the fellow with the long-visored cap, long raincoat,
and gold tooth?"

"A little something. Jenkins has scoured the town pretty well in the time
he had, A clerk at Maplewood Inn thinks--_thinks_--he saw such a man in
the lobby there about three weeks ago. And one of our patrolmen, Ashurst,
says he's pretty certain he saw him two months ago near here, in fact
down on Freeman Avenue near where Manniston Road branches off from it. It
was at night, nearly midnight."

"Did Ashurst watch him?"

"Only carelessly. Says he saw him walk on down Freeman Avenue as if he
intended going into the town."

"What did the clerk see? What did this fellow do in the Maplewood Inn
lobby?"

"Nothing--came in, bought a pack of cigarettes, and went out."

"Anybody else seen him?"

"Not so far as we've been able to discover."

"Has he ever registered at any of the hotels here?"

"Not that we can find; no, never."

"Funny," ruminated Bristow, "very funny. Yes, I think you're right,
chief. Put up the case against Perry until we can do something better
or prove it on him absolutely. Of course, if the laboratory test shows
that he had human flesh--a white person's flesh--under his finger nails,
that will settle it in my mind. There couldn't be any other answer."

"Will the test show whether it's a white person's skin or a nigger's?"

"Of course. There's no pigment in a white person's skin."

"Is that so? That's something I never knew before. Anyway, it certainly
will nail him, won't it? But, you don't feel anyways sure Perry's the
guilty man, do you?"

"No, I can't say I do. I'll tell you what we've got to consider, and it's
not a very pretty theory; either that Morley killed Mrs. Withers, and
Miss Fulton knows it; or that Morley and Miss Fulton together killed her;
or that, although Perry killed her, we, in looking for the murderer, have
come pretty near to stumbling on some sort of a nasty family scandal,
something in which Maria Fulton, Enid Withers and George Withers, with
perhaps another man, all have been mixed up.

"I mean a scandal ugly enough for all the rest of them to make desperate
attempts to keep it hidden, even when Mrs. Withers is dead and gone.
Frankly, I didn't believe Withers was in on the murder or that he
believes Maria had anything to do with it or knows how it was done.

"But Maria Fulton--that's different. How else are we to explain her
behaviour with us when we tried to interview her, the fact of her sudden
abhorrence for Morley, the man to whom she was engaged only yesterday?

"And how else are we to explain Morley's unexplained two hours of last
night, and his apparent terror today, and his whole connection with the
case--the matter of the ring found in his hotel room, and all that?
There's something fishy about this thing somehow, something fishy that
includes Maria Fulton and Morley.

"This fellow with the brown beard and the gold tooth strengthens the
theory of some rotten scandal. He must be mixed up in it some way. I'll
bet anything, though, that he had nothing to do with the murder. That's
what we want to get at--this inside scandal, this something which existed
long before the murder but yet may have led indirectly to the murder."

Greenleaf sighed and passed his hand wearily across his eyes. He had had
a hard day, the hardest day of his life.

"But you think my plan for the inquest is all right?" he asked once more.

"Yes; it's the best thing possible. By the way, don't have me summoned to
testify. Leave my evidence until the trial. I don't want to wear myself
out going down there for merely an inquest."

"All right; I'll fix that. We've enough evidence without yours--enough
for the inquest, anyway."

"Thanks."

Bristow looked at his watch, and Greenleaf got up to go.

"I'll be up here between eight and nine tomorrow morning," he said, "if
that suits you."

"What for?"

"To get a good look at the grounds back of Number Five. If the murderer
dropped anything, I want to be the man to pick it up."

"Oh, I'd forgotten that," Bristow said in a tone indicating his
hopelessness of finding anything worth while. "Yes; I'll be ready for
you."

Something else was on Greenleaf's mind.

"This Braceway," he said sarcastically, "the smartest detective in the
South. He'll be here in the morning. What will we do? Work with him?"

"Sure," Bristow replied heartily, as if to fore-stall the other's dislike
of the new-comer. "Even if he were no good, the best thing we could do
would be to work with him. And, as he's something of a world-beater,
we'll get the benefit of his ideas. By all means, let's all keep together
on this thing."

"All right," Greenleaf agreed, his tone a little surly. "Your appointment
to my force is O. K. I fixed that this afternoon. Good night."

"Good night--and don't forget to send that stuff off to the Charlotte
laboratory tonight. If we can find out who scratched somebody last night,
if we can determine who had little bits of foreign skin under the finger
nails today, we've got the answer to this murder mystery. That's one
thing sure."

Bristow turned off the lights in the living room and went to his dressing
room to prepare for bed on the sleeping porch.

"Money," he was thinking as he undressed; "money and fifteen thousand
dollars' worth of jewelry. Where has it all gone? That's the thing that
will settle this case, and I think--I think I've a pretty good idea of
what will be proved about it."




CHAPTER IX

WOMEN'S NERVES


Lucy Thomas in a cell in the Furmville jail sat on the edge of her cot
at midnight, staring into inky darkness while she tried to remember
the events of the night before. She was not of the slow-witted,
stupid-looking type of negro women. The thing against which she struggled
was not poverty of brain but the mist of forgetfulness with which the
fumes of liquor had surrounded her.

Questioned and requestioned by the police during the afternoon and early
evening, she had been able to tell them only that she and Perry had been
drinking together in her little two-room cabin. When he had left her,
what he had said, whether he had returned--these points were as
effectually covered up in her mind as if she had never had cognizance of
them.

She did remember, however, certain things which she had not imparted to
the police. One was that at some time during the night there had been a
struggle between herself and Perry. The other was that at some time,
far into the night or very early in the morning, she had heard the
clank-clank of the iron key falling on the floor of her house, a key
which she had worn suspended on a ribbon round her neck.

She rocked herself back and forth on the cot, her head throbbing, her
mouth parched, tears in her eyes. To the white people, she thought, it
did not matter much, but to her the fact that she and Perry had intended
to get married was the biggest thing in her life.

"I don't know; I don't know," her thoughts ran bitterly. "Ef Perry tuk
dat key away fum me, he mus' done gawn to dat house--an' he wuz full uv
likker. Ef he ain' done tuk dat key fum me an' den later flung it back on
de flo' uv my house, who did do it?"

She sobbed afresh.

"He is one mean nigger when he gits too much likker in him. Ain' nobody
knows dat better'n I does. An' he sayed somethin' las' night 'bout
gittin' a whole lot uv money. He--"

She moaned and flung herself backward on the cot.

"Gawd have mussy! Gawd have mussy! I done remembuhed. I done remembuhed.
He done say somethin' 'bout dat white woman's gol' an' jewelery. Gawd!
Dat's whut he done. He done it! Dat's why he wuz fightin' me. He wuz
tryin' to git dat kitchen key. An' he got it! He got it! Ef he done kilt
dat woman, de white folks goin' to git him sho'ly--sho'ly. An' him an' me
ain' nevuh gwine git married--nevuh. Dey'll kill him or dey'll sen' him
to dat pen. Aw, my Gawd! My Gawd!"

She sat up again and began to think about Mrs. Withers, how well the
slain woman had treated her, how kindly. From that, her thoughts went to
ghosts. She fell to trembling and moaning in an audible key. It was not
long before a warden, awakened by her cries of terror, had to visit her
and threaten bodily punishment if she did not keep quiet.

After a while, she relapsed into her quiet sobbing.

"I think maybe he done tuk dat key. I knows he done lef' me durin' de
night, an' I b'lieve he done come back. But I ain't gwine say nothin'.
Maybe I don' know. Maybe I is mistuk. De whole thing done got too mix' up
fuh me. Maybe he kilt her an' maybe he ain' been nigh de place. But I
wish I coul' know. My holy Lawd! I wish I done know all dat done happen.

"Dat key fallin' on de flo'. Who done drap it dar ef Perry ain' drapped
it? Dat's whut I'd like to know. Ef he ain' had dat key, ain' nobody
had it."

She lay down, weeping and sobbing from unhappiness and terror. Bristow
and Greenleaf would have given much to have known her suspicions,
suspicions which amounted to a moral certainty.

On the sleeping porch of No. 5, Manniston Road, Maria Fulton lay awake a
long time and tortured herself by reviewing again and again the thoughts
that had crushed her during the day. Miss Kelly, on a cot at the foot of
the girl's bed, heard her stirring restlessly but could not know in the
darkness how her long, slender fingers tore at the bed-covering, nor how
her face was drawn with pain.

"The overturning of that chair,"--her mind whirled the events before
her--"the sound of that whisper, that man's whisper, and the sight of
that foot! He wore rubbers. I know he did. He always wears them when it's
even cloudy. It was he! It was he!"

Her nails dug into her palms as she fought for something like
self-control.

"If it was not he? I would never have fainted--never. That's what made me
faint, the sickening, undeniable knowledge that that was who it was. And
I loved him! But--but the rubber-shod foot, the size of it! Am I sure?
Could it have been----"

She groaned so that Miss Kelly lifted her head from her own pillow and
listened intently, trying to determine whether the sufferer was asleep or
awake.

"He's not stupid," she swept on, closing mutinous lips against the
repetition of sound. "He knew Enid could do nothing--nothing more. I
don't understand. Oh, I don't understand! I wonder now why I said I heard
nothing.

"I wonder why I lay unconscious on the floor near the dining room door
all those hours--until ten o'clock this morning. It was because the
knowledge was too much for me to stand--just as it is too much now. And
I can't share it with anybody. I'll never be able to get it off my
conscience. If I did, they'd hang him--or the other one who----"

At that thought, she screamed aloud, a wild, eerie sound that chilled the
blood of even Miss Kelly, accustomed as she was to the cries of suffering
and despair. The nurse was at the hysterical girl's side in a moment,
holding her quivering body in strong, capable arms.

"What was it? What was it, Miss Fulton?" she asked soothingly.

Maria brushed the back of her hand across her forehead, which was beaded
with big, cold drops of perspiration.

"Nothing, Miss Kelly; nothing," she half-moaned. "A bad dream, a
nightmare, I guess. Give me something to make me sleep."

She drank eagerly from a glass the nurse put to her lips.

"If I begin to talk in my sleep, Miss Kelly, call me, wake me up, will
you?" she begged, the fright still in her voice.

"Yes, I will." This reassuringly while Miss Kelly smoothed the pillows
and readjusted the tumbled coverings.

Maria grasped her arm in a grip that hurt.

"But will you?" she demanded sharply. "Promise me!"

"Yes; indeed, I will. I promise."

Miss Kelly meant what she said. She was not anxious to be the recipient
of the sick girl's confidences.




CHAPTER X

EYES OF ACCUSATION


Bristow, at his early breakfast, devoted himself, between mouthfuls, to
the front page of _The Furmville Sentinel_. It was given up entirely to
the Withers murder.

"Murder--murder horrible and mysterious--was committed early yesterday
morning," announced the paper in large black-face type, "when the
beautiful and charming Mrs. Enid Fulton Withers, wife of George S.
Withers, the well-known attorney of Atlanta, was choked to death in the
parlour of her home at No. 5 Manniston Road. The most heinous crime that
has ever stained the annals of Furmville," etc.

The article went on to recite that Chief Greenleaf of the Furmville
police force had been fortunate in securing the assistance of a genius in
running down the various clues that seemed to point to the guilty party.
Mr. Lawrence Bristow, of Cincinnati, now in town for his health, had
worked with him all day in unearthing many circumstances "which, although
each of them seemed trivial, led when summed up to the almost irrefutable
conviction that the murder was done by a drunken negro, Perry Carpenter,"
etc.

In spite of this, the paper continued, the dead woman's husband, arriving
unexpectedly on the scene, had employed by wire Samuel S. Braceway, the
professional detective of Atlanta, who would reach Furmville early this
morning and, probably, work with Chief Greenleaf, Mr. Bristow, and the
plain-clothes squad in the effort to remove all doubts of the guilt of
the accused negro.

There followed a sketch of Braceway which was enough to convince the
readers that in him Mr. Withers had called into the case the shrewdest
man in the South, "very probably the shrewdest man in the entire
country."

"Evidently," Bristow was thinking when Greenleaf rang the door-bell,
"while I'm a 'genius,' Braceway's the man everybody relies on when it
comes to catching the murderer."

The chief was in a hurry, and the two men, going out of Bristow's back
door, walked down to the corner of the sleeping porch of No. 7, the
nurses' home. The frail wire fences that had served to partition the back
lots of Nos. 5, 7, and 9 had either fallen down or been carried away, but
there was a tall five-board fence at the rear of the three lots. From
this board fence, the hill sloped down toward the southeast, the
direction in which the negro settlement containing the home of Lucy
Thomas was located.

Bristow, frankly bored by the belated search, let Greenleaf lead the way.

"I went up to the sanitarium late last night," the chief told him, "and
had a long talk with Miss Hardesty. She says the man she saw night before
last was right here, just a few yards from this Number Seven sleeping
porch; and, it seemed to her, he made straight for the board fence. We'll
follow in his footsteps. That will take up to the fence in the middle of
the rear line of Number Seven's lot."

He was following this route as he talked, Bristow limping a few yards
behind him.

Greenleaf overlooked nothing. The lot had been cleared of last winter's
leaves, and the search was comparatively simple, but, if he saw even so
much as a small stick on either side of him, he turned it over. They were
soon at the fence, about twenty yards from the sleeping porch.

"There's not a trace--not a trace of anything, chief," said Bristow,
leaning one elbow on the top board of the fence.

Greenleaf, however, was not to be discouraged. After he had walked around
again and again in ever-widening circles, he stopped and thought.

"If that nigger was running away and trying to make good time," he
exclaimed, suddenly inspired, "he didn't jump the fence in the middle
there, where you are. He took a line slanting down toward that negro
settlement. The chances are he went over the fence down at that corner."

He pointed to the southeastern corner back of No. 5 and, with his eyes on
the ground, began to work toward it.

Barely a yard from the corner, he stooped down swiftly, picked up
something and turned joyfully toward Bristow, who still leaned against
the fence.

"Look here! Look here, Mr. Bristow," he called, hurrying across to him.

Bristow examined the object Greenleaf had found. It consisted of six
links of a gold chain, three of the links very small and of plain gold,
the other alternating three links being larger and chased with a fine,
exquisite design of laurel leaves, the leaves so small as to be barely
distinguishable to the naked eye.

The lame man shared the chief's excitement.

"By George! You've got something worth while. I should say so!"

"What do you make of it?" asked Greenleaf, eager and pleased. "It must
have belonged to Mrs. Withers, don't you think?"

"There's one way to find out," Bristow answered, looking at his watch. It
was half-past eight o'clock. "Let's go and ask Withers."

They went around to the front of No. 5.

"One of the end links is broken," Bristow said as they ascended the
steps. "My guess is that this is a part of the necklace Mrs. Withers wore
when she was killed. You remember the mark on the back of her neck. It
might have been made by the jerk that would have been required to break
these links."

Miss Kelly, answering their ring, told them Mr. Withers had gone to the
railroad station to meet Mr. Braceway.

"Then, too," she added, "Miss Fulton's father is due on the nine o'clock
train. Mr. Withers may stop down town to meet him."

"I'd forgotten about that," said Bristow. "We'll have to ask your help."
He handed her the fragment of chain. "Will you be so kind as to take
that back to Miss Fulton and ask her whether she recognizes it, whether
she can identify it?"

Miss Kelly complied with the request at once.

She returned in a few moments.

"Miss Fulton," she reported, handing the links back to Bristow, "says
this is a part of the chain Mrs. Withers wore round her neck night before
last. She wore a lavalliere; it had two emeralds and eighteen rather
small diamonds."

"Good!" exclaimed Greenleaf, glancing at the lame man. "I guess that
fixes Perry."

"Undoubtedly," Bristow assented; and spoke to Miss Kelly: "I beg your
pardon, but is Miss Fulton up this morning, or will she be up later?"

"She's dressing now. She wants to be up to meet her father."

"In that case, I'll wait until later. What I would like to have is a
complete, detailed description of all of Mrs. Withers' jewelry. I wish
you'd mention that to her, will you?"

Greenleaf was anxious to return to his office.

"This last piece of evidence," he said, "ought to go to the coroner's
jury. It clinches the case against Perry. Here's the whole business in a
nutshell: the buttons missing from his blouse, one found in Number Five,
the other in your bungalow; Miss Hardesty's having seen him the night of
the murder; the ease with which he undoubtedly got the kitchen key from
Lucy Thomas; the imprint of his rubber-soled shoe on the porch; the
finding of this piece of gold chain; and his failure to establish an
alibi. It's more than enough to have him held for the grand jury--it's
murder in the first degree."

Bristow went back to his porch. Looking down to his left and through the
trees, he commanded a view of Freeman Avenue.

"When I see an automobile flash past that spot," he decided, "I'll hurry
down to Number Five. I want to be there to witness the meeting between
Miss Fulton and her father. It may be possible that, when this
scandal--whatever it was--was about to break concerning Mrs. Withers,
this family was lucky enough to have a negro hauled up as the murderer.
In any event, it's up to me to keep track of the relations between
Fulton, his daughter, Withers, and Morley. The psychology of the
situation now is as important as any material evidence."

He did not have long to wait. At a quarter past nine he caught a glimpse
of a big car speeding out Freeman Avenue. He sprang to his feet, hurried
down to No. 5, rang the bell, and was inside the living room by the time
the machine had climbed up Manniston Road and deposited in front of the
door its one passenger. He was a man of sixty-five or sixty-seven years
of age, very white of hair, very erect of figure.

Bristow did not have time or need to formulate an excuse for his presence
before Mr. Fulton rushed up the steps to meet Maria. As she came from the
direction of the bedrooms to greet him, her expression had in it
reluctance, timidity even.

The father and daughter met in the centre of the living room. Bristow,
stationed near the corner by the door, could see their faces. He watched
them with attention strained to the utmost.

In the eyes of Maria there was a great fear mingled with a look of
pleading. The old man's face was deep-lined; under his eyes were dark
pouches; and his lips were tightly compressed, as if he sought to prevent
his bursting into condemnation.

With a little catch in her voice, Maria cried out, "Father!" and stood
watching him.

For a moment the old man's eyes were dreary with accusation. Bristow had
never seen an emotion mirrored so clearly, so indisputably, in anybody's
eyes. It was a speaking, thundering light, he thought.

The father, without opening his mouth, plainly said to the girl:

"At last, you've killed her! It's all your fault. You've killed her."

Bristow read that as easily as if it had been held before him in printed
words. So, apparently, did Miss Fulton. The pleading expression left her
face, and, in place of it, was only a flourishing, lively fear.

But Fulton put out his arms and gathered her into them, took hold of her
mechanically, displaying neither fondness nor a desire to comfort and
soothe.

Bristow quietly left the room and returned to his porch.

"Her father," he analyzed what he had seen, "blames her for the
tragedy--possibly believes her guilty of the actual murder. Why? This is
a new angle--brand new."

He went in and called up Greenleaf, only to be told that the chief had
left word he was to be found at the Brevord Hotel. Telephoning there, he
got him on the wire.

"Neither Withers nor Braceway came up here with old Mr. Fulton," he
began.

"I know," put in the chief. "I'm down here to meet Braceway now. He and
Withers are in conference. Braceway doesn't want to go to the inquest.
I'm to take him by the undertaker's to look at the body, and then he
wants to run up to see you. Says he won't learn anything important at the
inquest; he'd rather talk to you."

"All right," returned Bristow. "That suits me perfectly. When will he be
here?"

"In half an hour, I suppose. And I'll run up as soon as the inquest is
over."

"I wonder," Bristow communed again with himself, "whether this Braceway
is on the level, whether Withers is on the level. What's their game--to
find the real murderer or to shut up a family scandal?"

The scandal theory bothered him. He saw no way of getting at it.

In less than an hour he and Braceway were shaking hands on the porch of
No. 9. Bristow, studying him rapidly, motioned him to a chair.

Here was no ordinary police-detective type. This man had neither
square-toed shoes, nor a bull neck, nor coarseness of feature. About
thirty-six years old, he was unusually slender, and straight as a dart,
a peculiar and restless gracefulness characterizing all his movements. He
seemed fairly to exude energy. He was keyed up to lightning-like motion.
He gave the impression of having a brain that worked with the precision
and force of some great machine, a machine that never missed fire.

From the toes of his highly polished tan shoes to the sheen of his blond
hair and the crown of his nobby straw hat, he looked like a well dressed
and prosperous professional man. His dark gray suit with a thin thread of
pale green in it, his silver-gray necktie, the gloves he carried in his
left hand, every detail of his appearance marked him, first as a "snappy
dresser," and second as a highly efficient man.

While they exchanged casual greetings, Braceway lit a cigarette and spun
the match, with a droning sound, far out from the porch. He did this, as
he did everything else, with a "flaire," with that indefinable something
which marks every man who has a strong personality. There was in all his
bearing a dash, an electric emphasis.

"What do you think, Mr. Bristow?" He got down to business at once. "Did
this negro Perry kill Mrs. Withers?"

Braceway blew out a big cloud of smoke and looked intently at his new
acquaintance.

"I've talked to Greenleaf," he supplemented. "I suppose he gave me all
the facts you've collected. But Greenleaf--you know what I mean," he
waved his cigarette hand expressively; "I wouldn't say he had
extraordinary powers of divination. He's a good fellow, and all that,
but--what do you think?"

"On the evidence alone, so far," Bristow answered with an appreciative,
warming smile, "I'd say Perry committed the crime."

"Oh; yes, sure." He moved quickly in his chair. "On the evidence, but
there are other things, other factors. What do you think?"

"I'm afraid that's my trouble," Bristow told him. "I've been thinking so
much that I'm somewhat muddled. But I believe there may be something more
than a negro's greed back of this thing."

"Now you're speaking mouthfuls," Braceway said, smiling brightly. "Tell
me about it."

Bristow told him--about Withers' peculiar behaviour; the whole case
against Perry; the illusive personage with the chestnut beard and gold
tooth; Morley's suspicious story and actions; and, lastly, Maria Fulton's
highly puzzling narrative of what she had seen and not seen in connection
with the murder.

Braceway listened with complete absorption, in a way that showed he was
photographing each incident and statement on his brain.

"Now," he began with almost explosive suddenness, "let's get this
straight. I want to work with you, if you'll let me." He paused long
enough for Bristow to nod a pleased assent. "And I believe there's
something back of this crime that nobody has yet put his finger on. Mr.
Withers believes it. Don't make any mistake about that. Withers is as
anxious to get the real criminal as you and I are."

"Let me understand," Bristow said in his turn. "Do you propose that we
work on the case with the supposition that Withers is in no way
responsible for any part of the tragedy?"

"Absolutely!" snapped out Braceway, thoroughly good natured despite his
abruptness. "At least, that's my plan. I'm certain Withers had nothing to
do with it."

For the first time, something far back in Bristow's brain stirred
uneasily, as if, miles away, somebody had sounded an alarm. Should he
trust this man? Would Braceway try to pick up a false scent, try to throw
the whole thing out of gear?

Although he, Bristow, had expressed to Greenleaf only last night his
confidence in Withers' innocence, would it be wise to hold to such a
belief? The future was too uncertain, too apt to produce entirely
unexpected things. At any rate, it would be silly to call himself
anything of a criminologist; and yet go ahead with a blind, spoken
conviction of the innocence of a man who unquestionably had acted in a
way to bring suspicion upon himself.

He would wait and see. He purposed to throw away no card that might later
take a trick.

"Very good," he said. "That suits me if you're satisfied. You can answer
for him, I don't doubt."

"Thoroughly so. In the first place, he and I are close personal friends;
went to college together; were fraternity mates; had an office together
until I quit practising law and went in for this sort of work. Then, too,
I've turned him inside out this morning. He doesn't know a thing.

"And, I might as well tell you now, he didn't hang around Manniston Road
night before last after his wife got in. As soon as he saw this Douglas
Campbell go home he returned to the Brevord and went to bed.

"No, sirree! Here's what I work on: either Morley killed her, or the
negro killed her, or it was done by the mysterious fellow with the gold
tooth. How does that strike you?"

"Correctly; I'm with you," agreed Bristow, still with the mental
reservation that he would deal with Withers as he saw fit.

"One thing more," added Braceway, and Bristow was surprised to see that
he looked a trifle embarrassed; "I want you to handle all the talk that
has to be had with Miss Maria Fulton. I'll be frank with you; I have to
be. It's this way: I was once in love with her; in fact, engaged to marry
her. Do you see?"

"Fully."

He was glad to know at the outset that Braceway was a friend of the
family. It might be valuable later.

Braceway threw away his cigarette and sighed with relief.

"I'm glad you understand," he said. "Now, about Withers: things have
begun to happen to him already--this morning. Since this has hit him, he
doesn't know where he'll get off eventually. I'll tell you."




CHAPTER XI

THE $1,000 CHECK.


A few minutes after eight o'clock that morning Mr. Illington, president
of the Furmville National Bank, had called at the Brevord to see Mr.
Withers, who, still holding his room there, was waiting for the delayed
morning train.

Mr. Illington was of the true banker type, fifty years old, immaculately
dressed, thin of lip, hard of eye, slow and precise in his enunciation.
He had, apparently, estranged himself from any deep, human feeling. The
long handling of money had hardened him. His fingers were long and
grasping, and his voice was quite as metallic as the clink of gold coins
one upon the other.

At Mr. Withers' invitation he took a chair in Mr. Withers' room. He
rubbed his dry, slender hands together and cleared his throat, after
which he spoke his little set speech of condolence.

Mr. Withers, haggard from grief and lack of sleep, waved aside these
preliminary remarks.

The banker put his hand into his breast pocket and drew forth a bulky
envelope, from which he produced a long, rectangular piece of paper.

"I knew you would prefer to learn of this at first hand from the bank;
indeed, from me, its president. Yesterday, Mr. Withers, a promissory
note, a sixty-day note, for a thousand dollars fell due in the Furmville
National Bank. You might like to see it. Here it is."

He handed the piece of paper to Withers, who saw that the note had been
signed by Maria Fulton and endorsed by Enid Fulton Withers. The husband
of the dead woman was too astonished to comment.

"We acted as--as leniently in the matter as we could, perhaps more
leniently than was strictly proper in banking circles," Mr. Illington was
pleased to explain. "I myself called up Miss Fulton on the telephone
yesterday, but naturally she was so agitated that she seemed unable to
give me any information as to what she intended to do regarding
the--er--liquidation of this indebtedness."

"And," concluded Withers, passing the note back to him, "since my wife
was the endorser, it's up to me to make the note good, to pay the bank
the thousand dollars."

Mr. Illington was glad to see how thoroughly the bereaved husband
appreciated the situation.

"Quite right, entirely so," he said. "And will you?"

"Of course."

"Ahem--When?" inquired the banker, assuming an expression of casual
interest.

"I haven't that much money on deposit in Atlanta, but I can get it. I
return to Atlanta this afternoon. I can send the money to you tomorrow.
Will that answer?"

"Oh, perfectly, perfectly," assented Mr. Illington, much reassured. "We
are always glad, at the Furmville National, to do the reasonable and
accommodating thing. Yes; that will be thoroughly satisfactory.--Ahem!
I have a new note here. You might sign it? To keep things regular, in
order."

Withers signed the new note. It was for five days.

Illington got to his feet with stiff dignity.

"Glad to accommodate you, Mr. Withers; very glad. I wish you good
morning," he concluded, going toward the door.

"Good-bye," replied Withers absently, but looked up suddenly. "By the
way, I might like to know something about the disposition of that
thousand dollars. Could you tell me anything concerning it?"

Mr. Illington came back to his chair and reseated himself, again
producing the bulky envelope.

"I was prepared for just such a request, a perfectly natural request," he
answered Withers question, plainly approving of his own forehandedness.

He took from the envelope and passed to Withers a canceled check.

"This," he said, "gives you the information you desire. You see, I
gathered from the newspaper reports this morning and from the gossip of
the street yesterday afternoon that there might be more or less of--er--a
mystery in this--ah--distressing situation. Consequently, I brought along
this check which, curiously enough, had not been called for by the maker
of it."

Withers, disregarding the banker's remarks, was studying the check. It
had been signed by Enid Fulton Withers, to whom the $1,000 loan had
evidently been credited at the Furmville National. It was for $1,000, and
it was made payable to Maria Fulton. Maria Fulton had indorsed it, and,
below her endorsement, appeared that of Henry Morley, showing that the
money had passed directly into the hands of Morley.

"That's all I wanted to know," Withers said quietly, giving the check
back to Illington. "I'm much obliged."

This time Illington departed, taking himself off with a feeling of having
done his duty with promptitude and according to the best business ethics.

His visit had prevented Withers' meeting the train, and Fulton had gone
directly to Manniston Road.

Braceway, going to the hotel on the banker's heels, was admitted by
Withers, who broke into a storm of futile, highly coloured profanity.

"Brace," he said, "you'll get the devil who's caused all this, won't you?
You know what my life has been! You'll get him if you have to tear up
heaven and earth."

"Sure! Sure!" Braceway declared. "Keep yourself together. Let me do the
worrying. I'll get him if he's above the sod."

       *       *       *       *       *

"So, you see," Braceway said, in reciting the incident to Bristow, "we're
getting a little warm on the scent. This Morley, this wooer of Maria,
seems to have his head within stinging range of the hornets, doesn't he?"

"Undoubtedly."

"What do you make of it?" pressed Braceway.

Bristow thought a little while.

"It might be this," he advanced: "Morley is in trouble with his bank,
short in his accounts--probably has been for several months. Two months
ago, sixty-one days ago, he confided to Miss Fulton that he stood in
great danger of arrest, pointed out that he had made a mistake, asked
assistance from her, told her a thousand dollars would arrange things.

"But, instead of paying the thousand into the bank, he went to gambling
with it in the hope of trebling or quadrupling it and--lost it. In other
words, he's been afraid to tell his financee how much he really owed the
bank and then played the thousand to win enough to enable him to square
himself."

"Once more," observed the Atlanta man, "you speak in mouthfuls."

"Again and further--of course, all this is on the theory that Morley is a
pusillanimous kind of man; but he would have to be just that to be taking
money from a woman, any woman, much less the one to whom he is engaged to
be married--again and further, when he had lost the thousand and saw ruin
just ahead of him again, he ran down here and asked for more money.

"Perhaps, Mrs. Withers, at her sister's tearful request, had previously
raised more than a thousand for him, had added to that thousand other
money obtained from pawning some of her jewelry; and he now insisted that
Maria make Mrs. Withers go the limit and pawn _all_ her jewelry.

"By George!" Bristow concluded. "That may explain the quarrel which Miss
Rutgers, the trained nurse in Number Seven, heard the two sisters engaged
in the day before the murder. Yes; it might. Evidently, Mrs. Withers
refused to be bled further. After that, what? What would you say?"

"It's plain enough," Braceway answered. "There was Morley, crazed by the
fear of arrest and conviction for embezzlement. There was Mrs. Withers,
still possessing and holding enough jewelry to get him out of trouble, if
he had time to convert the jewels into cash and to get back to his bank
with the money.

"What was the result of that situation? Evidently, he never intended to
catch that midnight train. He did what he had planned to do, came back to
Number Five, confronted Mrs. Withers soon after her escort had left her
at the door, demanded the jewels, was refused; and then, in a blind rage
or a panic, killed her and stole the jewels."

"There's no use blinking the fact," said Bristow in a quiet, calculating
way, trying to keep in his mind all the other peculiar circumstances
surrounding this crime. "From the way we've put it, the thing reads as
plainly as a primer. Now, what are we to do? Even now, we haven't the
proof on him--any real proof."

"Suppose," said Braceway, "we let him leave Furmville, let him go back
to Washington, with the hope that he does pawn the stuff he's stolen?"

"And suppose," Bristow added, "we get a detailed description of all the
jewelry Mrs. Withers owned, and wire that description to the police of
the principal towns between here and Washington and between here and
Atlanta. We'll make the request, of course, that they watch the pawnshops
and nab anybody who shows up with any of the Withers stuff?"

"That's it! That's it as sure as you're born!" Braceway struck the arm of
his chair and catapulted himself into a standing position. "That will get
him--provided, of course, he's desperate enough to take the chance of
pawning any of it."

"One other thing," Bristow supplemented. "You said Withers said something
to you this morning about your knowing what his life had been. Just what
did he mean?"

Braceway reflected a moment,

"There's no reason for your not knowing it," he confided. "Withers
had rather a trying life with his wife. It was a baffling sort of a
situation. She was in love with him. I haven't a doubt of that. And he
was in love with her.

"She was one of the most fascinating women I ever saw. They used to say
in Atlanta that all the women liked her, and that any man who had once
shaken hands with her and looked her in the eye was, forever after, her
obedient servant.

"But she was never entirely frank with Withers. Naturally, that at first
made him regretful, and later it made him jealous. You know his type.
I'm not sure that I have the whole story, but that's the foundation of
it, and it led to bitter disagreements and fierce quarrels.

"Some of their acquaintances got on to it, and couldn't understand why a
woman like her and a good fellow like Withers couldn't hit it off. Things
got worse and worse. I don't believe Withers minded her being up here
with her sister. The temporary separation came, probably, as a great
relief to both of them."

"I see," Bristow said. "Naturally, when, on top of all that, the money
began to fly and the jewels went into pawn, he came to the end of his
rope--determined to put a stop to the thing."

"Probably," said Braceway, looking at his watch. "But how about our
little job--getting the description of the jewelry and having Greenleaf
wire it out? I'll go down to Number Five and get it from Withers and his
father-in-law."

"You don't mind seeing Miss Fulton?" Bristow asked interestedly.

"Oh, no," he answered, embarrassment again in his manner. "But I don't
feel like cross-questioning her. You can understand that. You'll have to
take on that end, really."

Bristow thought: "He's still in love with her. I was right about her.
There's a lot to her if she can hold a live wire like this." Aloud he
said:

"All right. You get the list. In the meantime, I'll telephone Greenleaf
to tell Morley he can go to Washington tomorrow if he wants to--but not
today."

"Why not today?"

"Because there are some things here you and I had better go over, and I
think we'd do well to follow Morley, don't you? That is, if we want to
get the goods on him without fail."

"Now that I think of it, yes. Perhaps, both of us needn't go, but one
will have to."

He went down the steps, saying Withers had by this time arrived at No. 5
and would be waiting there with Mr. Fulton. Both the father and the
husband would accompany the body of Mrs. Withers to Atlanta on the four
o'clock train that afternoon.

Bristow, having caught Greenleaf by telephone at the inquest, gave him
their decision about Morley's departure the next day, and announced that
he and Braceway would like him to send out by wire the description of the
Withers jewels. To both of these propositions Greenleaf agreed. Bristow
returned to his porch.

"So," he thought, "it's got to be Morley or the negro."

And yet, he decided, in spite of the theorizing he and Braceway had
indulged in, there was small chance now of fixing the crime definitely on
Morley. He had none of the jewelry, apparently. The police had searched
his baggage and his room at the hotel, without success. Indubitably, it
would be more likely that a jury would convict Perry. All the direct
evidence was against the negro.

Bristow did not deceive himself. It would be a great satisfaction and a
morsel to his vanity to prove the negro guilty. He foresaw that the
papers sooner or later would get hold of the fact that Braceway was after
Morley.

And, although they had hinted at mystery and uncertainty this morning,
they had printed their stories so as to show that Greenleaf, backed by
Bristow, would try to get Perry. The duel between himself and Braceway
was on. He remembered he had discounted at the beginning the idea of the
negro's guilt, but that had been before the discovery of the fragment of
the lavalliere chain.

Now, he was disposed, determined even, to treat everything as if Perry
were the guilty man. He would work with that idea always in mind. In
the meantime he would go with Braceway as long as the Braceway theories
seemed to have any foundation at all. He did not want to run the risk of
being shown up as a bungler. He was anxious to be "in on" anything that
might happen.

"So," he concluded, "if Perry is finally convicted, I get the credit. If
Morley is sent up, I'll get some of the credit for that also. I won't
lose either way.

"Now, about Withers? I've got to handle him by myself. If I were
analyzing this case from the newspaper accounts of it, I'd say at first
blush that either Withers did the thing or Perry did it. That's what the
public's saying now.

"But Braceway stands as a fence between Withers and me. He's a friend of
Withers and in love with Withers' sister-in-law. And he believes Withers
innocent. That's patent. For the present, I can't do anything in that
direction. I've got to dig up everything possible on Morley and the
negro--and, in spite of the check business, the chances are against the
negro."

He called to Mattie whom he heard moving about in the dining room.

"Lucy Thomas," he said, "is out of jail now. I wish you'd go look for her
right away. The inquest is over by this time, and she'll be at home by
the time you get there. Bring her back here with you. Tell her it's by
order of the police, and I only want to talk to her a few minutes."

"Yas, suh," said Mattie.

"I'm not going to hurt her, Mattie," he said. "Be sure to tell her so."

"Yas, suh, Mistuh Bristow; I sho' will tell her. I 'spec' dat po' nigger
is done had de bre'f skeered outen her already."

His eye was caught by the figures of Braceway and Mr. Fulton leaving No.
5. They turned and started up the walk toward No. 9.

"Mr. Fulton," Braceway explained, after the introduction to Bristow,
"wants to tell you something about his--about Mrs. Withers. It brings in
further complications--hard ones for us."




CHAPTER XII

THE MAN WITH THE GOLD TOOTH


Mr. Fulton's arms trembled as he put his hands on the arms of a chair and
seated himself with the deliberateness of his years. In his face the
lines were still deep, and once or twice his mouth twisted as if with
actual pain, but there was in his eyes the flame of an indomitable will.
He was by no means a crushed and weak old man. Neither the terrific blow
of his daughter's death nor the reverses he had suffered in his business
affairs had broken him.

"What I have to say," he began, looking first at Braceway and then at
Bristow, "is not a pleasant story, but it has to be told."

His low-pitched, modulated voice was clear and without a tremor. His
glance at the two men gave them the impression that he paid them a
certain tribute.

"Both of you," he continued, "are gentlemen. Mr. Braceway, you're a
personal friend of my son-in-law. Mr. Bristow, I know you will respect my
confidence, in so far as it can be respected."

They both bowed assent. At the same moment the telephone rang. Bristow
excused himself and answered it. The chief of police was on the wire.

"It's all over!" his voice sounded jubilantly. "It's all over, and I want
you to congratulate me, congratulate me and yourself. It was quick work."

"What do you mean?" queried Bristow.

"The inquest is over. The coroner's jury found that Mrs. Withers came to
her death at the hands of Perry Carpenter."

"And you're satisfied?"

"Sure, I'm satisfied! We've found the guilty man, and he's under lock and
key. What more do I want? I'll tell you what, I'll be up to have dinner
with you in a little while. I invite myself," this with a chuckle. "You
and I will have a little celebration dinner. It is a go?"

"By all means. I'll be delighted to have you, and I want to hear all
about the inquest."

Bristow went back to the porch.

"That," he told them, "was a message from the chief of police. He says
the coroner's jury has held the negro, Perry Carpenter, for the crime."

Mr. Fulton moved forward in his chair, his hands clutching the arms of it
tightly.

"I'll never believe it, never!" he declared, evidently indignant.
"Nothing will ever persuade me that Enid, Mrs. Withers, met her death at
the hands of an ordinary negro burglar."

"What makes you so positive of that?" Bristow asked curiously.

"Because of what has happened in the past," Fulton replied with emphasis.
"I was about to tell you. This man none of you have been able to find,
this man with the gold tooth, has been in Enid's life for a good many
years. I don't understand why you haven't found him; I really don't."

"We haven't had two whole days to work on this case yet," Bristow
reminded him politely. "Many developments may arise."

"I hope so; I hope so," he said sharply. "That man must be found."

"One moment," Braceway put in with characteristic quickness; "how do you
know he's been in your daughter's life, Mr. Fulton?"

"That goes back to the beginning of my story." He looked out across the
trees and roofs of the town toward the mountains.

"Enid was always my favourite daughter. I suppose it's a mistake to
distinguish between one's children, to favour one beyond the other. But
she was just that--my favourite daughter--always. She had a dash, a
spirit, a joyous soul. Years ago I saw that she would develop into a
fascinating womanhood.

"Nothing disturbed me until she was nineteen. Then she fell in love. It
was while she was spending a summer at Hot Springs, Virginia. The trouble
was not in her falling in love. It was that she never told me the name of
the man she loved." He leaned back again and sighed. "She never did tell
me. I never knew.

"I never knew, because, when she was twenty, she came to me with the
unexpected announcement that she was going to marry George Withers.
I was surprised. She was not the kind to change in her likes and
dislikes. And I knew Withers was not the man she had originally loved.
Nevertheless, I asked her no questions, and she was married to Withers
when she was barely twenty-one.

"A year later, approximately four years ago, she and my other daughter,
Maria, spent six weeks at Atlantic City in the early spring. It was there
that she got into trouble. I could detect it in her letters. Some
tremendous sorrow or difficulty had overtaken her, and she was fighting
it alone.

"Her husband was not with her. I wrote to Maria asking her to investigate
quietly, to report to me whether there was anything I could do.

"Maria's report was unsatisfactory. She knew Enid was distressed and was
giving away or risking in some manner large amounts of money--even
pawning her jewelry, jewelry which I had given her and which she prized
above everything else. The whole thing was a mystery, Maria wrote. The
very next mail I received a letter from Enid asking me to lend her two
thousand dollars.

"She made no pretence of explaining why she wanted it. She didn't have to
explain. I was a rich man at that time, comparatively speaking, and she
knew I would give her the money.

"I mailed her a check for two thousand, but on the train which carried
the check I sent a private detective--not to make any arrests, you
understand, not to raise any row or start any scandal. I merely wanted to
find out what or who troubled her. Women, you know, particularly good
women, are prone to fall into the hands of unscrupulous people.

"Four days later the detective reported to me, but it was of no special
value. He couldn't tell me where the two thousand had gone. If Enid had
paid it to a man or a woman, the fellow had missed seeing the
transaction. With the description of the jewels I had given him, however,
he made a round of the pawnshops in Atlantic City and learned that all of
them had been pawned--for a total of seven thousand."

"Pawned by whom--herself?" asked Bristow.

"No. They were pawned in different shops by a man with a gold tooth and a
thick, chestnut-brown beard."

"No wonder you doubt the negro's guilt!" exclaimed Braceway.

"Excuse me," put in Bristow quickly, "but did you ever mention this to
Mr. Withers?"

"Certainly, not," Fulton answered. "I never told it to a living soul. And
as my inquiries had netted me practically nothing, I was obliged to let
the matter drop. It was bad enough for me to have interfered with her, my
daughter and a married woman, in the hope of helping her. Most assuredly,
I could not have distressed her, degraded her, by telling her a detective
had been investigating her."

"And that was the end of it?" asked Braceway.

"Not quite. She went back to Atlanta. Withers wanted to know where her
jewels were. She wrote to me in an agony of fear and sorrow, asking me to
redeem the jewels. I did it. I went to Atlantic City myself. She had sent
me the tickets. It cost me seven thousand dollars."

"That was four years ago?" Braceway continued the inquiry.

"Yes."

"Did Miss Maria Fulton at that time know Henry Morley?"

"No; I think not. I think Morley's been a friend of hers for about three
years."

The three were silent, each busy with the same thought: that Morley was
being blamed for a series of acts at this time which duplicated what had
happened four years ago when he was unknown to the Fulton family, with
this distinction, that this last time murder had been added to the
blackmail or whatever it was. And the theory of his guilt was weakened.

"Mr. Withers has told me," Bristow said, "that there was a repetition of
the pawning of the jewels in Washington about a year ago."

"That's true," confirmed Fulton. "But on that occasion I knew nothing of
what had happened until Enid came to me, again with the request that I
redeem the jewelry. Her husband had arrived in Washington unexpectedly,
precipitating the crisis. I gave her the money. The sum this time was
eight thousand dollars."

"And that ended it, Mr. Fulton?"

The old man looked out again toward the mountains as if he sought to gain
some of their serenity.

"No. That time I asked her what troubled her. I explained that I would
blame her for nothing, that I only wanted to help her, to give her
comfort. But she wouldn't tell me anything. She declared that nobody
could help her and that, anyway, there would never be a repetition of the
extortion.

"She wept bitterly--I can hear her weeping now--and she begged me to
believe that she had been guilty of nothing--nothing criminal or immoral.
I told her I could never believe that of her.

"'It doesn't affect me alone. I'll have to fight it out the best way I
can,' was all the explanation she could bring herself to give me. The one
fact she revealed was that the man concerned in the Atlantic City affair
had also been responsible for her trouble in Washington."

Bristow, absorbed in every word of the story, recollected at once that
Mrs. Allen had received the same explanation when she had tried to
comfort Mrs. Withers.

"By George!" said Braceway, his voice a little husky. "She was game all
right--game to the finish."

"I think," said Fulton, relaxing suddenly so that his whole form seemed
to sag and grow weak, "that's all I wanted to tell you. It's all I can
tell--all I know. I wanted to show you that this man with the gold tooth
and the brown beard is no myth, as you seem to believe.

"Make no mistake about him, gentlemen. He has ability, ability which he
uses only for unworthy ends." The old man sucked in his lips and bit on
them. "He's elusive, slippery, working always in the dark.

"He's low, base. He wouldn't stop at murder. And I'm certain he was
the principal figure in my daughter's death. Nothing--no power on
earth--nobody can ever make me believe that Enid was murdered by the
negro. It doesn't fit in with what has gone before."

"If there's any way to find this man, we'll do it," Bristow assured him.

Braceway sprang to his feet.

"You can bet your last dollar on that, Mr. Fulton," he said heartily, "If
he's to be found, we'll get him."

The old man got to his feet. The recital of his story had weakened him.
His legs were a little unsteady. Braceway took him by the arm, and they
started down the steps.

"Will I see you again this afternoon?" Bristow called to the Atlanta
detective.

"I rather think so," Braceway threw back over his shoulder. "As soon as
I've had lunch I want to talk to Abrahamson. Chief Greenleaf seems to
have neglected him."

Bristow hesitated a moment, then limped down the steps.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Fulton," he said, overtaking the two, "but is
there nothing more, no hint, no probable clue, you can give us about this
mysterious man?"

"Absolutely nothing," Fulton answered wearily. "I've told you all I
know."

"You gave him--rather, you gave your daughter for him a total of
seventeen thousand dollars, counting the loan of two thousand and the
cost of redeeming the jewels both times. I beg your pardon for seeming
insistent, but is it possible that you passed over that much money
without even asking why she had been obliged to use it? Not many people
would credit such a thing."

Fulton smiled, and for a moment his grief seemed lightened by the hint of
happy memories.

"Ah, you didn't know my daughter, sir," he said. "She was irresistible,
not to be denied--one of the ardent flames of life. If she had asked me,
I would have given her treble that amount--anything, anything, sir."

Bristow thought of what had been said of her in Atlanta: that all women
liked her and that any man who had shaken hands with her was her
unquestioning servant. Surely such a woman would have been irresistible
in her requests to her father.

He ventured another line of inquiry:

"When you arrived at Number Five this morning, I was in the living room,
and I saw the meeting between you and Miss Maria Fulton. I came away as
soon as I could, but I couldn't help noting your expression as you
greeted her. It seemed to me that there was accusation in it."

"There was," the old man assented. "Enid had written me that Maria had
been pressing her for money, too much money. Naturally, when I heard of
the--the tragedy, I coupled it with the old, old thing that had always
been a burden on Enid--money. And this time I blamed Maria. Of course,
however, that was a mistake."

"I see," said Bristow.

He returned to his porch and sat down. He went over all that the father
of the dead woman had told him. So far as he could see, it had only
served the purpose of strengthening the case against Morley. Let it be
discovered that Maria had known Morley at the time of the Atlantic City
affair, and the case would be fixed, irrefutable. And Braceway would
win out.

Of course, there was still one chance. There was the bare possibility
that Morley had gone to No. 5 to murder Enid if he did not get more money
from her, and that he had been frustrated by the fact that the negro
Perry had forestalled him and done the murder first. Having advanced it,
Bristow did not care to abandon the theory that Perry was the guilty man.

An automobile whirled up Manniston Road and stopped in front of No. 9.
His physician, Dr. Mowbray, sprang from the car and up the steps.

"Good morning, doctor!" the patient called out cheerily.

"Hello!" answered Mowbray crustily. "But what's the big idea in your
trying to do a Sherlock Holmes in this murder case?"

The doctor was overbearing and opinionated. He had many patients, who
were in the habit of knotowing to him and obeying his instructions
implicitly. It was something which he required.

"Sit down," invited Bristow. "I'm not doing any Sherlock Holmes stuff,
but I thought I ought to help out if I could."

"Well, you can't!" snapped Mowbray, with quick, nervous gestures. "You'll
be in your grave before you know it. You can't stand this." He shot out
his hand and produced his watch with the celerity of a sleight-of-hand
performer. "Let me feel your pulse."

Bristow surrendered his wrist to the professional fingers.

"Just what I thought--twenty beats too fast. And your respiration's a
crime. Have you had any rest at all, today or yesterday?"

"Not much, doctor."

Mowbray glowered at him.

"Well, you'll have to have it! You ought to be in bed this minute. If you
don't carry out my instructions, I'll drop the case. You know that."

"I'm sorry, doctor, but I can't spend my time in bed now," Bristow said
as persuasively as he could.

"I'd like to know why! Why? Why?"

"I'm going to Washington tomorrow, although that's a secret. I merely
confide it to you in a professional way, and----"

"Going to Washington! Man, you're mad--mad! You'll have a hemorrhage or
something, and die--die, I tell you!"

"Nevertheless," Bristow insisted, "I must go."

"About this murder?"

"Yes."

"Very well!" snorted Mowbray, rising like a jumping-jack. "Go--go to the
North Pole if you wish. I'm through! I can't treat a man who defies my
orders and advice. Good morning, sir."

Bristow gave him no answer, and he ran down the steps and threw himself
into his car.

"Mistuh Bristow, Lucy's done come," said Mattie, at the living room door.

Bristow started to leave his chair, but changed his mind.

"Tell her to wait a few minutes," he said.

He began to think and to determine just what he wanted to find out from
Lucy, what she would say and what he wanted her to say. It would not do
to question her before he felt sure of what she knew and what she must
confess. He rocked gently in his chair, going over several times the
evidence he desired. His face was hard-set, almost like marble, as he
stared at the mountains. He was thinking harder at that moment than he
had done at any time since the murder.

He had it now. She had given Perry the key to the Withers kitchen--or,
better still, Perry had taken it from her--and she remembered every
detail of it, his departure from her house and his return with the key.
That was what she had to confess. Inevitably, he argued, that would be
her story, or else she would have no story at all.

He thought of Braceway. He made now no secret of the fact that a struggle
between himself and the Atlanta man was on--not openly, but thoroughly
understood by both of them--a fight for supremacy, a contest in which he
sought to convict Perry while Braceway worked for the conviction of
Morley.

Braceway had the added incentive of wanting to run down the man who had
destroyed his friend's home life; and Braceway believed that Morley and
Morley's money entanglements had, in some way, caused the tragedy.

Well, he, Bristow, would see about that! He knew he had the best of the
argument so far--and he looked forward to a double pleasure: the applause
that would come to him as the result of Perry's conviction, and his own
personal gratification at besting Braceway at his own game.

He went into the unused bedroom and told Mattie to send Lucy Thomas to
him there. While he waited, he closed the two windows.




CHAPTER XIII

LUCY THOMAS TALKS


Lucy came slowly into the room and stood near the door. She was of the
peculiar-looking negress type sometimes seen in the South--light of
complexion, with hard, porcelain-like blue eyes and kinky hair which,
instead of being black, is brown or brownish red. After her first
startled glance toward Bristow she stood with her head lowered and with
an expression of sulky stubbornness.

"Sit down!" he ordered after a few moments' silence, indicating a chair
near the wall.

She took her seat while he stepped to the door and closed it.

"Now, Lucy," he said, pulling at his lower lip as he stood in the middle
of the room and looked down at her, "I'm not going to hurt you, and
there's nothing for you to be afraid of. All I want you to do is to tell
me the truth."

In spite of his reassuring words, the woman caught the full meaning of
the goading sharpness in his voice. She immediately became more sullen.

"'Deed, I ain' got nothin' to tell 'bout you white folks," she said, with
a touch of insolence.

"This isn't about white folks," he corrected her, resisting his quick
impulse to anger. "It's about coloured folks."

"Nothin' 'bout dem neithuh," she continued in the same tone. "I don' know
nothin' 'cep'n I wuz drunk. I done tole all dat down at de p'lice
station."

"Listen to me!" he commanded, a little pale, "You know perfectly well
what I want to find out. I want you to tell me everything you remember
about Perry Carpenter's actions and words last Monday night--the night
before last."

She raised and lowered her eyes rapidly, the lids working like the
shutter of a camera.

"I knows what you wants, an' I knows I don' know nothin' 'tall 'bout it,"
she objected, her sullenness a patent defiance.

He stared at her for a full two minutes. She could hear the breath
whistling between his teeth; the sound of it frightened her.

"Don't lie to me!" he said, now a trifle hoarse. "It isn't necessary, and
it doesn't do anybody any good--you or Perry either."

She began to whimper.

Looking at her, he was conscious of being absorbed in the attempt to keep
his temper instead of eliciting what she had to tell. He smiled.

"Stop that sniffling, and tell me what you know about Monday night! Don't
you remember that Perry told you he was going to Mrs. Withers' house and
steal her jewelry?"

"I done tole you I don' remembuh nothin'."

He took a step toward her and lifted his open hand as if to strike her in
the face. Without waiting for the blow, she slid from the chair and fell
sprawling to the floor, where she lay, moaning.

"Get up!"

She obeyed him, her arms held folded over her head as a shield against
expected blows. She was still sullen, uncommunicative, her head down.

He limped swiftly to the door, left the room and went to the front part
of the house. He paced the length of the living room several times, his
fists clenched, his protuberant lip grown heavier.

He called to Mattie, who was in the kitchen.

"I wish," he directed, "you'd go down to Sterrett's and get a dozen
oranges."

"Yes, suh. Right now, Mistuh Bristow?"

"Yes; hurry. I want some orangeade."

He returned to the bedroom and closed the door. Lucy was bent forward on
the chair, moaning.

"Stop that!" he said, feeling now that he had himself and her under
control. "If you don't stop, you'll have something real to sniffle about
before I'm through with you! Now begin. What about Perry last Monday
night?"

"Please, suh," she changed her tone, "lemme go. I ain' got nothin' to
say. I feels like I might say somethin' dat ain' so. I'se kinder skeered
you might make me say somethin' whut I don' mean to say."

Moving deliberately, a fine, little tremor in his fingers, he took off
his coat and vest and hung them on the back of a chair. He had just
noticed that it was warm and close in the shut-up room. There was a
ringing in his ears. He kept repeating to himself that, if he lost his
temper, she would never become communicative.

He began all over again, patient, persistent----

When Mattie came back with the oranges, she met Lucy just outside the
kitchen door. There were no tears in the Thomas woman's eyes, but she
seemed greatly distressed.

"Whut'd he want offen you?" Mattie asked, with the negro's usual
curiosity.

"Nothin' much," replied the other, looking blankly out across Mattie's
shoulder. "He jes' axed me whut I knowd 'bout Perry dat night."

"I tole you dar warn't nothin' to be skeered uv him foh," said Mattie.
"Some uv you niggers ain' got no sense."

"Yas; dat's so," Lucy agreed dully, and walked slowly away.

She moved as if she felt that there was something frightful behind her.
When she was half-way home, she broke into a run, and, moaning, ran the
remainder of the distance. She threw herself on her bed and sobbed a long
time.

She had talked, and for the present she thought she felt more sorry for
Perry than she did for herself.

In the meantime, Bristow had gone into the bathroom to wash his hands.

"Pah!" he exclaimed, disgusted.

He dried his hands and walked, whistling, out to the living room. No
matter how distasteful the scene with the sullen woman had been, the
substantial fact remained that he had in his pocket an important
document. After all, Lucy Thomas had talked--and signed.

"Mattie," he called, "fix me an orangeade, please. Mr. Greenleaf's late
for dinner, and I need a little freshening up."

He went to the living room window again and gazed, with thoughtful,
slightly sad eyes, out toward the mountains.

"These policemen!" he was thinking contemptuously. "They don't know how
to make blockheads tell what they can tell. There are ways--and ways."




CHAPTER XIV

THE PAWN BROKER TAKES THE TRAIL


Frank Abrahamson, pawn broker and junk dealer, responded at once to
Braceway's warm smile. The Jew had his racial respect for keenness and
clean-cut ability. He liked this man who, dressed like a dandy, spoke
with the air of authority.

"The fellow with the gold tooth?" he replied to Braceway's request for
information. "Was there anything peculiar about him? Why, yes. He was
clothed in peculiarities."

The pawn broker, thin, round-shouldered, with a great hook-nose and
cavernous, bright eyes, spoke rapidly, without an accent, punctuating his
sentences with thrusts and dartings and waves of his two hands. His
fifty-five years had not lessened his vitality.

"You see, Mr. Braceway, we pawn brokers, we have to observe our
customers. We become judges of human nature. At the best, we have a hard
time making a living." Somehow, with his smile, he discounted this
statement. "And we come to judge men as closely as we examine jewels and
precious metals. You see?"

Braceway saw. He lit a cigarette and stepped to the door to throw away
the match. The Jew appreciated the thoughtfulness. Trash on the floor
made the morning task of sweeping up harder.

"Now," continued Abrahamson, expressing with one movement of his arm
tolerant ridicule, "this man with the gold tooth and the brown beard--he
thought he was disguised. By gracious! it was funny. A fellow like me
takes one look at him and sees the disguise. The gold tooth--that was
false, fake. When he talked to me, it was all I could do to keep from
reaching across the counter and pushing that tooth more firmly into his
jaw. Gold is heavy, you see. I was afraid it might drop down on my
showcase and break some glass."

Abrahamson laughed. So did Braceway.

"And his beard, Mr. Braceway? That was better. To the ordinary
observer, it might have looked natural--but not to me. Oh, yes; he was
disguised--too much.--Besides, the other afternoon was not the first time
I had seen him--no."

"You saw him two months ago, then?"

"Yes, sir--two months ago, and one month before that."

"In here?"

"Yes."

"What did he want?"

"Money. Money for jewelry. Oh, he had the jewelry. And I gave him the
money--a great deal; more, perhaps, than was good for me, when you
remember I always try to make a reasonable profit. He argued. He knew
about values."

This interested Braceway more than anything he had yet heard.

"That gave you an idea," he suggested.

"You are quick, Mr. Braceway. It did give me an idea. It made me think:
well! This man, he has pawned things before, these very same things.
He knew quite well what they should bring." Abrahamson shrugged his
shoulders. "And he did know--and I let him have the money. That is, I
mean, what happened the first two times. This last time, the three days
ago, he was different, in a hurry, and he took only what I offered. He
made no argument. I could see he was frightened. Yes--he was different
this last time."

The detective, oblivious of the other for a moment, blew a cloud of smoke
across the counter, causing the Jew to dodge and cough.

"Let me see," Braceway said. "You saw him three months ago, two months
ago, and three days ago. Had you ever seen him before?"

Abrahamson laughed, and, reaching over, slapped Braceway on the shoulder
gently.

"You are so quick, Mr. Braceway! I can't swear I had ever seen him
before, but I think I had--not with the gold tooth and the beard, but
with a moustache and bushy eyebrows, eyebrows too bushy."

"Where? Where did you see him?"

"Here, I think--but I'm not sure, you see. Sometimes I have traveled a
little--to Atlanta, to Washington, to New York. I don't know; I can't
tell whether I saw him in one of those places, or some other place, or
here."

Braceway urged him with his eyes.

"If you only could! Mr. Abrahamson, if you could remember where you saw
him when he wore the moustache, you would enable me to put my hands on
him. You'd do more. You'd give me enough information to lead to the
arrest of the murderer."

Abrahamson was silent, gazing through the shop doorway. He turned to the
detective again.

"I bet you, Mr. Braceway, you will be glad to hear something. Chief
Greenleaf was in here this morning, asking questions. But he asked so
many that were worth nothing, so few that were good. And I forgot to tell
him the whole story--the things of, perhaps, significance."

"Tell me. Significance is what I'm after."

"Well, you know Mr. Withers spent almost the whole day in here before the
night of the murder. Once he went out. That was in the late afternoon to
get some lunch. While he was out--understand, while he was out--in came
the gold-tooth fellow.

"It was bad luck. I kept him as long as I could, but he was hurried,
nervous. Half an hour, forty minutes maybe, after the gold-tooth fellow
had gone, in came Withers again, out of breath, complaining that he had
picked the man up just outside here and followed him, only to lose him
when the gold-tooth fellow went through Casey's store to the avenue.

"I showed Withers the ring the fellow had pawned for a hundred dollars.

"'Yes, yes!' he said; 'that's one of my wife's rings.'

"And he was all cut up.

"Now, here is what I have to tell." Abrahamson lowered his voice and,
leaning low on his elbow, thrust his face far over the counter toward
Braceway. "It is only an idea, but--it is an idea. I bet you I would not
tell anybody else. Such things might get a man into trouble. But I like
you, Mr. Braceway. I confide in you. Mr. Withers and that man with the
beard and the gold tooth--something in the look of the eyes, something
in the build of the shoulders--each reminded me of the other, a little.
And they were at no time in here together. Just an idea, I told you.
But----"

He spread out his hands, straightened his back, and smiled.

Braceway was, undisguisedly, amazed.

"You mean Withers was the----"

"S--sh--sh!" Abrahamson held up a protesting hand. "Not so loud, Mr.
Braceway. It is just an idea for you to think over. I study faces,
and all that sort of thing, and ideas sometimes are valuable--sometimes
not."

"By George!" Braceway put into his expression an enthusiasm he was far
from feeling. "You've done me a service, a tremendous service, Mr.
Abrahamson."

He thought rapidly. Three months ago! Where had George Withers been then?
Three months ago was the first of February. He started. It was then that
Withers had gone to Savannah. At least, he had said he was going to
Savannah. And two months ago? He was not certain, but when had George
left Atlanta, ostensibly for Memphis?

Inwardly, the detective ridiculed himself. He would have sworn to the
innocence of Withers. In fact, he was swearing to it all over again as
he stood there in the pawnshop. Abrahamson's "idea" was out of the
question. People were often victims of "wild thinking" in the midst of
the excitement caused by a murder mystery.

He returned to the effort to persuade the Jew to try to remember where he
had seen the bearded man without a beard, with only a moustache and bushy
eyebrows.

"That's the important thing," he urged. "If you can remember that, I'll
land the murderer."

"Maybe--perhaps, I can." The pawn broker hesitated, then made up his mind
to confide to Braceway another secret. "I don't promise, but there is a
chance. You see, Mr. Braceway, I'm a thinker." He smiled, deprecating the
statement. "Most men do not think. But me, I think. I do this: I want to
remember something. Good! I go back into my little room back of the shop,
and I practise association of ideas. What does the moustache remind me
of? What was in his voice that made me think I had seen him before? What
do his eyes bring up in my mind?

"So! I go back over the months, over the years. One idea leads to another
connected with it. There flash into my mind links and links of thoughts
until I have a chain leading to--where? Somewhere. It is fun--and it
brings the results. I will do so tonight and tomorrow. I will try. I
bet you I will be able to tell you--finally. You see?"

"It's a great scheme," said Braceway, encouraging him. "It ought to work.
Now, tell me this: how did this fellow strike you? What did you think of
him when he was in here pawning jewels and wearing a disguise?"

"I will tell you the truth. I thought at first he was like a lot of other
sick people who come here with that disease--tuberculosis. In the
beginning they have plenty of money. They expect to get well before the
money gives out. But they have miscalculated. They are not yet well, and
the money is gone.

"What next? They must have more money. With this disease, the rich get
well, the poor die. Well! I thought this fellow needed money to get
well--that was all; and, like a lot of them, he was ashamed of being hard
up and didn't want it known."

"Tell me this: would the ordinary man in the street have noticed that the
gold tooth was a false, clumsy affair?"

"I think not. I buy all sorts of old gold and sets of false teeth. There
is a market for them. I have studied them. That's why I saw what this
fellow's was."

"I see. Now, will you show me what he pawned two months ago, and three
months ago?"

Abrahamson consulted a big book, went to the safe at the back of the
shop, and returned with two little packets. In the first were two
bracelets, one studded with emeralds and diamonds, the other set with
rubies. In the second envelope was a gold ring set with one large diamond
surrounded by small rubies.

"I allowed him six hundred dollars on the bracelets," explained
Abrahamson; "they are handsome--exquisite; and three hundred and fifty
on the ring."

Braceway passed the stuff back to him. It was a part of the Withers
jewelry.

"You see, Mr. Braceway," added the Jew, "all this business, this murder
and everything, will cost me money. This jewelry, it is stolen goods.
Chief Greenleaf leaves it here for the present, as a decoy. Perhaps,
somebody might try to reclaim it. That's what he thinks. As for me, I
don't think so. It is a dead loss."

He sighed and rearranged the articles in their envelopes.

"Yes," agreed the detective; "it's hard luck. You've got every reason to
be interested in running down the truth in this mix-up. I wish you could
tell me where you think you saw this man--the time he had neither the
gold tooth nor the brown beard."

"Be patient, my friend--Mr. Braceway. By tomorrow I may remember. I shall
work hard--the association of ideas! It is a great system."

Braceway thanked him and was about to leave the shop. He had already
formed a new plan. He turned back to the pawn broker.

"By the way," he said, "I'm going to Washington tomorrow. If you should
remember, if the association of ideas produces anything, I wonder if
you'd wire me?"

"Certainly. Certainly."

The detective wrote on a slip of paper: S. S. Braceway, Willard Hotel. He
handed it to Abrahamson.

"Wire me that address, collect," he directed.

Abrahamson promised, smiling. He was pleased with the idea of helping to
solve the problem which convulsed Furmville.

"Oh," added Braceway, "another thing. How would you describe this fellow
in addition to the fact that he wore the beard and the gold tooth?"

"Very thin lips," replied Abrahamson slowly, "and high, straight,
aquiline nose, and blond hair, and--and, I should say, rather thin, high
voice."

"Good!" Braceway exclaimed. "Good! Mr. Abrahamson, you've just described
the man who, I believe, committed the murder. And I know where he is."

Morley had been pointed out to him in the hotel earlier in the day, and
Abrahamson's memory sketched a fairly good likeness of the young man as
he remembered him. Why not make certain of it at once?

"You've been very obliging," he continued, "and, I suppose, that's why I
feel I can impose on you further. I confide in you, as you did in me. I'm
going back to the Brevord now. Could you follow me and take a look at a
man who'll be with me there?"

The Jew's eyes sparkled.

"Yes, Mr. Braceway," he said and added: "It may cost me money, closing up
the shop, you understand. But if I can help----"

"Don't misunderstand me," the detective cautioned. "There's no charge of
murder. Nothing like that. This fellow may be the gold-tooth man, and
still not be the guilty man."

"I see; I see," Abrahamson's tone was one of importance. "You go on, Mr.
Braceway. I'll follow in three minutes."

"If the man I'm with is the one who wore the disguise, if he looks more
like it than Mr. Withers did, make no sign. If he's not the fellow
communicate with me later--as soon as you can."

Morley was the first person Braceway saw when he entered the lobby of the
hotel. He lost no time, but crossed over to the leather settee on which
the young man sat. Morley looked haggard and frightened, and, although he
held a newspaper in front of him, was gazing into space.

Braceway decided to "take a chance." He had a great respect for his
intuitions. These "hunches," he had found, were sometimes of no value,
but they had helped him often enough to make the ideas that came to him
in this way worth trying. He introduced himself.

"I was wondering," he said, sitting down beside Morley, "if you couldn't
help me out in a little matter."

Morley sighed and put down his paper before he answered:

"What is it?"

"Something about make-ups--facial make-up."

Morley looked at him and felt that the detective's eyes bored into him.

"What about make-up?"

"I had the idea--perhaps I got it from George Withers--that you used to
be interested in a matter of theatricals."

Morley coloured.

"Yes. That is," he qualified, "I was a member of the dramatic club when
I was in college, University of Pennsylvania. But I didn't know Withers
knew anything about it."

Braceway's demeanour now was casual. His eyes were no longer on Morley.
He was watching Abrahamson, who was at the news-stand near the main
entrance.

"I thought George had mentioned it to me, but I may be mistaken. Did you
ever 'make up' with a beard?"

The morning papers had got hold of the suspicion of some of the
authorities that a man wearing a brown beard and a gold tooth was wanted
because of the murder of Mrs. Withers. Although Chief Greenleaf had tried
to keep it quiet, it had leaked out as a result of Jenkins' search for
traces of the man. Morley had read all this, and Braceway's question
upset him.

"No," he answered; "I never did. I played women's parts."

Abrahamson was shaking his head in negation. He made it plain that he saw
in Morley no resemblance to the man who had come disguised to the
pawnshop.

Braceway did not press Morley for further information.

"Then you can't help me," he laughed lightly. "Women don't wear beards."

He got up with a careless word about the hot weather and passed on to the
clerk's desk. He was thinking: "He was lying. Any college annual prints
the cast of the important 'show' given by the dramatic club that year.
I'll wire Philadelphia."

He found the manager of the Brevord and inquired:

"How about the bellboy who was on duty all Monday night, Mr. Keene?"

"He's in the house now," Keene informed him. "Roddy is his name."

"Send him up to my room, will you?"

Braceway stepped into the elevator. Five minutes after he had
disappeared, Morley went into the writing room. His hand trembled a
little as he picked up a pen. He put two or three lines on several sheets
of paper, one after the other, and tore up all of them.

The communication which he finally completed he put into an envelope and
addressed to Braceway. It read:

  "Dear Mr. Braceway: When you asked me about the make-up, I was thinking
  of something else and was not quite clear as to what you were saying or
  what you wanted to know. I remember now that, on one occasion, I did
  have a part as a man who wore a beard in a play given by my college
  dramatic club. However, I don't remember enough about it to pass as an
  expert on such make-ups.

  "Yours truly,

  "Henry Morley."

Going to the desk, he left the note for the detective.

"I'm a fool," he reflected, as he went to the door and looked out at the
traffic in the street. "I believe I'll get a lawyer."

He considered this for a while.

"Oh, what's the use? He'll ask me a lot of questions, and----"

He shuddered and turned back into the lobby, hesitant and wretched.

"My God!" he thought miserably. "I've got to get back to Washington! I've
got to! After that, I can think--think!"

But he believed he could not go until the chief of police gave him
permission. If he had consulted a lawyer, he might have found out
differently. As it was, he stayed on, thinking more and more
disconnectedly, eating nothing, his nerves wearing to raw ends.

Upstairs Braceway was strengthening the net he had already woven around
Henry Morley.

"I was right." He reviewed what he had learned from Abrahamson. "It's
still up to Morley. That pawn broker's off, 'way off. He thinks George
Withers resembles the man with the beard, and, although he gave me the
description that fitted Morley exactly, he takes a look at him and denies
emphatically that Morley resembles at all the fellow with the disguise."

Abrahamson, however, was not satisfied with what he had seen. Back in
front of his shop, he opened the door, took down the sign he had left
hanging on the knob, "Back in ten minutes," substituted another, "Closed
for the day," relocked the door, and started off in the direction of
Casey's department store.

He had decided to devote the whole afternoon to detective work. Of
course, it would cost him money, having the shop closed half a day.
"But," he consoled himself, "I'm worth seventy thousand dollars. I bet
I am entitled to a little holiday."




CHAPTER XV

BRACEWAY SEES A LIGHT


Braceway had discovered long ago that the man who attempts good work as a
detective must depend almost as much on his ability to make friends as he
does on his capacity for sifting evidence.

"I'm a good worker," he was in the habit of saying, "but I'm not half as
good working alone as I am when I have the help of all the men and women
who are witnesses in a case or connected with it in some other way. I
need all the cooperation I can get."

This was one reason why Roddy, when he entered Braceway's room, felt sure
immediately that he would receive only kindly treatment. He had shown
signs of fear on entering the room, and in his extremely black face his
singularly white eyeballs had rolled around grotesquely.

But Braceway put him at ease with a smile.

"What have you been trying to do, Roddy?" was his first good-humoured
question. "Think you've got sense enough to fool all the white folks?"

"Who, boss? Me, boss?" the boy returned, disavowing with a grin any
pretense to intelligence. "Naw, suh, boss. You knows I ain' got no sense.
I ain' nevuh tried to fool nobody."

"Didn't you tell the chief of police you were awake all of Monday night
when you were on duty in the lobby and didn't you say the only thing you
did was to carry up Mr. Morley's bags?"

"Yas, suh, boss; an' dat was de truth--nothin' but de truth, boss. Gawd
knows----"

Braceway took from his pocket a crisp, new one-dollar bill and smoothed
it out on his knee.

"Now, listen to me, Roddy," he said, this time unsmiling. "Mr. Keene has
just told me he wouldn't fire you, even if you did go to sleep Monday
night. There's nothing for you to be afraid of; and this dollar note is
yours as soon as you tell me the truth, the real truth, about what you
saw and what you missed seeing Monday night. If you don't tell me, I'll
have you arrested."

Roddy's eyes, which had shone with a rather greasy glitter at the sight
of the money, rolled rapidly and whitely in their sockets at the mention
of arrest.

"'Deed, boss, you ain' gwine to have no cause to 'res' me, no cause
whatsomever. You knows how 'tis, boss. Us coloured folks, we got a gif,
jes' a natchel gif', foh nappin' an' sleepin'. Boss, dar ain' no nigger
in dis town whut would have kep' wide awake--_wide_--all dat Monday night
nor any yuther night."

"Very well. Think now. Try to remember. Were you asleep at all before
midnight?"

"Naw, suh, boss. Naw, suh!"

"Not at all?"

Roddy began to wilt again.

"Well, it might uv been dis way, boss, possibilly. 'Long 'bout 'leven I
kinder remembuhs jes' a sort uv nap, mo' like a slip, boss." He coughed
and spoke desperately: "You see, boss, when it gits a little quiet at
night, seems to me, why, right den, ev'y nigger I knows is got a hinge in
his neck. 'Pears like he jes' gotter let his haid drap furward. Dar ain'
no use talkin', boss, dat hinge wuks ovuhtime. I 'spec' mine done it,
too, jes' like you say, 'long 'bout 'leven. Yas, suh, I reckon dat's
right."

"How about the time between midnight and two in the morning? Was the
hinge working then?"

"Aw, boss," replied Roddy with something like reproach, "you knows 'tain'
no queshun uv a hinge arftuh midnight. Arftuh midnight, boss, de screws
drap right outen' de hinge, an' dar ain' no mo' hinge. You jes' natchelly
keeps your haid down an' don' lif' it no mo'. Naw, suh, dar ain' no hinge
to he'p you dat late, _on_less--_on_less somebody hit you or stab you."

Braceway became stern. His eyes snapped.

"Didn't you carry Mr. Morley's grips up to his room for him that night,
room number four hundred and twenty-one?"

"Yas, suh."

"What time was that?"

"Dat wuz jes' five minutes arftuh two, boss."

"Had you been asleep during the two hours before that?"

"I hates to say it, boss, but I wuz, almos' completely."

"Then, how did you wake yourself up thoroughly enough to know that it was
exactly five minutes past two?"

"Lemme see, suh. Possibilly, 'twuz bekase uv whut I seen 'long about
ha'fpas' one--possibilly, boss."

"So you hadn't been asleep for two hours?"

"Almos', suh. It wuz dis way: you see, boss, de bellboys' bench is right
unduh de big clock in de lobby, off to de right uv de desk. I happen' dat
night to let my haid slide ovuh 'g'in de glass case uv de clock, an when
it stahted out to hit de ha'fpas' bell, it rattled an' whizzed, an' it
jarred me. Golly, boss! I woke up an', when I seed how it wuz rainin'
outside, I thought lightnin' had hit me. It skeered me--an' dat is one
good way to wake up a nigger at night--skeer 'im, an' you don' have to
stab him. I sorter hollered.

"I got up an' went to de main entrance, jes' to make de night clerk think
I wuz on de job in case he woke up. I looked down de street tow'rd de
post-office, an' I seed a man goin' in dar.

"'Bless de Lawd!' I says to myse'f. 'White people ain' got much to
do--goin' to de post-office dis time uv night.' An' I went on back to de
bellboys' bench and stahted in niggerin' it once mo'e."

"Niggering it?"

"Yas, boss; you know, dat means quick sleepin'. 'Peared to me I ain' no
mo'e got my eyes shut when I wakes up ag'in, an' right dar in de lobby is
dat same man what I seed gwine to de post-office."

"What waked you up?"

"I don' know, boss. I can' no mo'e figger dat out den I kin fly. Dat wuz
de fust time in my life dat I done wake up at night when onmolested."

"How did you know the man you saw in the lobby was the one you had seen
going into the post-office?"

"Dey wuz de same, boss; dat's all. Had de same buil', same long raincoat
on, an' same thick beard. He had done pass' me by an' wuz on his way up
de stairs 'stead uv waitin' foh me to run de elevatuh. I wouldn' nevuh
seed his beard dat time, but he turn' 'roun' when he wuz nigh to de top
uv de stairs an' look back at me. Den I seed foh a fac' dat he wuz de
same as de yuther man

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