The Deep Lake Mystery
by Carolyn Wells · English · Gutenberg #46064 · 392,053 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Deep Lake Mystery
Author: Carolyn Wells
Release date: June 21, 2014 [eBook #46064]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEEP LAKE MYSTERY ***
DEEP LAKE
MYSTERY
By CAROLYN WELLS
Author _of_
“The Crime in the Crypt,” “All At Sea,” “Anything But the Truth,”
“The Bronze Hand,” “The Daughter of the House,” “Face
Cards,” “Feathers Left Around,” “The Fourteenth Key,”
“The Furthest Fury,” “Prillilgirl,” “The Red-Haired
Girl,” “The Vanity Case,” “Where’s Emily,” etc.
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.
Printed in U. S. A.
COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
TO MY DEAR FRIEND
LUCY C. JOYCE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. “A STATELY PLEASURE DOME ...” 1
II. THE GIRL IN THE CANOE 16
III. THE TRAGEDY 32
IV. THE NAIL 48
V. THE LADY OF THE LAKE 63
VI. THE WATCH IN THE WATER PITCHER 78
VII. THE INQUEST 93
VIII. ALMA’S STATEMENTS 108
IX. CLUES 123
X. DISCUSSION 138
XI. EVIDENCE 153
XII. MY SECRET 168
XIII. AS TO TUESDAY AFTERNOON 183
XIV. POSY MAY 198
XV. JENNIE 213
XVI. WHISTLING REEDS 228
XVII. AMES TAKES A HAND 244
XVIII. ALL RIGHT AT LAST 260
DEEP LAKE MYSTERY
CHAPTER I
“A STATELY PLEASURE DOME ...”
As I look back on my life, eventful enough in spots, but placid, even
monotonous in the long stretches between spots, I think the greatest
thrill I ever experienced was when I saw the dead body of Sampson Tracy.
Imagine to yourself a man, dead in his own bed, with no sign of violence
or maltreatment. Eyes partly closed, as he might be peacefully thinking,
and no expression of fear or horror on his calm face.
Now add to your mental picture the fact that he had round his brow a few
flowers arranged as a wreath. More flowers diagonally across his breast,
like a garland. Clasped in his right hand, against his heart, an ivory
crucifix, and in his left hand an orange.
Sticking up from behind his head showed the plume of a red feather
duster!
And draped round all this, like a frame, was a red chiffon scarf, a filmy
but voluminous affair, deftly tucked in here and there, and encircling
all the strange and bizarre details I have enumerated.
On a pillow, near the dead face, lay two small crackers and a clean,
folded handkerchief.
As I stared, my imagination flew to the Indians or the ancient Egyptians,
who provided their dead with food and toilet implements, which were
buried with them.
But in this case——
I believe it was Abraham Lincoln who said: “If you have a story to tell,
begin at the beginning, go through with the tale, and leave off at the
ending.” So, as I most assuredly have a story to tell, I will begin at
the beginning and follow the prescribed directions.
It all began, I suppose, the night Keeley Moore came to see me about
fishing tackle. Kee is a wonderful detective and all that, but when it
comes to fishing he’s mighty glad to ask my advice.
And Lord knows I’m glad to give it to him.
We used to go fishing together, every summer. Then Kee took it into his
silly head to get married, and to a girl who cares nothing about fishing.
So from that you can see how things are.
But this time Kee seemed really excited about his prospects of fishing
through the summer months.
“We’re going to Wisconsin,” he told me, with a note of joyousness in his
voice, “and, Gray, do you know, there are more than two thousand lakes in
one county out in that foolish old state?”
“I’d like to fish in all of ’em,” I said, with my usual lack of
moderation.
“You can’t do that, but you can fish in a few, if you like. Lora sends
you, and I back it up, an invitation to come out there as soon as we get
settled and stay as long as you can.”
“That’s a tempting bid,” I told him, “but I can’t impose on newlyweds
like that. I’ll go to the inn or lodge or whatever they have out there,
and see you every day.”
“No, we want you with us. We’ve taken a fairly good-sized house for the
season, and you must be our guest. Lora’s asking a few of her friends and
I want you.”
Well, he had little trouble in persuading me, once I felt convinced that
his wife’s invitation was in good faith, and I planned to go out there
early in August.
They were going in July, which left them time enough to get settled and
get their home in running order.
So I went to Wisconsin in August, glad enough to get away from the city’s
heat and noise and dirt.
Deep Lake, the choice of the Moores, was in Oneida County, which is
designated among the Scenic Sections of Wisconsin as North Woods—Eastern.
And scenic it surely was. The last part of the train ride had shown me
that, and when we were motoring from the railroad station to the Moore
bungalow, I was impressed with the weird beauty all about.
It was dusk, and the tall trees looked black against the sky. Long
shadows of hemlocks and poplars fell across the road, as the last glow of
the sunset was fading, and the reflection in the lakes of surrounding
scenery was clear, though dark and eerie-looking.
We passed several lakes before we reached the journey’s end.
“Here we are!” Moore cried at last, as we turned in at the gates of a
most attractive estate.
A short road led to the front door and Lora came out to greet us.
I liked Kee Moore’s wife, though I never felt I knew her very well. She
was of a reserved type and while amiable and cordial, she was not
responsive and never seemed to offer or invite confidence.
But she greeted me heartily, and expressed real pleasure at having me
there.
She was very good looking—a wholesome, bonny type, with an air of
executive ability and absolute _savoir faire_.
Her hair was dead gold, bobbed and worn straight, I think they call it a
Dutch bob. Anyway, she had a trace of Dutch effect and reminded me of
that early picture of Queen Wilhelmina.
She sent me to my room to brush up but told me I needn’t change as the
bungalow was run informally.
The place rejoiced in the name of “Variable Winds,” and though the Moores
guyed the idea of having a name for such an unpretentious affair, they
admitted it was at least appropriate.
I returned to the living room to find the group augmented by a few more
people: one house guest and two or three neighbours.
Cocktails appeared and the cheery atmosphere dispelled the darksome and
gloomy effects that had marked our drive from the station.
I found myself next my fellow guest, a pleasant-faced lady, who
introduced herself.
“I’m Maud Merrill,” she vouchsafed. “I’m staying here, so you must learn
to like me.”
“No trouble at all,” I told her, and honestly, for I liked her at once.
She was a widow, perhaps thirty or so, with white hair and deep blue
eyes. I judged her hair was prematurely grayed, for her face was young
and attractive.
“I’m an old schoolmate of Lora Moore’s,” she disclosed further, “and I’m
up here for a fortnight. Are you staying long?”
“I’m invited indefinitely,” I returned. “I’ll stay a month, I think, if
they seem to want me.”
“Oh, they will. They’ve both looked forward to your coming with real
delight. And you’ll like it here. There’s no end of things to do. Fishing
of course, and bathing and boating and golf and tennis and dancing and
flirting—in fact, you can have just whatever sport you want.”
“Sounds rather strenuous. I had hoped for a restful time.”
“Yes, you can have that if you really want it. Let me give you a hint of
the other guests. The beautiful woman is Katherine Dallas. She’s about to
be married to our next-door neighbour. He isn’t here to-night. But one of
his house guests is here. That tall, thin man,—he’s Harper Ames.”
I thanked her for her hints, though I wasn’t terribly interested. But
it’s good to know a little about new acquaintances, and often prevents
unfortunate speeches. Especially with me. For I’ve a shocking habit of
saying the wrong thing and making enemies thereby.
At the table I found myself seated at my hostess’s right hand and the
beautiful Mrs. Dallas on my other side.
It was a comfortable sort of party. The conversation, while not specially
brilliant, was unforced and gayly bantering. Two youngsters were present,
who added their flapper slang to the general fund of amusement.
These two were Posy May and Dick Hardy, and though apparently about
twenty they seemed to have world-wide knowledge and world-old wisdom.
“My canoe upset this afternoon,” Posy told the company with an air of
being a heroine.
“You upset it on purpose,” declared Dick.
“Didn’t, either. I turned around too quickly——”
“Yes, and if I hadn’t been on the job you’d be turning around there yet.”
“Posy,” Keeley said, reproachfully, “you must be more careful. Deep Lake
is one of the deepest and most treacherous lakes in all Wisconsin. Now,
don’t cut up silly tricks in a canoe.”
“Oh, I know how to manage a canoe.”
“You managed to upset,” said Lora Moore, accusingly, and pretty Posy
changed the subject.
After dinner there was a little bridge, but the youngsters were going to
a dance, and Mrs. Dallas seemed to want to go home early, so Ames carried
her off, and our own quartet was left alone.
I was glad of it, for I like a chat with a few better than the rattle of
the crowd. And it was not very long before Lora and Mrs. Merrill left us,
and Keeley and I had the porch to ourselves.
“Pleasant people,” I said, by way of being decently gracious.
“Good enough,” he agreed. “To-morrow, Gray, we’ll fish. It’s open season
for everything now and the limits are generous. Except muskellonge. You
may bag only one per day of those. But trout, all kinds, bass, all kinds,
pickerel, rock sturgeon—oh, we’ll have the biggest time!”
“Sounds good to me,” I returned, heartily. “I’m happy to be here, old
scout, and we’ll fish and all that, but don’t put yourself about to
entertain me.”
“I sha’n’t; but you must fall in with Lora’s plans, won’t you? I mean,
seem pleased to attend her kettledrums and whatnot, even if it bores
you.”
“Of course I will. Your lady’s word is law. She’s a brick, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” and Moore smiled happily at my somewhat crude compliment. “She’s
just that. And such a help in my work.”
“Your detective work?”
“What else? She’s more than a Watson, she’s a real helpmate. Her insight
and intuition are marvellous, and she sees through a bit of evidence and
gets the very gist of it quicker than I can.”
“Then you surely got the right one.”
“I certainly did. But I hope to Heaven there’ll be no cases this summer.
I want a real vacation, that’s why I came ’way off here, to get away from
all crime calls.”
“Don’t crow before you’re out of the woods. Crimes can happen even in
Wisconsin. And to me, this whole country round looks like a perfect
setting for a first-class criminal to work in.”
“Hush! I’m not superstitious, but your suggestion of such a thing might
bring it about. And I don’t want it!”
“You think you don’t,” I smiled a little, “but deep in your heart you do.
You can’t fish all the time, and you’re even now restively hankering to
be back in harness.”
“Shut up!” he growled. “Talk of something pleasanter. How do you like the
Dallas queen?”
“Stunning, seductive, and serpentine,” I summed up the lady in question.
Moore laughed outright. “I must tell Lora that,” he said. “You see, she
agrees with you. Now, I think the right words are stately, gracious, and
charming.”
“All right,” I said, “you know her better than I do, She is very
beautiful, I concede.”
“What do you mean, concede? Are you against her?”
“How you do snap a fellow up! No, not exactly. But I wouldn’t trust her
as far as I could see her,—and I’m near-sighted.”
“Sometimes I think I’m no detective after all,” Moore said, slowly. “Now
she gives me no effect of hypocrisy or insincerity.”
“But she does hint those things to Lora?”
“Y—yes, in a way.”
“Then Lora’s more of a detective than you are. But after I see more of
the siren, I may change my mind. I didn’t talk with her alone at all.
What about the grumpy Mr. Ames? Is he in love with the Dallas?”
“Not at all. In the first place, he wouldn’t dare be, for she is engaged
to Sampson Tracy, and Tracy is not one to take kindly to any poaching on
his domain. Besides that, Ames is a woman hater, also a man hater, and I
think, an animal hater.”
“Pleasant man!”
“Yes. He’s always in a fierce mood. I don’t know, but I imagine he had an
affair once....”
“Oh, crossed in love and it made him queer.”
“Rather say, queered in love and it made him cross.”
“Yes, he looks cross. Does he always?”
“Always. He and Samp Tracy are old friends, and Samp can manage him, but
nobody else can.”
“Pleasant guest for Mr. Tracy to have about.”
“He doesn’t mind. Pleasure Dome is usually full of guests and if any want
to sulk they are at liberty to do so.”
“Pleasure Dome?”
“Yes, that’s the Tracy place. It’s next to this, but it’s some distance
off. You see, Deep Lake has a most irregular boundary line. It has all
sorts of coves and inlets, and there’s one that juts in behind the Tracy
house. It’s so deep and black and so surrounded by trees that it’s called
the Sunless Sea.”
“Why, that’s from Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan,’ too.”
“Yes, these are the lines:
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately Pleasure Dome decree;
Where Alph, the sacred river ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
“You know it, of course, but that will refresh your memory. Well, old
Tracy——”
“Is he old?”
“Oh, no, he’s forty-five, but he seems older, somehow. Well, anyway, he’s
romantic and poetic and imaginative. And he has a fad for Coleridge.
Collects editions of him and all that. So he built his enormous and
gorgeous house and called it Pleasure Dome. And the deep arm of the lake,
which is right beneath his own window, he calls the Sunless Sea. And it
is. It’s on the north side of the house, and so hemmed in with great firs
and cypresses that the sun never gets a look-in.”
“Must make a delightful sleeping room!”
“Oh, there’s plenty of sunlight from the east and west. His rooms are in
a wing, a long L, and you bet they have sunlight and all other modern
improvements. The house is a palace.”
“That all sounds nice for Mrs. Dallas.”
“It is. And Samp is so drivellingly, so besottedly in love with her, that
she will have everything her own way when she takes up the sceptre.”
“Nobody else in the family? The Tracy family, I mean.”
“No. Not now. There was. You see, Tracy’s sister, Mrs. Remsen, and her
daughter used to live with him. Then Mrs. Remsen died, about a year ago,
or a little more, and then Mrs. Dallas came into the picture, and some
think it was at her request Tracy put his niece out——”
“The brute!”
“Oh, come now, you don’t know anything about it. Alma is a lovely girl,
but she’s a high-handed sort—all the Tracys are—and her uncle gave her a
beautiful home on a near-by island——”
“On an island? A girl, alone!”
“She has with her an old family nurse, who took care of her as a baby,
and old nurse’s husband is her gardener and houseman, and old nurse’s
daughter is her waitress, and oh, Lord, Alma Remsen is fixed all right.”
“But on an island!”
“But she likes being on an island. It was her own choice. She didn’t want
to stay with the new wife any more than the new wife wanted to have her.
You always fly off half-cocked!”
“All right, all right,” I soothed him. “Tell me more.”
“Well, that’s all about Alma. She’s a general favourite, has lots of
friends, and all that, but of course, when the new mistress of Pleasure
Dome comes in at the door, Alma’s prospects will fly out of the window.”
“Cut off entirely?”
“I’m not sure, but I’ve heard so. I suppose her uncle will always take
care of her, but she will no longer be the Tracy heiress.”
“And how does Miss Alma take that?”
“Not so good. She has had several talks with the family lawyer, and she
has tried to wheedle her uncle, but he’s a queer dick, is Samp Tracy, and
he obstinately refuses to make a new will or even consider its terms
until after he’s married.”
“And his present will?”
“Leaves everything to Alma. She’s his only living relative. But his
marriage will automatically cancel that will, and his wife will be sole
inheritor unless he fixes the matter up.”
“Which he will doubtless do.”
“Oh, I hope so. I hope the new wife will see to it that he does. But
there’s where Lora has her doubts. She doesn’t like Katherine Dallas,
somehow.”
“Lora is of great perspicacity,” I said. “Where does Ames come in?”
“Regarding the fortune? Nowhere, that I know of. He is an old friend of
Tracy’s, both socially and in a business way. They’re as different as day
and night. Ames is surly, sulky, and blunt. Tracy is suave, gentle, and
of the pleasantest manners.”
“Miss Remsen’s parents both dead?”
“Oh, yes. Her father died about fifteen years ago. Her mother recently.
Had her mother lived, I suppose Tracy would have put them both out of the
house, just the same. But Mrs. Remsen being gone, he sent Alma and the
servants to the island house.”
“Then the girl is utterly alone in the world except for the suave uncle
and her faithful servants.”
“Just that. There was a sister. Alma had a twin. But she died as a baby,
or as a small child. Her little grave is in a small God’s Acre on the
Pleasure Dome grounds. The mother and father are buried there too. And
some other relatives.”
“I didn’t know they had homestead cemeteries in Wisconsin. I thought they
were confined to the New England states.”
“It isn’t usual, I believe. But the Tracys are New England stock, and,
anyway, the graves are there. And beautifully kept and tended, as
everything about the place has to be.”
“Sounds interesting. Shall I see the high-strung Alma?”
“I didn’t say high-strung. She is a normal, lovely nature. But I did say
high-handed, for she is a determined sort, and if she sets her mind to a
thing it has to go through.”
“She has admirers?”
“Oh, of course. But she rather flouts them. One of Tracy’s secretaries is
frightfully in love with her. But she scarcely notices him.”
“Our friend has a multiplicity of secretaries, then?”
“Two, that’s all. But Sampson Tracy is a man of large interests, and I
fancy he keeps the two busy. Billy Dean is the one in love with Alma, but
the other, Charles Everett, is his superior.”
“He’s the chap who, they tell me, craves the Dallas lady.”
“Yes, though of course Tracy doesn’t know it. Everett wouldn’t be there
if he did.”
“And Mrs. Dallas? What is her attitude toward the presumptuous
secretary?”
“Hard to say. I think she favours him, but she is too good a financier to
throw over her millionaire for his underling.”
“Well, I think I’ve had about all the local history I can stand for one
night. Let’s go in the house.”
To my surprise, Lora Moore and Mrs. Merrill were in the lounge, waiting
for us.
The house was admirably arranged. The great central room, with doors back
and front, was called the lounge, and served as both hall and living
room. Off this were two smaller rooms: the card room and the music room.
To one side of these rooms were the bedrooms, and on the other side, the
dining room and kitchen quarters.
The furnishings were simple and attractive, with no “Mission” pieces or
attempts at camping effects.
I sat down on a wide davenport beside Lora, and said, tentatively:
“I believe you and I agree in our estimate of the Dallas beauty.”
“Then you have real good sense,” exclaimed Lora, heartily. “Kee won’t see
her as I do.”
“I won’t either,” put in Maud Merrill. “It’s disgraceful to knock a woman
just because she’s going to marry a rich man. Rich men want wives as well
as poor men. I’m all for Katherine Dallas. You’re jealous, Lora, because
she is so beautiful.”
Lora only smiled at this, and said:
“I’ve really nothing against her, except that I believe she had Alma
turned out of her uncle’s house.”
“And why not?” demanded Maud Merrill. “No house is big enough for two
families; and though I don’t know Miss Remsen well at all, I do know that
she is a girl of strong will and decided opinions. They’d never be happy
if Alma stayed there.”
“I can’t say as to all that,” I put in, determined to have my word, “but
I think, with Lora, that the Dallas is a lady of deep finesse and
Machiavellian cleverness.”
“Yes, just that!” cried Keeley Moore’s wife.
“Well, then,” said Maud, “if she snared that millionaire by her
cleverness, she deserves her reward. And she deserves a peaceful home,
which I doubt she’d have with a young girl bossing around, too.”
“Oh, you women!” and Moore wrung his hands in mock despair, “you’re
making up all this. You don’t know a thing about it, really.”
“We can see,” said Lora, sagely. “And there’s no use prolonging this
futile discussion. Time will show you how right I am, and meantime, we’d
better all go to bed.”
CHAPTER II
THE GIRL IN THE CANOE
My room at Variable Winds was cheery and comfortable. Bright-hued
curtains, painted furniture and bowls full of exquisitely tinted
California poppies gave the place a colourful effect that pleased my
aesthetic tastes. A perfectly appointed bathroom added to my content and
I concluded I would stay with the Moores as long as I could keep my
welcome in good working order.
Keeley Moore was one of the best if not the best known detectives of the
day, and while a quiet vacation would do him good, I was certain he was
already itching to get back to his problems and mysteries, with which the
city always supplied him.
I threw off my coat and put on a dressing gown, for the lake breezes were
chill, and sat at a window for a final smoke.
I felt at peace with the world. Some houses give you that feeling, just
as some others make you unreasonably nervous and irritable.
The moon had risen, a three-quarter or nearly full moon, and its
shimmering light across the lake made me turn off my room lights and gaze
out at the scene before me.
My room looked out on the lake, and the house itself was not more than a
dozen yards from the water. The ground sloped gently down to a tiny bit
of beach, a little crescent that had been selected for the site of the
house. On the right of this placid little piece of shore was the
boathouse, a large one, with canoes, rowboats and motor boats. Under the
same roof was the bath house, and in front of that, out in the lake, were
springboards, diving ladders and all the contrivances on which the
bathers like to disport themselves.
To the left was a bit of wild, rocky shore, for the edge of the lake was
greatly diversified and rocks abounded, both in and out of the water.
A line of light came across the lake, but was now and then blotted out as
the swiftly drifting clouds obscured the moon.
I liked it better in the darkness, for the sight was impressive.
From my window I could see a great stretch of water, and as a background,
dense black growth of trees, which came in many places down to the
water’s edge.
Often these trees were on a slope and rose to a height almost to be
called a hill, while again the ground stretched on a low-lying level.
As I looked, the details of the landscape became clearer and I discerned
a few faint lights here and there in the houses.
The big house nearest us I took to be Pleasure Dome. Not only because it
was the next house, but because I could dimly distinguish a large
building surmounted by a gilded dome.
How could any man in his sober senses construct such a place to live in?
It seemed like a cross between the Boston State House and the Taj Mahal.
I was really anxious to go over there and see the thing at closer range.
I decided to ask Moore to take me over the next day.
Suddenly the lights all went out and the house and its dome disappeared
from view. Looking at my watch I saw it was just one o’clock and
concluded that the master of the house had his home darkened at that
hour.
But after I again accustomed my eyes to the darkness I could see the
outlines of Pleasure Dome, and it looked infinitely more attractive in
the half light than it had done in the brightness of its own
illumination.
As a whole, though, the lake scene was depressing. It had a melancholy,
dismal air that seemed to lay a damper on my spirits. It was like a cold,
clammy hand resting on my forehead. I even shook my head impatiently, as
if to fling it off, and then smiled at my own foolishness. But it
persisted. The lake was mournful, it even seemed menacing.
With an exclamation of disgust at my own impressionableness, I sprang up
from my chair, flashed on the lights and prepared for bed.
The bright, pleasant room restored my equilibrium or equanimity or
whatever it was that had been jarred, and I found myself all ready for
bed, in a peaceful, happy frame of mind.
I turned off the lights, and then the lake lured me back to a last
glimpse of its wild, eerie beauty.
Again I flung on my robe and sat at the window. It seemed as if I
couldn’t leave it. The black, sinister water, the dark shores, with deep
hollows here and there, the waving, soughing trees, with thick underbrush
beneath them, all seemed possessed of a spirit of evil, a frightful,
uncanny spirit, that made me shiver with an unreasonable apprehension,
that held me in thrall.
I have no use for premonitions, I have no faith in presentiments, but I
had to admit to myself then a fear, a foreboding of some intangible,
ghastly horror. Then would come the moonlight, pale and sickly now, and
lasting but a moment before the clouds again blotted it out.
Yet I liked the darkness better, for the moon cast such horrendous
shadows of those black trees into the lake that it seemed to people the
lake with monstrous, maleficent beings, who leered and danced like
devils.
Though I knew the hobgoblins were only the waving trees, distorted in the
moonlight, I was none the less weak-minded enough to see portentous
spectres that made my flesh creep.
With a half laugh and a half groan at my utter imbecility, I declared to
myself that I would go to bed and go to sleep.
But as I started to rise from my chair, I saw something that made me sink
back again.
The moon now was behind a light, translucent cloud, that caused a faint
light on the lake.
Round a jutting corner I saw a canoe come into my line of vision.
A moment’s attention convinced me that it was no ghostly craft, but an
ordinary canoe, propelled by a pair of human arms.
This touch of human companionship put to rout all my feelings of fear and
even my forebodings of tragedy.
Normally interested now, I watched to see who might be out at that time
of night, and for what purpose.
The cloud dispersed itself, and the full clear moonlight shone down on
the boat and its occupant. To my surprise it was a girl, a
young-appearing girl, and she was paddling softly, but with a skilled
stroke that told of long practice.
Her hair seemed to be silver in the moonlight, but I realized the light
was deceptive and the curly bob might be either flaxen or gold.
She wore a white sweater and a white skirt—that much I could see plainly,
but I could distinguish little more. She had no hat on, and I could see
white stockings and shoes as the craft passed the house.
She seemed intent on her work, and her beautiful paddling aroused my
intense admiration. She did not look up at our house at all; indeed, she
seemed like an enchanted princess, doomed to paddle for her life, so
earnestly did she bend to her occupation. She passed the house and kept
on, in the direction of Pleasure Dome.
Could she be going there? I hardly thought so, yet I watched carefully,
hanging out of my window to do so.
To my surprise she did steer her little craft straight to the great house
next door, and turned as if to land there.
The Tracy house was on a line with the Moore bungalow, that is, on a
curving line. They were both on the same large crescent of lake shore.
Pleasure Dome had a cove or inlet behind it, Moore had told me, but that
was not visible from my window. The front of the house was, however, and
I distinctly saw the girl beach her canoe, step lightly out and then
disappear among the trees in the direction of the house.
I still sat staring at the point where she had been lost to my vision. I
let the picture sink into my mind. I could see her as plainly in
retrospect as I had in reality. That lissome, slender figure, that
graceful springy walk—but she had limped, a very little. Not as if she
were really lame, but as if she had hurt her foot or strained her ankle
recently.
I speculated on who she might be. Kee had told me of no young girl living
in the Tracy house now, since the niece had left there.
Ah, the niece. Could this be Sampson Tracy’s niece, perhaps staying at
her uncle’s for a visit and coming home late from a party? But she would
have had an escort or chaperon or maid—somebody would have been with her.
Yet, how could I tell that? Kee had said she was high-handed, and might
she not elect to go about unescorted at any hour?
I concluded it must be the niece, for who else could it be? Then I
remembered that there might be other guests at Pleasure Dome besides the
morose and glum-looking Ames. This, then, might be another house guest,
and perhaps the young people of the Deep Lake community were in the habit
of running wild in this fashion.
Anyway, the whole episode had helped to dispel the gloom engendered by
the oppressive and harrowing atmosphere of the lake scene, and I felt
more cheerful. And as there was no sign of the girl’s returning, I
concluded she had reached the house in safety and had doubtless already
gone to bed.
I tarried quite a while longer, listening to the quivering, whispering
sounds of the poplars, and an occasional note from a bird or from some
small animal scurrying through the woods, and finally, with a smile at my
own thoughts, I snapped off the lights and got into bed.
I couldn’t sleep at first, and then, just as I was about to fall asleep,
I heard the light plash of a paddle.
As soon as I realized what the sound was, I sprang up and hurried to the
window. But I saw no boat. Whether the same girl or some one else, the
boat and whoever paddled it, were out of sight, and though I heard, or
imagined I heard, a faint and diminishing sound as of paddling, I could
see no craft of any sort.
I strained my eyes to see if her canoe was still beached in front of
Pleasure Dome, but the moon was unfriendly now, and I could not
distinguish objects on the beach.
Again I began to feel that sickening dread of calamity, that nameless
horror of tragedy, and I resolutely went back to bed with a determination
to stay there till morning, no matter what that God-forsaken lake did
next.
I carried out this plan, and when the morning broke in a riot of
sunshine, singing birds, blooming flowers and a smiling lake, I forgot
all the night thoughts and their burdens and gave myself over to a joyous
outlook.
Breakfast was at eight-thirty and was served on an enclosed porch looking
out on the lake.
“You know, you don’t have to get up at this ungodly hour,” Lora said, as
she smiled her greeting, “but we are wideawakes here.”
“Suits me perfectly,” I told her. “I’ve no love for the feathers after
the day has really begun.”
Twice during our cosy breakfast I was moved to tell about the girl in the
canoe, but both times I suddenly decided not to do so. I couldn’t tell
why, but something forbade the telling of that tale, and I concluded to
defer it, at any rate.
The chat was light and trifling. Somehow it drifted round to the subject
of happiness.
“My idea of happiness,” Lora said, “which I know full well I shall never
attain, is to do something I want to do without feeling that I ought to
be doing something else.”
“Heavens and earth,” exploded her husband, “any one would think you a
veritable slave! What are these onerous duties you have to perform that
keep you from doing your ruthers?”
Lora laughed. “Oh, not all the time, but there is much to do in a house
where the servants are ill-trained and incompetent——”
“And where one has guests,” Maud Merrill smiled at her, and I smiled,
too.
“I’m out of it,” I cried. “You ought to help your friend out, Mrs.
Merrill, but, being a mere man, I can’t do anything to help around the
house.”
Lora laughed gaily, and said, “Don’t take it all too seriously. I do as I
please most of the time, but—well, I suppose the truth is, I’m too
conscientious.”
“That’s it,” Kee agreed. “And you know, conscience is only a form of
vanity. One wants to do right, so one can pat oneself on the back, and
feel a glow of holy satisfaction.”
“That’s so, Kee,” Lora quickly agreed, “and I oughtn’t to pamper my
vanity. So, I won’t make that blackberry shortcake you’re so fond of this
morning, I’ll read a novel, and bear with a smile the slings and arrows
of my conscience as it reproves me.”
“No,” Kee told her, “that’s carrying your vanity scourging too far. Make
the shortcake, dear girl, not so much for me, as for Norris here. I want
him to see what a bird of a cook you are.”
Lora shook her head, but I somehow felt that the shortcake would
materialize, and then Kee and I went out on the lake.
We went in a small motor launch, and he proposed that I should have a
survey of the lake before we began to fish.
“It’s one of the most beautiful and picturesque lakes in the county,” he
said, and I could easily believe that, as we continually came upon more
and more rugged coves and strange rock formations.
“Those are dells,” Kee said, pointing to weird and wonderful rocks that
disclosed caves, grottoes, chasms, natural bridges and here and there
cascades and waterfalls. “Please be duly impressed, Gray, for they are
really wonderful. You know Wisconsin is the oldest state of all, I mean
as to its birth. Geologists say that this whole continent was an ocean,
and when the first island was thrust up above the surface of the waters,
it was Wisconsin itself. Then the earth kindly threw up the other states,
and so, here we are.”
“I thought all these lakes were glacial.”
“Oh, yes, so they are. But you don’t know much, do you? The glacial
period came along a lot later, and as the slow-moving fields of ice
plowed down through this section they scooped out the Mississippi valley,
the beds of the Great Lakes and also the beds of innumerable little
lakes. There are seven thousand in Wisconsin, and two thousand in Oneida
County alone.”
“I am duly impressed, Kee, but quite as much by the way you rattle off
this information as by the knowledge itself. Where’d you get it all?”
“Out of the Automobile Book,” he returned, unabashed. “Most interesting
reading. Better have a shy at it some time.”
“I will. Now is this Pleasure Dome we’re coming to?”
“Yes. Thought you’d like to see it. It’s really a wonder house, you know.
We’ll be invited there to dine or something, but I want you to see it now
as a picture.”
It was impressive, the great pile rising against the background of dark
trees, and with a foreground of brilliant flower beds, fountains, and
arbours.
A critic might call it too ornate, too elaborate, but he would have to
admit it was beautiful.
A building of pure white marble, its lines were simple and true, its
proportions vast and noble, and save for the gilded dome, all its effects
were of the utmost dignity and perfection.
And the dome, to my way of thinking, was in keeping with the majesty of
it all. No lesser type of architecture could have stood it, but this
semi-barbaric pile proudly upheld its glittering crown with a sublime
daring that justified the whole.
There were numerous and involved terraces, all of white marble, that
disappeared and reappeared among the trees in a fascinating way. White
pergolas bore masses of beautiful flowers or vines, and back of it all
rose the black, wooded slopes that surrounded most of the lake.
“We’ll slip around for a glimpse of the Sunless Sea,” Kee said, and I
almost cried out as we came upon the place.
A strange chance had made a huge pool of water, almost square, as an arm
of the lake, and this, stretched behind the house, was like a midnight
sea.
Dark, even in broad daytime, because of the dense woods all round it, it
also looked deep and treacherous. A slight breeze was blowing but this
proved enough to ruffle the waters of the Sunless Sea in a
dangerous-looking way.
“Don’t go in there!” I cried, and Kee turned aside.
“I didn’t intend to,” he said, “I was just throwing a scare into you.
It’s really devilish. A sudden wave can suck you down to interminable
depths. You’re not afraid, really?”
“Oh, no,” I assured him, “but it’s pesky frightensome to look at,
especially——”
Again I was on the verge of telling him of the scene on the lake the
night before, and again I stopped, held back by some force outside
myself.
“Especially why?” he asked, curiously, but I evaded the issue by saying,
“Especially when one is on a holiday.”
He laughed and we turned away from Pleasure Dome.
“Now I’ll show you the island,” he said, “and then we’ll tackle the
tackle.”
We went rapidly back past Pleasure Dome, on down the lake, past Moore’s
own place, and then on a bit farther to the Island.
“They call it ‘Whistling Reeds’, and it’s a good name,” he said. “When
the wind’s a certain way, and it’s quiet otherwise, you can hear the
reeds whistle like birds.”
“You do have most interesting places,” I said. “And who lives here? And
where’s the house?”
“Alma Remsen lives here, the niece of Sampson Tracy I told you about last
night. You can’t see the house, the trees are so thick.”
“I should say they were!” and I stared at the dense black mass. “Why
doesn’t she cut a vista, at least?”
“She doesn’t want it, I believe. Thinks it’s more picturesque like this.”
“I’d be scared to death to live there!”
“No reason to be. Nothing untoward ever happens up here. All peaceable
citizens.”
“But fancy living in such a place. How do they get provisions and all
that?”
“Oh, that’s easy. Lots of the dealers deliver their stuff in canoes or
motor boats. See, there’s the boathouse. Some day we’ll call here. Alma
likes my wife, she’ll be glad to see us.”
“I suppose she’s a canoeist.”
“Everybody’s that, around here. I mean the people who live all the year
round. A good many people live on islands. They like it. This island, you
see, is a big one. About two or three acres, say. That gives Miss Remsen
room for tennis courts and gardens and pretty much anything she wants,
and the house is very pleasant. Nothing like Pleasure Dome, but a bigger
house than the one we’re in.”
We turned then, and started off toward the spot where Kee elected to do
his fishing.
“Hello,” he said, as we moved on, “there’s Alma now. That’s Miss Remsen.”
We were now about midway between the Moore bungalow and the Island of
Whistling Reeds. I looked, to see a girl come down to the floating dock
of the boathouse, spring into a canoe and paddle away.
I said nothing aloud, but to myself I said it was the girl I had seen in
a canoe the night before.
There was no mistaking that slim, lithe figure, that graceful capable way
of managing the boat, and she even wore what seemed to me to be the same
clothes, a white skirt and white sweater. She had on a small white felt
hat, and I noticed that she did not limp at all. As I had surmised, the
limp was occasioned by some slight and temporary strain or bruise.
“Well, don’t eat her up with your eyes!” exclaimed Moore, and I realized
I had been staring.
Also I was just about to tell him of seeing her before, but the chaffing
tone he used somehow shut me up on the subject.
So I only said, gaily: “Bowled over by the Lady of the Lake!” and laughed
back at him.
“That’s what she’s called up here,” he informed me. “She’s in her canoe
so much and manages it so perfectly, she seems like a part of it. Of
course, wherever she goes, she has to go in that or in some boat. Can’t
get on and off an island in a motor car.”
“Must be an awful nuisance.”
“She doesn’t find it so. Says she likes it better than a motor. Look at
her paddle. Isn’t she an expert?”
“She sure is.” And I held my tongue tightly to refrain from saying that
she seemed to me to have paddled even more beautifully the night before.
But, I said to myself, that was doubtless the glamour loaned by the
moonlight and the witchery of the night scene.
Miss Remsen soon reached Pleasure Dome, and we could see her beach her
canoe and follow her with our eyes for a few steps until she disappeared
behind a clump of tall trees.
We set to work then in good earnest and I saw in Keeley Moore for the
time being an embodiment of perfect happiness.
He loved to fish, even alone, but better still, he loved to fish with a
congenial companion. And we were that. Though not friends of such very
long standing, we were similar in our likes and dislikes as well as in
our dispositions.
We had an identical liking for silence at times, and as a rule we chose
the same times. Often we would sit for half an hour in a sociable
silence, and then break into the most animated conversation.
This morning, after we had begun to fish, such a spell fell upon us. I
was glad, for I wanted to think things out; to learn, if possible, why I
was so interested, or why, indeed, I was interested at all, in Alma
Remsen.
Just because I saw her paddling over to her uncle’s house the night
before and again this morning, was that enough to make me feel that I
must keep still about the first excursion? And, if so, why?
I didn’t even know yet what she looked like. So it couldn’t be that I had
fallen for a pretty face—I didn’t even know whether she had one.
I thought of asking Kee that, but decided not to. A strange, vague
instinct held me back from mentioning Alma Remsen’s name.
Suddenly he said, “Damn!” in a most explosive way, and not unnaturally I
thought he had lost one of those biggest of all big fishes.
But as he began pulling in his empty line and making other evident
preparations for bringing our fishing party to an end, I mildly asked for
light on the subject.
“Got to go home,” he said, like a sulky child.
“What for?”
“See that red flag in the bungalow window? That means come home at once.
Lora only uses it in cases of real importance, so we’ve got to go.”
CHAPTER III
THE TRAGEDY
As we went up the steps and crossed the porch of the Moore bungalow, we
saw a man seated in the lounge, talking to Lora.
Both jumped up at our approach, and Lora cried out, “Oh, Kee, Mr. Tracy
is dead!”
“Sampson Tracy! Dead?” exclaimed Moore, with a look of blank
consternation.
“Yes,” the man said, tersely, “and not only dead, but murdered. I’m
Police Detective March. I’ve just come from the Tracy house. You see,
everything is at sixes and sevens over there. Nobody authorized to take
the helm, though plenty of them want to do so. In a way, Everett, the
secretary, is head of the heap, but a guest there, Mr. Ames, refuses to
acknowledge that Everett has any say at all. Claims he is Tracy’s oldest
and closest friend, and insists on taking charge himself.”
“Why shouldn’t he?” asked Keeley Moore, quietly.
“Well, why should he?” countered the policeman. “And, besides, I think
he’s the man who killed Tracy. But here’s my errand here. It seems Mr.
Ames was here last night to dinner?”
Lora nodded assent to his inquiring glance.
“Well, he formed a high opinion of Mr. Moore’s detective ability, and he
wants to engage his services, if possible.”
Kee Moore was a tall, dark man, about thirty-five or so. But when he
undertook a case, or even thought about undertaking a case, he seemed to
change his personality. Rather, he intensified it. He seemed to be
taller, darker and older.
I saw this change come over him at once, as he listened to the police
detective’s words.
There is a phrase about an old warhorse scenting the battle. I’ve never
seen such a thing, but I am sure it implies the same attitude that Moore
showed at the moment. His eyes took on a far-away look that was yet alert
and receptive. His hands showed strained muscles as he grasped the back
of a chair that stood in front of him. His lips lost their smiling curve
and set in a straight line. I knew all these gestures well, and I knew
that not only would he take up this case, but that he was anxious to get
at it at once.
Lora knew it, too, and I heard her sigh as she resigned herself to the
inevitable. It wasn’t necessary for any of us to say we had hoped Kee was
to have a rest from his work, an idle vacation. The two Moores and I knew
that, and we all knew, too, that the vacation was broken in upon and
there would be no rest for the busy, inquiring brain until the Tracy case
was settled for all time.
“I don’t know about accepting this offer of Mr. Ames to engage my
services,” Kee said, “but I will most certainly look into the matter and
if I can be of help we can make definite arrangements. Tell me a little
more of the circumstances, please, and then we will go over to Pleasure
Dome.”
“It seems the butler or housekeeper was in the habit of taking tea to Mr.
Tracy’s room of a morning, at nine o’clock. Well, this morning, the door
was locked and nobody responded to knocks on it. So—you can get the
connecting data later, sir—they broke in, and found Mr. Tracy dead in
bed, with the strangest doings all about.”
“What do you mean by strange doings?”
“Well, he was all dolled up with flowers and a long red scarf, and, if
you please, a red feather duster sticking up behind his head——”
“Did you see all this?” demanded Moore, his eyes growing darker every
minute.
“Yes, and that’s not half! There was an orange in his hand and crackers
on his pillow and a crucifix against his breast——”
“Come on,” said Moore, quietly, but in a tone of suppressed excitement.
“Let’s get over there before they disturb all that scenery! I never heard
of such astounding conditions.”
“No, sir, I’ll say you didn’t,” March agreed. “I felt a bit miffed when
they told me to come and get you; any detective would, you know, but when
I came to think over all that hodge-podge of evidence, I knew it was a
case too big for me to tackle alone. I hope you’ll let me help you, sir.”
“Oh, of course,” said Moore, a little impatiently, as he urged the
detective to start. “Will your car hold us all?” His glance included me,
and March answered; “Oh, yes. I’ve one of Mr. Tracy’s big cars.”
When we reached the great house, and stopped at the landing place under
the porte-cochère, I was more than ever impressed by the beauty all
about.
There was nothing glaring or ostentatious. The bit of verandah we
traversed to reach the front door was brightened with a few railing
flower-boxes and potted palms, but it was quietly dignified and stately.
Stately was the key word for the whole place, and I suddenly remembered
that Kubla Khan’s Pleasure Dome was described as stately. Surely, Sampson
Tracy had sensed the real meaning of the phrase.
Inside, the house was the same. Marked everywhere by good taste, the
appointments were of the finest and best.
There seemed to be a great many people about. Servants were coming and
going and policemen were here and there.
March took Moore and myself directly to the library, where Inspector
Farrell was awaiting us.
Also present were Ames, whom we already knew, and a young man, who proved
to be Charles Everett, the confidential secretary of the dead man.
I took to Everett at once. He was the clean-cut type of so many of our
efficient young American secretaries. He looked capable and wise, and
being introduced, bowed gravely.
Ames took up the matter at once.
He looked perturbed rather than grumpy this morning, but his speaking
voice had an unpleasant twang, and I saw Kee stiffen up as if he would
certainly decline to be at this man’s beck and call.
“I sent for you, Mr. Moore,” Ames began, “to get your help in unravelling
the mystery of Sampson Tracy’s death. As you will soon learn, the
conditions are startlingly unusual, even bizarre. But I have heard that
the more bizarre the clues and evidence, the easier a case is to solve.
So, I beg you to get at it at once and exert your most clever efforts.”
“But I haven’t yet said I would take the case for you,” Moore told him.
“Why not?” cried Ames, his face lowering in a pettish frown. “I shall
make no objection to your terms, whatever they may be—in reason. I shall
not trammel you with any restrictions or annoy you with any advice. I am
told you are a famous detective. I know you for a friend of Mr. Tracy.
Why, then, would you hesitate to solve the problem of his death and learn
the identity of his murderer?”
“Are you sure he was murdered?” asked Moore. “You see, I know little of
the facts in the case.”
“No,” broke in Inspector Farrell, “no, we don’t know that he was
murdered. And the facts that we do know are seemingly contradictory. I
trust, Mr. Moore, that you will look into the matter, at least, and give
us the benefit of your findings, whether you officially take up the case
or not.”
“I cannot say,” Moore told him, “until I am in possession of the details
of the tragedy. Nor do I want it told me here. Let me see the body, let
me inquire for myself concerning the facts, and let me draw my own
conclusions. Only after that can I decide whether I take on the case or
not.”
“I think you very unreasonable, Mr. Moore,” Ames grumbled. “I want you to
be my agent in this matter, and so I want you to start in fully equipped
with my sanction and authority.”
“Just how much authority have you here, Mr. Ames?” asked Moore, looking
at him thoughtfully.
“As the oldest and nearest friend of Sampson Tracy, and as his intimate
confidant and adviser, I think I can claim more authority than any one
else. In fact the man had no relatives in the world except a niece. He
had no friends of a confidential nature except myself. I am not referring
to financial affairs, they are in the hands of his lawyer and his
secretaries. But if he has been murdered, I propose to hound down the
wretch who is responsible for his death. I know much about Tracy’s life
that nobody else knows. I know of those who might wish him dead, and my
knowledge, combined with the skill of a canny detective, must bring out
the truth.”
This was straightforward talk, and Ames, though his face wore an
aggrieved expression, spoke concisely and to the point. But after all,
his manner was truculent, he didn’t ask Moore’s help so much as he
demanded it, almost commandeered it. I was not surprised to see Kee stick
to his first decision.
“I appreciate all you say, Mr. Ames,” Kee said, “but I repeat I am not
willing to take a case until I look into it. Do not delay further, but
let us go at once to the scene of the tragedy.”
Ames glowered, but without another word he led the way from the room and
turned toward the staircase.
The broad steps, carpeted with red velvet, branched half way up, and
turning to the right, Ames conducted us to Sampson Tracy’s rooms. They
were in a wing that had been flung out at the back of the house, probably
as a later addition to the structure. Entrance was through a private
hall, and then into a foyer or ante-room, from which led several doors.
“This is the bedroom,” said the Inspector, taking a key from his pocket
as he paused before one of the doors.
“I thought you had to break in,” Moore said, looking at the unmarred
door.
“Not exactly,” Farrell told him. “The door was locked and the key inside,
in the lock. But they got the garage mechanician up here, and he managed
to dislodge the key and then get the door unlocked with his tools.”
He opened the door, and we filed in, the Inspector first, then Moore and
I, then Ames and Detective March.
Farrell closed and locked the door behind us, and it was then that I saw
the strange, the grotesque spectacle of Sampson Tracy’s deathbed.
The first thing that caught my attention and from which I found it well
nigh impossible to detach my vision was the red-feather duster.
A full plume of bright red feathers seemed to crown the head on the
pillow.
The handle of the duster had been thrust down behind and under the head,
and only the red plume showed, of such fine, light feathers that a few
fronds waved at a step across the room or a movement near the bed.
Then I looked at the rest of the strange picture.
Sampson Tracy was a large and heavy man. His head was large, and his face
was of the conformation sometimes called pear-shaped. He had heavy jaws,
pendulous jowls and a large mouth. Clean shaven as to face, his hair was
thick and rather long. His eyebrows were bushy, and his half opened eyes
of a glassy and yet dull blue.
His hair was iron-gray, and round his brow were wreathed some blossoms of
blue larkspur. Across his chest, diagonally, was a garland of the same
flowers. The blossoms were not tied or twined, they had merely been laid
in a row in order to form a vinelike garland.
The right hand, bent to rest on his breast, held a crucifix, and in the
left hand was, of all things, a small orange.
His head lay on one large pillow, and on the other pillow was a folded
handkerchief and also two small sweet crackers. And encircling the head
and shoulders, framing all these strange details, a long and wide scarf,
of soft and filmy scarlet chiffon, a beautiful scarf, from a woman’s
point of view, but a peculiar adjunct to a man’s taking-off.
I stared at all this, quite forgetting to look at Moore to see how he was
taking it.
When I did glance up at him, hearing his voice, I saw he had evidently
completed his scrutiny of the bed and had turned to Harper Ames.
“Why do you think Mr. Tracy was murdered?” Kee asked of the glum-faced
one.
“What other theory is possible?” Ames returned. “A suicide would not
place all that flumadiddle about himself. A natural death wouldn’t have
such decorations, either. So, he was killed, either by some one with a
most distorted sense of humour, or there is a meaning in each seeming bit
of foolishness.”
“What did he die of, exactly?”
“That we don’t know yet, the doctor will be here any minute, and the
coroner, too.”
Even as he spoke, Doctor Rogers arrived. He was the family physician, and
as Farrell opened the door to his knock, he went straight to the bed.
“What’s all this rubbish?” he exclaimed, reaching for the scarf.
“Don’t touch it, If you can help it, Doctor,” March implored him. “It may
be evidence——”
“Evidence of what?”
“Crime—murder—or is it a natural death?”
Doctor Rogers was making his examination with as little disturbance as
might be of the flowers and scarf.
But the feather duster he pulled from its place and flung across the
room. The orange followed it, and the crackers.
“Pick them up if you want them for clues,” he said; “you know where they
were found, and I won’t have my friend photographed with all those monkey
tricks about him!”
March picked up the things, with a due regard for possible finger prints,
and stored them away in a drawer of the chiffonier.
Finally, Doctor Rogers straightened up from his examining, and rose to
his feet.
“Apoplexy,” he said. “What’s all this talk about murder? Sampson Tracy is
dead of apoplexy, as I have often told him he would be, if he kept on
with his plan of eating and drinking too much and taking little or no
exercise. He had an apoplectic stroke last night which proved fatal. He
died, as nearly as I can judge, about two o’clock. As to these foolish
trinkets, they were brought in here later and placed round him after he
was dead. You can see that though he seemed to hold the cross and the
orange in his hands, they weren’t tightly held, the fingers were bent
round them after death. It must have been the deed of some child or of
some servant who is mentally lacking. Is there a girl of twelve or
fourteen on the place? But I’ve no time to tarry now. I’m on my way to
the train. I’m going for my vacation on a trip through Canada and down
the Pacific coast. I’d throw it over, of course, if I could be of any
use. But I can’t, and my wife is waiting for me. I’ve given my statement
as to Tracy’s death, and I know I’m right. Here comes Coroner Hart now. I
say, Hart, the Inspector and Mr. Ames here will tell you my findings, and
I know you’ll corroborate me. It’s all a terrible pity, but I knew he was
digging his grave with his teeth. No amount of advice did a bit of good.
As to the flowers and rags, look for a twelve-year-old girl.... There are
the ones who kick up such bobberies. Maybe the housekeeper has a
grandchild, or maybe there is a kiddy in the chauffeur’s or gardener’s
cottage. Good-bye, I must run. Sorry, but to lose this local train means
to upset our reservations all along the trip.”
The Doctor hurried away, yet so positive had been his diagnosis, and so
logical his disinclination to linger when he could be of no possible use,
that we all forgave him in our minds.
The Coroner gave a start at the masses of flowers, somewhat disarranged
by Doctor Rogers’s manipulations, and drew nearer to the body.
Farrell told him how things had been before Doctor Rogers removed the
feather duster and threw out the orange and crackers.
“He ought to have let them alone!” Hart declared, angrily.
“It doesn’t really matter,” put in March, “I know exactly how they were
lying, and anyway, Rogers says it’s a natural death.”
“Natural? With all that gimcrack show!”
“He says that’s the work of a mischievous child, for preference, a little
girl of twelve or fourteen.”
“He’s thinking of Poltergeist—he’s got that sort of thing on the brain.
Let me take a look at the body.”
So Doctor Hart sat on the side of the bed and made his examination of the
dead millionaire.
“There is every symptom of apoplexy,” he said, at last, “and no symptom
of anything else. Yet, I feel a little uncertainty. We’ll have to see
what the autopsy says.”
“When can you have that?” Ames asked him.
“Very soon. This afternoon, probably. But it is important now to make
inquiries as to conditions last night. You were here, Mr. Ames?”
“Yes,—that is, I am staying here, visiting, you know,—but last evening I
was out to dinner, with our neighbour, Mr. Moore here.”
“What time did you get home?”
“Not late; about eleven, I think.”
“Had Mr. Tracy gone to bed then?”
“No, he was waiting up for me. We went into the smoking room and had a
smoke and a chat.”
“What time did you retire?”
“We went upstairs about midnight, I should say. I said good night to him
on this floor and then went on upstairs to my own room.”
“He seemed in his usual health and spirits?”
“So far as I noticed, yes.”
“You heard nothing unusual in the night?”
“Nothing at all.”
“What was the subject of your conversation last evening?”
“Nothing of serious moment. He asked me who were at the Moore party and I
told him. He was lightly interested, but cared only to hear about Mrs.
Dallas, who is his fiancée and who was at the party.”
“And Mr. Tracy was not there?”
“No. He had been invited, but—well, he had had a little tiff with the
lady, and in a moment of anger had declined the invitation. He was sorry
afterward and wished he had accepted it. I begged him to go in my place,
I would have willingly stayed home, but he wouldn’t hear of such a thing.
Then I wanted to telephone Mrs. Moore, the hostess, and ask her to make
room for him, too, but he wouldn’t allow that, either. So I went to the
dinner, and Mrs. Dallas went, but Mr. Tracy stayed at home.”
“Alone?”
“I think so, except for his two secretaries. When I came home, he was in
a pleasant enough mood, and I concluded he had thought it all over and
straightened it out in his mind one way or another. I didn’t refer to the
matter at all, but he asked me many questions about Mrs. Dallas, such as
how she looked, what mood she was in and whether she said anything about
him. Just such questions as a man would naturally ask about his absent
sweetheart.”
“All this properly belongs to the inquest,” Coroner Hart said. “But I
want to get any side-lights I can while the matter is fresh in your mind.
Do you know this room well, Mr. Ames?”
“Not at all. I’ve only been in here once or twice in my life.”
“Then you can’t tell me if anything is missing?”
“No, I think not,” Ames looked around. “No, I don’t know anything about
the appointments here. Or do you mean valuables?”
“Anything at all. I think we can’t blink the fact that somebody came in
here after the man was dead, and arranged all those weird decorations.
Now maybe that somebody took away something as well.”
“That I don’t know,” Ames reiterated. “I know nothing of Tracy’s
belongings.”
The man had been pleasant enough at first, but now he was resuming his
irritable manner, and I wondered if he would get really angry.
Keeley Moore was saying almost nothing. But I knew he was losing no
points of what was happening, and I rather expected him to break out
soon. He did.
“Perhaps, Doctor Hart,” he said, quietly, “it might be a good idea to get
Mr. Tracy’s manservant or housekeeper up here, and find out a little more
about the appointments of this room. For instance, whether the orange and
crackers were already here, or whether the mysterious visitor brought
them.”
“I was just about to do that, Mr. Moore,” the Coroner said, with such
haste that I had my doubts of his veracity.
But he rang a bell in the wall, and we waited for a response.
The butler himself answered it, a rather grandiose personage in the
throes of excitement and grief at the terrible happenings to his master.
“Well, Griscom,” Ames said, with his habitual frown, “these gentlemen
want to ask you some questions. Answer them as fully as you can.”
“Was it Mr. Tracy’s habit to have a bit of fruit or a cracker in his room
at night?” the Coroner inquired.
“Yes, sir,” said the butler, and the sound of his own voice seemed to
steady him. “He always had an orange or a few grapes and a cracker or two
on the table by his bed, sir.”
“And do you think this orange and these crackers are the ones put out for
him last night?”
“I’m sure of it, sir. I put them out myself.”
“Then where is the plate? Surely you had them on a plate.”
“Of course, sir. They were on a small gilt-edged plate. I don’t see it
about.”
“No, I don’t either. Had Mr. Tracy a valet?”
“No, sir, he didn’t like a man fussing about. I attended him, sir, and a
footman helped me out now and then; and Mrs. Fenn, she’s cook and
housekeeper, sir, she looked after his clothes, saving what I did
myself.”
“Have you any reason to think your master would take his own life?”
“Oh, Lord, no, sir. Begging your pardon, but he was very fond of life,
was Mr. Tracy. I thought he died of a fit, sir.”
“Probably he did. A fit or stroke of apoplexy. I begin to think,
Inspector, we have no murder mystery on our hands after all.”
“No,” said Farrell, shaking his head, “apparently not.”
“Apparently yes,” said Keeley Moore, quietly. He had been looking at the
dead man, and though he had not moved, but had stood for a long time,
with his hands in his pockets, staring down at the still figure on the
bed, I knew, somehow, that he had made a discovery.
“Stand over here, please, Inspector,” he said, in his calm,
matter-of-fact way.
Farrell went and stood beside him, and Moore pointed to a very small
circular object that shone like silver, though nearly hidden by the thick
and rather long hair of Sampson Tracy.
It was the head of a nail that had been driven into the man’s skull.
CHAPTER IV
THE NAIL
“My God!” Farrell exclaimed, stepping closer and pushing aside the gray
hair, thus clearly revealing the awful truth.
A flat-headed nail, the head rather more than a quarter of an inch in
diameter, had been driven into the skull with such force that it showed
merely as a metal disk. Having been hidden by the dead man’s hair, it had
remained unnoticed until Moore’s quick eyes espied it.
Farrell picked at it a little, but it was far too firmly fastened to be
moved by his fingers.
“What shall we do?” the Inspector asked, helplessly. “Shall we try to get
Doctor Rogers back?”
“No,” returned the Coroner, “he’s just starting on a long trip. Let him
go. He could do nothing and it would be a pity to spoil his journey. His
diagnosis of apoplexy was most natural in the circumstances, for the
symptoms are the same. I, too, thought death was the result of an
apoplectic stroke. But now we know it is black murder, the case comes
directly within my jurisdiction, and there’s no occasion to recall Doctor
Rogers.”
“You’re right,” Ames assented, “but who could have done this fearful
thing? I can hardly believe a human being capable of such a horror! Mr.
Moore, you simply must take up this case. It ought to be a problem after
your own heart.”
Every word the man uttered made me dislike him more. To refer to this
terrible tragedy as a problem after Moore’s own heart seemed to me to
indicate a mind callous and almost ghoulish in its type.
I knew Kee well enough to feel sure that he would investigate the murder,
but not at the behest of Harper Ames.
He only acknowledged Ames’s speech by a noncommittal nod and turned to
Detective March.
“We have our work cut out for us,” he said, very gravely. “I have never
seen a stranger case. The murderer must have been a man of brute passions
and brute strength. That nail is almost imbedded in the bone, and, I
fancy, needed more than one blow of the hammer that drove it in. But
first, as to the doors and windows. You tell me they were locked this
morning?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Griscom, the butler, as Moore looked at him.
He was a smallish man, bald and with what are sometimes called pop-eyes.
He stared in a frightened manner, but he controlled his voice as he went
on to tell his story.
“Yes, sir, I brought the master’s tea at nine o’clock, as always. The
door was locked——”
“Is it usually locked in the morning?” Moore interrupted.
“Sometimes, not always. When it is locked, I knock and Mr. Tracy would
get up and open the door. If unlocked, I walked right in.”
“And this morning it was locked, and the key in the lock on the inside?”
“Yes, sir. So I knocked, but when there was no answer, I got scared——”
“Why were you scared?”
“Because Doctor Rogers had often told me that Mr. Tracy was in danger of
an apoplectic stroke, and that I must do anything I could to make him eat
less and take more exercise. I’ve been with the master a long time, sir,
and I had the privilege of a bit of talk with him now and then. So I did
try to persuade him to obey the doctor’s orders, and he would laugh and
promise to do so. But he forgot it as soon as he saw some dish he was
fond of, and he’d eat his fill of it.”
“Go on, Griscom,” Moore said, “what happened next?”
“I went to Mr. Everett——”
“Yes, he went to Everett,” broke in the aggrieved voice of Harper Ames.
“Why did he do that, instead of coming to me, I’d like to know!”
“Go on,” Moore instructed the butler.
“I went to Mr. Everett, sir, he was up and dressed, and he said, at once,
to get Louis—that’s the chauffeur—and tell him to bring some tools, I did
that, and Louis first pushed the key out of the lock, and then poked
around with a wire until he got the door open. Then we came in——”
“Who came in?”
“Mr. Everett and Mr. Ames and me, sir. And Mrs. Fenn—she’s the
housekeeper—she saw Louis running upstairs, so she came, too.”
“And you saw——?”
“Mr. Tracy, just as he was when you first saw him, sir. Just as he is
now, except for the things Doctor Rogers chucked out.”
“Is that door, the one that was locked, the entrance to the whole suite?”
“Yes, sir, that door is the only one connecting these rooms with the
house.”
“I see. Now what about the windows?”
“They haven’t been touched, sir.”
Kee Moore turned his attention to the windows. There were many of them.
The suite of Sampson Tracy’s was a rectangular wing, built out from the
main house, and having windows on three sides. But all of these windows
overlooked the deep, black waters of the Sunless Sea. It had been the
whim of the man to have his quarters thus, to be surrounded on all sides
by the water of the lake that he loved, and he usually had all the
windows wide open, doubtless enjoying the lake breezes that played
through the rooms, and listening to the birds, whose notes broke the
stillness of the night.
“What is below these rooms?” Moore asked.
“The big ballroom, sir. Nothing else.”
After scrutinizing every window in the bedroom, dressing room, bathroom
and sitting room, Moore said, slowly: “These windows seem to me to be
inaccessible from below.”
It was characteristic of the man that he didn’t say they were
inaccessible but merely that they seemed so to him.
As they certainly did to the rest of us. We all looked out, and in every
instance, the sheer drop to the lake was about fifteen or more feet. The
outer walls of marble presented no foothold for even the most daring of
climbers. They were smooth, plain, and absolutely unscalable.
“It is certain no one entered by the windows,” Moore said, at last,
having looked out of every one. “I suppose the house is always carefully
secured at night?”
“Yes, sir,” Griscom assured him. “Mr. Tracy was very particular about
that. He and all the household had latchkeys, and the front door—indeed,
all the doors and windows were carefully seen to.”
“Who has latchkeys?”
“Mr. Everett, Mr. Dean, myself and the housekeeper. Then there are others
which are given to guests. Mr. Ames had one——”
“With so many latchkeys about, one may have been abstracted by some
evil-minded person.”
“Not likely, sir. We keep strict watch on them.”
“Well, that would only give entrance to the house. How could anyone get
into and out of Mr. Tracy’s room, leaving the door locked on the inside?”
I knew Moore purposely voiced this problem himself, to head off those who
would ask it of him. He had often said to me, “if you don’t want a
question asked of you, ask it yourself of somebody else.” And so, as he
flung this at them each felt derelict in not being able to reply.
But Ames’s querulous voice volleyed the question back.
“That’s why I want you to do up this business, Moore,” he said. “That’s
what makes it such a pretty problem——”
Moore could stand this no longer.
“For an intimate friend of a martyred man, I should think you would see
the matter in a more personal light than a pretty problem!”
“Oh, I do. I’m sad and sorry enough, but I don’t wear my heart on my
sleeve. And first of all, I’m keen to avenge my friend. And I know that
what’s to be done must be done quickly. So, get busy, I beg.”
The more Ames said, the less I liked him, and I knew Kee felt the same
way about it. But the man was right as to haste being advisable. The
circumstances were so peculiar, the conditions so fantastic, that search
for the criminal must be made quickly, or a man of such diabolical
cleverness would put himself beyond our reach.
The Inspector, the police detective and Keeley Moore consulted a few
moments and then Inspector Farrell said:
“The case is altered. Now that we know it is wilful murder, and not a
stroke of illness, we must act accordingly. Coroner Hart will conduct an
immediate inquiry, preliminary to his formal inquest. No one may leave
the house; you, Griscom, will tell the servants this, and I shall call in
more help from the police station to guard the place. We will go
downstairs, and the Coroner will choose a suitable room, and begin his
investigation.”
Farrell was an efficient director, though in no way a detective. He
locked the door that commanded the whole apartment after he had herded us
all out.
We filed downstairs, and I could hear women’s voices in a small reception
room as we passed it.
The Coroner chose a room which was fitted up as a sort of writing room.
It was of moderate size and contained several desks or writing tables,
evidently a writing room for guests. There was a bookcase of books and a
table of periodicals and newspapers.
Clearly, the house had every provision for comfort and pleasure. Save for
the sinister atmosphere now pervading it, I felt I should have liked to
visit there.
The Coroner settled himself at a table, and instructed Griscom to send in
the house servants one at a time. He also told the butler to serve
breakfast as usual, and advised Harper Ames to go to the dining room, as
he would be called on later for testimony.
Hart’s manner now was crisp and business-like. The realization of the
awful facts of the case had spurred him to definite and immediate action.
Mrs. Fenn, the cook-housekeeper, threw no new light on the situation. She
corroborated Griscom’s story of the locked door and the subsequent
opening of it by Louis, but she could add no new information.
“You were fond of Mr. Tracy?” asked Moore, kindly, for the poor woman was
vainly trying to control her grief.
“Oh, yes, sir. He was a good master and a truly great man.”
“You’ve never known, among the guests of the house, any one who was his
enemy?”
“No, sir. But I almost never see the guests. I’m housekeeper, to be sure,
but the maids do all the housework. I superintend the cooking.”
“And you’ve heard no gossip about any one who had an enmity or a grudge
toward Mr. Tracy?”
“Ah, who could have? He was a gentle, peaceable man, was Mr. Tracy. Who
could wish him harm?”
“Yet somebody did,” the Coroner put in, and then he dismissed Mrs. Fenn,
feeling she could be of no use.
The other house servants were similarly ignorant of any guest or
neighbour who was unfriendly to Mr. Tracy, and then Hart called for the
chauffeur.
Louis, a Frenchman, was different in manner and disinclined to talk. In
fact, he refused to do so unless all members of the household were sent
from the room.
So the Coroner ordered everybody out except Farrell and Detective March,
Moore and myself.
Then Louis waxed confidential and declared that Mr. Ames and Mr. Tracy
were deadly enemies.
I thought the man was exaggerating, and that he had some grudge of his
own against Ames. But Hart listened avidly to the chauffeur’s
arraignment, and I was forced to the conclusion that Louis knew a lot.
Yet it was all hints and innuendoes. He stated that the two men were
continually quarrelling. Asked what about, he replied “Money matters.”
“What sort of money matters?” Hart asked him.
“Stocks and bonds and mortgages. I think Mr. Ames owed Mr. Tracy a great
deal of money and he couldn’t or wouldn’t pay it, and so they wrangled
over it.”
“There was no quarrelling on other subjects?”
“No, sir, except now and then about Mrs. Dallas.”
“And what about her?”
“Well, Mr. Ames didn’t want Mr. Tracy to marry her.”
“Did Mr. Ames favour the lady himself?”
“Oh, no, sir. He’s a woman hater. Or at least he says so. No, but he
didn’t want Mr. Tracy to marry anybody for fear he might cut him, Mr.
Ames, out of his will.”
“How do you know all these things?”
“Well, I drive the car, you see, and they talk these matters over, and I
can’t help hearing them. They make no bones of it, they talk right out. I
never repeat anything I hear, in an ordinary way, but as you ask me,
sir——”
“Yes, Louis, tell all you know. So Mr. Ames would suffer financially if
Mr. Tracy married?”
“I don’t know that, sir, but I know he thought he would. And I suppose he
knew.”
“It seems to me,” Farrell said, “we ought to know the terms of Mr.
Tracy’s will as it might help us to get at the truth.”
“We can’t do that at the moment,” Hart said, “and anyway, this is merely
a preliminary inquiry to get the main facts of the situation.”
But the other servants had no more information to impart than those
hitherto questioned. A chambermaid, one Sally Bray, convinced us that all
the queer decorations spread on the bed had been already in the room and
were, therefore, not brought in by the murderer.
The red feather duster belonged in a small cupboard that held polishing
cloths and dusters. The larkspur flowers had been in a vase on a side
table, and the whole bunch had been removed from the vase and laid around
the dead man. The orange and crackers had been on a plate on the bedside
table, but where the plate was, Sally had no idea. The crucifix was Mr.
Tracy’s property and belonged on a small hook above the head of his bed.
“And the scarf,” suggested Hart. “The red chiffon scarf, where did that
come from?”
Sally blushed and looked down, but finally being urged to tell, said that
she knew it to be a scarf belonging to Mrs. Dallas, and the lady had left
it there one evening not long ago, when she had been there to dinner.
“Why had it not been returned to her?” Hart wanted to know.
“Because Mr. Tracy took a notion to it. It was a sort of keepsake of the
lady, sir, and, too, Mr. Tracy was that fond of beautiful things. Any
pretty piece of silk or brocade would please him tremenjous.”
“Then, whoever arranged all those decorations round him knew of his love
for beautiful things, and that would explain the flowers and the scarf.
Is there anything missing from his room, Sally?”
“I don’t know, sir. I’ve not been allowed in there this morning.”
“Well, go up there now. Tell the guard he’s to let you in. Here’s the
key.”
“Oh, sir, I—I daren’t! Don’t make me go in there!”
The girl shivered with real fear, but Hart had to know.
“You must go,” he said, not unkindly. “Get Griscom to go with you, or
Mrs. Fenn, if you like. But it is important for me to know if anything
has been taken away that you know of. I don’t mean papers or letters from
his desk. I mean any of his appointments or small belongings.”
The girl went off, still shuddering, and Hart finished up the rest of the
servants in short order.
Next he interviewed Charlie Everett. I had taken a fancy to Everett, and
somehow, from the way Kee looked at him, I thought he liked him, too.
He was not a distinguished-looking man, but he seemed a well-balanced
sort, and his eyes were alert and showed a sense of humour. Not that the
occasion called for humour, but you can always tell by a man’s eyes if he
has that desirable trait.
Very quiet and self-possessed was Everett, his manner polite but a little
detached. He was quite ready to answer questions but he gave only the
answer, no additional information.
Yes, he said, he had spent an hour or so with Mr. Tracy the night before.
They had played a game of billiards and had then sat for a short time
over a cigar and a whisky and soda. Then, perhaps about ten o’clock, he
had said good night to his employer and had gone to his own room. No, he
could form no idea whatever as to who could have killed Sampson Tracy, or
how he could have got into the room.
“That is,” he amended his speech, “he could get in easy enough, but I
don’t see how he could get out and leave the door locked behind him.”
“It is one of those cases,” Hart said, a little sententiously, “where
there has been a murder committed in a sealed room.”
Keeley Moore spoke up then.
“A murder cannot be committed in a sealed room,” he said, “unless the
murderer stays there. If the murderer left the room, the room was not a
sealed room.”
“How did he get out?” demanded Hart.
“That we have yet to learn. But he did get out, not through the door to
the hall. Remains the possibility of a secret passage and the windows.”
“I’m sure there is no secret passage,” Everett said, with an unusual
burst of unasked information. “I’ve been here three years and if there
was such a thing I’m sure I’d know of it.”
“You might and you might not,” said Moore, looking at him. “If Mr. Tracy
wanted a private entrance to his suite for any reason, he would have had
it built and kept the matter quiet.”
“Not Sampson Tracy,” exclaimed Everett. “He was not a secretive man. I
think I may say I knew all about his affairs, both business matters and
private dealings, and he trusted me absolutely.”
“Even so,” Moore told him. “But in the lives of most men there is some
secret, something that they don’t talk over with anybody.”
“Not Mr. Tracy,” Everett reiterated. “Even his engagement to Mrs. Dallas
was freely talked over with me, both before it occurred and since. I know
all about his habits and his fads and whims. And in no case was there
ever an occasion for a secret passage to or from his rooms.”
“Yet it may be there,” Kee insisted. “But if none can be found, then the
murderer either escaped by the windows or——”
“Or what?” asked Hart.
“Or he had a steel wire contraption to turn the key from the outside. But
this I don’t think likely, for the door has a rather complicated lock,
and is far from being an easy thing to manipulate.”
“You know the terms of his will, then?” the Coroner inquired.
“Oh, yes,” Everett said. “At present his niece, Miss Remsen, is his
principal heir. There are many bequests to friends and to servants, but
the bulk of the estate goes to Miss Remsen. Mr. Tracy knew that his
marriage would invalidate this will, which was why he had not changed it.
He said that after his wedding with Mrs. Dallas, he would revise the will
to suite his changed estate.”
“Then, under his existing will, Mrs. Dallas has no legacy?”
“Not unless Mr. Tracy made a change without telling me. He may have done
that, but I think it very unlikely.”
“You know of no one then, who had sufficient enmity toward Mr. Tracy to
desire his death?”
“Absolutely no one. So far as I am aware, he hadn’t an acquaintance in
the world who was anything but friendly toward him.”
Everett was dismissed and Billy Dean was called in.
He was a pleasant-faced chap of twenty-three or thereabouts. His work was
far from being as important as Everett’s. In fact he was really a
high-class stenographer and office boy.
He was good looking with big brown eyes and a curly mop of brown hair. He
too, scoffed at the idea of a secret passage in the house.
“Pleasure Dome has all the modern improvements,” he said, “but nothing
like that. If there was such a thing, I’d have been through it in no
time. I can ferret out anything queer of that sort by instinct, and
there’s nothing doing. There’s no way in and out of Mr. Tracy’s suite but
by that one hall door. I know that. And it has a special lock. He had
that put on about six months ago.”
“Why? Was he afraid of intruders?”
“Don’t think so. But there had been some robberies down in the village
and he said it was as well to be on the safe side.”
“Then, Mr. Dean, in your opinion, how did the man who killed Mr. Tracy
get out of his rooms?”
“That’s where you get me. I’m positively kerflummixed. I can’t see
anybody twisting that peculiar key with a bit of wire. Though that’s
easier to swallow than to imagine any one jumping out of the window.”
“Why? The windows are not so very high.”
“No. But the lake there is mighty deep and dangerous.”
“Why specially dangerous?”
“Because there are swirling undercurrents, you see, it’s almost like a
caldron. That Sunless Sea, as Mr. Tracy named it, is in a cove and the
winds make the water eddy about, and—well, I’m a pretty fair diver, but I
wouldn’t dive out of a second story window into that cove!”
“Then, we have to look for either a clever mechanician or an expert
diver,” said Keeley Moore. “How about the chauffeur?”
“He’s an expert mechanician all right, but he wouldn’t harm a hair of Mr.
Tracy’s head. He loved him, as, indeed, we all did. Nobody could help
loving that man. He was always genial, courteous and kindly to
everybody.”
“And his niece, Miss Remsen?” asked the Coroner. “She, too, is gentle and
lovely?”
Young Dean blushed fiery red.
“Yes, she is,” was all he said, but no clairvoyance was needed to read
his thoughts of her.
“Is she here?” asked Moore, knowing we had seen her arrive.
“Yes,” Billy Dean said. “We telephoned her so soon as we knew what had
happened, and she came right over.”
“You may go now,” said the Coroner, “and please send Miss Remsen in
here.”
CHAPTER V
THE LADY OF THE LAKE
“And so,” I thought to myself, “I shall see again the Lady of the Lake.”
As Alma Remsen entered the room, I realized the aptness of Kee’s term,
high-handed. Without any effect of strong-mindedness, the girl showed in
face and demeanour a certain self-reliance, an air of determination, that
made even a casual observer feel sure she could hold her own against all
comers.
Yet she was a gentle sort. Slender, of medium height, with appealing
brown eyes, she nodded a sort of greeting that included us all, and
addressed herself to the coroner.
“You sent for me, Doctor Hart?” she said, in a low, musical voice.
“Yes, Miss Remsen. Will you answer a few direct questions?”
“Certainly. To the best of my ability.”
“First of all, then, when did you last see your uncle alive?”
“I was over here day before yesterday, Tuesday, that would be. I have not
been here since, until this morning.”
My heart almost stopped beating. I had seen her come in her canoe—but
stay, that was at one-thirty or thereabouts. Perhaps she salved her
conscience for the lie by telling herself that was this morning.
“You mean, when you came over here perhaps half an hour ago?”
“Yes.” Alma looked at him in some surprise. “What else could I mean?”
A finished actress, surely. I was amazed at her coolness and her pretty
air of inquiry.
“Who summoned you?”
“Mrs. Fenn. She had been asked to do so by Mr. Ames.”
“What was her message?”
“That Uncle Sampson had died of apoplexy and I’d better come right over.”
“So you came?”
“Yes, as soon as I could get here.”
“Have you seen—er—Mr. Tracy?”
“No; Mr. Ames advised against it.”
“Well, Miss Remsen, I think we want no information from you, except a
formal statement of your relationship to the dead man and your standing
with him.”
“Standing?”
“Yes. Were you good friends?”
“The best. I loved Uncle Sampson and he loved me, I know. I am his only
living relative, except some distant cousins. I am the daughter of his
sister, of whom he was very fond.”
The girl was a bit of an enigma. She seemed straightforward and sincere,
yet I was somehow conscious of a reservation in her talk, a glibness of
speech that carried the idea of a prearranged story.
Why I should mistrust her I couldn’t say, at first. Then I remembered
that I had seen her canoeing over to Pleasure Dome in the night, and now
she was saying she had not done so.
“Are you his heiress?” The question came sharply.
“So far as I know,” she replied with perfect equanimity. “My uncle has
told me that his will leaves the bulk of his estate to me, but he also
told me that when he married Mrs. Dallas, he would revise that will, and
make different arrangements.”
“Did you resent this?”
“Not at all. I knew my uncle would leave me a proper portion of his
wealth, and that as long as he lived he would take care of his sister’s
child.”
“You are an only child of your parents?”
“I had a twin sister. She died fourteen years ago.”
“And she is buried on this estate?”
“Her grave is in a small cemetery which also contains the graves of my
parents and five or six other relatives of my uncle’s family.”
“How did it come about that the cemetery is on the grounds of the estate?
It is, I believe, a New England custom.”
“It was my mother’s wish. She was devoted to the little girl who died and
wanted to have the grave where she could visit it often. My uncle
humoured her and also had the remains of my father sent here to be buried
beside the child. Then, when my mother died, about a year ago, naturally
she was buried there, too.”
“I see. What did your sister die of?”
“Scarlet fever. There was an epidemic of it. We both had it, but I pulled
through, though it left me with a slight deafness in one ear.”
“Then, after your mother’s death, you went to live by yourself on the
island. Why did you do this?”
“Because my uncle was to marry Mrs. Dallas.”
“And you don’t like Mrs. Dallas?”
“I don’t dislike her at all, but I am not of an easy-going disposition. I
felt sure there would be clashes, and I told uncle I’d rather live by
myself. He understood and agreed. So after some looking about, we decided
on the island of Whistling Reeds as the most attractive site for a home.”
“And he built a house for you there?”
“Oh, no, the house was already there. He bought the whole island, house
and all.”
“You like it as a home?”
“I love it. I am happier there than I could be anywhere else.”
“Are you not lonely?”
“No more than I would be anywhere. I have capable and devoted servants,
and I have tennis courts and an archery field and I have many boats and
can get any place I wish to go in them. No, I am not so lonely as I
sometimes was here in this great house. Of course, since my mother’s
death, I haven’t gone much in society but I am thinking of going out more
in the future.”
Keeley Moore listened to the girl with the deepest interest. I wondered
what he would say if he knew what I knew of her midnight canoe trip!
But I vowed to myself then and there that I should never tell of that. I
knew I might be doing wrong, withholding such an important bit of
information, but I was determined to keep my secret.
I tried to make myself think it was some other girl I had seen, but the
alert figure before me and the white costume said plainly that I was
making no mistake in recognizing the girl of the canoe.
From beneath her little white felt hat strayed a few golden curls, and I
well remembered the bare head that had looked silvery in the moonlight.
I said to myself, by way of placating my conscience, that when the time
came I would tell Kee about it, but I certainly did not propose to give
the Coroner a chance to suspect this lovely girl of crime.
Apparently, the Coroner had no slightest suspicion of Alma, but you can’t
tell. He may have been drawing her out in order to prove her complete
innocence or he may have felt that she had motive and must be closely
questioned.
“Were you at home last evening?” Hart said, in a casual tone.
“Yes, I was.”
“You didn’t go out all the evening or night?”
“No. I didn’t leave the island.”
“Whew!” I exclaimed to myself, “it’s lucky she doesn’t know that I know!”
I gazed at her in admiration. I didn’t, I _couldn’t_ think that she had
killed her uncle, but knowing, as I did, that she had visited Pleasure
Dome, I could only think that she had come on some secret errand.
“Maybe,” I puzzled over it, “she came to see her uncle on some private
business, and saw the murderer at his work. Maybe she knew the criminal,
and is shielding him.”
For I had already made up my mind that some one in the house had killed
Sampson Tracy. I didn’t believe in any burglar or intruder. I thought a
member of the family or household had done the deed, and, presumably, for
the sake of inheritance. I had heard there were large bequests to the
servants in Tracy’s will, and there were several men to suspect.
I longed for a talk alone with Kee, but I saw this could not occur very
soon.
“How did you occupy your evening?” pursued Hart, and I listened eagerly
for the answer.
“I had an interesting book I was reading and after dinner I sat in my
living room with the book until I finished the story. Then I played on
the piano a little, as I often do in the evening, and about half-past ten
I went to bed.”
All of this was stated in a calm, even voice, and with the most clear and
unflinching gaze of the brown eyes.
I realized then what beautiful eyes they were. Deep brown, with long,
curling black lashes, and an expression of wistful appeal that would go
straight to any man’s heart.
Once for all, I was committed to the cause of Alma Remsen, and never, to
Kee Moore or to anybody else, would I divulge any word that might make
trouble for her.
I wasn’t exactly in love with the girl then, or if I was I didn’t know
it. But I felt like a guardian toward her, and surely my first duty was
to guard the secret of her canoe trip that night.
“You come over here often?” Moore asked, in his pleasant way, and she
replied without hesitation.
“Oh, yes, I come over in my canoe or my motor boat nearly every day.
Uncle gives me vegetables and fruit from the garden, and flowers, too.”
“You say you haven’t seen your uncle since his death,” Kee went on. “Have
you been told of the peculiar details of his deathbed?”
“Yes,” Alma said, her brown eyes clouding with perplexity. “But I can’t
understand the meaning of such conditions. Who do you suppose would do
such absurd things?”
“Doctor Rogers thinks it was the work of some small girl——”
“Ridiculous!” cried Alma. “Does he think a small girl killed my uncle?”
“No, apparently the deed was done by a strong man. But he thinks the
flowers and those things were put where they were found by some
mischievous child. Do you know of any ten- or twelve-year-old girl near
by?”
“No, I don’t,” and she looked about wonderingly. “Of course, there are
lots of them in the village, but I know of none among the servants’
families or in the neighbourhood at all. I don’t agree with Doctor
Rogers. It’s too fantastic to think of a child coming along here at that
time of night and getting into the house——Oh, the very idea is
ridiculous.”
“I agree to that,” said Hart. “But how can we explain the feather duster
and the food and all that?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” Alma declared, “but any man who was
diabolically minded enough to drive a nail into the head of a sleeping
victim would have a distorted brain, and might have done all those queer
things. But cannot you detectives and policemen find out the truth?”
Her tone was appealing, she seemed to be asking their help, and I
marvelled afresh at her poise and calm.
“You and Mrs. Dallas are friendly?” Coroner Hart broke out, abruptly.
“Oh, yes. We are not intimates, she is older than I am. But we have never
had anything but the pleasantest of interviews.”
“You are friendly with Mr. Ames?”
“In a general way, yes. He too, is so much older than I am that I have
never given him a thought save as a friend of my uncle’s. I don’t know
Mr. Ames very well, but I’ve certainly no unfriendly feelings toward
him.”
I wondered at myself. Why did I so admire this girl, so respect her, and
yet have an undercurrent of fear for her? She was utterly frank,
perfectly straightforward, to all appearances, yet—probably influenced by
what I knew—I couldn’t believe in her.
She was so self-possessed, so unafraid in her attitude and expression of
face, that I had no real reason to doubt her good faith.
But I did, and I determined to watch Alma Remsen carefully and to the
exclusion of everybody else connected with the mystery.
Moreover, I determined to keep my knowledge to myself. I wasn’t sure
whether I should tell Moore eventually or not, but at any rate, I wasn’t
ready to tell him yet.
After a few questions, which seemed to me of no real importance, Alma was
excused and Mrs. Dallas was summoned.
What a different type of woman!
She was, as I learned later, about thirty, but her hair had turned
prematurely gray, almost white. She wore it short, a soft, curly bob,
that framed her young-looking face with a sort of halo.
Her eyes were gray, too, with dark lashes, and her complexion was
perfect. That lovely creamy flesh, with a soft sheen on it that needed, I
felt sure, no aid of cosmetics.
Her mouth was a Cupid’s bow, and her smile was that of a siren.
I gazed at her, because I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
True, I had seen her the night before at the Moores’ dinner party, but
she hadn’t looked like this then. At the dinner she had seemed out of
sorts, and unsmiling.
Now, she was animated and fascinating.
A strange idea came to me. Suppose she had killed Sampson Tracy, wouldn’t
she adopt this attitude of charm to wheedle the Coroner?
Then I laughed at my own foolishness. Why, of all people, would Katherine
Dallas kill the man she was about to marry? The wealthy, powerful
magnate, who was ready to dower her with everything heart could wish and
put her at the head of his great establishment. Of course not. She had no
motive, nor had she opportunity. Even if she possessed a latchkey, which
might well be, she couldn’t come to the house in the dead of night, and
get away again, without being seen by somebody.
Although, I was forced to admit, whoever killed the man had gone to his
room in the dead of night, and had got away again, unseen, so far as we
could learn. How had he got away? Well, that question was as yet
unanswered.
Even now, I realized, Coroner Hart was asking Mrs. Dallas her opinion on
this very matter.
“I can’t imagine,” she said, and I was angry with myself to realize that
her voice had in it no ring of a false note, no hint of insincerity.
“It is too impossible,” she went on, her lovely face alight with
interest, “whoever killed Mr. Tracy had to get out of that room and leave
the door locked behind him, but how could he do it?”
“Dived out of the window,” suggested Keeley, to hear what she would say.
“Then he was a master diver,” she told him. “Deep Lake, or as they call
it here, the Sunless Sea, is not only very deep, but it is full of hidden
rocks and there are strong eddies and currents,—oh, it is a dangerous
hole!”
“There’s the alternative of a secret passage,” Moore went on. “Did you
ever hear of one?”
“No, and I doubt there being such. I mean, the house, though of
complicated structure, is modern and I’m quite sure it hasn’t any
concealed or subterranean passages. If it had, I think Mr. Tracy would
have spoken of them to me.”
“Why do you feel so sure of that?”
“Only because he told me everything. I mean he was confidential by nature
and I’ve never known him to have a secret from me.”
“Why didn’t Mr. Tracy attend the dinner last night at which you were a
guest?”
She coloured a little, but answered frankly: “We had had a little tiff,
and he was, while not really angry at me, just enough annoyed to stay
home from the party. I think he regretted having declined the invitation,
but then it was too late to change his mind.”
“What was your disagreement about?”
“Must I tell that?”
“I think you’d better, Mrs. Dallas.”
“I greatly prefer not to.”
“Still I must request it.”
“Well, then, he had said he wanted to tell me something about his niece,
Miss Remsen.”
“Something unpleasant?”
“I feared so. I didn’t know. But he said it was a thing I ought to know
about if I was coming into the family.”
“He gave you no hint as to the purport of his disclosures?”
“He wanted to, but I wouldn’t listen. I told him I didn’t want to hear
it, at any rate, not then.”
“Why did you take that attitude in the matter?”
“I’ll try to explain. I have known Mr. Tracy about a year. I’ve been
engaged to him about three months. Now, he had never mentioned this thing
before. So I had a feeling that he had spoken impulsively, and perhaps on
thinking it over would change his mind about telling me.”
“And you had no curiosity about it?”
“Oh, no, not beyond a natural wonder as to what it could be. But I am
very fond of Alma Remsen, and I was positive it couldn’t be anything
really serious. Perhaps an early love affair or escapade that would be
better left buried in oblivion.”
“So you had words over it all.”
“Yes, I was so insistent that he should not tell me, and he so equally
insistent that I should hear it, that we had a real quarrel.”
“How did it wind up?”
“By his leaving my house—he was calling on me—in a rage. I admit it was a
foolish thing to quarrel about, but I was determined to have my way in
the matter, and I did.”
“When was this affair?”
“It was Monday night.”
“And to-day is Thursday. You didn’t see him again?”
“No. He sulked Tuesday and Wednesday. I called him on the telephone
yesterday and asked him if he was going to the Moores’ dinner party, and
he said ‘No,’ very shortly and hung up the receiver.”
“He was really angry, then?”
“Yes, but I fancy more with himself than with me. Mr. Ames told me that
Mr. Tracy was sorry about it all, and that he kept my scarf near him all
the time. I know Mr. Tracy’s ways, and when he keeps any of my belongings
near him, he isn’t really angry at me.”
“You are speaking of the crimson scarf that was found on Mr. Tracy’s
bed?”
“Yes, that one.” And then, the calm of Katherine Dallas broke down and
she burst into a piteous flood of tears.
I was not surprised. I had noticed her clenching fingers and her tapping
foot, and I knew she was striving to keep a grip on her feelings.
It was Inspector Farrell who opened the door for her, and as she stumbled
through, we saw Alma Remsen awaiting her, and knew she would be duly
cared for.
Farrell returned into the room and closed the door, and went slowly back
to his seat.
“What about it?” he said, including both Hart and Keeley Moore in his
glance of inquiry.
“Whoever killed that man, it was not Mrs. Dallas,” Kee declared. “I don’t
suppose anybody thought she did, but there’s no slightest reason to
suspect her.”
“What about the girl?” asked Farrell, with brooding eyes.
“Drive a nail in her uncle’s head!” Moore exclaimed. “I can’t see her
doing that! Can you, Norris?”
“No,” I said, and it was God’s truth. That lovely girl connected with a
brutal, inhuman deed,—no, nobody could believe that!
“Well, then, where are we at?” Farrell asked.
“At Harper Ames,” said the coroner, and we realized that he was sticking
to his first impressions.
“All right,” Farrell sighed. “Get him in here next, then.”
But just then, Sally Bray came to the door. Farrell let her in and asked
the result of her investigation of Mr. Tracy’s belongings.
“There’s nothing missing as Griscom and I can see,” she reported, “except
two things—I mean, three.”
“What are they?” and Farrell placed a chair for her and spoke in a kindly
tone.
“One is the Tottum Pole.”
“The what?”
“She doubtless means the Totem Pole,” said Moore, quietly. “Is that it,
Sally?”
“Yes, sir, that’s what I said, the Tottum Pole. It was one of Mr. Tracy’s
favourite toys. It was Indian, Griscom says, and it always stood on his
bedside table. He thought it was a—a charm, like.”
“A Luck you mean, I dare say.” Keeley had taken the inquiry into his own
hands for the moment.
“Yes, sir, it was his Luck, that’s what Griscom said.”
“How large was it?”
“About so big.” Sally measured a foot or more with her hands. “Oh, it was
fierce! Yet beautiful, too.”
“Bright colours, and a face at the top——”
“Yes, sir. But a norful face, all eyes——”
“I know. You understand, Mr. Farrell, don’t you? She means a miniature
Totem Pole. They have them in the better class of shops round here that
carry Indian trinkets. The little Totem Poles are interesting, and are
called lucky. I have two or three at home. But mine are smaller, only six
or eight inches. And so this Totem Pole is missing. What else, Sally?”
“Two of Mr. Tracy’s best weskits, sir! His striped dark blue morey, and
his pearl-coloured figgered satin.”
“He wore fancy waistcoats, then?”
“Oh, yes, sir, he was a great hand for weskits of beautiful stuff. Never
gay or gaudy, but soft, lovely colours and the expensivest materials.”
“And two of them are gone. Are you sure?”
“Yes, sir. Griscom missed ’em. He says they ain’t gone to the cleaner’s
or anything like that, for they’re both nearly new. And he says he knows
they were in their right place yesterday morning, sir.”
“Well,” Hart said, “we can’t complain of any lack of curious
complications. This seems to prove a man did the deed. A woman surely
would not take fancy waistcoats!”
“And why should a man take them, either?” Moore asked, but none of us
could answer.
CHAPTER VI
THE WATCH IN THE WATER PITCHER
“Well, Sally, is that all?”
“No, sir, not quite. Griscom found one more queer thing. He found Mr.
Tracy’s watch in the water pitcher.”
“In the water pitcher!” Farrell exclaimed. “Was there water in the
pitcher?”
“Oh, yes, sir, it was nearly full. And down at the bottom of it was the
watch.”
“How extraordinary. Is the watch going?”
“I don’t know, sir. Griscom took it out of the pitcher, but I don’t know
what he did with it.”
“Well, we’ll see about it. If you’ve no more astonishing bits of
information, you can run along, Sally.”
The girl left the room, and we looked at one another, half smiling, half
appalled.
“It’s all so tawdry,” Keeley Moore said, with an impatient shrug of his
shoulders.
“Just what meaning do you attach to the word ‘tawdry’?” asked Hart. “I
can’t seem to make it apply at all.”
“Oh, I only mean these foolish clues that some practical joker has
arranged are tawdry of intent. I may be obliged to change my mind, but
just at present, I can’t think that the person who killed Sampson Tracy
is the person who stuck the feather duster behind his head and dropped
his watch in the water pitcher. By the way, why did he have a water
pitcher, with an elaborate bathroom at hand?”
“Call Griscom, let’s find out a little more about it.”
So the butler came at a summons, and explained that the water pitcher was
a pitcher of drinking water that was placed on a table for him every
night.
“Mr. Tracy didn’t approve of thermos bottles,” Griscom informed us. “He
said they never seemed clean things to him. So he had a pitcher.”
“When you found the watch, was it running?”
“No, sir, it was not.”
“At what time had it stopped?”
Inspector Farrell awaited the answer with an air of one expecting a piece
of important information. But he was disappointed.
“I didn’t exactly notice, sir, but it isn’t the watch Mr. Tracy was
carrying. That is still under his pillow. This watch I found in the
pitcher is an old one, and it was lying on his dressing table last
night.”
“Why was it there?”
“Mr. Tracy had it out, looking at it a day or two ago. He thought he
would send it to a jeweller and have it put in order. The mainspring is
broken, you see. But he didn’t decide, and the watch lay there, in a
little tray, with some other odds and ends of jewellery.”
“Then, somebody took that watch and deliberately dropped it into the
water pitcher?”
“That must be the truth, sir.”
“Mr. Tracy never showed the slightest disposition toward any mental
affection, did he?”
“Oh, no, indeed, sir. Nothing of that sort.”
“Who do you think killed Mr. Tracy, Griscom?”
Farrell shot this question so suddenly that I was not surprised to see
the butler turn pale and grasp at the chair in front of him to steady
himself.
“I—I don’t know, sir.”
“Of course you don’t know. I’m asking you what you think.”
“Well, what can I think, but Mr. Ames.”
“Mr. Ames! Why would he do such a thing?”
“Well, sir, it had to be somebody with motive. Mr. Ames had that, and
likewise opportunity.”
“You’ve been reading detective stories. You’re very glib with your
‘motive and opportunity’! How could Mr. Ames get in?”
“He carries a latchkey, sir.”
“I don’t mean into the house, I mean in the room, Mr. Tracy’s room.”
“Well, the door wasn’t always locked at night. About half the time it was
left unlocked.”
“Then, how could he get out after the deed and leave the door locked on
the inside?”
“That’s more than I can tell you. I thought that’s what you detectives
were going to explain. But kill my master somebody did, and get out of
the room, he did, too. So there must be an explanation somewhere.”
“A secret passage, I suppose.”
“No, sir. I’m ready to swear there’s no secret passage in this house.”
“You may not know of it.”
“Well, sir, how could there be? That wing of Mr. Tracy’s is foursquare.
It has no L’s or bays. You can measure it up and you’ll find there’s no
bit of space unaccounted for. The rooms open into one another, and
there’s just the wall between, no room for a concealed staircase.”
“How are you so sure? You been examining around?”
“Just that, sir, meaning no harm. But I somehow feel I’ve got to find out
the truth of this whole thing, and so I’ve got to look into the
conditions.”
Keeley Moore gave Griscom a stare of decided interest. It was evident he
thought the man knew rather more than he had credited him with.
Farrell and Hart were not so well pleased, apparently. They frowned a
little, and the Inspector advised the butler not to exceed his orders or
overstep his privileges.
And then it was lunch time, and Keeley, remembering his wife’s hint of
blackberry shortcake, decided we must go home at once.
“I want to think matters over a bit,” he said to the police officers. “If
you want me here, I will come when summoned, but otherwise I’ll stay at
home this afternoon. When will you have the inquest, Doctor Hart?”
“To-morrow,” said the Coroner. “Though it will probably have to be
adjourned. I confess I’m in a quandary. I scarcely know which way to
look. You know I am relying on your help, Mr. Moore.”
“I’ll help all I can,” Kee said, gravely. “But I think you’ve got a hard
nut to crack.”
“You mean the locked room——”
“No, I don’t mean the locked room. That will explain itself, once you get
the criminal.”
“Then you mean all these bizarre clues we have to deal with.”
“No, I don’t mean those, either. The finding of the criminal will wipe
those out at once. It’s the hunt that is hard. The quarry is elusive and
hard to track. Find the motive first; that’s always a sound plan.”
And with that Moore and I went off, leaving behind us a greatly perplexed
pair of sleuths of the law.
A car belonging to the house conveyed us home, and by good luck we were
not late for luncheon.
The shortcake materialized and proved worthy of all praise, and Kee
refused to talk about the tragedy at all until the meal was over and we
gathered in the lounge afterward.
Lora and Maud had heard only scraps of information from neighbours and
tradesmen, but they had not been inquisitive, preferring to wait until we
returned to tell them all about it.
And so the four of us sat down for a real confab.
I listened while Keeley told his wife all the information he had so far
accumulated, and I couldn’t help admiring the straightforward, clean-cut
story he told. He might have been a skilled reporter, giving the known
facts to the public.
Of course my conscience pricked me because I was holding back the very
important bit of evidence that I seemed the only one to know. Apparently
no one but myself had seen Alma Remsen go in her canoe to Pleasure Dome
the night before at about half past one o’clock.
I might be accessory after the fact. I might be aiding and abetting a
criminal, but, shameless that I was, I didn’t care, and had no intention
of telling my secret.
My justification, adequate in my own mind, was that I didn’t for a minute
believe Alma Remsen had killed her uncle. It was too incredible, too
impossible. Go to his house, she did. Stay there about an hour, she did.
But kill him, no! Perhaps she saw the deed committed, perhaps she arrived
later, and saw the dead victim, perhaps—a very doubtful perhaps—she
arranged the bizarre decorations, but strike the deadly blow—never!
So, I felt I had a right to keep still about the matter, for why drag the
girl into detestable prominence, and have her wrongly suspected of crime,
when all I had to do was to keep silence?
Lora listened quietly, with sundry intelligent nods of her head, and Maud
Merrill was no less interested. I had great respect for the intelligence
of both these women, and listened eagerly for their comments.
“Too many suspects,” said Lora, as Kee finished his recital.
“Yes,” agreed Maud, “there’s positively nobody in the house outside
suspicion.”
“Then we must eliminate,” said Kee.
“We can’t exactly eliminate,” Lora told him, “but we can guess who had
the strongest motive.”
“Guess!”
“That’s all we can do. I can’t see that there are any clues that mean
anything. All those flowers and things were already in the room. As
clues, they all go for nothing. The murderer was not necessarily a man of
fantastic tastes or a child of playful tendencies, he only cut up those
tricks so we would think he was.”
“That’s right,” Kee said. “It wasn’t even specially clever. He just
picked up anything he saw about and laid it on the bed to fog things up.
So what about motive? I can’t imagine any one wanting to kill Tracy for
anything except a sordid reason. Money, I am sure, is the only motive.”
“Love?” I said. “Was no one else enamoured of the beautiful Mrs. Dallas,
and wanted Tracy out of the way?”
“Of course, Charlie Everett adored her,” Lora said, “but he wouldn’t
commit murder to get her. And if he did, he wouldn’t choose such a
horrible, brutal method. He’d shoot his victim, not assassinate him with
a hammer and nail!”
“I think that, too,” Kee declared. “To my mind, that nail business
indicates a low type of personality. A servant seems the most likely.
Griscom, for choice.”
Now I knew Keeley Moore well enough to know that if he suggested Griscom,
Griscom was not the man he suspected. He had a way of drawing out other
people, by hints and allusions, in hope of getting a side light on his
own suspect.
“If the motive was to achieve at once the legacy from the Tracy estate,
then every inmate of that house is suspect. Farrell told me that Mr.
Tracy’s will left a substantial bequest to each of the servants, to the
secretary and to Mr. Ames,” I told my audience.
“All right,” exclaimed Moore, “let’s begin at the top. What have we got
against Harper Ames?”
“His immediate need for money, his hateful, belligerent disposition, his
love for Mrs. Dallas and his unhampered opportunity,” I declared,
promptly.
“I thought he was a woman hater,” cried Maud Merrill. “Why do you say he
was in love with her?”
“I may not be a detective,” I said, “but I am not entirely a nincompoop.
When I saw those two people here last evening, I realized that whatever
he calls himself, he’s no woman hater where Mrs. Dallas is concerned. He
adores her; in the language of the poet, he worships the ground she walks
on.”
“Norris is right about that,” Keeley conceded. “I’ve seen it for some
time. And when these avowed woman haters fall for a siren, they fall
hard. Yes, Ames is head over ears in love with the lady, and for that
very reason, he’s out of the running. A man isn’t going to commit murder
to win a lady’s hand. It’s too dangerous a proceeding. If Ames were not
in love with her, I might suspect him.”
“But, hold on, Kee. There might be circumstances,” I said, “in which Ames
lost his head, or his temper, or both, and let fly at Tracy in an
ungovernable fit of rage——”
“That murder wasn’t done in an ungovernable fit of rage, it was a
premeditated affair. Whoever did it, came prepared with that nail and a
hammer——”
“Why a hammer?” I demanded. “The nail could have been driven in with any
heavy object.”
“Such as what?”
I ruminated over the appointments of the room as I remember them, and
said, a little lamely, “Well, one could take off his shoe to drive the
nail.”
“Yes, one could,” Kee assented, “but it doesn’t sound likely——”
“The whole affair doesn’t sound likely,” I countered, “and anyway, it
doesn’t matter. Somebody did drive that nail, and what it was driven with
is unimportant. As far as I can learn, they’ve found nothing conclusive
in the way of fingerprints. I’m not keen on those things myself, but in
New York they would have been fingerprinting the whole crowd of us.”
“Of course, there are no available fingerprints on the nail,” Kee said,
“and that’s the only thing that matters. I don’t give a fig for all the
feather dusters, flowers, oranges and such things.”
“Not even the watch in the water pitcher?” I asked.
“Well, yes, I do consider the watch in the water pitcher. In fact, I
think that’s the key note of the whole performance.”
“You’ve got to tell us why,” I told him. “You can’t say that and leave it
unexplained.”
“Indeed I can. A real detective never explains his cryptic utterances.”
“You’re not a real detective,” I declared, solemnly.
“Why not?” and he glowered at me.
“Because you look like a detective. You’re tall, and dark and hawk-eyed
or hawk-nosed, or hawk-somethinged. Now, a real detective must always
look utterly unlike the detective of fiction, and you’re the very image
of Sherlock Holmes.”
“And I glory in it. But if you flatter yourself you’re my Watson, you
must cultivate the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.”
“I thought we were eliminating,” put in Maud. “Who have we eliminated so
far?”
“Your English is deplorable,” Kee told her, “but I can deduce your
meaning. Well, how about eliminating Ames?”
“No,” I cried, “he’s the one not to eliminate. There are too many counts
against him. I say, let’s begin at the other end of the line. The lesser
servants.”
“Cut out Sally Bray, then,” Moore advised. “That girl never had the nerve
to go a-murdering all by herself.”
“Of course not,” I agreed. “Though she may have gone with some
companion.”
“No, it isn’t plausible. As to the servants, all we can say is that they
could have had opportunity. The house servants, at any rate, could have
had a duplicate key made to the Tracy suite——”
“But that wasn’t needed. So far as we know the door wasn’t locked when
the murderer went in. But he left it locked when he came out.”
“That’s the point of the whole thing,” Lora said, confidently. “You can’t
do this elimination you talk about, for every servant had a motive, if
you count greed a motive, and every servant had a chance to get into the
room unnoticed. Now it all comes back to the explanation of the intruder
leaving the door locked behind him. Give me a possible explanation, Kee.”
“There are but two,” he said, thoughtfully. “I am sure there’s no secret
passage, for I measured and sounded the walls thoroughly. So it’s either
that the criminal had some clever mechanical contrivance with which he
turned that key in the door behind him, or he jumped out of the window.”
“Into the lake!” cried Lora.
“Yes, into the lake. It implies an expert diver, and it is a most
dangerous proceeding, even then. But you asked for the possibilities.”
“Is Everett or Dean an expert diver?” I asked.
“Everett is. Dean not.”
“And Everett is in love with the Dallas, too. Well, we can hardly
eliminate him, then.”
“But I refuse to suspect a lover of murder,” Kee insisted. “He must
realize he will be suspected, if not convicted, and where would he stand
with the fair one then?”
“Murderers don’t always think ahead,” I said, sagely.
“This one did. He thought far enough ahead to bring that horrible nail.
We’ve no reason to think there was a nail lying about among the flowers
and crackers.”
“Isn’t there a story about somebody being killed with a nail?” I asked.
“There is,” Kee replied, “it’s in Holy Writ. Jael killed Sisera, or
Sisera killed Jael, I forget which, but the weapon was a nail driven in
the victim’s head.”
“Yes,” I returned, “I know, but I don’t mean that story. There’s
another—by a Frenchman——”
“No,” said Maud, in her quiet, confident way, “it’s a Spanish story, by
Pedro de Alarcón. The name of it is _The Nail_. It’s a horrible tale, but
the theme is a murder by a nail driven in a man’s head.”
“Then,” and Kee shook himself, as if roused to action, “then we must look
for a man who has read that story. Nobody would think of a nail, unless
something had suggested it to him. I say that eliminates all the
servants, unless, maybe, that chauffeur chap, Louis. I can’t see any of
the others reading Spanish stories, even in translation. Item one. Search
the Tracy library for a copy of that story. Is it a whole book, Maud?”
“No. A short story. I read it in a collection of Spanish and Italian
mystery tales. I have it at home, but there’s no point to it in
connection with this matter, except the nail.”
“That association means something,” Kee persisted. “When we do find the
murderer, we’ll find he got his notion from that story.”
“Or from the Bible,” I said.
“Maybe. But I think more likely Maud’s story. As I remember it, the
Scripture narrative is not very dramatic, and so, less likely to imbue
our murderer’s mind with the plan than the Spanish yarn is.”
“Granting the Spanish story, then,” I said, “can’t we eliminate the
servants? They’d surely not read such literature.”
“All right, eliminate them for the moment,” Kee agreed. “We can always go
back to them if need be. That leaves us, in the house, Everett, Billy
Dean and Ames. Help yourself.”
“Ames,” I said decidedly. “He’s the very one to read morbid, sensational
literature.”
“But everybody reads detective stories nowadays,” Lora said. “Especially
the grave and reverend seigneurs who wouldn’t be suspected of such
tastes.”
“This wasn’t a detective story,” Maud informed us. “It was a thriller, a
scare story.”
“All the same,” I said, “and more in line with Ames’s effects than
straight detective yarns. I’m all for Ames. He wanted money, a lot of
money, and Tracy wouldn’t let him have it, so, as he would not only get a
large bequest at Tracy’s death, but, for all we know, could bury in
oblivion his indebtedness to Tracy, of course he wanted Tracy out of the
way. Moreover, if by the same token he could get the beautiful lady, that
was an added inducement.”
“I’m ready to admit all that,” Kee was very thoughtful now; “and I can
conceive of Ames in a murderer’s rôle. But I happen to know he is no
diver. He can swim a little, but not expertly, and he can scarcely dive
at all.”
“Perhaps,” I offered, “he is a master-diver, and had kept it secret for
this very reason. What do you know of his past?”
“Nothing at all. And Norris, that was clever of you. If Harper Ames came
here to commit that murder and escape by the window, it would be in
keeping with his diabolical astuteness to pretend to be inexpert at
swimming.”
“We’re building up a case instead of eliminating,” I said, secretly
elated at Moore’s word of praise. “But before we go on, what about the
two secretaries? I mean, are they omnivorous readers?”
“Mr. Everett is,” Maud volunteered. “He was here one night and we talked
about books. We didn’t talk very seriously, but I gathered he was widely
read, and had really good taste in literature.”
“And Everett is undoubtedly in love with Mrs. Dallas,” Kee went on, “and
of course, he will have a bequest, and of course, he could get out of the
room as well as anybody else, and we know somebody did, so all things
being equal, why not suspect Everett instead of Ames?”
“Because of the difference in the characters of the two men,” Lora said,
with emphasis. “I’m ready to grant a murderer may masquerade as an angel
of light, but all the same, we have to judge our fellow men more or less
by appearances, and I’ll pick Ames for a criminal long before I’ll choose
Charlie Everett.”
“And we’re leaving out Billy Dean entirely?”
“I am,” I said. “He’s a nice, decent chap, and he’s too young for a
murderer, at least, with no motive other than a bit of money. He isn’t in
love with Mrs. Dallas, is he?”
“Lord, no. He’s in love with the Remsen girl.”
“Well, then,” I said, “if that nice boy is in love with that nice girl,
he’s not going to commit a crime. I say, let’s eliminate him.”
“Then,” Kee summed up, “we’ve eliminated everybody but Ames and Everett.
Griscom is the only servant we could possibly suspect, and he is said to
be devoted to his master, and too, I’m told he has a tidy sum laid by, so
I don’t see him driving nails into people.”
“We can’t get away from the nail and the sort of character it connotes,”
I said. “I stand by Ames until he’s definitely eliminated.”
“Well, I guess we’re all agreed, then,” and Keeley rose and stretched his
long arms. “Now, I’m for a swim. Who’ll go?”
We all went, and I found that the water of a sunny cove of Deep Lake was
an ideal bathtub, and I forgot for the time being the sinister depths of
the Sunless Sea.
CHAPTER VII
THE INQUEST
The inquest was an interesting affair.
I gathered from Coroner Hart’s manner that he had picked up some
information or some bits of evidence that meant a lot to him, and he
seemed impatient to begin his questioning.
The setting of the scene was far too beautiful to be wasted on a crime
session and I looked about at the curious crowd of neighbours and
villagers with distaste.
We were in the great ballroom, which occupies the lower floor of the wing
containing Sampson Tracy’s rooms. On three sides, the Sunless Sea lapped
its dark waters against its rocky shores, and the merest glance into its
black depths was enough to deter the stoutest heart from an unnecessary
dive therein. But an escaping murderer, if brave enough to risk the
danger, and skilled enough in diving and sufficiently familiar with the
position of the principal rocks, might make the goal. It was a comfort to
me to think that, since the authorities assumed that was the way the
criminal got out, it rather freed Alma Remsen from suspicion.
For that delicate girl, even though a good diver, as I had heard, could
never have committed that brutal murder, and then have dived into those
perilous depths at desperate risk of her own life.
Seats had been reserved for our crowd, and as we took them I glanced at
the coroner’s jury. All well to do and fine looking men from the large
estates that bordered the whole length of Deep Lake. Some were grave,
some seemed unable to quell a naturally gay and jolly disposition, but
all were alert and alive, and I felt that the case was in good hands.
I knew few of the audience. Mrs. Dallas was accompanied by several
friends, and I also noted the young girl, Posy May, who had been at the
Moores’ dinner party.
Then I saw Alma Remsen. She sat near Posy and she was accompanied by a
woman who impressed me strongly. Never have I seen a face of more
determination and grim endurance than that of Mrs. Merivale, which I
later learned was her name.
She was the nurse who had cared for Alma since she was born. She lived
with the girl in her island home, and surely no one could ask for a more
capable and efficient-looking guardian.
Not a fine lady, but beyond all doubt a fine woman, Mrs. Merivale was
tall and gaunt of figure and possessed a large, bony face whose stern,
set mouth was belied by a touch of humour quite evident in the shrewd
gray eyes.
But what most impressed me was her expression of wisdom. Surely, this was
a woman to whom all the experiences of life were as an open book. She had
the look of a witch or sibyl, although her gray hair was decorously
smooth beneath her small black hat.
She noted every new arrival, she swept the jury with her all-seeing
glance and finally concentrated her attention on the coroner, until, with
a quick nod of satisfaction, she ended that scrutiny.
Then she turned a little to contemplate the girl beside her.
Alma Remsen, to-day in a costume of soft beige-coloured silk weave,
looked nervous and worried. Her golden hair, escaping at the sides from
her close little hat, framed a face that was clearly worn and wan from a
sleepless night. At least it seemed that way to me, and I longed to tell
her her secret was safe with me. Never would I divulge to any one the
fact that she visited Pleasure Dome on the night of the tragedy. So far,
I hadn’t heard a hint of such a thing, and I hoped there would be none.
Though we hadn’t been formally introduced, and I had never had a word of
conversation with her, I nodded a greeting and smiled.
She inclined her head in slight acknowledgment, and then, to my
amazement, a look of fright crossed her face.
I tried to persuade myself that she had seen some one else or heard some
word that alarmed her, but in my heart I felt sure that the shadow of
fear was caused by the sight of me.
What could it mean? I saw her slip her hand into that of the nurse beside
her, and I noted the reassuring pat the woman gave her.
It seemed to comfort the girl, and she gave a little smile at her
companion.
Not wanting to embarrass her further I turned my glance toward Mrs.
Dallas. She looked superb this morning. Garbed all in black, yet a black
that hinted Paris in its every line and fold, her beautiful face and her
great gray eyes showed a quiet sadness that spoke of a deeper grief than
emotion could show.
Her lovely gray hair was tucked under a black hat, and her lips and
cheeks, quite evidently the result of a well-equipped vanity box, were
the only touch of colour about her.
She sat between Harper Ames and Charles Everett, the post of chief
mourner seemingly accorded her as her right.
Yet though she was calm and composed, it seemed to me there was an
undercurrent of anxiety, a hint of dread or apprehension.
Nor was this to be wondered at. The occasion was a tragic one, and as the
person most deeply affected by the tragedy, it was only natural that
Katherine Dallas should be nervous.
Hart first questioned the servants. Though new matter to the jury, we had
heard their stories before, and no fresh fact or bit of evidence was
forthcoming.
No articles had been missed from Sampson Tracy’s rooms except two of his
fancy waistcoats and the gayly painted Totem Pole.
Several of the servants testified as to Mr. Tracy’s previous possession
of these three articles and of their unaccountable absence at present.
None of them had heard any sounds during the night or could throw any
light on the mystery of the criminal’s entrance or exit, if, indeed, he
was not an inmate of the house.
All testified to the kindness and generosity of the master, and though
all inherited a sum of money by his will, there seemed no real reason to
suspect that any one of them had hastened the demise.
As Doctor Rogers was absent, Hart himself was the only one to give the
medical report, and he told the jury succinctly and clearly the details
of the death and how both doctors had thought it apoplexy at first, as
the symptoms were of such an attack.
“Without doubt, the autopsy would have disclosed the truth,” Hart said,
“but before that, Mr. Moore, the famous New York City detective, noticed
there was a tiny metal disk visible through the hair of the dead man.
Investigation proved this to be the head of a nail, about two inches
long, that had been driven with great force into Mr. Tracy’s skull,
presumably while he was alive and asleep.”
“Could a nail be so driven, through the bone?” asked a mild mannered
juryman.
“Yes,” the coroner told him. “It would require a heavy driving
instrument, and a strong hand, as well as a callous brain, for a man to
accomplish that fiendish deed.”
The bizarre decorations on the bed were then told about, and reference
made to the watch found in the water pitcher and the absence of the plate
that had held the fruit and the crackers. But these things were merely
touched on, for the jury had only to discover the cause of the death, and
these details were of slight help.
Individual testimony was another matter, and I felt a deep interest as
Harper Ames was called to the stand.
I could see Keeley Moore also eager to learn what the visitor of the
house would have to say.
Ames was in grumpy mood, as usual. More, he seemed belligerent, and I
wondered whether the Coroner would try to placate him or would ruffle him
still more.
“Will you state, in your own words, Mr. Ames, the circumstances of your
return to this house, after a dinner party on Wednesday night?”
The question sounded abrupt, and, perhaps for that reason, it seemed to
rouse Ames’s resentment.
“That’s about all there is to tell,” he declared, frowning. “I came home
from a dinner party next door, about eleven o’clock. I chatted with Mr.
Tracy for a while and then we both went upstairs to bed. That’s all.”
He glared about him, as if he were being imposed on to have to testify at
all. I tried to analyze the man. He had been insistent that Keeley Moore
should take the case. Was this a gigantic bluff? I mean, could it be that
Ames was himself the murderer, and sought to escape suspicion by frankly
asking the detective to solve the mystery? Did he think he had so covered
his tracks that he was safe from even the astute cleverness of Keeley
Moore?
If this were the case, he was greatly mistaken. I had no idea whether
Ames was the murderer or not, but if so, then he stood no chance of
escaping the detection of my friend.
But Hart was proceeding, in a suave, pleasant way, calculated to soothe
Ames’s antagonism.
“You were Mr. Tracy’s best friend?” he asked.
“That’s saying a great deal, but I was certainly one of them. We have
known each other from boyhood, and though we bandied words now and then,
we never had a real quarrel in our lives.”
“You owed him money?”
Harper Ames’s eyes flashed, and he seemed about to fly into a rage. Then,
apparently thinking better of it, he calmed down and said, quietly, but
sullenly still:
“Yes, though I don’t know that it’s your business. Tracy has let me owe
him money for a long time, and as he had no objections to it, I can’t see
your right to inquire about it.”
“Yes, I have a right,” Hart said, “and I propose to use it. How much did
you owe him?”
“Some thousands,” and now Ames’s frown became a real scowl.
“And his will gives you a bequest of many thousands. It is a fortunate
occurrence for you.”
I thought and still think that Harper Ames had a right to get angry at
the Coroner. If Hart suspected his witness he should have said so, and
not cast these innuendoes at him.
Yet Ames said nothing. He contented himself with such a venomous glance
of hatred at the Coroner, that I shivered at the sight. Keeley Moore,
too, looked amazed at the way things were going. Then we both realized
that this was doubtless Hart’s first murder case. Such things didn’t
often happen up here in the peaceful lake region, and the sudden
responsibility and authority had rather gone to Hart’s head and made him
a little uncertain of procedure.
Next he flung out the query, “Are you a good diver?”
At this Ames gave a sardonic smile.
“No,” he returned, “I am not. To begin with I didn’t kill Sampson Tracy,
I didn’t jump out of the window of his locked room, and I didn’t bedeck
his bed with flowers and ornaments. If these are the things you want to
know, I am telling you.”
“Yes,” and the Coroner’s air was imperturbable, “but I have only your
unsupported word for all that.”
Harper Ames stared at him as if he would like to drive a nail into his
half-witted head, and then, drawing himself up with a new dignity, he
said:
“That is true, Mr. Coroner. But I can’t bring forward any witnesses to
prove my statements. That is why I have been trying to engage the
services of the famous Mr. Moore to take on this case, and to discover
the true murderer of Sampson Tracy, for only such a course will prove the
innocence of other suspects.”
This was fine talk, but to me it didn’t ring true. If Ames had done the
foul deed himself, he might have put forth this very line of argument. He
might have demanded the services of a great detective, feeling sure
nobody could detect his guilt.
Well, it wasn’t up to me to decide these things.
A few more inquiries of small importance finished up Ames’s testimony and
then Mrs. Dallas was questioned.
She was dignified of appearance and calm of speech. She said she was the
fiancée of Mr. Tracy and they had expected to be married in the fall. She
said they occasionally had little differences, but always made them up
and were really very fond of one another. Her statements were all
rational and straightforward. She spoke as might a cultured and mature
woman of her accepted suitor.
Asked as to the terms of Mr. Tracy’s will, she replied that so far as she
knew his fortune was left to his niece, Miss Remsen. But, she added, he
had told her that after they were married, he would change his will and
make suitable arrangements for his wife. She said she had given the
matter no thought, knowing that Mr. Tracy would do what was right.
This seemed to remove from her any possible suspicion that might have
formed in the minds of the jury. Surely, Mrs. Dallas had no reason to
kill the man she loved and expected to marry.
No reference was made to the disagreement the engaged pair had had, and
which had resulted in Mr. Tracy’s absence from the Moores’ dinner party.
I rejoiced at this, for I dreaded to have Alma’s name brought in at all.
But as I thought it over, I became a little alarmed. Had Hart omitted the
point in order to tax Alma herself with it later? To ask her what was the
tale her uncle desired to tell Mrs. Dallas? To see if it could be some
disgraceful story that might militate against the girl herself?
The two secretaries followed Mrs. Dallas.
Everett, quiet-mannered and polite, as always, answered questions readily
enough, but offered no additional information.
He repeated his story of the evening, how he had been with Mr. Tracy
until about ten o’clock, and then had gone to his room and to bed.
“You heard no unusual sounds during the night?”
“No,” said Everett, but it seemed to me he had hesitated.
Hart must have noticed this, too, for he said, “Are you quite sure? No
sounds inside the house or out?”
Apparently Charlie Everett was a truthful man. But it was equally evident
he did not want to testify further.
“I must press you for an answer, Mr. Everett,” the Coroner prodded him.
“Well, to be strictly accurate, I may say that I thought I heard the
sound of a boat on the lake some time after midnight.”
“What sort of boat?”
“I don’t know. And it may not have been any. I was asleep, and I
partially awaked and seemed to hear a slight sound as of paddles. But it
may well be that I dreamed it, for I heard no further sounds.”
“Do you know the time this happened?”
“No, except that I seemed to have been asleep some hours. I thought
nothing of it, and directly went to sleep again.”
“You didn’t look out of the window?”
“No, I didn’t rise from my bed.”
I thanked my lucky stars that he hadn’t! That he hadn’t seen Alma Remsen,
in her canoe, some time after midnight!
But if the Coroner thought much about this bit of evidence he gave no
sign of doing so, and the rest of the inquiries he put to Everett were of
a stereotyped sort and led nowhere.
Then came Billy Dean. That cheerful young man was chipper as always and
told all he had to tell in a clear and concise way.
“Did you hear any sound in the night as of a passing boat?” Hart asked
him.
“No,” Dean declared, and his voice was steady and all would have been
well but that the silly chap turned brick red from the roots of his hair
to the top of his collar.
“Then,” said Hart, with a full intention of embarrassing him, “why are
you blushing like a turkey cock?”
“I’m not!” Dean stormed at him, getting redder yet. “But you barge into
me with sudden questions and it knocks me off my base.”
Clever! His winning smile and his sudden carrying of the war into the
enemy’s quarters succeeded, as I was sure he had hoped, in diverting the
jury’s attention from his palpable mendacity.
“Then you heard no boat?” Hart went back to his subject.
“I heard a motor boat, but that was about twelve o’clock,” Dean said,
reminiscently. “I heard none later, for I went to sleep then.”
He had himself perfectly in hand, now, and though I confidently believed
he had seen Alma Remsen in her canoe, I knew, too, that wild horses
couldn’t drag the fact from him.
“And you heard no further noises?”
“Not till morning, when Everett rapped on my door, and told me to get
up.”
There seemed to be nothing more to get out of young Dean, and he was
dismissed. He had made a good effect on the jury, I could see that. Since
they didn’t have my knowledge of the girl in the boat, they were not
greatly interested in the vague sounds mentioned by Everett.
In fact, I could gather from the whole trend of the inquest that
suspicion centred on the inmates of the house. There was little thought
given to the outer world.
Then Alma Remsen was called.
Without asking permission, Mrs. Merivale rose and went with her charge to
the witness chair. She took another chair beside Alma, and her big, hard
face looked like a tower of strength, should such be needed.
“You were not at this house on Wednesday evening or night at any time?”
the Coroner said. It was more a statement than a question, and it sounded
to me as if Hart wanted to shut up this point once and for all.
“No, I was not,” Alma replied, and I hoped nobody except me noticed the
quivering of her eyelids.
That was the only way she showed any nervousness. Her hands lay quietly
in her lap, her lips were not trembling, her eyes were clear and steady
in their gaze, but the eyelids fluttered once, twice, as if she was
holding herself together by sheer force of will.
“Where were you that evening?”
“At home, in my own house.”
“All the evening?”
“Yes.”
“Who is your companion?”
“Mrs. Merivale. My housekeeper and friend.”
“Will she corroborate your presence in your home?”
Hart’s voice was most courteous, but it also was decided.
“Surely,” said Alma. “Will you question her?”
“Miss Remsen was at home all Wednesday evening?” he said.
“Yes, sir,” the woman’s voice was respectful but far from servile.
“And all night?”
“Oh, yes, sir, of course.”
“Why of course?”
“Because,” Mrs. Merivale spoke patiently, as if to a dull child, “if she
was in all evening she would scarcely go out later, sir.”
“You are her caretaker?”
“I have been her nurse ever since she was born. I am now her housekeeper
and I take all care of her.”
There was something fine about Mrs. Merivale. She gave an impression of
one who was tolerating the inquiries of a lot of zanies who must be
humoured because they represented the law.
“You live in an island home?”
“Yes.” Alma took up the answering again, seeing no reason why Mrs.
Merivale should be her spokesman save by way of corroboration.
Then Hart asked the same questions he had asked her before, as to her
relations with her uncle, her expectations at his death, and to all the
girl replied with a gentle, demure manner that won the admiration and
respect of all present.
At last Hart said, plainly:
“I regret the necessity of this, Miss Remsen, but it must be said. You
are the one to benefit by the decease of your uncle.”
“Yes,” she looked at him steadily, with no sign of fear, but again I
detected that slight quiver of her eyelid, and wondered what it
portended.
“You would have opportunity to reach his room.”
“Opportunity?” she looked a little bewildered, and I noticed the lines
around the firm set lips of Mrs. Merivale grow even tenser.
“Yes, you possess a latchkey to this house.”
“Oh, that!” Alma smiled and I felt sure it was a smile of relief. “Yes, I
have always had a latchkey. My uncle gave it to me.”
“When?”
“Oh, years ago. When I lived here. Then when I went to live on the island
he bade me keep it so I could come over whenever I chose and let myself
in.”
“Yes. That gave you what we call opportunity.”
“And my desire to inherit his estate gave me motive!” she wasn’t quite
smiling, but nearly. “Well, Mr. Coroner, that may be true, but I didn’t
come over here with my latchkey and kill my uncle and trick out his bed
with flowers. The motive was not strong enough and the opportunity was
negligible. I hope you can find my uncle’s murderer, but it was not I.”
There was something in her simple plain speech that carried conviction.
Had I been one of those jurymen I could not have helped believing in the
sincerity of that clear, sweet young voice that rang true in its every
cadence.
“Then, Miss Remsen, you know nothing of the missing waistcoats?”
“Missing waistcoats?” she repeated, and now I saw that eyelid quiver
pitifully.
“Yes, don’t repeat my words to gain time. Where are those two waistcoats
that disappeared the night your uncle was killed?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“Then I will tell you. They have been found, and they were found under a
settee in your boathouse——”
“My boathouse!”
“Yes. And wrapped up in them was the Totem Pole that vanished that same
night.”
Mrs. Merivale’s hand shot out and clasped the girl’s trembling fingers.
“It is a plant!” she said, “a deep-laid plot to incriminate this innocent
child!”
CHAPTER VIII
ALMA’S STATEMENTS
“That is a possible explanation,” Hart conceded. “But who would do such a
thing? Who would hide those ridiculous properties in that strange place,
and why?”
“No, it is not a plant,” Alma Remsen said, speaking slowly and seeming to
choose her words carefully. “I left the waistcoats in the boathouse
myself, when I carried them home day before yesterday.”
“Why did you take them home?” Hart spoke gravely but not unkindly.
“My uncle gave them to me.”
“Gave them to you! What for?”
“I am making a patchwork quilt, and he told me these two waistcoats were
worn and I could have them to cut up for patches. As they were of fine
quality silk, I was glad to get them.”
I looked at the girl in admiration. She was quite composed, even smiling
a little, and she favoured Hart with a glance of confidence, as if sure
he would believe her.
“And the Totem Pole?”
“Uncle gave me that, too. He possessed several, and he often gave me
little presents like that.”
She was quite at ease now, and her eyelids were as steady as the rest of
her face and demeanour.
“You were here Tuesday afternoon, then?”
“Yes, between three and four.”
“You saw your uncle?”
“Yes, of course.”
Something about her manner was disconcerting. At least, it bothered the
already harassed Coroner.
I was watching Alma Remsen closely, and it seemed to me she purposely
tried to put the Coroner in wrong. There was no overt act or word, but
her little glance of surprise or her glimmer of a smile made him seem
blundering and inept, and I decided she had such intentions.
This did not lower her in my estimation; indeed, I was fast reaching a
point where nothing could disparage her to me. It was not alone her
beauty, though she looked fair and sweet to-day, but I was bowled over by
her air of courage and determination.
That she had something to conceal, I was positive.
I knew she had been at Pleasure Dome the night of her uncle’s death, I
knew she denied it. Fatuously I told myself she had her own good reasons
for telling a falsehood, and I preferred to believe she was shielding
another rather than herself.
Hart was proceeding.
“Were you alone with him?”
Alma’s pretty brows contracted in her effort to recollect.
“Most of the time,” she said, with the air of humouring an
over-inquisitive child. “Mr. Everett was in and out of the room, and Mr.
Dean, too, I think.”
“Where were you?”
“In my uncle’s sitting room in his own suite.”
“And then he gave you the silk waistcoats?”
“Yes.”
“Which are, you say, worn?”
“Y-yes.” There was a slight hesitation this time.
“But Griscom has stated they were nearly new. Why should he give them to
you?”
Alma’s brows rose in distinct annoyance.
“The question of wear in such a garment is not a matter of fact, it is a
matter of opinion. It may be that my uncle considered them more worn than
Griscom did, or it may be that, since I admired them, my uncle was
willing to part with them, even if they were nearly new. The fact
remains, he gave them to me, for the purpose I have told you, and I
cannot see what bearing it has on the matter of his death. He also gave
me the Totem Pole, and I carried the things home, and inadvertently left
them in the boathouse.”
Well, if that girl was a liar, she certainly was the cleverest one I had
ever seen, and I didn’t for a minute believe she was lying.
I glanced at Keeley Moore, but nobody could read his inscrutable face.
I turned my attention to the jury.
Their interested countenances left no doubt of their sympathy with the
witness and their readiness to accept her statements.
And apparently Hart himself believed in her. The explanation of the
waistcoats was plausible enough. Doubtless, those rich men did give up
their clothing before it was worn threadbare, especially if a pretty
niece asked for it. And the Totem Pole, too. It was known that Sampson
Tracy had been devoted to his niece, although they no longer lived in the
same house, and for him to make her presents was far from unbelievable.
And, of course, I believed her.
Even if she had come to Pleasure Dome in the dead of night, that had
nothing to do with the waistcoats, which, doubtless, were given to her
exactly when and why she had stated.
Yet the girl seemed a mystery.
Coroner Hart contemplated her with a perplexed stare, which she in no way
resented.
“Can I tell you anything more?” she asked, helpfully.
Then he glared at her.
“Not now, Miss Remsen,” he said, with a new note in his voice. It sounded
almost menacing and Merry seemed to spring to attention. “I shall adjourn
the inquest, as it was intended merely for identification purposes, and I
must look into the case further before I can carry on properly. I will
call at your house to-day, and investigate a few things.”
“Indeed, you’ll do nothing of the sort!”, Mrs. Merivale exclaimed, her
eyes fairly snapping. They were dark, deep-set eyes, and her gray hair,
in wisps round her thin gaunt face, shook with the intensity of her
anger. “I’ll not have my lamb pestered by such nonsense! Ask her what you
like now, and have done with it. But don’t come snooping about her home,
for you won’t be let in!”
Alma quietly turned to the irate woman, and gave her a tender smile.
Then she said to Hart, quietly:
“Mrs. Merivale means no disrespect. She is ignorant of the workings of
the law, and is quick to resent what she thinks an intrusion on my
privacy. Keep still, Merry. The law must take its course.”
More, I felt certain, in response to a caressing touch on her shoulder
than by Alma’s words, the woman subsided, muttering to herself, but
saying nothing audible.
“It must, Miss Remsen,” Hart agreed. “I shall therefore call on you
to-day, as well as on several other of the witnesses, and I adjourn this
inquest for a week.”
Now it was Katherine Dallas’s turn to look apprehensive.
“I shall not be here,” she volunteered. “I am going away for a trip——”
“Not just at present, Mrs. Dallas,” the Coroner said, sternly. I was
surprised to note how much more master of himself he was when talking to
this woman than when he addressed Alma. Yet, surely, the haughty and
dignified widow was more awe-inspiring than the gentle girl.
Somehow, everybody seemed disturbed.
Harper Ames looked positively disgruntled. Both secretaries sat, with
eyes cast down, as if dismayed at the way things were going. Clearly,
there was disappointment that the matter could not be finished up then
and there, one way or another.
I came to the conclusion that the Coroner was largely at fault.
Apparently he knew little about conducting an inquest, and though he made
no basic errors, he was distinctly floundering and decidedly out of his
depth.
“There is much yet to be learned,” he announced, and we all, I am sure,
silently agreed with him. “There are strange happenings to be explained,
stories to be investigated, clues to be traced, evidence to be sifted,
and until these things are done the jury cannot come to a decision. As
they have seen and identified the deceased man, and have heard the detail
of the finding of the body, the funeral may be held and the estate may be
administered. But no witness may leave town, and all present must attend
the resumed inquest one week from to-day.”
Again I looked at the principals. As I could take no part in the
conversation, I contented myself with trying to read faces.
Nor was it difficult to do so.
Alma was trembling. Not only did her eyelids quiver, but she shook all
over, though quite evidently trying to control herself. Merivale stood at
her side; we had all risen now, and the girl leaned heavily upon the arm
of the faithful nurse.
Katherine Dallas looked daggers at everybody. Whatever her reason,
whatever her mental attitude, she appeared angry at the whole world and
inclined to show it.
Ames maintained his usual aspect, which was that of grumpiness.
That is the only word that really describes that man. He was not actively
angry, not exactly morose, but just grumpy, and it seemed to be his
normal state.
He looked loweringly at the Coroner, at Mrs. Dallas and at Alma. But none
of them called forth a varying expression to his grumpy face.
The audience began to disperse, and Ames came directly to Keeley Moore.
“Are you going to take this case?” he asked, in a threatening rather than
an urgent manner.
Moore looked at him. Knowing Kee as I did, I could read his thoughts
pretty well, and I realized that he was torn between his great desire to
investigate this intriguing problem and his disinclination to do it at
Ames’s behest.
Yet he couldn’t ignore Harper Ames and take up the case on his own.
“Yes,” he said, deciding quickly, “yes, Mr. Ames, I am most desirous of
doing so.”
“Then, go ahead, in your own way,” and for almost the first time, I saw
Harper Ames look pleased. “Conduct it as you like, and report to me at
your convenience.”
“I understand, then,” Moore said, looking at him closely, “I am to have
_carte blanche_ in my manner of procedure, and I am to pursue my
investigations no matter in what direction they may lead me?”
I saw a quick spasm of fear flash into Ames’s eyes, but it vanished as
quickly, and he said, suavely:
“Yes, Mr. Moore. Stop at nothing to get at the truth.”
He’s the villain, I told myself. He is so sure of his diabolical
cleverness, that he thinks he has left no clue and has completely covered
his tracks! God help him, when Keeley Moore gets on his trail!
We went into Mr. Tracy’s office, a pleasant room off the library.
There were three fine desks, Tracy’s own, and those of the secretaries.
Moore had told me to come along, and as Ames made no objection, I did so.
The three of us, behind closed doors, ran over the salient details.
“I can offer no sort of explanation of the absurd decorations on the
bed,” Ames said, “that is your province.”
He spoke in a quick, jerky way, as if anxious to delegate the whole
matter to Moore and be rid of it once for all.
“Once get the main issues of the affair, and those things will explain
themselves,” Keeley said, nonchalantly. “Whom do you suspect, Mr. Ames?”
Harper Ames gave a start, and looked up as if he had not heard aright.
“Suspect? I? Oh, nobody. I can’t conceive of a human being brutal enough
to commit this crime as it was committed. But somebody did, and so, I
hope you can bring about his arrest and conviction. Spare no expense——”
“This is not going to be an expensive case, Mr. Ames,” Moore told him.
“It must be solved by clever work, not by buying up evidence. I admit
that sounds rather boastful on my part, but I confess that I am taking up
the matter principally because of its unusual features and its bizarre
elements. I mean to do my best, and while I shall rely on having your
help when and where it may be available, yet I think the most of my work
will be done by myself alone.”
Again Harper Ames showed that strange gleam of fear in his eyes, but now
I thought he feared for some one other than himself. Was he shielding
some one? I knew evidence was often misleading because of the desire of
some one to protect some one else. But so far, there was not enough
evidence even to predicate this.
“Very well,” Ames continued. “Work on your own lines. Be as expeditious
as possible, but omit no effort. By the terms of Mr. Tracy’s will, I
shall be in a position to compensate you for your time, and your bill
will be paid whether you succeed or not.”
“And you have no hint to offer? No advice as to which way to look?”
“I have not. I will only say, it seems to me quite possible that the
killing of Mr. Tracy and the strange business of the flowers and oranges
may not be the work of the same hand.”
“That has occurred to me, too,” Kee said. “Now, I don’t want to seem
insistent, but do tell me your opinion as to the servants.”
“I’m not sure.” Ames seemed thoughtful. “I can’t suspect any wrong of
Griscom; he’s a faithful old soul, yet he does want his money. Little
home on a farm and all that. If he is mixed up in this thing, look out
for Bray. She is infatuated with Griscom——”
“And he with her?”
“That I don’t know. And it may be only my imagination. The cook is too
stupid to do anything really wrong. She has no thought save for her
kitchen and household. The other servants I don’t know very well. Find
out for yourself.”
“I shall,” and Kee smiled. “Don’t think I expect you to hire a dog and
then do your own barking. As to the secretaries?”
Though he said this with a most casual air, I knew Moore was listening
intently for the reply.
“As to that I can say nothing at all,” Ames returned, gravely. “I
wouldn’t say a word that might inculpate an innocent man. Nor do I say
that I think them other than innocent. But you must look it all up, you
must weigh and sift and decide for yourself.”
“Yes,” and Kee nodded his head, “that’s what detectives are for.”
“Then go to it. Of course, you are free of this house. Any other place
you wish to go, you must get permission for yourself. Try to be as
expeditious as possible.”
I had warmed to Ames. He seemed more of our own sort than I had thought
him. But as he rose, thus tacitly dismissing us, his grumpiness returned,
and he made a pettish gesture of annoyance at the whole situation.
“Rotten thing to happen!” he exclaimed. “Just now, too, when there were
so many crises pending.”
“I think I ought to know of those crises, Mr. Ames,” Moore said,
decidedly.
“Oh, nothing that you don’t already know,” Ames pulled himself up. But I
was sure that this time he was not strictly truthful. “Only Mr. Tracy’s
approaching marriage and——”
“Yes, and?”
“Nothing, save some financial matters that are in the lawyers’ hands.”
Ames was suave again, and I realized that his little burst of anger had
been impulsive and was now regretted.
So we left him, and Moore said, as he bowed us out, that we would take a
look round Mr. Tracy’s apartments upstairs.
“Not just now,” Ames said. “They are about to take the body away.”
“That won’t matter. We won’t incommode them,” and grasping my arm, Moore
fairly hustled me along with him toward the staircase.
We went up to the wing containing the luxurious suite of the dead man.
Looking at it more critically than before, I was delighted with its
beautiful furnishings and appointments. We paused in the sitting room,
for the undertaker’s men were in the bedroom.
Moore began to scrutinize the room. He did not get down on his hands and
knees, and show the accepted detective demeanour of “a hound on the
scent.” But he went about the room with his quick eyes darting here and
there for possible indication of an intruder.
The usual appurtenances of the master’s occupancy he left apparently
unnoticed, but he examined the door sill and the window sills.
The windows, there were two large ones, gave on the lake, or rather, on
that dark pool-like stretch of water called the Sunless Sea.
“Come and look out here, Norris,” he said. “Can you imagine any one
jumping or diving into that bottomless pit?”
“Yes,” I returned, “I can easily imagine it. But he would have to be a
master diver and a master swimmer. Also, a fearless man and a desperate
one.”
“Well put, old chap. Clearly and succinctly, I’ll say. He would, indeed,
have to be all those things. And he was about five feet eight inches
tall, and not a heavy weight, and he wore white flannels and tennis shoes
and carried in his hand something painted red.”
“Marvellous, Holmes, marvellous!” I managed to ejaculate, though I was
nearly struck dumb at his speech. “Now, I won’t be your Watson, unless
you tell me how you picked up, or made up, all that.”
“Of course, I’ll tell you. You well know I’m not the sort of mutt that
likes to be mysterious. And, too, I want your corroboration. First, you
see the print on the white painted window sill of what can only be the
rubber sole of a tennis shoe. You see there’s by no means a full
foot-print, but there is enough to show the nubbly sole.”
He was right. I could discern clearly, though faintly, a few of the
imprints undeniably made by a sole of a tennis shoe.
“Not enough to tell whether the wearer of the shoe had his foot turned in
toward the room or outward,” I offered.
“No,” he returned, eying me sharply, “but the law of probabilities makes
me believe it is turned outward. It is hard to think of the murderer
poising himself on the sill and diving into that black water, but far
harder to visualize him coming in by such an entrance!”
“Go on,” I said, a bit crossly, for I didn’t at all like it.
“Our friend, the murderer, was about five feet eight, because I am five
feet ten and a half, and here at the sides of the window frame, we see
two sets of fingerprints, faint again, but there, and they are at a
height of two and a half inches below where mine would strike if I took
hold to pull myself up to the window sill.”
“You can’t get anything from those prints,” I told him. “They’re too
faint. A mere hint only.”
“I only need a mere hint. And anyway, I’m only proving the exit of our
criminal by this window, and so down into the lake.”
“And his clothes!” I jeered. “A straw hat, did you say?”
“I did not. I said white flannels, because here’s a shred of such caught
in a splinter of the upright of the window frame.”
“I refuse to believe in ‘shreds of cloth clenched in the victim’s hand.’”
“Not a shred, really, just a thread, a strand, but it’s to the zealous,
confirmation strong! And, note that he carried something painted red in
his right hand. See the mark, just above his right hand-print, that is
indubitably made by a piece of painted wood.”
“The devil it is! I say, Moore, you’re going dotty over this thing. At
any rate, don’t give it all to Hart or March, for they’ll make ducks and
drakes of it in short order.”
“No, I shall give it to nobody. I shall use it all myself. I only show it
to you, because I want you to witness it. This evidence may be removed,
and I want you to swear it was here.”
“I can’t swear those are fingerprints,” I complained. “They’re too faint.
You can’t swear to that yourself.”
“I’ll get the fingerprint man up here, or get his outfit. It’s a wonder
what they can do with the merest smudges. And, I say, Norry, what’s the
trouble? Don’t you want me to find clues? Don’t you want me to unearth
the villain? You didn’t murder Tracy, did you?”
“No, but do go slowly, Kee. You’re so impulsive, so headstrong. Now, that
red streak, a mere blur, may have been here for days—even weeks.”
“Not in this house. Do you see any other smudges or smears on this
immaculate white paint? Enamel paint, of the finest sort. Every
fingerprint is wiped off within twenty-four hours, I’m sure. That’s why I
want to be sure of these.”
The men were gone now, so we stepped into the bedroom.
Save that the master was absent, the room was much as we had already seen
it. The flowers, now withered, still lay on the pillows, and the crackers
and orange were on the floor where Doctor Rogers had flung them.
The feather duster seemed not to interest Kee, but he scrutinized the
window sill with care.
“No signs here, you see. And, too, there’s a balcony. It would be easier
to dive from the sitting-room window. So that’s what our friend did. See,
here’s the lady’s scarf. Now learn, my boy, to distinguish between
important and non-important clues. Without doubt, the sentimental Sampson
kept that scarf by him as a reminder and souvenir of his bride to be.
Most likely, he went to bed, carrying it with him. Perhaps wrapped it
about him, or held it to his cheek.”
“Don’t be silly!”
“Not silly at all. I see you know nothing of fetish worship, remnants of
which survive among us moderns in the form of just such souvenirs. So, I
deduce the murderer had no hand in providing the scarf. But the flowers
had to be brought from their vases, the crackers and fruit from the
table, the duster from its proper abiding place, all these things were
achieved by our tennis-soled friend.”
“And the nail?” I snapped at him.
“Yes,” he said, “and the nail.”
CHAPTER IX
CLUES
“And what was the nail driven home with?” I pursued, looking about.
“That’s a queer thing, too,” he returned. “Some heavy mallet or hammer
must have been used. True, it could have been driven by some other hard
or heavy object, but I see nothing indicative about. No bronze book-ends
or iron doorstop.”
We scanned the room, but saw no implement that would act as a hammer.
“I think I may say,” Keeley went on, “that never have I seen a case with
so many bizarre points. To be sure they may be all faked in an attempt to
bewilder and mislead the investigators, but even so, such a number of
clues, whether real or spurious, ought to lead somewhere.”
“They will,” I assured him. “Where are you going to begin?”
“I don’t know where I shall begin, but I shall end up with the watch in
the water pitcher. That, you will find, will be the bright star in this
galaxy of clues.”
“Just as a favour, Kee, do tell me why you stress that so. Why is that
silly act more illuminating than the other queernesses?”
“No, Gray, I won’t tell you that now. Not that I want to be mysterious,
but that may be my trump card, and I don’t want to expose it prematurely.
You’d know yourself if you’d ever studied medical works.”
“Medical works! I can’t see any therapeutic value in the incident. Is it
voodoo, or a medicine-man stunt?”
Griscom came into the room just then, and Moore asked him again as to the
watch.
But we gained no new knowledge. The watch had been lying on a small jewel
tray on the dresser. The water pitcher had been on a near-by table. It
seemed, like all the rest of the inexplicable circumstances, a mere bit
of wanton mischief.
“Why do you look so worried, Griscom?” Kee said, eying the man closely.
“I am worried, sir. About them weskits.”
“Oh, pshaw, they’re of small consequence compared to the graver questions
we have to face.”
“Yes, sir, but it’s queer. Now, I know those two weskits were in their
right place Wednesday morning. And Miss Alma said the master gave ’em to
her of a Tuesday afternoon.”
“Oh, she just mistook the day,” I said, hastily, anxious to keep her name
out of the discussion.
But Moore was interested at once.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Perfectly sure,” the man replied. “Miss Alma was here Tuesday afternoon
and the master may have given her the weskits then, but she didn’t carry
them home, for they were here Wednesday morning.”
“One of you must be mistaken as to the day,” I repeated. “And it doesn’t
matter, anyway.”
“Oh, keep still, Gray,” Kee said, impatiently. “What about the Totem
Pole, Griscom? Was that here Wednesday morning?”
“I don’t know for certain——” He looked perplexed.
“Of course you don’t,” I broke in, irrepressibly. “You can’t remember
exactly incidents that made no real impression on you at the time. Nobody
can. And don’t try to be positive about these things when you’ve really
only a vague recollection.”
“No, sir,” Griscom said, speaking deferentially enough, but I caught a
slight gleam of obstinacy in his eye.
“Are you talking about those waistcoats?” asked Everett, coming into the
room.
“Yes,” Kee said, “why?”
“Only that I’m puzzled. Miss Remsen says her uncle gave them to her on
Tuesday, but I know that he wore the dark blue moire one on Wednesday.”
“At dinner time?” Moore asked.
“Yes, we don’t dress in summer, unless there are ladies here. He had it
on at dinner I’m positive.”
“Then it’s all part of the planted evidence,” I informed them. “Whoever
staged all the foolish scene on the bed, also grabbed up two waistcoats
and the Totem Pole, made a bundle of them and deposited it in Miss
Remsen’s boathouse.”
“Then why did she say she wanted them for patchwork——”
“She didn’t at first,” I urged, not realizing where my argument led. “But
she was so put about and bewildered by that fool coroner that she
scarcely knew what she was saying——”
“I think you scarcely know what you’re saying, Gray,” and Moore looked at
me in kindly admonition. “You’d better hush up, if you don’t mind. I’m
not sure Miss Remsen needs an advocate, but if she does, your incoherent
babblings won’t do her any good.”
Though he smiled, his tone was serious, and I began to see I was making a
fool of myself.
I turned on my heel and left the room, not trusting myself to hush up to
the degree desired. In the sitting room, I saw Billy Dean, looking
disconsolate.
I was surprised, for he had seemed cheerful enough up to now.
On a sudden impulse, and with a glance that he could not mistake for
other than confidential, I said:
“So you saw the canoe Wednesday night?”
“Yes,” he said, answering my eyes rather than my words. Then realizing
his slip, he said, quickly, “No, not a canoe, I heard a motor boat about
midnight.”
“Yes, and a canoe later,” I persisted. “Look out, Dean, I’m not
investigating, I’m only anxious to help—the innocent,” I finished, a
little lamely.
“I don’t get you,” the young man said, stubbornly, and again the red
flamed in his cheeks.
“Oh, yes, you do, and please understand we’re at one in this matter. I
want you to promise not to say anything about it to any one. You see,
your unfortunate trick of blushing like a schoolgirl gives you away, and
makes you seem to admit far more than you know. Now, before Detective
March or Keeley Moore gets after you, just you tell me what you know and
let me advise you. I’m as loyal to Miss Remsen as you can possibly be,
even if you are in love with her and I’m not.”
I made this not entirely veracious statement to set the poor chap’s mind
at rest, for I could see dawning jealousy in his frank and open
countenance.
He responded to my sincerity of manner and tone, and speaking almost in a
whisper, said:
“I didn’t see her, my room is in the other wing, but I heard Alma’s
paddling. I’d know her stroke among a thousand. Nobody paddles as she
does.”
“Oh, you couldn’t recognize a mere paddle stroke!”
“Yes, I could. It’s unique, I tell you. She has a peculiar rhythm, and if
you know it, it’s unmistakable.”
“At what time was this?”
“About half past one; a few minutes later, just after the clock in the
hall had chimed the half hour.”
“Why do you tell me this?”
He glared at me. “That’s a nice question, when you’ve fairly dragged it
out of me! But I’m banking on your statement that you’re loyal to Alma
and I’m hoping that you can somehow ward off inquiries from Mr. Moore or
keep the police away from her house.”
“You don’t think she had anything to do with——”
“Of course, I know Alma Remsen had nothing to do with her uncle’s death,
if that’s what you’re trying to say, but I do believe she was here late
that night, and if that fact is discovered, it means trouble all round.”
He had suddenly acquired a dignity quite at variance with his former
boyish embarrassment, and spoke earnestly and steadily.
“Why would she come here at such an hour?”
“She—she comes at any time—she has her own key——” He was floundering
again.
“Yes, I know, but at half past one at night! What could be the
explanation?”
“I can’t tell you——I daren’t tell you,” he moaned like a child. “But oh,
Mr. Norris, do stand by! Do use any tact or cleverness you may possess to
keep the hounds off her track! She will be persecuted, unless we can save
her!” He began to look wild-eyed, and I began to fear that Miss Remsen
had even a worse and more imbecile helper in him than in me.
But the whole affair was growing in interest, and I was glad to have a
sympathizer in my belief in Alma Remsen’s innocence, whatever sort he
might be.
For I had caught a few words from the next room and I felt certain that
Everett and Keeley Moore were talking over the strange story of Alma and
the waistcoats.
Feeling I could do no more with Dean just then, I went back to the
bedroom.
“Sifting clues?” I asked, trying to speak casually.
Kee looked at me, and smiled a little.
“Absent clues rather than present ones,” he said. “You see, the
waistcoats and the Totem Pole disappeared, but so did the plate—the fruit
plate.”
“Is that important?” I asked.
“Why, yes, in a way. Everything that is here or that isn’t here is
important.”
“A bit cryptic, but I grasp your meaning,” I told him. “Then the hammer
that belongs to the nail is important?”
“Very much so,” Kee answered, gravely. “Do you know where it is?”
“I don’t, but it seems to me you haven’t looked for it very hard. If the
murderer is one of this household, presumably he used a hammer belonging
here.”
“Then it loses its importance. The hammer is only of interest if it was
brought in from outside.”
“Have you made any headway at all, Kee?”
“Not much, I confess. Mr. Everett here inclines to Ames——”
“And Ames inclines to Everett,” was the somewhat surprising observation
of the secretary himself.
“Yes,” he went on, as I looked at him in amazement, “but I think, I hope,
Ames only suspects me because it’s the conventional thing to do. In
stories, you know, nine tenths of the crimes are committed by the
confidential secretary.”
“Not so many,” I said, judicially: “Four tenths, at most. Then, three
tenths by the butler, three tenths by the inheriting nephew, and two
tenths by——”
“Hold up, Gray,” Keeley cried, “you’ve used up your quota of tenths
already. But Ames is a really fine suspect.”
“Except that he can’t dive and I can,” Everett helped along. “And there’s
no way out of this locked apartment except through a window. And all the
windows are on the Sunless Sea.”
“Could you dive into that and come up smiling?” asked Kee.
“I could,” Everett said, “but I’d rather not. I know the rocks and all
that, but it’s a tricky stunt. Ames could never do it.”
“Unless he’s been hoaxing you all as to his prowess in the water,” Moore
suggested.
“Yes, that might be,” Everett assented, thoughtfully.
Then Moore and I started for home. As we left the house, he proposed we
go in a boat, of which there seemed to be plenty and to spare at the
dock.
In preference to a canoe, Keeley selected a trim round-bottomed rowboat,
and we started off.
He did the rowing, by choice, and he bent to his oars in silence. I too
felt disinclined to talk, and we shot along the water, propelled by his
long steady strokes.
I looked about me. The whole scene was a setting for peace and
happiness—not for crime. Yet here was black crime, stalking through the
landscape, aiming for Pleasure Dome, and clutching in its wicked hand the
master of the noble estate.
I looked back at the wonderful view. The great house, built on a gently
sloping hill, shone white in the summer sunlight. The densely growing
trees, judiciously thinned out or cut into vistas, made a perfect
background, and the foreground lake, shimmering now as the sun caught its
wavelets, veiled its dangers and treachery beneath a guise of smiling
light.
We went on and on and I suddenly realized that we had passed the Moore
bungalow.
“Keeley,” I said, thinking he had forgotten to land, “where are you
going?”
“To the Island,” he replied, and his face wore an inscrutable look, “Come
along, Gray, but for Heaven’s sake don’t say anything foolish. Better not
open your mouth at all. Better yet, stay in the boat——”
“No,” I cried, “I’m going with you. Don’t be silly, Kee, I sha’n’t make a
fool of myself.”
“Well, try not to, anyway,” he said, grimly, and then we made a landing
at Alma Remsen’s home.
It was a tidy little dock and trim boathouse that received us, and I
realized the aptness of the name “Whistling Reeds.”
For the tall reeds that lined some stretches of its shore were even now
whistling faintly in the summer breeze. A stronger wind would indeed make
them voiceful.
Back of the reeds were trees, and I had a passing thought that never had
I seen so many trees on one island. So dense that they seemed like an
impenetrable growth, the path cut through them to the house was not at
once discernible.
“This way,” Kee said, and struck into a sort of lane between the sentinel
poplars and hemlocks.
But a short walk brought us out into a great clearing where was a
charming cottage and most pleasant grounds and gardens.
There were terraces, flower beds, tennis court, bowling green and a field
showing a huge target, set up for archery practice.
It fascinated me, and I no longer wondered that Miss Remsen loved her
island home. The house itself, though called a cottage, was a good-sized
affair, of two and a half stories, with verandahs and balconies, and a
hospitable atmosphere seemed to pervade the porches, furnished with
wicker chairs and chintz cushions.
Yet the place was so still, so uninhabited looking that I shuddered
involuntarily. I became conscious of a sinister effect, an undercurrent
of something eerie and strange.
I glanced off at the trees and shrubbery. It was easily seen that the
Island, of two or three acres, I thought, was bright and cheerful only
immediately around the house. Surrounding the clearing for that, the
trees closed in, and the result was like an enormous, lofty wall of
impenetrable black woods.
I quickly came back to the house, and as we went up the steps, Alma
Remsen came out on the porch.
I shall never forget how she looked then.
For the first time I saw her close by without a hat. Her hair, of golden
brown, but bright gold in the sunlight, was in soft short ringlets like a
baby’s curls. I know a lot, having sisters, about marcel and permanent,
about water waves and finger curls, but this hair, I recognized, had that
unusual attribute, longed for by all women: it was naturally curly.
The tendrils clustered at the nape of her neck and broke into soft, thick
curls at the top of her head. I had never seen such fascinating hair, and
dimly wondered what it was like before she had it cut short.
She wore a sort of sports suit of white silk with bands of green.
She glanced down at this apologetically.
“I ought to be in black,” she said, “or, at least, all white. But I am,
when I go over to the mainland. Here at home, it doesn’t seem to matter.
Does it?”
She looked up at me appealingly, though with no trace of coyness.
“Of course not,” I assured her. “Our affection is not made or marred by
the colour of a garment.”
This sounded a bit stilted, even to me, but Kee had told me not to make a
fool of myself and I was trying hard to obey.
“Sit down,” she said, hospitably, but though calm, she was far from being
at ease.
“We’re only going to stay a minute,” Kee said. “We must get home to
luncheon. It’s late now, and my wife will be furious. Miss Remsen, I
think I’ll speak right out and not beat about the bush.”
She turned rather white, but sat listening, her hands clasped in her lap
and her little white-shod foot tapping nervously on the porch floor.
“I want to ask you,” Keeley Moore spoke in a tone of such kindness that I
could see Alma pluck up heart a bit, “about the waistcoats. Though it may
be a trifling matter, yet great issues may hang on it. When you said your
uncle gave them to you, were you strictly truthful?”
She sat silent, looking from one to the other of us. When she glanced at
me I was startled at the message in her eyes. If ever a call of SOS was
signalled, it was then. Without a word or a gesture her gaze implored my
help.
But with all the willingness in the world, what could I do? Keeley had
warned me against making a fool of myself, and though I would gladly have
defied him to serve her, I could see no way to do so, fool or no fool.
All I could do, was to give her back gaze for gaze and try to put in my
eyes all the sympathy and help that were surging up in my heart.
I think she understood, and yet I could see a shadow of disappointment
that I could, as she saw, do nothing definite.
Moore was waiting for his answer, but she was deliberate of manner and
speech.
“By what right are you questioning me, Mr. Moore?” she said.
“Principally by right of my interest in you and your welfare and my great
desire to be of service to you.” Kee’s sincerity was beyond all doubt.
“That is the truth?”
“Yes, Miss Remsen, that is the truth.”
“Then, I will tell you, that you can be of service to me only by
refraining from questioning me and ceasing to interest yourself in my
welfare.”
The asperity of the words was contradicted by the supplicating glance and
the troubled face of the girl before us. Her eyelids quivered with that
agonized trembling I had learned to know, and she fairly bit her lips in
an effort to preserve her poise.
“I’m sorry not to take you at your word, and leave you at once, but I
must warn you that the police will doubtless come to see you, and I’m
sure you are in need of advice.”
“Police!” she breathed, scarcely audibly.
“Yes; Not Hart, but more likely Detective March. He is not an unkind man,
but he will do his duty, and it will be an ordeal for you. Now, won’t you
let me help you, as a friend, or, if not, won’t you call a lawyer, of
good standing and repute?”
“A lawyer!” she breathed, exactly as she had spoken of the police.
Clearly, the poor child was at her wits’ end. The reason for her distress
I did not see, for surely nobody could dream of her being mixed up in a
crime. The obvious explanation was that she was shielding somebody, and
this was my theory.
I came to a swift conclusion that she had gone to Pleasure Dome that
night, that she had seen or heard the murderer at his fell deed, and that
it had so unnerved her that she could not control herself when thinking
of it.
This seemed to point to Billy Dean, that is, if she cared for him as he
did for her.
Kee was forging ahead.
“Yes. Please try to realize, Miss Remsen, that the visit from the police
detective is inevitable. He will doubtless come this afternoon. You will
have to see him; one can’t evade the law. Now, let me help you to be a
little prepared for him, and not let him throw you into spasms of
terrified silence, or, worse, impetuous and incriminating statements.”
Still looking at him steadily, Alma Remsen seemed to change. Her face
grew calm, even haughty; her lips set in a straight line that betokened
determination and courage; and her eyes fairly gleamed with a beautiful
bravery that transformed her into a veritable goddess of war.
She seemed to have taken up her sword and her shield, and I think it was
at that moment that I realized that I loved her and adored her as
something far above earthly mortals.
I couldn’t help her, at least, not at the moment, but I could worship her
and did so, with the innermost fibres of my being.
Then this new Alma spoke.
“Mr. Moore,” she said, “and Mr. Norris, I thank you for this visit. I
thank you for the kindness that prompted it, and for your offers of
assistance. But there is nothing you can do, either of you. I am alone in
the world; alone, I must fight my battles and conquer my foes. Alone I
must defend my actions and accept my misfortunes. I live alone, I shall
always be alone, and alone I must decide upon my course in this present
crisis. Please believe I am grateful and please believe I am sorry not to
accept your kindly offered assistance. But I cannot tell you anything, I
cannot—I cannot—Merry!”
Her final despairing call brought the old nurse on the run.
“Yes, lamb, yes, my darling,—there, there——”
Mrs. Merivale clasped the trembling girl to her bosom and glared at us as
at vile interlopers.
“Please to go away, gentlemen,” she said, in a repressed tone that
indicated wrath behind it. “Please leave my young lady for the present.
She will see you, if she wishes, at some other time. But now, she is
nervous and all wrought up with the horror of her uncle’s death. If you
are men, let her alone!”
The last plea was brought out with a dramatic touch worthy of a tragedy
queen, and I know I felt like a worm of the dust and I devoutly hoped
that Keeley felt even more so.
He gave one last bit of unsolicited advice.
“You’d better be with Miss Remsen when the police come, Mrs. Merivale,”
he said, and no one could have put any construction on his words other
than the kindest and most disinterested counsel.
Then we went away, and Keeley rowed us home without a word.
CHAPTER X
DISCUSSION
If Whistling Reeds had seemed desolate and sinister, Variable Winds was
just the opposite. Clean, wind-swept, cheerful with flowers and only
pleasantly shaded by the waving trees, the place was like sanctuary after
the forbidding aspect of the island home.
Luncheon was ready and the two women who awaited our coming were not at
all reproachful, but welcomed us with smiles.
“Dust up a bit and then come along,” admonished Lora, and we obeyed.
At the table, though the subject of the tragedy was not entirely taboo,
there was no real discussion, until we were, later, seated in the lounge,
comfortably smoking and resting from our strenuous morning.
“The keynote is the missing waistcoats,” Kee announced, oracularly.
“You said the keynote was the watch in the water pitcher,” I reminded
him.
“They are part of the same note,” he informed me. “The work of the same
hand and equally illuminating as signboards.”
“Oh, if you’re going to be mysterious——”
“I’m not, Gray, but I can’t announce decisions that are not yet entirely
clear in my own mind. I’m sorry Doctor Rogers went away—he could read the
message of the watch at once. But I don’t want to put it up to any other
doctor.”
“Well, of course I can’t help you, as you are so close-minded——”
“Nonsense, Gray,” said Lora, “of course we can help. The watch may or may
not be of such great importance, but it surely isn’t all there is of it.
Nor the waistcoats, either. To me, those things seem merely adjuncts of
the rest of the queer performance, the flowers and feather duster and all
that.”
“But the waistcoats are in contradictory stories,” I argued. “Miss Remsen
said she took them home Tuesday afternoon, and left them in the boathouse
where they were found. Griscom says they were in their place on
Wednesday. Then Everett came along and said Mr. Tracy wore one of them,
the blue one, Wednesday night at dinner.”
“Well, then,” and Lora looked at me keenly, “what point are you making,
Gray? These stories seem to stultify Miss Remsen’s statement.”
“I’m making the point,” I declared, “that the girl isn’t quite
responsible for her own statements; she doubtless told her uncle she
would like the satin for her patchwork and he probably said she could
have it. But she didn’t carry the waistcoats away with her, Tuesday
afternoon—that we know. So, what conclusion is there, but that, as the
old nurse said, it is all a plant? Somebody came in the night, killed Mr.
Tracy, and then, after fixing up all that jiggery-pokery, went off
carrying the waistcoats and Totem Pole, and carefully planted them in
Alma Remsen’s boathouse. I can’t see anything incriminating to the girl
in all that.”
“Gray, dearie,” Lora said, with a queer, affectionate little smile, “you
couldn’t see anything incriminating to Miss Remsen with a Lick telescope!
Now, that’s all right, and I’m not cavilling, but unless you can approach
this matter with an unbiassed mind, maybe you’d better keep out of it.”
“Keep out of it nothing!” I exclaimed. “I admit I admire Miss Remsen, but
that’s all the more reason to see things clearly and stay in the
discussion.”
“Right!” said Maud, “and I vote that Gray be in it all, and that we pay
especial attention to his opinions.”
I looked at her quickly, to see if she was guying me, but she was not,
and I at once recovered my balance, my self-respect and an added cocksure
air that caused the Moores, both of them, great amusement.
But I was not at all daunted by their smiles and I went on.
“My opinion is this,” I stated, “the man who killed Sampson Tracy is as
clever as they come. He fixed up all the rubbishy evidence to mislead the
investigators. But, perhaps on purpose, perhaps accidentally, he led
directly to Miss Remsen in the matter of the waistcoats and the Totem
Pole. And so——”
“Now, Graysie, dear,” and Kee threw the stub of his cigar into the ash
tray, “I’m ready to talk. So, call a halt on the waistcoat-totem matter,
and let’s get down to cases.”
“It’s a case, all right,” said Lora, whose fine eyes were gazing directly
at her husband, as she concentrated on the subject. “Kee, you’ve got your
chance!”
“Chance!” Moore echoed. “I’m no Sherlock, I’m ready to say right out that
I’m all afloat, absolutely at sea, in this thing.”
Somehow this comforted me. I feared he would jump at once to a conclusion
that somehow incriminated Alma Remsen, and I was greatly relieved that he
didn’t.
Wanting to be helpful, I volunteered: “How about the weapon? There’s the
nail, of course, but what about the hammer or mallet? I can’t see that
nail driven without a heavy implement.”
Kee looked at me.
“No,” he said, “I can’t either. How about a croquet mallet?”
“That would fit,” I responded. “Know of any here-abouts?”
“Not precisely. But the tennis court at Whistling Reeds used to be a
croquet ground.”
I quailed, but I hoped I didn’t show it.
“And that proves?” I said, jauntily.
“Nothing but possibility.”
“Which isn’t much.”
“No, it isn’t much.” Kee looked harassed. “But a lot of little bits of
evidence, added together, make a——”
“Make a muckle,” I jibed. “All right, what’s your muckle?”
“That Alma Remsen knows more about this matter than she’s telling.”
Moore’s deadly still tone, more than his words, struck a chill of terror
to my heart.
For a moment, knowing his great wisdom as well as I did, I was tempted to
tell him everything, but caution held me back, and I only said, “it may
be.”
Lora looked at me, curiously.
“Gray,” she said, “you don’t know anything, do you?” I was glad she put
it like this.
“No, Lora,” I replied, “I don’t know anything. If I did, I’d speak out.
But I do believe that there is a deep, dark, underlying mystery that none
of us understands, and I wish I could see into it.”
“Kee will see into it,” she said, confidently, and I could only respond:
“I hope to Heaven he will.”
Kee sat without speaking for a moment or two, and then said:
“Gray, what was the reason for Miss Remsen’s sudden change of base while
we were talking to her?”
“Change of base?” I said, stupidly.
“Yes. Don’t be an imbecile. I know you noticed it. It was just after I
told her the police would come to interview her. That seemed to spur her
or stir her up in some way, for she at once became a different being.
More alert and alive, more determined.”
“Yes, I noticed it,” I told him. “I can’t explain it except to say that
she was startled at the idea of a police interview, and it brought out
her natural bravery and courage. She rose to the occasion and I’ve no
doubt she will meet Hart with proper dignity and poise.”
“It won’t be Hart, it will be March. March is a good man, but I doubt if
he can swing this case.”
“Of course he can’t,” I declared. “But you’re going to do the swinging,
yourself.”
“Then I’d better begin. Now let’s marshal our facts. First of all, we
have the collection of properties found on the bed. Was that all the work
of one hand?”
“Yes,” I said, “but not necessarily the hand of the murderer.”
“That’s right,” and Moore nodded assent. “I’m inclined to think a
waggish-minded visitor followed up the murderer and arranged that
scenery.”
“Why?” asked Lora, very thoughtfully.
“I can think of no reason,” Kee returned, “except in an effort to direct
suspicion away from the real criminal.”
“Who would do that?”
“Only a clever and watchful person, determined to shield the murderer.”
“Set up a hypothetical case,” suggested Maud. “Say, Mrs. Dallas was the
murderer——”
“How absurd,” cried Lora, “why should she kill the man she expected to
marry?”
“That we don’t know,” Maud went on in her calm way. “But there may have
been reasons. Suppose Mr. Tracy had learned some secret in Mrs. Dallas’s
past——”
“Go on,” Kee said, briefly, as Maud looked at him questioningly.
“I know it sounds melodramatic, but the whole affair is melodramatic, and
those clues don’t seem to lead anywhere. Well, suppose Mrs. Dallas did
it—killed him, I mean—and suppose somebody saw her who cared for her, Mr.
Ames or Mr. Everett, or—or anybody. Mightn’t he trump up all that funny
business to make it seem as if she could not have done it?”
“I don’t think you’ve struck it quite right, Maud,” Keeley said, “but I
will say there’s a germ of thought in your theory. Granting two people
concerned, there’s no reason to think them accomplices, it’s far more
likely one is covering up the deeds of the other.”
“All of which is fantastic and not founded on fact,” Lora put in. “It’s
only imagination, and one can imagine anything.”
“You have no use for imagination?” I asked her, smiling.
“Yes, when it is admittedly imagination, as in a fairy story or a
romance. But imagination must not be used as a basis for argument.”
“She’s right,” Keeley said, slowly. “Lora’s usually right. Now what facts
have we, outside the feather-duster lot?”
“The people themselves,” I offered. “The relationships between the people
and the motives of the people.”
“That’s more like it,” and Kee gave me a glance of approval. “Take the
household first. Who’s the most likely suspect?”
“Mrs. Dallas,” I said, promptly.
“She isn’t in the household.”
“Same as. She has a latchkey, so that makes her practically one of them.”
“Then Alma Remsen is in the same case.”
“Same case,” I agreed, knowing better than to combat him.
“All right, go on. What’s the widow’s motive?”
I knew Moore’s methods. He liked to have us make suggestions that he
could accept or discard, thereby giving his mind something to work on.
“We can’t get at her motive,” I told him, “because we know too little
about her. A personal interview with her is needed, and then she would
probably, or at least perhaps, let slip some hint of why she wanted
Sampson Tracy out of her way.”
“She’d have to hate him,” said Maud, doubtfully.
“Whoever killed him must have hated him,” Kee declared. “It was a brutal
murder——”
“Don’t over-stress the brutality,” Lora put in. “It was horrible, of
course, but to my mind it was less dreadful than shooting or stabbing.”
“Where did the murderer get his nail?” mused Kee.
“The nail and the hammer,” Lora said, “inclines me to the servants, or
the secretaries. I can’t see Mrs. Dallas or Alma Remsen coming to the
house armed with a hammer and nail! They might bring a pistol or a
dagger, but the implement used must have been picked up impulsively or
impetuously, in the Tracy pantries or offices.”
“Unless the murderer acted on the story Maud told of, the Spanish story
of _The Nail_,” I observed.
“Rather far-fetched,” Kee returned. “I’d have to see a copy of that book
in a suspect’s possession before I’d take much stock in that theory.”
“I rather fancy it,” Maud insisted. “Any of our suspects, and I suppose
they include all who were questioned by the coroner, may have read that
book.”
“The servants?” I asked.
“Yes, often servants read books that they run across, though they’d never
dream of buying them.”
“Then Griscom for choice,” Moore said. “Say his motive is a desire to get
his legacy at once. Say his friendship for his master is not so great as
he pretends, and there’s no question of his opportunity. Say he read that
gruesome tale, and concluded it would be a fine way to get his money
quickly. Then, after his deed is accomplished, he has imagination enough,
or ingenuity enough to fix up all those tricks on the bed, and in his
zeal he rather overdid it.”
“Your own imagination is running away with you,” I declared. “It may all
be true, but you’ve no atom of proof, nor even an atom of evidence
against Griscom more than any other servant. Sally Bray——”
“Sally Bray may have been Griscom’s accomplice. Isn’t she in love with
him?”
“Is she?” I inquired. “There’s the trouble, Kee, we don’t know enough
facts. Is Sally in love with the butler? Is Mrs. Dallas in love with the
secretary? Is Harper Ames in love with Mrs. Dallas? Get these things
settled for certain, and then try to fit in your theories.”
“That’s so, Gray,” Moore agreed. “And I see Mr. Police Detective March
coming our way. I hate to acknowledge it, but he may know more, in his
ordinary police way, than we hifalutin, transcendent detectives have, so
far, been able to ferret out.”
I glanced out of the window to see the stolid-looking man tramping along
toward our door.
Although he showed little alertness or eagerness, there was a sort of
power in the way he carried himself that gave me a feeling of confidence.
He came in as Kee rose to greet him, spoke to the ladies in a preoccupied
way, and seated himself comfortably in a big easy chair.
“Well,” he said, “I’ve been to see the Remsen girl.”
“What about her?” Kee asked.
“Nothing, so far. She’s rattled to death, and all upset, of course, but
though I think she’s trying to hide something, I’m sure it’s nothing of
real importance. I mean, she thinks she knows something about somebody
that seems to her of evidential value, but it isn’t.”
“How do you know it isn’t?”
“This way, Mr. Moore. She gets embarrassed at the wrong places.”
“Go on, say more about it.”
“It’s hard to explain so as to make it plausible. But when I ask her
about her doings that night, or about her relations with her uncle, or
her feeling towards Mrs. Dallas, she’s as unconcerned and
un-self-conscious as a child. But when I refer to those waistcoats or
that painted pole, she gets queer-like all in a minute.”
“And you gather from that?”
“That she is worried to death about the waistcoats because somebody must
have put them in her boathouse to incriminate her, and that scares her.
While any talk of the actual murder seems not to disturb her nearly so
much.”
“You have imagination, Mr. March,” Moore said, looking at him with a sort
of admiration. “Or you couldn’t see all that.”
“No, Mr. Moore,” the policeman looked earnest, “that’s only seeing things
as they are. I saw all that in Miss Remsen’s face and attitude. It
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