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                          THE GIRL AT CENTRAL
                          BY GERALDINE BONNER




       Author of "The Emigrant Trail," "The Book of Evelyn," etc.




                             ILLUSTRATED BY
                          ARTHUR WILLIAM BROWN




                          NEW YORK AND LONDON
                        D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
                                  1915




                          Copyright, 1915, by
                       _D. Appleton and Company_




       _Copyright, 1914, 1915, by The Curtis Publishing Company_




               _Printed in the United States of America_




[Illustration: _'Mark my words, there’s going to be trouble at
Mapleshade’"_]




CONTENTS


  · LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
  · I
  · II
  · III
  · IV
  · V
  · VI
  · VII
  · VIII
  · IX
  · X
  · XI
  · XII
  · XIII
  · XIV
  · XV
  · XVI
  · XVII




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


'Mark my words, there’s going to be trouble at Mapleshade’
Sylvia was in her riding dress, looking a picture
A day later he was arrested at Firehill and taken to Bloomington jail
I came down to the parlor where Babbitts was waiting




I


Poor Sylvia Hesketh! Even now, after this long time, I can’t think of it
without a shudder, without a comeback of the horror of those days after
the murder. You remember it—the Hesketh mystery? And mystery it surely
was, baffling, as it did, the police and the populace of the whole
state. For who could guess why a girl like that, rich, beautiful,
without a care or an enemy, should be done to death as she was. Think of
it—at five o’clock sitting with her mother taking tea in the library at
Mapleshade and that same night found dead—murdered—by the side of a
lonesome country road, a hundred and eighteen miles away.

It’s the story of this that I’m going to tell here, and as you’ll get a
good deal of me before I’m through, I’d better, right now at the start,
introduce myself.

I’m Molly Morganthau, day operator in the telephone exchange at
Longwood, New Jersey, twenty-three years old, dark, slim, and as for my
looks—well, put them down as "medium" and let it go at that. My name’s
Morganthau because my father was a Polish Jew—a piece worker on
pants—but my two front names, Mary McKenna, are after my mother, who was
from County Galway, Ireland. I was raised in an East Side tenement, but
I went steady to the Grammar school and through the High and I’m not
throwing bouquets at myself when I say I made a good record. That’s how
I come to be nervy enough to write this story—but you’ll see for
yourself. Only just keep in mind that I’m more at home in front of a
switchboard than at a desk.

I’ve supported myself since I was sixteen, my father dying then, and my
mother—God rest her blessed memory!—two years later. First I was in a
department store and then in the Telephone Company. I haven’t a relation
in the country and if I had I wouldn’t have asked a nickel off them. I’m
that kind, independent and—but that’s enough about me.

Now for you to rightly get what I’m going to tell I’ll have to begin
with a description of Longwood village and the country round about. I’ve
made a sort of diagram—it isn’t drawn to scale but it gives the general
effect, all right—and with that and what I’ll describe you can get an
idea of the lay of the land, which you have to have to understand
things.


Longwood’s in New Jersey, a real picturesque village of a thousand
inhabitants. It’s a little over an hour from New York by the main line
and here and there round it are country places, mostly fine ones owned
by rich people. There are some farms too, and along the railway and the
turnpike are other villages. My exchange is the central office for a
good radius of country, taking in Azalea, twenty-five miles above us on
the main line, and running its wires out in a big circle to the
scattered houses and the crossroad settlements. It’s on Main Street,
opposite the station, and from my chair at the switchboard I can see the
platform and the trains as they come down from Cherry Junction or up
from New York. It’s sixty miles from Longwood to the Junction where you
get the branch line that goes off to the North, stopping at other
stations, mostly for the farm people, and where, when you get to
Hazelmere, you can connect with an express for Philadelphia. Also you
can keep right on from the Junction and get to Philadelphia that way,
which is easier, having no changes and better trains.

When I was first transferred from New York—it’s over two years now—I
thought I’d die of the lonesomeness of it. At night, looking out of my
window—I lived over Galway’s Elite Millinery Parlors on Lincoln
Street—across those miles and miles of country with a few lights dotted
here and there, I felt like I was cast on a desert island. After a while
I got used to it and that first spring when the woods began to get a
faint greenish look and I’d wake up and hear birds twittering in the
elms along the street—hold on! I’m getting sidetracked. It’s going to be
hard at first to keep myself out, but just be patient, I’ll do it better
as I go along.

The county turnpike goes through Longwood, and then sweeps away over the
open country between the estates and the farms and now and then a
village—Huntley, Latourette, Corona—strung out along it like beads on a
string. A hundred and fifty miles off it reaches Bloomington, a big town
with hotels and factories and a jail. About twenty miles before it gets
to Bloomington it crosses the branch line near Cresset’s Farm. There’s a
little sort of station there—just an open shed—called Cresset’s
Crossing, built for the Cresset Farm people, who own a good deal of land
in that vicinity. Not far from Cresset’s Crossing, about a half mile
apart, the Riven Rock Road from the Junction and the Firehill Road from
Jack Reddy’s estate run into the turnpike.

This is the place, I guess, where I’d better tell about Jack Reddy, who
was such an important figure in the Hesketh mystery and who—I get red
now when I write it—was such an important figure to me.

A good ways back—about the time of the Revolution—the Reddy family owned
most of the country round here. Bit by bit they sold it off till in old
Mr. Reddy’s time—Jack’s father—all they had left was the Firehill
property and Hochalaga Lake, a big body of water, back in the hills
beyond Huntley. Firehill is an old-fashioned, stone house, built by Mr.
Reddy’s grandfather. It got its name from a grove of maples on the top
of a mound that in the autumn used to turn red and orange and look like
the hillock was in a blaze. The name, they say, came from the Indian
days and so did Hochalaga, though what that stands for I don’t know. The
Reddys had had lots of offers for the lake but never would sell it. They
had a sort of little shack there and before Jack’s time, when there were
no automobiles, used to make horseback excursions to Hochalaga and stay
for a few days. After the old people died and Jack came into the
property everybody thought he’d sell the lake—several parties were after
it for a summer resort—but he refused them all, had the shack built over
into an up-to-date bungalow, and through the summer would have guests
down from town, spending week-ends out there.

Now I’m telling everything truthful, for that’s what I set out to do,
and if you think I’m a fool you’re welcome to and no back talk from
me—but I was crazy about Jack Reddy. Not that he ever gave me cause;
he’s not that kind and neither am I. And let me say right here that
there’s not a soul ever knew it, he least of all. I guess no one would
have been more surprised than the owner of Firehill if he’d known that
the Longwood telephone girl most had heart failure every time he passed
the window of the Exchange.

I will say, to excuse myself, that there’s few girls who wouldn’t have
put their hats straight and walked their prettiest when they saw him
coming. Gee—he was a good looker! Like those advertisements for collars
and shirts you see in the back of the magazines—you know the ones. But
it wasn’t that that got me. It was his ways, always polite, never fresh.
If he’d meet me in the street he’d raise his hat as if I was the Queen
of Sheba. And there wasn’t any hanging round my switchboard and asking
me to make dates for dinner in town. He was always jolly, but—a girl in
a telephone exchange gets to know a lot—he was always a gentleman.

He lived at Firehill—forty miles from Longwood—with two old servants,
David Gilsey and his wife, who’d been with his mother and just doted on
him. But everybody liked him. There wasn’t but one criticism I ever
heard passed on him and that was that he had a violent temper. Casey,
his chauffeur, told a story in the village of how one day, when they
were passing a farm, they saw an Italian laborer prod a horse with a
pitchfork. Before he knew, Mr. Reddy was out of the car and over the
fence and mashing the life out of that dago. It took Casey and the
farmer to pull him off and they thought the dago’d be killed before they
could.

There was talk in Longwood that he hadn’t much money—much, the way the
Reddys had always had it—and was going to study law for a living. But he
must have had some, for he kept up the house, and had two motors, one
just a common roadster and the other a long gray racing car that he’d
let out on the turnpike till he was twice arrested and once ran over a
dog.

My, how well I got to know that car! When I first came I only saw it at
long intervals. Then—just as if luck was on my side—I began to see it
oftener and oftener, slowing down as it came along Main Street, swinging
round the corner, jouncing across the tracks, and dropping out of sight
behind the houses at the head of Maple Lane.

"What’s bringing Jack Reddy in this long way so often?" people would say
at first.

Then, after a while, when they’d see the gray car, they’d look sly at
each other and wink.

There’s one good thing about having a crush on a party that’s never
thought any more about you than if you were the peg he hangs his hat
on—it doesn’t hurt so bad when he falls in love with his own kind of
girl.

And that brings me—as if I was in the gray car speeding down Maple
Lane—to Mapleshade and the Fowlers and Sylvia Hesketh.




II


About a mile from Longwood, standing among ancient, beautiful trees, is
Mapleshade, Dr. Dan Fowler’s place.

It was once a farmhouse, over a century old, but two and a half years
ago when Dr. Fowler bought it he fixed it all up, raised the roof, built
on a servants’ wing and a piazza with columns and turned the farm
buildings into a garage. Artists and such people say it’s the prettiest
place in this part of the State, and it certainly is a picture,
especially in summer, with the lawns mown close as velvet and the
flower-beds like bits of carpet laid out to air.

The Doctor bought a big bit of land with it—I don’t know how many
hundred acres—so the house, though it’s not far from the village, is
kind of secluded and shut away. You get to it by Maple Lane, a little
winding road that runs between trees caught together with wild grape and
Virginia creeper. In summer they’re like green walls all draped over
with the vines and in winter they turn into a rustling gray hedge, woven
so close it’s hard to see through. About ten minutes’ walk from the gate
of Mapleshade there’s a pine that was struck by lightning and stands up
black and bare.

When the house was finished the Doctor, who was a bachelor, married Mrs.
Hesketh, a widow lady accounted rich, and he and she came there as bride
and groom with her daughter, Sylvia Hesketh. I hadn’t come yet, but from
what I’ve heard, there was gossip about them from the start. What I can
say from my own experience is that I’d hardly got my grip unpacked when
I began to hear of the folks at Mapleshade.

They lived in great style with a housekeeper, a butler and a French maid
for the ladies. In the garage were three automobiles, Mrs. Fowler’s
limousine, the Doctor’s car and a dandy little roadster that belonged to
Miss Sylvia. Neither she nor the Doctor bothered much with the
chauffeur. They left him to take Mrs. Fowler round and drove themselves,
the joke going that if Miss Sylvia ever went broke she could qualify for
a chauffeur’s job.

After a while the story came out that it wasn’t Mrs. Fowler who was so
rich but Miss Hesketh. The late Mr. Hesketh had only left his wife a
small fortune, willing the rest—millions, it was said—to his daughter.
She was a minor—nineteen—and the trustees of the estate allowed her a
lot of money for her maintenance, thirty thousand a year they had it in
Longwood.

In spite of the grand way they lived there wasn’t much company at
Mapleshade. Anne Hennessey, the housekeeper, told me Mrs. Fowler was so
dead in love with her husband she didn’t want the bother of entertaining
people. And the Doctor liked a quiet life. He’d been a celebrated
surgeon in New York but had retired only for consultations and special
cases now and again. He was very good to the people round about, and
would come in and help when our little Dr. Pease, or Dr. Graham, at the
Junction, were up against something serious. I’ll never forget when Mick
Donahue, the station agent’s boy, got run over by Freight No. 22. But
I’m sidetracked again. Anyhow, the Doctor amputated the leg and little
Mick’s stumping round on a wooden pin almost as good as ever.

But even so they weren’t liked much. They held their heads very high,
Mrs. Fowler driving through the village like it was Fifth Avenue,
sending the chauffeur into the shops and not at all affable to the
tradespeople. The Doctor wouldn’t trouble to give you so much as a nod,
just stride along looking straight ahead. When the story got about that
he’d lost most of the money he’d made doctoring I didn’t bear any
resentment, seeing it was worry that made him that way.

But Miss Sylvia was made on a different measure. My, but she was a
winner! Even after I knew what brought Jack Reddy in from Firehill so
often I couldn’t be set against her. Jealous I might be of a girl like
myself, but not of one who was the queen bee of the hive.

She was a beauty from the ground up—a blonde with hair like corn silk
that she wore in a loose, fluffy knot with little curly ends hanging on
her neck. Her face was pure pink and white, the only dark thing in it
her big brown eyes, that were as clear and soft as a baby’s. And she was
a great dresser, always the latest novelty, and looking prettier in each
one. Mrs. Galway’d say to me, with her nose caught up, scornful,

"To my mind it’s not refined to advertise your wealth on your back."

But I didn’t worry, knowing Mrs. Galway’d have advertised hers if she’d
had the wealth or a decent shaped back to advertise it on, which she
hadn’t, being round-shouldered.

There was none of the haughty ways of her parents about Miss Sylvia.
When she’d come into the exchange to send a call (a thing that puzzled
me first but I soon caught on) she’d always stop and have a pleasant
word with me. On bright afternoons I’d see her pass on horseback,
straight as an arrow, with a man’s hat on her golden hair. She’d always
have a smile for everyone, touching her hat brim real sporty with the
end of her whip. Even when she was in her motor, speeding down Main
Street, she’d give you a hail as jolly as if she was your college chum.

Sometimes she’d be alone but generally there was a man along. There were
a lot of them hanging round her, which was natural, seeing she had
everything to draw them like a candle drawing moths. They’d come and go
from town and now and then stay over Sunday at the Longwood Inn—it’s a
swell little place done up in the Colonial style—and you’d see them
riding and walking with her, very devoted. At first everybody thought
her parents were agreeable to all the attention she was getting. It
wasn’t till the Mapleshade servants began to talk too much that we heard
the Fowlers, especially the Doctor, didn’t like it.

I hadn’t known her long before I began to notice something that
interested me. A telephone girl sees so many people and hears such a lot
of confidential things on the wire, that she gets to know more than most
about what I suppose you’d call human nature. It’s a study that’s always
attracted me and in Miss Sylvia’s case there was a double attraction—I
was curious about her for myself and I was curious about her because of
Jack Reddy.

What I noticed was that she was so different with men to what she was
with women—affable to both, but it was another kind of affability. I’ve
seen considerably many girls trying to throw their harpoons into men and
doing it too, but they were in the booby class beside Miss Sylvia. She
was what the novelists call a coquette, but she was that dainty and sly
about it that I don’t believe any of the victims knew it. It wasn’t what
she said, either; more the way she looked and the soft, sweet manner she
had, as if she thought more of the chap she was talking to than anybody
else in the world. She’d be that way to one in my exchange and the next
day I’d see her just the same with another in the drugstore.

It made me uneasy. Even if the man you love doesn’t love you, you don’t
want to see him fooled. But I said nothing—I’m the close sort—and it
wasn’t till I came to be friends with Anne Hennessey that I heard the
inside facts about the family at Mapleshade.

Anne Hennessey was a Canadian and a fine girl. She was a lady and had a
lady’s job—seventy-five a month and her own bathroom—and being the real
thing she didn’t put on any airs, but when she liked me made right up to
me and we soon were pals. After work hours I’d sometimes go up to her at
Mapleshade or she’d come down to me over the Elite.

I remember it was in my room one spring evening—me lying on the bed and
Anne sitting by the open window—that she began to talk about the
Fowlers. She was not one to carry tales, but I could see she had
something on her mind and for the first time she loosened up. I was
picking over a box of chocolates and I didn’t give her a hint how keen I
was to hear, acting like the candies had the best part of my attention.
She began by saying the Doctor and Miss Sylvia didn’t get on well.

"That’s just like a novel," I answered, "the heroine’s stepfather’s
always her natural enemy."

"He’s not that in this case," said Anne—she speaks English fine, like
the teachers in the High—"I’m sure he means well by her, but they can’t
get on at all, they’re always quarreling."

"There’s many a gilded home hides a tragedy. What do they fight about?"

"Things she does he disapproves of. She’s very spoiled and self-willed.
No one’s ever controlled her and she resents it from him."

"What’s he disapprove of?"

Anne didn’t answer right off, looking thoughtful out of the window. Then
she said slow as if she was considering her words:

"I’m going to tell you, Molly, because I know you’re no gossip and can
be trusted, and the truth is, I’m worried. I don’t like the situation up
at Mapleshade."

I swung my feet on to the floor and sat up on the edge of the bed,
nibbling at a chocolate almond.

"Here’s where I get dumb," I said, sort of casual to encourage her.

"Sylvia Hesketh’s a girl that needs a strong hand over her and there’s
no one has it. Her father’s dead, her mother—poor Mrs. Fowler’s only a
grown-up baby ready to say black is white if her husband wants her
to—and Dr. Fowler’s trying to do it and he’s going about it all wrong.
You see," she said, turning to me very serious, "it’s not only that
she’s head-strong and extravagant but she’s an incorrigible flirt."

"Is there a place in the back of the book where you can find out what
incorrigible means?" I said.

Anne smiled, but not as if she felt like it.

"Uncontrollable, irrepressible. Her mother—Mrs. Fowler’s ready to tell
me anything and everything—says she’s always been like that. And, of
course, with her looks and her fortune the men are around her like flies
round honey."

"Why does the Doctor mind that?"

"I suppose he wouldn’t mind if they just came to Mapleshade or Longwood.
But—that’s what the quarreling’s about—he’s found out that she meets
them in town, goes to lunch and the matinée with them."

"Excuse me, but I’ve left my etiquette book on the piano. What’s wrong
about going to the matinée or to lunch?"

"Nothing’s really wrong. Mind you, Molly, I know Sylvia through and
through and there’s no harm in her—it’s just the bringing-up and the
spoiling and the admiration. But, of course, in her position, a girl
doesn’t go about that way without a chaperone. The Doctor’s perfectly
right to object."

I was looking down, pretending to hunt over the box.

"Who does she go with?" I said.

"Oh, there are several. A man named Carisbrook——" I’d seen him often, a
swell guy in white spats and a high hat—"and a young lawyer called
Dunham and Ben Robinson, a Canadian like me. People see her with them
and tell the doctor and there’s a row."

I looked into the box as careful as if I was searching for a diamond.

"Ain’t Mr. Reddy one of the happy family?" I asked. "Ah, here’s the last
almond!"

"Oh, of course, young Reddy. I think it would be a good thing if she
married him. Everybody says he’s a fine fellow, and I tell you now,
Molly, with Sylvia so willful and the doctor so domineering and Mrs.
Fowler being pulled to pieces between them, things at Mapleshade can’t
go on long the way they are."

That was in May. At the end of June the Fowlers went to Bar Harbor with
all their outfit for the summer. After that Jack Reddy didn’t come into
Longwood much. I heard that he was spending a good deal of his time at
the bungalow at Hochalaga Lake, and I did see him a few times meeting
his company at the train—he had some week-end parties out there—and
bringing them back in the gray car.

At the end of September the Fowlers came home. It was great weather,
clear and crisp, with the feel of frost in the air. Most everybody was
out of doors and I saw Sylvia often, sometimes on horseback, sometimes
driving her motor. She was prettier than ever for the change and seemed
like she couldn’t stay in the house. I’d see her riding toward home in
the red light of the sunset, and as I walked back from work her car
often would flash past me, speeding through the early dark toward Maple
Lane.

Anne said they’d had a fairly peaceful summer and she hoped they were
going to get on better. There had only been one row—that was about a man
who was up at Bar Harbor and had met Sylvia and paid her a good deal of
attention. The Doctor had been very angry as he disapproved of the
man—Cokesbury was his name.

"Cokesbury!" I cut in surprised—we were in Anne’s room that
evening—"why, he belongs round here."

Anne had heard that and wanted to know what I knew about him, which I’ll
write down in this place as it seems to fit in and has to be told
somewhere.

When I first came to Longwood, Mr. and Mrs. Cokesbury were living on
their estate, Cokesbury Lodge, about twenty-five miles from us, near
Azalea. They had been in France for a year previous to that, then come
back and taken up their residence in Mr. Cokesbury’s country seat, and
it was shortly after that Mrs. Cokesbury died there, leaving three
children. For a while the widower stayed on with nurses and governesses
to look after the poor motherless kids. Then, the eldest boy taking sick
and nearly dying, he decided to send them to his wife’s parents, who had
wanted them since Mrs. Cokesbury’s death.

So the establishment at the Lodge was broken up and Mr. Cokesbury went
to live in town. There were rumors that the house was to be sold, but in
the spring Sands, the Pullman conductor, told me that Mr. Cokesbury had
been down several times, staying over Sunday and had said he had given
up the idea of selling the place. He told Sands he couldn’t get his
price for it and what was the sense of selling at a loss, especially
when he could come out there and get a breath of country air when he was
scorched up with the city heat?

I’d passed the house one day in August when I was on an auto ride with
some friends. It was a big, rambling place with a lot of dismal-looking
pines around it, about five miles from Azalea and with no near
neighbors. Mr. Cokesbury only kept one car—he’d had several when his
wife was there—and used to drive himself down from the Lodge to the
station, leave his car in the Azalea garage, and drive himself back the
next time he came. He had no servants or caretaker, which he didn’t
need, as, after Mrs. Cokesbury’s death, all the valuable things had been
taken out of the house and sent to town for storage.

It gave me a jar to hear that Sylvia Hesketh—who, in my mind, was as
good as engaged to Jack Reddy—would have anything to do with him. I’d
never seen him, but I’d heard a lot that wasn’t to his credit. He hadn’t
been good to his wife—everybody said she was a real lady—but was the
gay, wild kind, and not young, either. Anne said he was forty if he was
a day. When I asked her what Sylvia could see in an old gink like that,
she just shrugged up her shoulders and said, who could tell—Sylvia was
made that way. She was like some woman whose name I can’t remember who
sat on a rock and sang to the sailors till they got crazy and jumped
into the water.

My head was full of these things one glorious afternoon toward the end
of October when—it being my holiday—I started out for a walk through the
woods. The woods cover the hills behind the village and they’re grand,
miles and miles of them. But wait! There was a little thing that
happened, by the way, that’s worth telling, for it gave me a
premonition—is that the word? Or, maybe, I’d better say connected up
with what was in my mind.

I was walking slow down Main Street when opposite the postoffice I saw
all the loafers and most of the tradespeople lined up in a ring staring
at a bunch of those dago acrobats that go about the State all summer
doing stunts on a bit of carpet. I’d seen them often—chaps in dirty pink
tights walking on their hands and rolling round in knots—and I wouldn’t
have stopped but I got a glimpse of little Mick Donahue stumping round
the outside trying to squeeze in and trying not to cry because he
couldn’t. So I stopped and hoisted him up for a good view, telling the
men in front to break a way for the kid to see.

There was a dago scraping on a fiddle and while the acrobats were
performing on their carpet, a big bear with a little, brown,
shriveled-up man holding it by a chain, was dancing. And when I got my
first look at that bear, in spite of all my worry I burst out laughing,
for, dancing away there solemn and slow, it was the dead image of Dr.
Fowler.

You’d have laughed yourself if you’d seen it—that is, if you’d known the
Doctor. There was something so like him in its expression—sort of gloomy
and thoughtful—and its little eyes set up high in its head and looking
angry at the crowd as if it despised them. When its master jerked the
chain and shouted something in a foreign lingo it hitched up its lip
like it was trying to smile, and that sideways grin, as if it didn’t
feel at all pleasant, was just the way the Doctor’d smile when he came
into the Exchange and gave me a number.

It fascinated me and I stood staring with little Mick sitting on my arm,
just loving it all, his dirty little fist clasped round a penny. Then
the music stopped and one of the acrobats came round with a hat and
little Mick gave a great sigh as if he was coming out of a dream. "If
you hadn’t come, Molly, I’d have missed it," he said, looking into my
face in that sweet wistful way sickly kids have, "and it’s the last time
they’ll be round this year."

I kissed him and put him down and told the men as I squeezed out to keep
him in the front or they’d hear from me. Then I walked off toward the
woods thinking.

It was a funny idea I’d got into my head. I’d once read in a paper that
when people looked like animals they resembled the animals in their
dispositions—and I was wondering was Dr. Fowler like a bear, grouchy and
when you crossed him savage. Maybe it was because I’d been so worried,
but it gave me a kind of chill. My thoughts went back to Mapleshade and
I got one of those queer glimpses (like a curtain was lifted for a
second and you could see things in the future) of trouble
there—something dark—I don’t know how to explain it, but it was as if I
got a new line on the Doctor, as if the bear had made me see through the
surface clear into him.

I tried to shake it off for I wanted to enjoy my afternoon in the woods.
They are beautiful at that season, the trees full of colored leaves, and
all quiet except for the rustlings of little animals round the roots.
There’s a road that winds along under the branches, and trails, soft
under foot with fallen leaves and moss, that you can follow for miles.

I was coming down one of these, making no more noise than the squirrels,
when just before it crossed the road I saw something and stopped. There,
sitting side by side on a log, were Sylvia Hesketh and a man. Close to
them, run off to the side, was a motor and near it tied to a tree a
horse with a lady’s saddle. Sylvia was in her riding dress, looking a
picture, her eyes on the ground and slapping softly with her whip on the
side of her boot. The man was leaning toward her, talking low and
earnest and staring hard into her face.


[Illustration: _Sylvia was in her riding dress, looking a picture_]


To my knowledge I’d never seen him before, and it gave me a start—me
saying, surprised to myself, "Hullo! here’s another one?" He was a big,
powerful chap, with a square, healthy looking face and wide shoulders on
him like a prize fighter. He was dressed in a loose coat and
knickerbockers and as he talked he had his hands spread out, one on each
knee, great brown hands with hair on them. I was close enough to see
that, but he was speaking so low and I was so scared that they’d see me
and think I was spying, that I didn’t hear what he was saying. The only
one that saw me was the horse. It looked up sudden with its ears
pricked, staring surprised with its soft gentle eyes.

I stole away like a robber, not making a speck of noise. All the joy I’d
been taking in the walk under the colored leaves was gone. I felt kind
of shriveled up inside—the way you feel when someone you love is sick. I
couldn’t bear to think that Jack Reddy was giving his heart to a girl
who’d meet another man out in the woods and listen to him so coy and yet
so interested.

As far as I can remember, that was a little over a month from the fatal
day. All the rest of October and through the first part of November
things went along quiet and peaceful. And then, suddenly, everything
came together—quick like a blow.




III


For two days it had been raining, heavy straight rain. From my window at
Galway’s I could see the fields round the village full of pools and
zigzags of water as if they’d been covered with a shiny gray veil that
was suddenly pulled off and had caught in the stubble and been torn to
rags. Saturday morning the weather broke. But the sky was still overcast
and the air had that sort of warm, muggy breathlessness that comes after
rain. That was November the twentieth.

It was eleven o’clock and I was sitting at the switchboard looking out
at the streets, all puddles and ruts, when I got a call from the
Dalzells’—a place near the Junction—for Mapleshade.

Now you needn’t get preachy and tell me it’s against the rules to
listen—suspension and maybe discharge. I know that better than most.
Didn’t the roof over my head and the food in my mouth depend on me doing
my work according to orders? But the fact is that at this time I was
keyed up so high I’d got past being cautious. When a call came for
Mapleshade I _listened_, listened hard, with all my ears. What did I
expect to hear? I don’t know exactly. It might have been Jack Reddy and
it might have been Sylvia—oh, never mind what it was—just say I was
curious and let it go at that.

So I lifted up the cam and took in the conversation.

It was a woman’s voice—Mrs. Dalzell’s, I knew it well—and Dr. Fowler’s.
Hers was trembly and excited:

"Oh, Dr. Fowler, is that you? It’s Mrs. Dalzell, yes, near the Junction.
My husband’s very sick. We’ve had Dr. Graham and he says it’s
appendicitis and there ought to be an operation—now, as soon as
possible. _Do_ you hear me?"

Then Dr. Fowler, very calm and polite:

"Perfectly, madam."

"Oh, I’m so glad—I’ve been so _terribly_ worried. It’s so unexpected.
Mr. Dalzell’s never had so much as a _cramp_ before and now——"

"Just wait a minute, Mrs. Dalzell," came the Doctor. "Let me understand.
Graham recommends an operation, you say?"

"Yes, Dr. Fowler, as soon as possible; something awful may happen if
it’s not done. And Dr. Graham suggested you if you’d be so kind. I know
it’s a favor but I _must_ have the best for my husband. _Won’t_ you
come? Please, to oblige me."

Dr. Fowler asked some questions which I needn’t put down and said he’d
come and if necessary operate. Then they talked about the best way for
him to get there, the Doctor wanting to know if the main line to the
Junction wouldn’t be the quickest. But Mrs. Dalzell said she’d been
consulting the time tables and there’d be no train from Longwood to the
Junction before two and if he wouldn’t mind and would come in his auto
by the Firehill Road he’d get there several hours sooner. He agreed to
that and it wasn’t fifteen minutes after he’d hung up that I saw him
swing past my window in his car, driving himself.

Later on in the afternoon I got another call from the Dalzells’ for
Mapleshade and heard the Doctor tell Mrs. Fowler that the operation had
been a serious one and that he would stay there for the night and
probably all the next day.

Before that second call, about two hours after the first one, there came
another message for Mapleshade that before a week was out was in most
every paper in the country and that lifted me right into the middle of
the Hesketh mystery.

It was near one o’clock, an hour when work’s slack round Longwood,
everybody being either at their dinner or getting ready for it. The call
was from a public pay station and was in a man’s voice—a voice I didn’t
know, but that, because of my curiosity, I listened to as sharp as if it
was my lover’s asking me to marry him.

The man wanted to see Miss Sylvia and, after a short wait, I heard her
answer, very gay and cordial and evidently knowing him at once without
any questions. If she’d said one word to show who he was things
afterward would have been very different, but there wasn’t a single
phrase that you could identify him by—all anyone could have caught was
that they seemed to know each other very well.

He began by telling her it was a long time since he’d seen her and
wanting to know if she’d come to town on Monday and take lunch with him
at Sherry’s and afterward go to a concert.

"Monday," she said very slow and soft, "the day after to-morrow? No, I
can’t make any engagement for Monday."

"Why not?" he asked.

She didn’t answer right off and when she did, though her voice was so
sweet, there was something sly and secret about it.

"I’ve something else to do."

"Can’t you postpone it?"

She laughed at that, a little soft laugh that came bubbling through her
words:

"No, I’m afraid not."

"Must be something very interesting."

"Um—maybe so."

"You’re very mysterious—can’t I be told what it is?"

"Why should you be told?"

That riled him, I could hear it in his voice.

"As a friend, or if I don’t come under that head, as a fellow who’s got
the frosty mit and wants to know why."

"I don’t think that’s any reason. I have no engagement with you and I
have with—someone else."

"Just tell me one thing—is it a man or a woman?"

She began to laugh again, and if I’d been the man at the other end of
the wire that laugh would have made me wild.

"Which do you think?" she asked.

"I don’t think, I _know_," and _I_ knew that he was mad.

"Well, if you know," she said as sweet as pie, "I needn’t tell you any
more. I’ll say good-bye."

"No," he shouted, "don’t hang up—wait. What do you want to torment me
for?" Then he got sort of coaxing, "It isn’t kind to treat a fellow this
way. Can’t you tell me who it is?"

"No, that’s a secret. You can’t know a thing till I choose to tell you
and I don’t choose now."

"If I come over Sunday afternoon will you see me?"

"What time?"

"Any time you say—I’m your humble slave, as you know."

"I’m going out about seven."

"Where?"

"That’s another secret."

I think a child listening to that conversation would have seen he was
getting madder every minute and yet he was so afraid she’d cut him off
that he had to keep it under and talk pleasant.

"Look here," he said, "I’ve something I want to say to you awfully. If I
run over in my car and get there round six-thirty, can you see me for a
few minutes?"

She didn’t answer at once. Then she said slow as if she was undecided:

"Not at the house."

"I didn’t mean at the house. Say in Maple Lane, by the gate. I won’t
keep you more than five or ten minutes."

"Six-thirty’s rather late."

"Well, any time you say."

"Can’t you be there exactly at six-fifteen?"

"If that’s a condition."

"It is. If you’re late you won’t find me. I’ll be gone"—she began to
laugh again—"taking my secret with me."

"I’ll be there on the dot."

"Very well, then, you can come—at the gate just as the clock marks one
quarter after six. And, maybe, if you’re good, I’ll tell you the secret.
Good-bye until then—try not to be too curious. It’s a bad habit and I’ve
seen signs of it in you lately. Good-bye."

Before he could say another word she’d disconnected.

I leaned back in my chair thinking it over. What was she up to? What was
the secret? And who was the man? "Run over in his car"—that looked like
someone from one of the big estates. How many of them _had_ she buzzing
round her?

And then, for all I was so downhearted, I couldn’t help smiling to think
of those two supposing they were talking so secluded and an East Side
tenement girl taking it all in. Little did I guess then that me breaking
the rules that way, instead of destroying me was going to——But that
doesn’t come in here.

And now I come to Sunday the twenty-first, a date I’ll never forget.

It seemed to me afterward that Nature knew of the tragedy and prepared
for it. The weather was duller and grayer than it had been on Saturday,
not a breath of air stirring and the sky all mottled over with clouds,
dark and heavy looking. A full moon was due and as I went to the
Exchange I thought of the sweethearts that had dates to walk out in the
moonlight and how disappointed they’d be.

Things weren’t cheerful at the Exchange either. I found Minnie Trail,
the night operator, as white as a ghost, saying she felt as if one of
her sick headaches was coming on and if it did would I stay on over
time? I knew those headaches—they ran along sometimes till eight or
nine. I told her to go right home to bed and I’d hold the fort till she
was able to relieve me. We often did turns like that, one for the other.
It’s one of the advantages of being in a small country office—no one
picks on you for acting human.

About ten I had a call from Anne Hennessey. "Have you got anything on
for this evening, Molly?"

"I have not. This is Longwood, not gay Paree."

"Then I’ll come round to Galways, about seven and we’ll go to the Gilt
Edge for supper. I want to talk to you."

The Gilt Edge Lunch was where I took my meals, a nice clean little joint
close to the office. But I didn’t know when I’d get my supper that
night, so I called back:

"That’s all right, sister, but come to the Exchange. Minnie’s head’s on
the blink and I’ll stay on here late. Anything up?"

"Yes. I don’t want to talk about it over the wire. There’s been another
row here—yesterday morning. It’s horrible; I can’t stand it. I’ll tell
you more this evening. So long."

I put my elbows on the table and sat forward thinking. If you’d asked me
a year ago what I wanted most in the world I’d have said money. But I’d
learnt considerable since then. "Money don’t do it," I said to myself.
"Look at the Fowlers with their jewels and their millions scrapping till
even the housekeeper on a fancy salary with a private bath can’t stand
it."

And there came up in my mind the memory of the East Side tenement where
I was raised. I thought of my poor father, most killed with work, and my
mother eking things out, doing housecleaning and never a hard word to
each other or to me.

The night settled down early, black, dark and very still. At seven Anne
Hennessey came in and sat down by the radiator, which was making queer
noises with the heat coming up. Supper time’s like dinner—few calls—so I
turned round in my chair, ready for a good talk, and asked about the
trouble at Mapleshade.

"Oh, it was another quarrel yesterday morning at breakfast and with
Harper, the butler, hearing every word. He said it was the worst they’d
ever had. He’s a self-respecting, high-class servant and was shocked."

"Sylvia and the Doctor again?"

"Yes, and poor Mrs. Fowler crying behind the coffee pot."

"The same old subject?"

"Oh, of course. It’s young Reddy this time. Sylvia’s been out a good
deal this autumn in her car; several times she’s been gone nearly the
whole day. When the Doctor questioned her she’d either be evasive or
sulky. On Friday someone told him they’d seen her far up on the turnpike
with Jack Reddy in his racer."

I fired up, I couldn’t help it.

"Why should he be mad about that? Isn’t Mr. Reddy good enough for her?"

"_I_ think he is. I told you before I thought the best thing she could
do would be to marry him. But——" she looked round to see that no one was
coming in——"don’t say a word of what I’m going to tell you. I have no
right to repeat what I hear as an employee but I’m worried and don’t
know what’s the best thing to do. Mrs. Fowler has as good as told me
that her husband’s lost all his money and it’s Sylvia’s that’s running
Mapleshade. And what _I_ think is that the Doctor doesn’t want her to
marry _anyone_. It isn’t her he minds losing; it’s thirty thousand a
year."

"But when she comes of age she can do what she wants and if he makes it
so disagreeable she won’t want to live there."

"That’s two years off yet. He may recoup himself in that time."

"Oh, I see. But he can’t do any good by fighting with her."

"Molly, you’re a wise little woman. _Of course_ he can’t, but he doesn’t
know it. He treats that hot-headed, high-spirited girl like a child of
five. Mark my words, there’s going to be trouble at Mapleshade."

I thought of the telephone message I’d overheard the day before and it
came to me suddenly what "the secret" might be. Could Sylvia have been
planning to run away? I didn’t say anything—it’s natural to me and you
get trained along those lines in the telephone business—and I sat
turning it over in my mind as Anne went on.

"I’d leave to-morrow only I’m so sorry for Mrs. Fowler. She’s as
helpless as a baby and seems to cling to me. The other day she told me
about her first marriage—how her husband didn’t care for her but was
crazy about Sylvia—that’s why he left her almost all his money."

I wasn’t listening much, still thinking about "the secret." If she _was_
running away was she going alone or with Jack Reddy? My eyes were fixed
on the window and I saw, without noticing particular, the down train
from the city draw into the station, and then Jim Donahue run along the
platform swinging a lantern. As if I was in a dream I could hear Anne:

"I call it an unjust will—only two hundred thousand dollars to his wife
and five millions to his daughter. But if Sylvia dies first, all the
money goes back to Mrs. Fowler."

The train pulled out, snorting like a big animal. Jim disappeared, then
presently I saw him open the depot door and come slouching across the
street. I knew he was headed for the Exchange, thinking Minnie Trail was
there, he being a widower with a crush on Minnie.

He came in and, after he’d got over the shock of seeing me, turned to
Anne and said:

"I just been putting your young lady on the train."

Anne gave a start and stared at him.

"Miss Sylvia?" she said.

"That’s her," said Jim, warming his coat tails at the radiator.

I could see Anne was awful surprised and was trying to hide it.

"Who was she with?" she asked.

"No one. She went up alone and said she was going to be away for a few
days. Where’s she going?"

Anne gave me a look that said, "Keep your mouth shut," and turned quiet
and innocent to Jim. "Just for a visit to friends. She’s always visiting
people in New York and Philadelphia."

Jim stayed round a while gabbing with us, and then went back to the
station. When the door shut on him we stared at each other with our eyes
as round as marbles.

"Oh, Molly," Anne said, almost in a whisper, "it’s just what I’ve been
afraid of."

"You think she’s lighting out?"

"Yes—don’t you see, the Doctor being at the Dalzells’ has given her the
chance."

"Where would she go to?"

"How do I know? Heaven send she hasn’t done anything foolish. But this
morning she sent Virginie, that French woman, up to the village for
something—on Sunday when all the shops are shut. The housemaid told me
they’d been trying to find out what it was and Virginie wouldn’t tell.
Oh, dear, _could_ she have gone off with someone?"

We were talking it over in low voices when a call came. It was from
Mapleshade to the Dalzells’. As I made the connection I whispered to
Anne what it was and she whispered back, "Listen."

I did. It was from Mrs. Fowler, all breathless and almost crying. She
asked for the Doctor and when he came burst out:

"Oh, Dan, something’s happened—something dreadful. Sylvia’s run away."

I could hear the Doctor’s voice, small and distant but quite clear:

"Go slow now, Connie, it’s hard to hear you. Did you say _Sylvia’d run
away_?"

Then Mrs. Fowler said, trying to speak slower:

"Yes, with Jack Reddy. We’ve been hunting for her and we’ve just found a
letter from him in her desk. Do you hear—her desk, in the top drawer? It
told her to meet him at seven in the Lane and go with him in his car to
Bloomington."

"Bloomington? That’s a hundred and fifty miles off."

"I can’t help how far off it is. That’s where the letter said he was
going to take her. It said they’d go by the turnpike to Bloomington and
be married there. And we can’t find Virginie—they’ve evidently taken her
with them."

"I see—by the turnpike, did you say?"

"Yes. Can’t you go up there and meet them and bring her back?"

"Yes—keep cool now, I’ll head them off. What time did you say they
left?"

"The letter said he’d meet her in the Lane at seven and it’s a little
after eight now. Have you time to get up there and catch them?"

"Time?—to burn. On a night like this Reddy can’t get round to the part
of the pike where I’ll strike it under three and a half to four hours."

"But can you go—can you leave your case?"

"Yes—Dalzell’s improving. Graham can attend to it. Now don’t get
excited, I’ll have her back some time to-night. And not a word to
anybody. We don’t want this to get about. We’ll have to shut the mouth
of that fool of a French woman, but I’ll see to that later. Don’t see
anyone. Go to your room and say nothing."

Just as the message was finished Minnie Trail came in. I made the record
of it and then got up asking her, as natural as you please, how she
felt. Anne did the same and you’d never have thought to hear us
sympathizing with her that we were just bursting to get outside.

When we did we walked slow down the street, me telling her what I’d
heard. All the time I was speaking I was thinking of Sylvia and Jack
Reddy tearing away through that still, black night, flying along the
pale line of the road, flashing past the lights of farms and country
houses, swinging down between the rolling hills and out by the open
fields, till they’d see the glow of Bloomington low down in the sky.

It was Anne who brought me back to where I was. She suddenly stopped
short, staring in front of her and then turned to me:

"Why, how can she be eloping with Reddy by the turnpike when Jim Donahue
saw her get on the train?"




IV


When I come to the next day I can’t make my story plain if I only tell
what I saw and heard. I didn’t even pick up the most important message
in the tragedy. It came at half-past nine that night through the Corona
Exchange and was sent from a pay station so there was no record of it,
only Jack Reddy’s word—but I’m going too fast; that belongs later.

What I’ve got to do is to piece things together as I got them from the
gossip in the village, from the inquest, and from the New York papers.
All I ask of you is to remember that I’m up against a stunt that’s new
to me and that I’m trying to get it over as clear as I can.

The best way is for me to put down first Sylvia’s movements on that
tragic Sunday.

About five in the afternoon Sylvia and Mrs. Fowler had tea in the
library. When that was over—about half-past—Sylvia went away, saying she
was going to her room to write letters, and her mother retired to hers
for the nap she always took before dinner. What happened between then
and the time when Mrs. Fowler sent the message to the Doctor I heard
from Anne Hennessey. It was this way:

They had dinner late at Mapleshade—half-past seven—and when Sylvia
didn’t come down Mrs. Fowler sent up Harper to call her. He came back
saying she wasn’t in her room, and Mrs. Fowler, getting uneasy, went up
herself, sending Harper to find Virginie Dupont. It wasn’t long before
they discovered that neither Sylvia nor Virginie were in the house.

When she realized this Mrs. Fowler was terribly upset. Sylvia’s room was
in confusion, the bureau drawers pulled out, the closet doors open. Anne
not being there, Harper, who was scared at Mrs. Fowler’s excitement,
called Nora Magee, the chambermaid. She was a smart girl and saw pretty
quickly that Sylvia had evidently left. The toilet things were gone from
the dresser; the jewelry case was open and empty, only for a few old
pieces of no great value. It was part of Nora’s job to do up the room
and she knew where Sylvia’s Hudson seal coat hung in one of the closets.
A glance showed her that was gone, also a gold-fitted bag that the
Doctor had given his stepdaughter on her birthday.

All the servants knew of the quarreling and its cause and while Mrs.
Fowler was moaning and hunting about helplessly, Nora went to the desk
and opened it. There, lying careless as if it had been thrown in in a
hurry, was Jack Reddy’s letter. She gave a glance at it and handed it to
Mrs. Fowler. With the letter in her hand Mrs. Fowler ran downstairs and
telephoned to the Doctor.

The poor lady was in a terrible way and when Anne got back she had to
sit with her, trying to quiet her till the Doctor came back. That wasn’t
till nearly two in the morning, when he reached home, dead beat, saying
he’d come round the turnpike from the Riven Rock Road and seen no sign
of either Sylvia or Jack Reddy.

No one at Mapleshade saw Sylvia leave the house, no one in Longwood saw
her pass through the village, yet, two and a half hours from the time
she had made the date with Mr. Reddy, she was seen again, over a hundred
miles from her home, in the last place anyone would have expected to
find her.

Way up on the turnpike, two miles from Cresset’s Crossing, there’s a
sort of roadhouse where the farm hands spend their evenings and
automobilists stop for drinks and gasoline. It’s got a shady reputation,
being frequented by a rough class of people and once there was a dago—a
laborer on Cresset’s Farm—killed there in a drunken row. It’s called the
Wayside Arbor, which doesn’t fit, sounding innocent and rural, though in
the back there is a trellis with grapes growing over it and tables set
out under it in warm weather.

At this season it’s a dreary looking spot, an old frame cottage a few
yards back from the road, with a broken-down piazza and a door painted
green leading into the bar. Along the top of the piazza goes the sign
"Wayside Arbor," with advertisements for some kind of beer at each end
of it, and in the window there’s more advertisements for whisky and
crackers and soft drinks. Nailed to one of the piazza posts is a public
telephone sign standing out very prominent.

At the time of the Hesketh mystery I’d only seen it once, one day in the
summer when I was out in a hired car with Mrs. Galway and two gentlemen
friends from New York. We’d been to Bloomington by train and were
motoring back and stopped to get some beer. But we ladies, not liking
the looks of the place, wouldn’t go in and had our beer brought out to
us by the proprietor, Jake Hines, a tough-looking customer in a shirt
without a collar and one of his suspenders broken.

It’s very lonesome round there. The nearest house is Cresset’s, a half
mile away across the fields. Back of it and all round is Cresset’s land,
some of it planted in crops and then strips of woods, making the country
in summer look lovely with the dark and the light green.

Sunday evening there were only two people in the Wayside Arbor bar,
Hines and his servant, Tecla Rabine, a Bohemian woman. Mrs. Hines was
upstairs in the room above in bed with a cold. There was a fire burning
in the stove, as a good many of Hines’s customers were the dagoes that
work at Cresset’s and the other farms and they liked the place warm.
Hines was reading the paper and Tecla Rabine was cleaning up the bar
before she went upstairs, she having a toothache and wanting to get off
to bed.

At the inquest Hines swore that he heard no sound of a car or of
wheels—which, he said, he would have noticed, as that generally meant
business—when there was a step on the piazza, the door opened and a lady
came in. He didn’t know who she was but saw right off she wasn’t the
kind that you’d expect to see in his place. She had on a long dark fur
coat, a close-fitting plush hat with a Shetland veil pushed up round the
brim, and looked pale, and, he thought, scared. It was Sylvia Hesketh,
but he didn’t know that till afterward.

She asked him right off if she could use his telephone and he pointed to
the booth in the corner. She went in and closed the door and Hines
stepped to the window and looked out to see if there was a car or a
carriage that he hadn’t heard, the mud making the road soft. But there
was nothing there. Before he was through looking he heard the booth door
open and turning back saw her come out. He said she wasn’t five minutes
sending her message.

That telephone message was the most mysterious one in the case. It was
transmitted through the Corona Exchange to Firehill and there was no one
in the world who heard it but Jack Reddy. I’m going to put it down here,
copied from the newspaper reports of the inquest:

    Oh, Jack, is that you? It’s Sylvia. Thank Heavens you’re there.
    I’m in trouble, I want you. I’ve done something dreadful. I’ll
    tell you when I see you. I’ll explain everything and you won’t
    be angry. Come and get me—start now, this minute. Come up the
    Firehill Road to the Turnpike and I’ll be there waiting, where
    the roads meet. Don’t ask any questions now. When you hear
    you’ll understand. And don’t let anyone know—the servants or
    anyone. You’ve got to keep it quiet, it’s vitally important, for
    my sake. Come, come quick.

That was all. Before he could ask her a question she’d disconnected.
And, naturally, he made no effort to find out where the call had come
from, being in such a hurry to get to her—Sylvia who was in trouble and
wanted him to come.

When she came out of the booth she carried a small purse in her hand and
Hines then noticed that she had only one glove on—the left—and that her
right hand was scratched in several places. Thinking she looked cold he
asked her if she would have something to drink and she said no, then
pushed back her cuff and looked at a bracelet watch set in diamonds and
sapphires that she wore on her wrist.

"Twenty minutes to ten," she said. "I’ll wait here for a little while if
you don’t mind."

She went over to the stove, pulled up a chair and sat down, spreading
her hands out to the heat, and when they were warm, opening her coat
collar, and turning it back from her neck. Both Hines and Tecla Rabine
noticed that her feet were muddy and that there were twigs and dead
leaves caught in the edge of her skirt. As she didn’t seem inclined to
say anything, Hines, who admitted that he was ready to burst with
curiosity, began to question her, trying to find out where she’d come
from and what she was waiting for.

"You come a long way, I guess," he said.

She just nodded.

"From Bloomington maybe?" he asked.

"No, the other direction—toward Longwood."

"Car broken down?" he said next, and she answered sort of indifferent,

"Yes, it’s down the road."

"Maybe I might go and lend a hand," he suggested and she answered quick
to that:

"No, it’s not necessary. They can fix it themselves," then she added,
after a minute, "I’ve telephoned for someone to come for me and if the
car’s really broken we can tow it back."

That seemed so straight and natural that Hines began to get less
curious, still he wanted to know who she was and tried to find out.

"You come a long ride if you come from Longwood," he said.

But he didn’t get any satisfaction, for she answered:

"Is it a long way there?"

"About a hundred and eighteen miles by the turnpike—a good bit shorter
by the Firehill Road, but that’s pretty bad after these rains.

"Most of the roads _are_ bad, I suppose," she said, as if she wasn’t
thinking of her words.

They were silent for a bit, then he tried again:

"What’s broke in your auto?"

And she answered that sharp as if he annoyed her and she was setting him
back in his place:

"My good man, I haven’t the least idea. That’s the chauffeur’s business,
not mine."

He asked her some more questions but he couldn’t get anything out of
her. He said she treated him sort of haughty as if she wanted him to
stop. So after a while he said no more, but sat by the bar pretending to
read his paper. Tecla Rabine came and went, tidying up for the night and
none of them said a word.

A little before ten she got up and buttoned her coat, saying she was
going. Hines was surprised and asked her if she wouldn’t wait there for
the auto, and she said no, she’d walk up the road and meet it.

He asked her which way it was coming and she said: "By the Firehill
Road. How far is that from here?"

He told her about a quarter of a mile and she answered that she’d just
about time to get there and catch it as it came into the turnpike.

Hines urged her to stay but she said no, she was cramped with sitting
and needed a little walk; it was early yet and there was nothing to be
afraid of. She bid him good night very cordial and pleasant and went
out.

He stood in the doorway watching her as far as he could see, then told
Tecla, whose toothache was bad, to go to bed. After she’d gone he locked
up, went upstairs to his wife and told her about the strange lady. His
wife said he’d done wrong to let her go, it wasn’t right for a person
like that to be alone on such a solitary road, especially with some of
the farm hands, queer foreigners, no better than animals.

She worked upon his feelings till she got him nervous and he was going
to get a lantern and start out when he heard the sound of an auto horn
in the distance. He stepped to the window and watched and presently saw
a big car with one lamp dark coming at a great clip down from the
Firehill Road direction. The moon had come out a short while before, so
that if he’d looked he could have seen the people in the car, but
supposing it was the one the lady was waiting for, he turned from the
window, and, thinking no more about it, went to bed.

Before he was off to sleep he heard another auto horn and the whirr of a
car passing. He couldn’t say how long after this was, as he was half
asleep.

How long he’d slept he didn’t know—it really was between four and five
in the morning—when he was roused by a great battering at the door and a
sound of voices. He jumped up just as he was, ran to the window and
opened it. There in the road he could see plain—the clouds were gone,
the moon sailing clear and high—a motor and some people all talking very
excited, and one voice, a woman’s, saying over and over, "Oh, how
horrible—how horrible!"

He took them for a party of merry-makers, half drunk and wanting more,
and called down fierce and savage:

"What in thunder are you doing there?"

One of them, a man standing on the steps of the piazza, looked up at him
and said:

"There’s a murdered woman up the road here, that’s all."

As he ran to the place with the men—there were two of them—they told him
how they were on a motor trip with their wives and that night were going
from Bloomington to Huntley. The moon being so fine they were going
slow, otherwise they never would have found the body, which was lying by
the roadside. A pile of brushwood had been thrown over it, but one hand
had fallen out beyond the branches and one of the women had seen it,
white in the moonlight.

They had unfastened an auto lamp and it was standing on the ground
beside her. Hines lifted it and looked at her. She lay partly on her
side, her coat loosely drawn round her. The right arm was flung out as
if when the body stiffened it might have slipped down from a position
across the chest. As he held the lantern close he saw below the hat,
pulled down on her head, with the torn rags of veil still clinging to
it, a thin line of blood running down to where the pearl necklace
rested, untouched, round her throat.

It was Sylvia Hesketh, her skull fractured by a blow that had cracked
her head like an egg shell.




V


There were so many puzzling "leads" and so much that was inexplicable
and mysterious in the Hesketh case that it’ll be easier to follow if, in
this chapter, I put down what the other people, who were either suspects
or important witnesses, did on that Sunday.

Some of it may not be interesting, but it’s necessary to know if you’re
going to get a clear understanding of a case that baffled the police and
pretty nearly.... There I go again. But it’s awfully hard when you’re
not used to it to keep things in their right order.

I’ve told how Jim Donahue said he put Sylvia on the train for the
Junction that night at seven-thirty. Both Jim and the ticket agent said
they’d seen her and Jim had spoken to her. She carried a hand bag, wore
a long dark fur coat and a small close-fitting hat that showed her hair.
Both men also noticed in her hand the gold mesh purse with a diamond
monogram that she always carried. Over her face was tied a black figured
veil that hid her features, but there was no mistaking the hair, the
voice, or the gold mesh purse.

Sands, the Pullman conductor, said this same woman rode down in his
train to the Junction, where she got off. Clark, the station agent at
the Junction, saw her step from the car to the platform. After that he
lost track of her as he was busy with the branch line train which left
at eight-forty-five and was the last one up that night. No woman went on
it, there were only two passengers, both men.

The Doctor didn’t make his whole story public till the inquest. They
said afterward the police knew it, but it was his policy to say little
and keep quiet in Mapleshade. What we in the village did know—partly
from the papers, partly from people—was that after the message from Mrs.
Fowler saying Sylvia had eloped, he told Mrs. Dalzell he would have to
leave, having been called away to an important case. When the Dalzells’
chauffeur brought his car round he asked the man several questions about
the shortest way to get to the turnpike. The chauffeur told him that the
best traveling would be by the Riven Rock Road, which he would have to
go to the Junction to get. The Doctor left the Dalzells’ at a little
after eight, alone in his car.

He reached the Junction about eight-thirty-five, a few minutes after the
train from Longwood had arrived. On the platform he spoke to Clark,
asking him how to get to the Riven Rock Road. Clark gave him the
directions, then saw him disappear round the station building. Neither
Clark nor anyone at the Junction—there were very few there at that
hour—saw him leave in his car, though they heard the honk of the auto
horn.

But it was Jack Reddy’s movements that everybody was most interested in.
There was no secret about them.

Sunday at lunch he told Gilsey that he was going away for a trip for a
few days. If he stayed longer than he expected he’d wire back for his
things, but, as it was, he’d only want his small auto trunk, which he’d
take with him. When Mrs. Gilsey was packing this he joked her about
having a good time while he was gone, and she told him that, as there’d
be no dinner that night, she and Gilsey’d go over to a neighbor’s, take
supper there and spend the evening. After that he asked Casey, the
chauffeur, to have the racing car brought round at five, to see that the
tank was full, a footwarmer in it and the heaviest rugs and a drum of
gasoline, as he was going on a long trip.

At five he left Firehill in the racer. At a quarter to seven two boys
saw him pass the Longwood Station in the direction of Maple Lane. He
said he came back through the outskirts of the village at seven-thirty,
but no one could be found who had seen him.

After he left Firehill the Gilseys cleared up and walked across the
fields to the Jaycocks’ farm, where they spent the evening, coming home
at ten and finding the house dark and quiet. Casey went to another
neighbor’s, where he stayed till midnight, playing cards.

He slept over the garage, and about four in the morning—he looked at his
watch afterward—was awakened by a sound down below in the garage. He
listened and made sure that someone was trying to roll the doors back
very slow and with as little noise as possible. Casey’s a bold, nervy
boy, and he reached for his revolver and crept barefooted to the head of
the stairs. On the top step he stooped down and looked through the
banisters, and saw against the big square of the open doors a man
standing, with a car behind him shining in the moonlight.

He thought it was a burglar, so, with his revolver up and ready, he
called:

"Hello, there. What are you doing?"

The man gave a great start, and then he heard Mr. Reddy’s voice:

"Oh, Casey, did I wake you? I’ve come back unexpectedly. Help me get
this car in."

They ran the car in, and, when Casey went to tell how he thought it was
a burglar and was going to shoot, he noticed that Mr. Reddy hardly
listened to him, but was gruff and short. All he said was that he’d
changed his mind about the trip, and then unstrapped his trunk from the
back and turned to go. In the doorway he stopped as if he’d had a sudden
thought, and said over his shoulder:

"You don’t want to mention this in Longwood. I’m getting a little sick
of the gossip there over my affairs."

Casey went back to bed and in the morning, when he looked at the car,
found it was caked with mud, even the wind-guard spattered. At seven he
crossed over to the house for his breakfast and told the Gilseys that
Mr. Reddy was back. They were surprised, but decided, as he’d been out
so late, they’d not disturb him till he rang for his breakfast.

Monday morning was clear and sharp, the first real frost of the season.
All the time I was dressing I was thinking about the elopement and how
queer it was Mrs. Fowler saying they’d gone by turnpike and Jim Donahue
saying he’d seen Sylvia leave on the train. I worked it out that they’d
made some change of plans at the last moment. But the _way_ they’d
eloped didn’t matter to me. Small things like that didn’t cut any ice
when I was all tormented wondering if it was for the best that my hero
should marry a wild girl who no one could control.

I hadn’t been long at the switchboard, and was sitting sideways in my
chair looking out of the window when I saw Dr. Fowler’s auto drive up
with the Doctor and a strange man in it. I twirled round quick and was
the business-like operator. I’ll bet no one would have thought that the
girl sitting so calm and indifferent in that swivel chair was just
boiling with excitement and curiosity.

The Doctor looked bad, yellow as wax, with his eyes sunk and inflamed.
He didn’t take any notice of me beside a fierce sort of look and a
gruff,

"Give me Corona 1-4-2."

That was Firehill. I jacked in and the Doctor went into the booth and
shut the door. The strange man stood with his hands behind him, looking
out of the window. I didn’t know then that he was a detective, and I
don’t think anyone ever would have guessed it. If you’d asked me I’d
have said he looked more like a clerk at the ribbon counter. But that’s
what he was, Walter Mills by name, engaged that morning, as we afterward
knew, by the Doctor.

Watching him with one eye I leaned forward very cautiously, lifted up
the cam and listened in on the conversation:

"Is this Gilsey?"

Then Gilsey’s nice old voice, "Yes, sir. Who is it?"

The Doctor’s was quick and hard:

"Never mind that—it doesn’t matter. Do you happen to know where Mr.
Reddy is?"

My heart gave a big jump—he hadn’t caught them! They’d got away and been
married!

"Yes, sir, Mr. Reddy’s here."

There was just a minute’s pause before the Doctor answered. In that
minute all sorts of ideas went flashing through my head the way they say
you see things before you drown. Then came the Doctor’s voice with a
curious sort of quietness in it.

"_There_, at Firehill?"

"Yes, sir. Can I take any message? Mr. Reddy was out very late last
night and isn’t up yet."

The Doctor answered that very cordially, all the hurry and hardness
gone.

"Oh, that’s all right. I’ll not disturb him. No, I won’t bother with a
message. I’ll call up later. Thanks very much. Good-bye."

I dropped back in my chair, tapping with a pencil on the corner of the
drawer and looking sideways at the Doctor as he came out of the booth.
He had a queer look, his eyes keen and bright, and there was some color
in his face. The strange man turned round, and the Doctor gave him a
glance sharp as a razor, but all he said was: "Come on, Mills," and they
went out and mounted into the car.

When the door banged on them I drew a deep breath and flattened out
against the chair back. They _hadn’t_ eloped!

Gee, it was a relief! Not because of myself. Honest to God, that’s
straight. I knew I couldn’t have him any more than I could have had the
Kohinoor diamond. It was because I _knew_—deep down where you feel the
truth—that Sylvia Hesketh wasn’t the girl for him to marry.

That was about half-past eight. It was after ten when a message came for
Mapleshade that made the world turn upside down and left me white and
sick. It was from the Coroner and said that Sylvia Hesketh had been
found that morning on the turnpike, murdered.

Poor Mrs. Fowler took it!

Anne Hennessey told me afterward that she heard her scream on the other
side of the house. I heard it, too, and it raised _my_ hair—and then a
lot of words coming thin and shrill along the wire. "Sylvia, my
daughter—dead—murdered?" It was awful, I hate to think of it.

Nora and Anne ran at the sound and found Mrs. Fowler all wild and
screaming, with the receiver hanging down. I could hear them, a babble
of tiny little voices as if I had a line on some part of Purgatory where
the spirits were crying and wailing.

Suddenly it stopped—somebody had hung up. I waited, shaking there like a
leaf and feeling like I’d a blow in the stomach. Then Mapleshade called
and I heard Anne’s voice, distinct but broken as if she’d been running.

"Molly, is that you? Do you by any chance know if the Doctor’s in the
village?"

"He was here a little while ago with a man calling up Firehill. Anne, I
heard—it can’t be true."

"Oh, it is—it is—I can’t talk now. I’ve _got_ to find him. Give me
Firehill. He may have gone there. Quick, for God’s sake!"

I gave it and heard her tell a man at the other end of the line.

I’ll go on from here and tell what happened at Firehill. I’ve pieced it
out from the testimony at the inquest and from what the Gilseys
afterward told in the village.

The Doctor and Mills went straight out there from the Exchange. When
they arrived Gilsey told him Mr. Reddy wasn’t up yet, but he’d call him.
The Doctor, however, said the matter was urgent and they couldn’t lose a
minute, so the three of them went upstairs together and Gilsey knocked
at the door. After he’d knocked twice a sleepy voice called out, "Come
in," and Gilsey opened the door.

It led into a sitting-room with a bedroom opening off it. On a sofa just
opposite the door was Jack Reddy, dressed and stretched out as if he’d
been asleep.

At first he saw no one but Gilsey and sat up with a start, saying
sharply:

"What’s the matter? Does anyone want me?"

Gilsey said, "Yes, two gentlemen to see you," and stepped to one side to
let the Doctor and Mills enter.

When Reddy saw the Doctor he jumped to his feet and stood looking at
him. He didn’t say "Good morning" or any sort of greeting, but was
silent, as if he was holding himself still, waiting to hear what the
Doctor was going to say.

He hadn’t to wait long. The Doctor, in the doorway, went right to the
point.

"Mr. Reddy," said he, "where’s my daughter?"

Reddy answered in a quiet, composed voice:

"I don’t know, Dr. Fowler."

"You do!" shouted the Doctor. "You ran away with her last night. What
have you done with her?"

Reddy said in the same dignified way:

"I haven’t done anything. I know nothing about her. I haven’t any more
idea than you where she is."

At that the Doctor got beside himself. He shouted out furiously:

"You have, you d——d liar, and I’ll get it out of you," and he made a
lunge at Reddy to seize him. But Mills jumped in and grabbed his arm.
Holding it he said, trying to quiet down the Doctor:

"Just wait a minute, Dr. Fowler. Maybe when Mr. Reddy sees that we
understand the situation, he’ll be willing to explain." Then he turned
to Reddy: "There’s no good prevaricating. Your letter to Miss Hesketh
has been found. Now we’re all agreed that we don’t want any talk or
scandal about this. If you want to get out of the affair without trouble
to yourself and others you’d better tell the truth. Where is she?"

"Who the devil are you?" Reddy cried out suddenly, as mad as the Doctor,
and before Mills could answer, the branch telephone on the desk rang.

Reddy gave a loud exclamation and made a jump for it. But Mills got
before him and caught him. He struggled to get away till the Doctor
seized him on the other side. They fought for a moment, and then got him
back against the door, all the time the telephone ringing like mad. As
they wrestled with him Mills called over his shoulder to Gilsey:

"Answer that telephone, quick."

Gilsey, scared most out of his wits, ran to the phone and took down the
receiver. Anne Hennessey was at the other end with her awful message.

When he got it Gilsey gave a cry like he was stabbed, and turned to Mr.
Reddy, pinioned against the door.

"Good Lord, have mercy, Mr. Jack," he gasped out. "Miss Hesketh’s dead.
She’s murdered—on the turnpike—murdered last night!"

The Doctor dropped Reddy, tore the instrument out of Gilsey’s hand and
took the rest of the message.

Reddy turned the color of ashes. There wasn’t any need to hold him. He
fell back against the door with his jaw dropped and his eyes staring
like a man in a trance. Gilsey thought he was going to die and was for
running to him, crying out, "Oh, Mr. Jack, don’t look that way." But
Mills caught the old servant by the arm and held him back, watching
Reddy as sharp as a ferret.

The Doctor turned from the phone and said: "It’s true. Miss Hesketh’s
been murdered."

There was a dead silence. The click of the receiver falling into its
hook was the only sound. The three other men—the Doctor as white as
death, too—stood staring at Reddy. And then, seeing those three faces,
he burst out like he was crazy:

"No—she’s not—she can’t be! I was there; I went the moment I got her
message. I was on the turnpike where she said she’d be. I was up and
down there most of the night. And—and——" he stopped suddenly and put his
hands over his face, groaning, "Oh, my God, Sylvia—why didn’t you tell
me?"

He lurched forward and dropped into a chair, his hands over his face,
moaning like an animal in pain.




VI


Longwood was stunned. By noon everybody knew it and there was no more
business that day. The people stood in groups, talking in whispers as if
they were at a funeral. And in the afternoon it _was_ like a funeral,
the body coming back by train and being taken from the depot to
Mapleshade in one of the Doctor’s farm wagons. It lay under a sheet and
as the wagon passed through the crowd you couldn’t hear a sound, except
for a woman crying here and there.

Then it was as if a spring that held the people dumb and still was
loosed and the excitement burst up. I never saw anything like it. It
seemed like every village up and down the line had emptied itself into
Longwood. Farmers and laborers and loafers swarmed along the streets,
the rich came in motors, tearing to Mapleshade, and the police were
everywhere, as if they’d sprung out of the ground.

By afternoon the reporters came pouring in from town. The Inn was full
up with them and they were buzzing round my exchange like flies. Some of
them tried to get hold of me and that night had the nerve to come
knocking at Mrs. Galway’s side door, demanding the telephone girl. But,
believe me, I sat tight and said nothing—nothing to them. The police
were after me mighty quick, and there was a séance over Corwin’s Drug
Store when I felt like I was being put to the third degree. I told them
all I knew, job or no job, for I guessed right off that that talk I’d
overheard on the phone might be an important clew. They kept it close.
It wasn’t till after the inquest that the press got it.

Before the inquest every sort of rumor was flying about, and the papers
were full of crazy stories, not half of them true. I’d read about places
and people I knew as well as my own face in the mirror, and they’d sound
like a dime novel, so colored up and twisted round the oldest inhabitant
wouldn’t have recognized them.

To get at the facts was a job, but, knowing who was reliable and who
wasn’t, I questioned and ferreted and, I guess, before I was done I had
them pretty straight.

Sylvia had been killed by a blow on the side of her head—a terrible
blow. A sheriff’s deputy I know told me that in all his experience he
had seen nothing worse. Her hat had evidently shielded the scalp. It was
pulled well down over her head, the long pin bent but still thrust
through it. Where she had been hit the plush was torn but not the thick
interlining, and her hair, all loosened, was hanging down against her
neck. There was a wound—not deep, more like a tearing of the skin, on
the lower part of her cheek. It was agreed that she had been struck only
once by some heavy implement that had a sharp or jagged edge. Though the
woods and fields had been thoroughly searched nothing had been
discovered that could have dealt the blow. Whatever he had used the
murderer had either successfully hidden it or taken it away with him.
The deputy told me it looked to him as if it might have been some
farming tool like a spade, or even a heavy branch broken from a tree.
The way the body was arranged, the coat drawn smoothly together, the
branches completely covering her, showed that the murderer had taken
time to conceal his crime, though why he had not drawn the body back
into the thick growth of bushes was a point that puzzled everybody.

It was impossible to trace any footprints, as the automobile party and
Hines had trodden the earth about her into a muddy mass, and the grass
along the edge was too thick and springy to hold any impression.

Close behind the place where she lay twigs of the screening trees were
snapped and bent as if her assailant had broken through them.

There were people who said Hines would have been arrested on the spot if
robbery had been added to murder. But the jewelry was all on her, more
than he said he had noticed when she was in the Wayside Arbor. The pearl
necklace alone was worth twenty thousand dollars, and just below it,
clasping her gown over the chest, was a diamond cross, an old ornament
of her mother’s, made of the finest Brazilian stones. In the pocket of
her coat was a purse with forty-eight dollars in it. So right at the
start the theory of robbery was abandoned.

Another inexplicable thing was the disappearance of the French maid,
Virginia Dupont. Jack Reddy denied any knowledge of her. He said Sylvia
had never mentioned bringing her with them and he didn’t think intended
to do so. The Mapleshade people thought differently, all declaring that
Sylvia depended on her and took her wherever she went. One of the
mysteries about the woman that was quickly cleared up was the walk she
had taken to the village on Sunday morning. This was to meet Mr. Reddy
and take from him the letter for Sylvia which had been found in the
desk.

I know from what I heard that the police were keen to find her, but she
had dropped out of sight without leaving a trace. No one at Mapleshade
knew anything about her or her connections. She was not liked in the
house or the village and had made no friends. On her free Sundays she’d
go to town and when she returned say very little about where she’d been.
A search of her rooms showed nothing, except that she seemed to have
left her clothes behind her. She was last seen at Mapleshade by Nora
Magee, who, at half-past five on Sunday, met her on the third floor
stairs. Nora was off for a walk to the village with Harper and was in a
hurry. She asked Virginie if she was going out and Virginie said no, she
felt sick and was going up to lie down till she’d be wanted to help Miss
Sylvia dress for dinner.

If you ask me was anyone suspected at this stage I’d answer "yes," but
people were afraid to say who. There was talk about Hines on the street
and in the postoffice, but it was only when you were close shut in your
own room or walking quiet up a side street that the person with you
would whisper the Doctor’s name. Nobody dared say it aloud, but there
wasn’t a soul in Longwood who didn’t know about the quarreling at
Mapleshade, whose was the money that ran it, and the will that left
everything to Mrs. Fowler if her daughter died.

But no arrests were made. Everything was waiting on the inquest, and we
all heard that there were important facts—already known to the
police—which would not be made public till then.

Wednesday afternoon they held the inquest at Mapleshade. The authorities
had rounded up a bunch of witnesses, I among them. The work in the
Exchange had piled up so we’d had to send a hurry call for help to
headquarters and I left the office in charge of a new girl, Katie
Reilly, Irish, a tall, gawky thing, who was going to work with us
hereafter on split hours.

Going down Maple Lane it was like a target club outing or a political
picnic, except for the solemn faces. I saw Hines and his party, and the
railway men, and a lot of queer guys that I took to be the jury. Halfway
there a gang of reporters passed me, talking loud, and swinging along in
their big overcoats. Near the black pine the toot of a horn made me
stand back and Jack Reddy’s roadster scudded by, he driving, with Casey
beside him, and the two old Gilseys, pale and peaked in the back seat.

They held the inquest in the dining-room, with the coroner sitting at
one end of the long shiny table and the jury grouped round the other.
Take it from me, it was a gloomy sight. The day outside was cold and
cloudy, and through the French windows that looked out on the lawns, the
light came still and gray, making the faces look paler than they already
were. It was a grand, beautiful room with a carved stone fireplace where
logs were burning. Back against the walls were sideboards with silver
dishes on them and hand-painted portraits hung on the walls.

But the thing you couldn’t help looking at—and that made all the
splendor just nothing—were Sylvia’s clothes hanging over the back of a
chair, and on a little table near them her hat and veil, the one glove
she had had on, and the heap of jewelry. All those fine garments and the
precious stones worth a fortune seemed so pitiful and useless now.

We were awful silent at first, a crowd of people sitting along the
walls, staring straight ahead or looking on the ground. Now and then
someone would move uneasily and make a rustle, but there were moments so
still you could hear the fire snapping and the scratching of the
reporters’ pencils. They were just behind me, bunched up at a table in
front of the window. When the Doctor came in everyone was as quiet as
death and the eyes on him were like the eyes of images, so fixed and
steady. Mrs. Fowler was not present—they sent for her later—but Nora and
Anne were there as pale as ghosts.

The Coroner opened up by telling about how and where the deceased had
been found, the position, the surroundings, etc., etc., and then called
Dr. Graham, who was the county physician and had made the autopsy.

A good deal of what he said I didn’t understand—it was to prove that
death resulted from a fracture of the skull. He could not state the
exact hour of dissolution, but said it was in the earlier part of the
night, some time before twelve. He described the condition of the scalp
which had been partially protected by the hat, thick as it was with a
plush outside and a heavy interlining. This was held up and then given
to the jury to examine. I saw it plainly as they passed it from hand to
hand—a small dark automobile hat, with a tear in one side and some
shreds of black Shetland veil hanging to its edge. She bore no other
marks of violence save a few small scratches on her right hand. She had
evidently been attacked unexpectedly and had had no time to fight or
struggle.

The automobilists who had found the body came next. Only the men were
present—two nice-looking gentlemen—the ladies having been excused. They
told what I have already written, one of them making the creeps go down
your spine, describing how his wife said she saw the hand in the
moonlight, and how he walked back, laughing, and pulled off the
brushwood.

After that Mrs. Fowler came, all swathed up in black and looking like a
haggard old woman. The Coroner spoke very kind to her. When she got to
the quarrel between Sylvia and the Doctor her voice began to tremble and
she could hardly go on. It was pitiful to see but she had to tell it,
and about the other quarrels too. Then she pulled herself together and
told about going up to Sylvia’s room and finding the letter.

The Coroner stopped her there and taking a folded paper from the table
beside him said it was the letter and read it out to us. It was dated
Firehill, Nov. 21st.

    "_Dearest_:

    "All right. This evening at seven by the pine. We’ll go in my
    racer to Bloomington and be married there by Fiske, the man I
    told you about. It’ll be a long ride but at the end we’ll find
    happiness waiting for us. Don’t disappoint me—don’t do what you
    did the other time. Believe in my love and trust yourself to
    me—_Jack_."

In the silence that followed you could hear the fire falling together
with a little soft rustle. All the eyes turned as if they were on pivots
and looked at Jack Reddy—all but mine. I kept them on Mrs. Fowler and
never moved them till she was led, bent and sobbing, out of the room.

Nora Magee was the next, and I heard them say afterward made a good
witness. The coroner asked her—and Anne when her turn came—very
particular about the jewelry, what was gone, how many pieces and such
questions. And then it came out that nobody—not even Mrs. Fowler—knew
exactly what Sylvia had. She was all the time buying new ornaments or
having her old ones reset and the only person who kept track of her
possessions was Virginie Dupont. All any of them could be sure of was
that the jewel box was empty, and the toilet articles, fitted bag, and
gold mesh purse were gone.

Hines was called after that. He was all slicked up in his store clothes
and looked very different to what he had that day in the summer. Though
anyone could see he was scared blue, the perspiration on his forehead
and his big, knotty hands twiddling at his tie and his watch chain; he
told his story very clear and straightforward. I think everyone was
impressed by it and by Mrs. Hines, who followed him. She was a miserable
looking little rat of a woman, with inflamed eyes and a long drooping
nose, but she corroborated all he said, and—anyway, to me—it sounded
true.

Tecla Rabine, the Bohemian servant, followed, and when she walked over
to sit in the chair, keyed up as I was, I came near laughing. She was a
large, fat woman with a good-humored red face and little twinkling eyes,
and she sure was a sight, bulging out of a black cloth suit that was the
fashion when Columbus landed. On her head was a fancy straw hat with one
mangy feather sticking straight up at the back, and the last touch was
her face, one side still swollen out from her toothache, and looking for
all the world as if she had a quid in her cheek.

Though she spoke in a queer, foreign dialect, she gave her testimony
very well and she told something that no one—I don’t think even the
police—had heard before.

While Hines was locking up she went to her room but couldn’t sleep
because of the pain of her toothache.

"Ach," she said, spreading her hand out near her cheek, "it was out so
far—swole out, and, oh, my God—_pain_!"

"Never mind your toothache," said the Coroner—"keep to the subject."

"How do I hear noises if my toothache doesn’t make me to wake?" she
asked, giving him a sort of indignant look.

Somebody laughed, a kind of choked giggle, and I heard one of those
fresh write-up chaps behind me whisper:

"This is the comic relief."

"Oh, you heard noises—what kind of noises?"

"The scream," she said.

"You heard a scream?"

"Yes—one scream—far away, up toward Cresset’s Crossing. I go crazy with
the pain and after Mr. Hines is come upstairs I go down to the kitchen
to make——" she stopped, looking up in the air—"what you call him?"—she
put her hand flat on the side of her face—"for here, to stop the pain."

"Do you mean a poultice?"

She grinned all over and nodded.

"Yes, that’s him. I make hot water on the gas, and then, way off, I hear
a scream."

"What time was that?"

"The kitchen clock says ten minutes past ten."

"What did you do?"

She looked surprised.

"I make the—you know the name—for my ache."

"Didn’t you go out and investigate—even go to the door?"

She shook her head and gave a sort of good-humored laugh as if she was
explaining things to a child.

"Go out. For why? If I go out for screams I go out when the dagoes
fight, and when the automobiles be pass—up and down all night, often
drunken and making noises;" she shrugged her shoulders sort of careless;
"I no be bothered with screams."

"Did you go to bed?"

"I do. I make the medicine for my swole up face and go upstairs."

"Did you hear any more screams?"

"No—there are no more. If there are I would have hear them, for I can’t
sleep ever all night. All I hear is automobiles—many automobiles passing
up and down and maybe—two, three, four times—the horns sounding."

The Coroner asked her a few more questions, principally about Hines’
movements, and her answers, if you could get over the lingo, were all
clear and in line with what Hines had said.

The railway men followed her, Sands and Clark and Jim Donahue. Jim was
as nervous as a cat, holding his hat in his hands and twisting it round
like a plate he was drying. He told about the woman he put on the
seven-thirty train on Sunday night.

"Where did you first see this woman?" he was asked.

"On the platform, just before the train came in. She came down along it,
out of the dark."

"Can you swear it was Miss Hesketh?"

Jim didn’t think he could swear because he couldn’t see her face plain,
it being covered with a figured black veil. But he never thought of it
being anyone else.

"Why did you think it was she?"

"Because it looked like her. It was her coat and her gold purse and I’d
know her hair anywhere. And when I spoke to her and said: ’Good evening,
Miss Hesketh, going to leave us?’ it was her voice that answered: ’Yes,
Jim, I’m going away for a few days.’"

"Did you have any more conversation with her?"

"No, because the train came along then. She got in and I handed her her
bag and said ’Good night.’"

When he was asked to describe the bag, he said he hadn’t noticed it
except that it was a medium sized bag, he thought, dark colored.

Then he was shown the clothes—that was heart-rending. The Coroner held
them up, the long fur coat, the little plush hat, and the one glove. He
thought they were the same but it was hard to tell, the platform being
so dark—anyway, it was them sort of clothes the lady had on, and though
he couldn’t be sure of the glove he had noticed that her gloves were
light colored.

Sands, the Pullman conductor, and Clark, from the Junction, testified
that they’d seen the same woman on the train and at the Junction. Sands
particularly noticed the gold mesh purse because she took her ticket out
of it. He addressed her as Miss Hesketh and she had answered him, but
only to say "Good evening."

Then came the Firehill servants. The two old Gilseys were dreadfully
upset. Mrs. Gilsey cried and poor old David kept hesitating and looking
at Mr. Reddy, but the stamp of truth was on every word they said. Casey
followed them, telling what I’ve already written.

When Mr. Reddy was called a sort of stir went over the people. Everybody
was curious to hear his story, as we’d only got bits of it, most of them
wild rumors. And there wasn’t a soul in Longwood that didn’t grieve for
him, plunged down at the moment when he thought he was most happy into
such an awful tragedy. As he sat down in the chair opposite the Coroner,
the room was as still as a tomb, even the reporters behind me not making
so much as the scratch of a pen.

He looked gray and pinched, his eyes burnt out like a person’s who
hasn’t slept for nights. You could see he was nervous, for he kept
crossing and uncrossing his knees, and he didn’t give his evidence
nearly so clear and continued as the newspapers had it. He’d stop every
now and then as if he didn’t remember or as if he was thinking of the
best way to express himself.

He began by telling how he and Sylvia had arranged to go in his car to
Bloomington, and there be married by his friend Fiske, an Episcopal
clergyman. The Coroner asked him if Fiske expected them and he said no,
he hadn’t had time to let him know as the elopement was decided on
hurriedly.

"Why was the decision hurried?" the Coroner asked and he answered low,
as if he was reluctant to say it.

"Because Miss Hesketh had a violent quarrel with her stepfather on
Saturday morning. It was not till after that that she made up her mind
she would go with me."

"Did you know at the time what that quarrel was about?"

His face got a dull red and he said low.

"Yes, she told me of it in a letter she wrote me immediately afterward."

Then he told how on Saturday night he had received a special delivery
letter from her, telling of the quarrel and agreeing to the elopement.
That letter he had destroyed. He answered it the next morning, she
having directed him to bring it in himself and deliver it to Virginie,
who would meet him opposite Corwin’s drugstore. This he did, the letter
being the one already in evidence.

The Coroner asked him to explain the sentence which said "Don’t
disappoint me—don’t do what you did the other time." He looked straight
in front of him and answered:

"We had made a plan to elope once before and she had backed out."

"Do you know why?"

"It was too—too unusual—too unconventional. When it came to the scandal
of an elopement she hung back."

"Is it your opinion that the quarrel with Dr. Fowler made her agree the
second time?"

"I know nothing about that."

Then he told of leaving Firehill, coming into Longwood, and going down
Maple Lane.

"I reached there a few minutes before seven and ran down to the pine
tree where I was to meet her. I drew up to one side of the road and
waited. During the time I waited—half an hour—I neither saw nor heard
anybody. At half-past seven I decided she had changed her mind again and
left."

"You didn’t go to the house?"

"No—I was not welcome at the house. She had told me not to go there."

"You were in the habit of seeing her somewhere else, though?"

His face got red again and you could see he had to make an effort not to
get angry.

"After I had heard from Miss Hesketh and seen from Dr. Fowler’s manner
that I was not wanted at Mapleshade, I saw her at intervals. Once or
twice we went for walks in the woods, and a few times, perhaps three or
four, I met her on the turnpike and took her for a drive in my car."

He then went on to tell how he drove back to Firehill, reaching there a
little after nine. The place was empty and he went up to his room. He
didn’t know how long he’d been there when the telephone rang. It was the
mysterious message from her.

He repeated it slowly, evidently trying to give it word for word. You
could have heard a pin drop when he ended.

"Did you attempt to question her on the phone?"

"No, it all went too quick and I was too astonished."

"Did you get the impression that she was in any grave danger?"

"No, I never thought of that. She was very rash and impulsive and I
thought she’d done some foolhardy thing and had turned to me as the one
person on whom she could rely."

"What do you mean by foolhardy?"

He gave a shrug and threw out his hands.

"The sort of thing a child might do—some silly, thoughtless action. She
was full of spirit and daring; you never could be sure of what she
mightn’t try. I didn’t think of any definite thing. I ran to the garage
and got out my car and went northward up the Firehill Road. It was
terrible traveling, and I should say it took me nearly three-quarters of
an hour to make the distance. When I was nearing the pike I sounded my
horn to let her know I was coming.

"Just before I got there the clouds had broken and the moon come out.
The whole landscape was flooded with light, and I made no doubt I’d see
her as soon as I turned into the pike. But she wasn’t there. I slowed up
and waited, looking up and down, for I’d no idea which way she was
coming, but there wasn’t a sign of her. As far as I could see, the road
was lifeless and deserted. Then I ran up and down—a mile or two either
way—but there was no one to be seen."

"Did you hear any sounds in the underbrush—footsteps, breaking of
twigs?"

"I heard nothing. The place was as still as the grave. I made longer
runs up and down, looking along both sides and now and then waiting and
sounding the auto horn."

"Did you stop at any of the farms or cottages and make inquiries?"

"No. I didn’t do that because I had no thought of her being in any real
danger and because she’d cautioned me against letting anyone know. After
I’d searched the main road thoroughly for several miles and gone up
several branch roads I began to think she’d played a joke on me."

"Do you mean fooled you?"

"Yes—the whole thing began to look that way. Her not being at the
rendezvous in Maple Lane and then phoning me to meet her at a place,
which, when I came to think of it, it was nearly impossible for her to
reach in that space of time. It seemed the only reasonable
explanation—and it was the sort of thing she might do. When I got the
idea in my head it grew and," he looked down on the floor, his voice
dropping low as if it was hard for him to speak, "I got blazing mad."

For a moment it seemed like he couldn’t go on. In that moment I thought
of how he must be feeling, remembering his rage against her while all
the time she was lying cold and dead by the road.

"I was too angry to go home," he went on, "and not thinking much what I
did, I let the car out and went up and down—I don’t know how far—I don’t
remember—miles and miles."

"According to Mr. Casey it was half-past four when you came back to the
garage."

"I daresay; I didn’t notice the time."

"You were from 9:30 to 4:30 on the road?"

"Yes."

"You spent those seven hours going up and down the turnpike and the
intersecting roads?"

"Yes, but at first I waited—for half hours at a time in different
places."

He looked straight at the Coroner as he said that, a deep steady look,
more quiet and intent than he’d done since he started. I think it would
have seemed to most people as if he was telling the absolute truth and
wanted to impress it. But when a girl feels about a man as I did about
him, she can see below the surface, and there was something about the
expression of his face, about the tone of his voice, that made me think
for the first time he was holding something back.

Then he went on and told about going home and falling asleep on the
sofa, and about the doctor and Mills coming.

"When I saw the Doctor my first thought was that I must keep quiet till
I found out what had happened. When he asked me where his daughter was I
was startled as I realized she wasn’t at home. But, even then, I hadn’t
any idea of serious trouble and I was determined to hold my tongue till
I knew more than I did.

"The ring of the telephone gave me a shock. I had been expecting to get
a call from her and instinctively I gave a jump for it. By that time I
was sure she’d got into some silly scrape and I wasn’t going to have her
stepfather finding out and starting another quarrel. They," he nodded
his head at the Doctor and Mills, "caught on at once and made a rush for
me.

"After that——" he lifted his hands and let them drop on his knees—"it
was just as they’ve said. I was paralyzed. I don’t know what I said. I
only felt she’d been in danger and called on me and I’d failed her. I
think for a few moments I was crazy."

His voice got so husky he could hardly speak and he bent his head down,
looking at his hands. I guess every face in the room was turned to him
but mine. I couldn’t look at him but sat like a dummy, picking at my
gloves, and inside, in my heart, I felt like I was crying. In the
silence I heard one of the reporters whisper:

"Gee—poor chap! that’s tough!"

He was asked some more questions, principally about what Sylvia had told
him of the quarrels with her stepfather. You could see he was careful in
his answers. According to what he said she’d only alluded to them in a
general way as making the life at Mapleshade very uncomfortable.

He was just getting up when I saw one of the jurors pass a slip of paper
across the table to the Coroner. He looked at it, then, as Mr. Reddy was
moving away, asked him to wait a minute; there was another question—had
he stopped anywhere during Sunday night to get gasoline for his car?

Mr. Reddy turned back and said very simply:

"No, I had an extra drum in the car."

"You used that?"

"Yes."

"What did you do with the drum?"

"Threw it into the bushes somewhere along the road."

"Do you know the place?"

He gave a sort of smile and shook his head.

"No, I don’t remember. I don’t know where I filled the tank. When it was
done I pitched the drum back into the trees—somewhere along the
turnpike."

Several more of us came after that, I among them. But the real sensation
of the day was the Doctor’s evidence, which I’ll keep for the next
chapter.




VII


The Doctor was as calm and matter-of-fact as if he were giving a lecture
to a class of students. He looked much better than he did that morning
in the Exchange; rested and with a good color. As he settled himself in
the chair, I heard one of the reporters whisper:

"I wouldn’t call that the mug of a murderer."

I looked over my shoulder right at the one who had spoken, a young chap
with a round, rosy, innocent sort of face like a kid’s and yellow hair
standing up over his head as thick as sheep’s wool. I’d seen him several
times in the Exchange and knew his name was Babbitts and that the other
fellows called him "Soapy." When he caught my eye he winked, and you
couldn’t be mad because it was like a big pink baby winking at you.

The Doctor told his story more straight and continuous than any of the
others. It went along so clear from point to point, that the coroner
didn’t have to ask so many questions, and when he did the doctor was
always ready with his answer. It sounded to me as if he’d thought out
every detail, worked it up just right to get the best effect. He began
with Saturday morning, when he’d got the call to go to the Dalzells’.

"An operation was performed early that afternoon and I stayed during the
night and all the next day, going out on Sunday morning at ten for an
hour’s ride in my motor. I had decided to remain Sunday night too—though
the patient was out of danger—when at about eight I received a telephone
message from my wife saying Miss Hesketh had run away with Jack Reddy.
Hearing from her that their route would be by the turnpike to
Bloomington I made up my mind that my best course was to strike the
turnpike and intercept them."

"You disapproved of their marriage?"

"Decidedly. Miss Hesketh was too young to know her own mind. Mr. Reddy
was not the husband I would have chosen for her—not to mention the
distress it would have caused Mrs. Fowler to have her daughter marry in
that manner. My desire to keep the escapade secret made me tell Mrs.
Dalzell a falsehood—that I was called away on an important case.

"The Dalzells’ chauffeur told me that the road from their place to the
turnpike was impassable for motors. The best route for me would be to go
to the Junction, where I could strike the Riven Rock Road, which came
out on the turnpike about a mile from Cresset’s Crossing. I had plenty
of time, as the distance young Reddy would have to travel before he
reached that point was nearly a hundred and twenty miles.

"I arrived at the Junction as the train for Philadelphia was drawing
out. I spoke to Clark, the station agent, about the road, and, after
getting the directions, walked round the depot to the back platform,
where my car stood. As I passed the door of the waiting-room it suddenly
opened and a woman came out."

He stopped—just for a moment—as if to let the people get the effect of
his words. A rustle went over the room, but he looked as if he didn’t
notice it and went on as calm and natural as if he was telling us a
fiction story.

"I probably wouldn’t have noticed her if she hadn’t given a suppressed
cry and cowered back in the doorway. That made me look at her and, to my
amazement, I saw it was Miss Hesketh’s maid, Virginie Dupont."

Nobody expected it. If he’d wanted to spring a sensation he’d done it.
We were all leaning forward with our mouths open.

"The moment I saw her I remembered that my wife had told me the woman
had gone with Miss Hesketh. One glance into the waiting-room told me she
was alone and I turned on her and told her I knew of the elopement and
asked her what she was doing there. She was evidently terrified by my
unexpected appearance, but seeing she was caught, she confessed that she
knew all about it, in fact, that she had been instructed by Miss Hesketh
to go to Philadelphia by the branch line, take a room in the
Bellevue-Stratford, and wait there till her mistress appeared.

"I was enraged and let her see it, pushing her round to the car and
ordering her into the back seat. I vaguely noticed that she carried a
bag and wrap over her arm. She tried to excuse herself but I shut her up
and took my seat at the wheel. There was no one on the platform as we
went out.

"It took me over an hour to negotiate the distance between the Junction
and the turnpike. The road was in a fearful condition. We ran into chuck
holes and through water nearly to the hubs. Once the right front wheel
dropping into a washout, the lamp struck a stump and was so shattered it
had to be put out. My attention was concentrated on the path, especially
after we left the open country and entered a thick wood, where, with one
lamp out of commission, I had to almost feel my way.

"I said not a word to the woman nor she to me. It was not till I was
once again in the open that I turned to speak to her and saw she was
gone."

"Gone!" said one of the jury—a raw-boned, bearded old man like a
farmer—so interested, he spoke right out.

"Yes, gone. I guessed in a moment what she had done. Either when I had
stopped to put out the lamp or in one of the pauses while I was feeling
my way through the wood she had slipped out and run. It would have been
easy for her to hide in the dark of the trees. I glanced into the
tonneau and saw that the things she had carried, the bag and the wrap,
were also missing. She had been frightened and made her escape.
Unfortunately, in the shock and horror of the next day the whole matter
slipped my mind and she had time to complete her getaway, probably by
the branch line early Sunday morning."

The Coroner here explained that inquiries had since been made at the
branch line stations for the woman but nobody had been found who had
seen her.

"I had no time to go back and look for her, and, anyway, it would have
been useless, as she could have hidden from a sheriff’s posse in the
wood. Besides, my whole interest was focused on reaching the turnpike. I
could see it before me, a long winding line between the dark edges of
small trees. I turned into it and let the car out. Though the road has
many turns I could have seen the lamps of a motor some distance ahead
and I ran fast, looking neither to the right nor left but watching for
approaching lights. On my ride back I met only a few vehicles, several
farmers’ wagons and the car of Dr. Pease, the Longwood practitioner.

"I reached home about two and went at once to my wife’s room. She was in
a hysterical state and I stayed with her an hour or so trying to quiet
her. When she was better I retired to my own apartment and at seven
called up Walter Mills, a detective in New York, telling him to come to
Longwood as soon as he could. By this time I was uneasy, not that I had
any suspicion of a real tragedy, but the disappearance of Miss Hesketh
alarmed me. I met Mills at the train and told him the situation and that
I intended telephoning to Fiske at Bloomington, thinking they might have
reached there by some other way. It was his suggestion that before any
step was taken which might make the matter public, it would be well to
communicate with Firehill and see if the servants knew anything. I did
this and to my amazement learned that Reddy was there."

That is all of the Doctor’s testimony that I need put down as the rest
of it you know.

It left us in a sort of mixed-up surprise. No one could have told it
better, no one could have been more sure about it or more quiet and
natural. _But_—it seems like I ought to write that word in the biggest
letters to give the idea of how it stood out in my mind.

Of all the stories it was the strangest and it was so _awfully_ pat. I
don’t know how you feel about it, reading it as I’ve written it here,
but I can say for myself, listening and watching that man tell it, I
couldn’t seem to believe it.

It was near to evening, the room getting dusk and the fire showing up
large and bright when the jury brought in their verdict: "The deceased
met her death at the hands of a person or persons unknown."

I walked back up Maple Lane. The night was setting in cold and frosty.
The clouds had drawn off, the air was clear as crystal and full of the
sounds of motor horns. Big and little cars passed me, jouncing over the
ruts and swinging round the bend where the pine stood. I was looking up
at it, black like a skeleton against the glow in the West, when a step
came up behind me and a voice said:

"You’re a good witness, Miss Morganthau."

It was that fresh kid Babbitts and I wasn’t sorry to have him join me as
I was feeling as if I’d been sitting in a tomb. He was serious too, not
a wink about him now, his eyes on the ground, his hands dug down in the
pockets of his overcoat.

"A strange case, isn’t it?" he said.

"Awful strange," I answered.

"If it wasn’t for your story of that man on the ’phone I think they’d
arrest Dr. Fowler to-night."

"Didn’t you believe what he said?"

I wasn’t going to give away my thoughts any more than I’d been willing
to give away what I heard on the wire. And it seemed that he was the
same, for he answered slow and thoughtful:

"I’m not saying what I believe or don’t believe, or maybe it’s better if
I say I’m not ready yet to believe or disbelieve anything,"—then he
looked up at the sky, red behind the trees, and spoke easy and careless:
"They say Miss Hesketh had a good many admirers."

"Do they?" was all he got out of me.

That made him laugh, jolly and boyish.

"Oh, you needn’t keep your guard up now. Your stuff’ll be in the papers
to-morrow, and, take it from me, that fellow that sent the message is
going to get a jar."

"The man I listened to?"

"Sure. He hasn’t got the ghost of an idea anyone overheard him. Can’t
you imagine how he’ll feel when he opens his paper and sees that a smart
little hello girl was tapping the wire?"

It’s funny, but I’d never thought of it that way. Why, he’d get a shock
like dynamite! It got hold of me so that I didn’t speak for a spell,
thinking of that man reading his paper to-morrow—over his coffee or
maybe going down in the L—and suddenly seeing printed out in black and
white what he thought no one in the world knew except himself and that
poor dead girl. Babbitts went on talking, me listening with one
ear—which comes natural to an operator.

"We’ve been rounding up all the men that were after her—not that they
were backward with their alibis—only too glad to be of service, thank
you! Carisbrook was at Aiken, a lawyer named Dunham was up state trying
a case; Robinson, a chap in a bank, was spending the week-end on Long
Island. There was only one of them near here—man named Cokesbury. Do you
know him?"

Both my ears got busy.

"Cokesbury," I said, sort of startled, "was Cokesbury at the Lodge last
week?"

"He was and I know just what he did."

"What did he do?"

He laughed out as gay as you please, for he saw he’d got me just where
he wanted.

"When I’ve tried to find out things from you you’ve turned me down."

"Aw, go on," I said coaxing, "don’t you know by experience I’m no
talking machine to give out every word that’s said to me."

"I believe you," he answered, "and it’ll be good for your character for
me to set a generous example. Cokesbury was at the Lodge from last
Saturday on the one-ten train to last Monday on the eight-twenty."

"Gee!" I said, soft to myself.

"You can quell those rising hopes," he replied. "He wasn’t the man you
heard."

"How do you know?"

"Because hearing that he was a friend of Miss Hesketh’s, I spent part of
yesterday at Azalea and found that Mr. Cokesbury can prove as good an
alibi as any of them."

"Did you see him?"

"No, he wasn’t there and if he had been I wouldn’t have bothered with
him. I saw someone much better—Miner, the man who owns the Azalea
Garage, where Cokesbury puts up his car. It appears that the trip before
last Cokesbury broke his axle and had to have his car towed down to the
garage and left there to be mended. When he came down Saturday he
expected it to be done and when it wasn’t, got in a rage and raised the
devil of a row. He had to go out to his place in one of Miner’s cars
which left him there and went back for him Monday morning."

"Then he had no auto on Sunday."

"Miss Morganthau will take the head of the class," then he said, low, as
if to someone beside him: "She’s our prize pupil but we don’t say it
before her face for fear of making her proud," then back to me as solemn
as a priest in the pulpit, "That is the situation reduced to its lowest
terms—he had no car."

"Well that ends _him_," I said.

"So it seems to me. In fact Cokesbury gets the gate. I won’t hide from
you now that I went to Azalea because I’d heard a rumor of that talk on
the phone and thought I’d do a little private sleuthing on my own.
Didn’t know but what I was destined to be the Baby Grand Burns."

"And nothing’s come of it."

"Nothing, except that it drops Cokesbury out with a thud that’s dull and
sickening for me, but you can bet your best hat it’s just the opposite
for him."

"Well, I guess yes," I said and walked along wondering to myself whose
voice that _could_ have been.




VIII


After the inquest there was no more question about who was suspected. It
was as if every finger in Longwood was raised and pointed to Mapleshade.
The cautious people didn’t say it plain—especially the shop-keepers who
were afraid of losing custom—but those who had nothing to gain by
keeping still came out with it flatfooted.

It wasn’t only that nobody liked the Doctor, or believed his story, it
was because the people were wild at what had been done. They wanted to
find the murderer and put him behind bars and seeing that things pointed
more clearly to Dr. Fowler than to anybody else they pitched on him. All
the gossip about the quarreling came out blacker than ever. The papers
were full of it and the other worse stories, about Sylvia’s allowance
and the will of her father. There wasn’t a bit of dirty linen in the
Fowler household that wasn’t washed and hung out on the line for the
public to gape at, and some of it was dirtier when they’d got through
washing than it had been before.

There were those who didn’t scruple to say that the whole tragedy was a
frame-up between Virginie Dupont and the Doctor. If you talked sensible
to them and asked them how Virginie could have got word to him that
Sylvia was running away, they’d just push that to one side, saying it
could be explained some way, everything wasn’t known yet—but one thing
you _could_ be sure of—the one person who knew the whereabouts of that
French woman was Dr. Daniel Fowler.

I believe there were some days after the inquest when, if there’d been
an anarchist or agitator to stand on the postoffice steps and yell that
Dr. Fowler ought to be jailed, a crowd would have gathered, gone down to
Mapleshade, and demanded him.

Fortunately there was no one of that kind around, and he stayed quiet in
his home, not even coming to the village. Two days after the inquest I
saw Anne and she said he and Mrs. Fowler hadn’t been out of the
house—that they were in a state of siege what with reporters and the
police and morbid cranks who hung round the grounds looking up at the
windows.

That same evening I stayed over time in the Exchange, lending a hand.
The work was something awful, and Katie Reilly, the new girl, was most
snowed under and on the way to lose her head. I wanted to see her
through and I wanted the credit of the office kept up, but it’s also
true that I wanted to be on the job myself and hear all that was
passing. Believe me, it was hard to quiet down in my bedroom at night
after eight hours at the switchboard right in the thick of the
excitement. Besides, I’d got to know the reporters pretty well and it
was fun making them think I could give them leads and then guying them.

I liked Babbitts the best, but there were three others that weren’t bad
as men go. One was Jones, a tall thin chap like an actor, with long
black hair hanging down to his collar, and Freddy Jasper, who was
English and talked with an awful swell dialect, and a sallow-skinned,
consumpted-looking guy called Yerrington who belonged on a paper as
yellow as his face and always went round with a cigarette hanging from
his lip like it was stuck on with glue.

It was nearly eight and work was slacking off when I started to go home.
What with the jump I’d been on and listening to the gabbing round the
door I’d forgotten my supper. It wasn’t till I saw the Gilt Edge window
with a nice pile of apples stacked up round a pumpkin, that I remembered
I was hungry and walked over. There were only three people in the place,
Florrie Stein, the waitress, and a woman with a kid in the corner.

I was just finishing my corn beef hash with a cup of coffee at my elbow
and stewed prunes on the line of promotion when Soapy and Jones and
Jasper came in and asked me if they could sit at my table. "Please
yourself," said I, "and you’ll please me," for politeness is one of the
things I was bred up to, and they sat down, calling out their orders to
Florrie Stein.

They naturally began talking about "the case"—it was all anybody talked
about just then—and for all I knew so much about it, I generally picked
up some new bits from them. So I went to the extravagance of three cents
worth of jelly roll, not because I wanted it, but because I could crumb
it up and eat it slow and not give away I was sitting on to listen.

"We can talk before you, Miss Morganthau," said Babbitts, "because while
we all agree you’re the belle of Longwood, we’ve found out by sad
experience you’re a belle without a tongue."

Florrie Stein, bringing the food then, they were silent till she’d set
it out, and when she’d drawn off to the cashier’s desk, they started in
again. They were, so to speak, looking over Hines as a suspect.

"No, Hines won’t fit," said Babbitts. "The presence of the jewelry on
the body eliminates him. They’ve dug up his record and though the place
he ran wasn’t to be recommended for Sunday school picnics, the man
himself seems to have been fairly decent."

"It’s odd about the bag—the fitted bag and the jewelry gone from the
room," said Jasper.

"The police have an idea that Virginie Dupont could tell something of
them."

"Theft?"

"Theft on the side."

"Oh, pshaw!" said Jones, "what’s the good of complicating things? If
theft was committed it was a frame-up, part of a plot."

"You believe in this idea they’ve got in the village that Fowler and the
French woman worked together?"

"I do—to my mind the murderer’s marked as plain as Cain after he was
branded on the brow or wherever it was."

Then Jasper spoke up. He’s a nice quiet chap, not as fresh as the
others. "Let’s hear what you base that assertion on."

Jones forgot his supper and twisted round sideways in his chair, looking
thoughtful up at the cornice:

"As I understand it, in a murder two things are necessary—a crime and a
corpse; and in a murderer one, a motive. Now we have all three—the
motive especially strong. If Miss Hesketh married, her stepfather lost
his home and the money he had been living on, so he tried to stop her
from marrying. Saturday night he heard that his efforts had failed. I
fancy that on Sunday morning when he went for that auto drive he stopped
at some village—not as yet located—and communicated with Virginie
Dupont, who was in his pay. She, too, went out that morning, you may
remember."

"There’s a good deal of surmise about this," said Babbitts.

Jones gave him a scornful look.

"If the links in the chain were perfect Dr. Fowler’d be eating his
dinner to-night in Bloomington Jail."

"How do you account for Miss Hesketh—presupposing it was she—being on
the train instead of the turnpike?" said Jasper.

"A change of plans," Jones answered calmly, "also not yet satisfactorily
cleared up. To continue: Sometime on Sunday the Doctor conceived the
plan of ridding himself of all his cares—his troublesome stepdaughter,
the disturbance of his home and his financial distress. _How_," he
turned and looked solemnly at us, fate played so well into his hands I
can’t yet explain—the main point is that it did. He met Miss Hesketh at
the Junction, either by threats, persuasion or coercion made her enter
his auto and carried her up the road to the turnpike.

"And now," said Babbitts, leaning his arms on the table, "we come to her
appearance in the Wayside Arbor."

"We do," Jones replied, nodding his head. "You may remember that both
Hines and his servant said there were twigs and leaves on the edge of
her skirt and that her boots were muddy. Traces of this were still
visible in her clothes when they found her body. She _did_ get out of
the automobile, but not so far from the turnpike as he said. Either he
and she had some fierce quarrel and she ran from him in rage or terror,
or he may have told the truth and she slipped out at the turn from the
Riven Rock Road without his knowledge. Anyway she got away from him and
ran for the only light she saw. There she telephoned Reddy, withholding
the main facts from him, perhaps merely to save time, but cautioning him
against letting anyone know of the message. That, as I see it, was a
natural feminine desire to guard against gossip. When she thought Reddy
was due she started out to meet him—and instead met the Doctor."

"Who’d been hanging about for a half-hour on the roadside?"

"Precisely. He killed her, concealed the body, and went home."

"Just a minute," said Yerrington—"what did he kill her with? The weapon
used is a disputed point. Many think it was a farm implement. Did he go
across lots to Cresset’s and arm himself with a convenient spade or rake
for the fatherly purpose of slaying his stepdaughter?"

But you couldn’t phase Jones, he said as calm as a May morning:

"He _could_ have done that. But I don’t think he did. He didn’t need it.
The tool box of the car was nearer to hand. A large-sized auto wrench is
a pretty formidable weapon, and a tire wrench—did you ever see one? One
well-aimed blow of that would crush in the head of a negro."

"Gentlemen, the evidence is all in," said Babbitts.

"Your case might hold water," said Jasper, "if it wasn’t as full of
holes as a sieve. Why, you can make out as good a one for almost
anybody."

"Who, for example?" Jones asked.

"Well—take Reddy."

"Jack Reddy?" I said that, sitting up suddenly and staring at them with
a piece of jelly roll halfway to my mouth.

"He’s as good as another," said Jasper, and then he added sort of
dreamy: "I believe I could work up quite a convincing case against
Reddy, allowing for a hole here and there. But our illustrious friend
here admits holes at this stage."

"Fire away," said Babbitts. "Give it to us, holes and all."

"Well—off the bat here it is. You may remember that no one saw him
coming back from Maple Lane that night. There is no one, therefore, to
deny that he may have had Miss Hesketh in the car with him. Instead of
going back to Firehill, as he says he did, he followed his original plan
of taking her by the turnpike."

"Right at the start I challenge that," said Babbitts. "She appeared at
the Wayside Arbor at nine-thirty. The date in Maple Lane was for seven.
Supposing she kept it and was on time—which is a stretch of the
imagination—he would have had to travel one hundred and eighteen miles
in two hours and a half."

"He could have done it."

"On a black, dark night? nearly forty-eight miles an hour?"

"You forget he knew the road and was driving a high-powered racing car.
It’s improbable but not impossible."

"I count that as a hole, but go on."

"Now in this hypothetical case we’ll suppose that as that car flew over
the miles the man and the woman in it had high words?"

"Hold on," said Jones, holding out his fork—"that’s too big a hole. They
were lovers eloping, not an old married couple."

"I’ll explain that later. The high words inflamed and enraged the man to
the point of murder and he conceived a horrible plan. As they neared the
Wayside Arbor he told the woman something was wrong with the car and
sent her to the place ostensibly to telephone, really to establish her
presence there at a time when, had she been with him, she could hardly
have got that far."

I jumped in there. I knew it was only fooling, but even so I didn’t like
hearing Mr. Reddy talked about that way.

"Who did he send her to telephone to, Mr. Jasper—himself?"

Babbitts laughed and jerked his head toward me.

"Listen to our little belle sounding the curfew on Jasper."

But Mr. Jasper was ready.

"He could have done that, knowing his house was empty. Hines, you
remember, said she wasn’t five minutes in the booth. We’ve only Reddy’s
word for that message. We don’t even know if she got a connection. I
telephoned out to the Corona operator Saturday and she answered that
there was no record of the message and she herself remembered nothing
about it."

"But Sylvia," I said—"she told Hines she was expecting someone to come
for her."

"Sylvia was eloping. Mightn’t she have told Hines—who was curious and
intrusive—what wasn’t true?"

A sort of hush fell on us all. Babbitts’s face and Jones’s, from being
just amused, were intent and interested.

"Go ahead, Jasper," said Babbitts, "if this isn’t buying the baby a
frock it’s good yarning."

Jasper went on.

"Her story of the broken automobile _she_ believed to be true. But she
didn’t want Hines to know who she was or what she was up to, so she
invented the person coming to take her home. Why she sat so long there
talking is—I’ll admit—a hole, but I said in the beginning there would be
some. The end is just like the end of Jones’s case. She went back to
Reddy and he killed her with, as our friend has suggested, one of the
auto tools. Very soon after it would have been as that Bohemian—what’s
her name?—heard the scream at ten-ten."

"That’s all very well," said Jones, "but before we go further I’d like
you to furnish us with a motive."

"Nothing easier—jealousy."

"Jealousy!" I said, sudden and sharp.

"Jealousy in its most violent form. The lady in this case was a peculiar
type—a natural born siren. She had made the man jealous, furiously
jealous. _That_ was the reason of the high words in the motor."

"Who was he jealous of?" It was I again who asked that.

Jasper turned round and looked at me with a smile.

"Why, Miss Morganthau," he said, "_you_ gave us the clue to that. He was
jealous of the man who made the date you heard on the phone. Don’t you
see," he said, turning to the others, "_that_ man kept his date and
Reddy came and found him there."

I can’t tell what it was that fell on us and made us sit so still for a
minute. All of us knew it was just a joke, but—for me, anyway—it was as
if a cloud had settled on the room. Babbitts sat smoking a cigarette and
staring at the rings he was making with his eyes screwed up. Presently,
when Jones spoke, his voice had a sound like his pride was taken down.

"A great deal better than I expected, but it’s simply riddled with
holes."

Before Jasper could answer the door opened and Yerrington came in. The
cigarette was hanging off his lip and as he said "Good evening" to me it
wobbled but clung on. Then he pulled out a chair, sat down and, looking
at the other three with a gleam in his eye, said:

"A little while ago Dr. Fowler’s chauffeur in dusting out his car found
the gold mesh purse squeezed down between the back and the cushion."




IX


The finding of the gold purse established the fact that part, anyway, of
the Doctor’s story was true—the woman who had gone down to the junction
and then disappeared _had_ disappeared in his auto. Was she Sylvia
Hesketh?

The general verdict was yes—Sylvia Hesketh, for some unknown reason,
running away from her lover and her home. All the world knew now that
she was wild and unstable, a girl that might take any whim into her head
and act on the spur of the moment. There were theories to burn why she
should have thrown down Reddy and slipped away alone, but those that
knew her said she was a law unto herself and let it go at that.

The morning after that supper in the Gilt Edge, Anne came in to do the
marketing and stopped at the Exchange. The room was empty but even so I
had to whisper:

"Are they going to arrest the Doctor?"

"He’s waiting," she whispered back.

"What do you make of it?"

"What I always have. I think the woman was Virginie. I think she took
Sylvia’s things and lit out on her own account."

"What does Mrs. Fowler say?"

"She’s going to offer a reward for the murderer. That’s her way of
answering. This last seems to have roused her. She knows now it’s going
to be a fight for her husband’s liberty, perhaps his life. She’s
employing Mills and some other detectives and she keeps in close touch
with them."

The next day the reward was made public. It was in all the papers and
nailed up at the depot and in the post office, the words printed in
black, staring letters:

    TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD!

    TO ANYONE DISCOVERING THE MURDERER OF THE LATE SYLVIA HESKETH,
    THIS SUM WILL BE PAID BY HER MOTHER, CONSTANCE GREY FOWLER,
    MAPLESHADE, NEW JERSEY.

Late that afternoon Babbitts came into the office. He was staying at the
Longwood Inn, but it was the first time that day I’d seen him and after
our supper together I’d begun to feel real chummy with him. Contrary to
his usual custom he was short and preoccupied, giving me a number
without more words and then banging shut the door of the booth. It got
me a little riled and seeing he wasn’t wasting any manners I didn’t see
why I should, so I lifted the cam and quietly listened in. Not that I
expected to hear anything very private. The number he’d given was his
paper.

The chap at the other end had a way of grunting, "I got you," no matter
what was said. I’d heard _him_ before and he had a most unnatural sort
of patience about him, as if his spirit was broken forever taking
messages off a wire.

"Say," says Babbitts, "I got a new lead—up country near Hines’ place. I
been there all morning. There’s a farm up that way. Cresset’s"—he
spelled the name and the other one did his usual stunt—"Good people,
years on the soil, self-respecting, stand high. Their house is about
half a mile across woods and fields from the Wayside Arbor, lonely with
a bad bit of road leading up from the pike. Do you hear?"

"Get on," said the voice.

"I stopped in there and had a séance with Mrs. Cresset, nice woman, fat
with a white apron. I said I was a tourist thirsting for a drink of
milk."

The other one seemed to rouse up. "Did you thirst that bad?"

"For information—and I got it. She’s been scared of the notoriety and
has held back something which seems important. Her husband’s been prying
her up to the point of going to the District Attorney and she’s agreed,
but tried it on me first. Do you hear?"

"I got you."

"The night of the murder, about nine, a man knocked at her door saying
he’d lost his way and wanting to know where he was, and how to get to
the turnpike. She spoke to him from an upper window and couldn’t see his
face, the night being dark. All she could make out was that he was large
and wore an overcoat. He told her his auto was in the road back of him
and he’d got mixed up in the country lanes. The thing’s funny, as there
are very few roads that side of the pike."

"Hold on—what’s that about pike?"

Babbitts repeated it and went on:

"Doesn’t appear to have been in the least drunk—perfectly sober and
spoke like a gentleman. She gave him the direction and here’s what
caught me—describes his voice as very deep, rich and pleasant, almost
the same words the Longwood telephone girl used to describe the voice
she overheard speaking to Miss Hesketh Saturday noon."

"Any more?"

"Impossible to identify man but says she’d know the voice again. He
thanked her very politely—she couldn’t lay enough stress on how good his
manners were—and she heard him walk away, splashing through the mud."

There were a few ending-up sentences that gave me time to pull out a
novel and settle down over it. I seemed so buried in it that when
Babbitts put down his money I never raised my eyes, just swept the coin
into the drawer and turned a page. He didn’t move, leaning against the
switchboard and not saying a word. With him standing there so close I
got nervous and had to look up, and as soon as I did it he made a motion
with his hand for me to lift my headpiece.

"If two heads are better than one," he said, "two ears must be; and the
words I am about to utter should be fully heard to be appreciated."

Of course I thought he was going to tell me what he’d found out at
Cresset’s. It made me feel proud, being confided in by a newspaper man,
and I pushed up my headpiece, all smiling and ready to be smart and
helpful. He didn’t smile back but looked and spoke as solemn as an
undertaker.

"Miss Morganthau, yours is a very sedentary occupation."

Believe me I got a jolt.

"If you’re asking me to violate the rules for that," I answered, "you’re
taking more upon yourself than I’ll overlook from a child reporter with
a head of hair like the Fair Circassian in Barnum & Bailey’s."

"I speak only as one concerned for your health. A walk after business
hours should be the invariable practice of those whose work forbids
exercise."

"Thank you for your interest," says I, very haughty, "but it’s well to
look at home before we search abroad. The man who spends all his time
riding in autos at the expense of the Press would be better employed
exercising his own limbs than directing those of others. So start right
along and walk quick."

He didn’t budge, but says slow and thoughtful:

"Your remarks, Miss Morganthau, are always to the point. I’m going to
take a walk this evening—say about seven-thirty."

"I hope you’ll enjoy it," says I. "As for me, I’m going straight home to
rest. I need it, what with my work and the ginks that stand round here
taking up my time and running the risk of getting me fired"—the door
handle clicked. I looked over my shoulder and saw a man coming in.
"Which way?" I says in a whisper.

"Down Maple Lane," he whispers back, and I was in front of my board with
my headpiece in place when the man came in.

We walked up and down Maple Lane for an hour, and it may amuse you to
know that what that simple guy wanted was to tell me to listen to every
voice on my wires.

I looked at him calm and pitiful. _Me_, that had been listening till, if
your ears grow with exercise, mine ought to have been long enough to tie
in a true lover’s knot on top of my head!

There’s a wonderful innocence about men in some ways. It makes you feel
sorry for them, like they were helpless children.

Then he capped the climax by telling me about Mrs. Cresset that
morning—hadn’t thought I’d heard a word. And as he told it, believing so
honest that I didn’t know, I began to feel kind of cheap as if I’d lied
to someone who couldn’t have thought I’d do such a thing. I didn’t tell
him the truth—I was too ashamed—but I made a vow no matter how sly I was
to the others I’d be on the square with Babbitts. And I’ll say right
here that I’ve made good resolutions and broken them, but that one I’ve
kept.

There’s a little hill part way along the Lane where the road slopes down
toward the entrance of Mapleshade. We stopped here and looked back at
the house lying long and dark among its dark trees. The sky was bright
with stars and by their light you could see the black patches of the
woods and here and there a paler stretch where the land was bare and
open. It was all shadowy and gloomy except where the windows shone out
in bright orange squares. I pointed out to Babbitts where Sylvia’s
windows were, not a light in them; and then, at the end of the wing,
four or five in a row that belonged to Mrs. Fowler’s suite. Her
sitting-room was one of them where Anne had told me she and the Doctor
always sat in the evenings.

"They’re there now," I said. "What do you suppose they’re doing?"

"Search me," said Babbitts, "I can’t answer for another man, but if I
was in the Doctor’s shoes I’d be pacing up and down, with my Circassian
Beauty hair turning white while you waited."

"Yes," I said, nodding. "I’ll bet that’s what he’s doing. I can see
them, surrounded by their riches, jumping every time there’s a knock on
the door, thinking that the summons has come."

And that shows you how you never can tell. For at that hour in that room
the Doctor and Mrs. Fowler were talking to Walter Mills, who had just
come from Philadelphia, bringing them the first ray of hope they’d had
since the tragedy. It was in the form of a diamond and ruby lavalliere
that he had found the day before in a pawn shop and that Mrs. Fowler had
identified as Sylvia’s.

Four days later a piece of news ran like wildfire through Longwood:
Virginie Dupont had been arrested and brought to Bloomington.

They put her in jail there and it didn’t take any third degree to get
the truth out of her. She made a clean breast of it, for she was caught
with the goods, all the lost jewelry being found in the place where she
was hiding. It sent her to the penitentiary, and her lover, too, for
whom—anyway she said so—she had robbed Sylvia’s Hesketh’s room on the
night that Sylvia Hesketh disappeared.

If her story threw no light on the murder it exonerated the Doctor, for
it fitted at every point with what he had said.

I’ll write it down here, not in her words, but as I got it from the
papers.

For some time she had been planning to rob Sylvia, but was waiting for a
good opportunity. This came, when the Doctor, being out of the house,
she discovered that an elopement was on foot. She had read Sylvia’s
letters, which were thrown carelessly about, and knew of the affair with
Jack Reddy, and when on Sunday morning she was sent to the village to
get a letter from Reddy she guessed what it was. Before giving it to
Sylvia she went to her own room, opened the envelope with steam from a
kettle, and read it. Then she knew that her chance had come.

When evening drew on she hung about the halls and saw Sylvia leave at a
few minutes past six, carrying the fitted bag. The coast being clear,
she went to her room, took an old black bag of her own and stole back.
It was while she was getting this bag that the idea came to her of
impersonating her mistress, as in that way she could steal some clothes.
She secured the jewelry in a pocket hanging from her waist, took some
false hair that Sylvia wore when the weather was damp, and covered her
head with it, and selected a little automobile hat of which there were
several, over all tying a figured black lace veil.

What she particularly wanted was a new Hudson seal coat that had been
delivered a few days before. No one but herself and Miss Hesketh knew of
this coat as there had been so much quarreling about Sylvia’s
extravagance, that the girl often bought clothes without telling. After
putting it on she filled her bag with things from the bureau drawers,
and just as she was leaving saw the gold mesh purse on the dresser and
snatched it up.

All this was done like lightning and she thinks she left the house not
more than twenty or twenty-five minutes after Sylvia. To catch the train
she had to hurry and she ran up Maple Lane behind the hedge. She was
nearing the village when she heard the whirr of an auto and through the
hedge saw the two big headlights of a car, coming slowly down the Lane.
For a moment she paused, peeking through the branches and made out that
there was only one person in it, Jack Reddy.

She reached the station only a few minutes before the train came in. As
she had a ticket, she stood at the dark end of the platform, not moving
into the light till the engine was drawing near. Then Jim Donahue saw
her and came up, addressing her as Miss Hesketh. She had often tried to
imitate Sylvia’s voice and accent which she thought very elegant, and
she did so now, speaking carefully and seeing that Jim had no doubt of
her identity. On the ride to the Junction she had only murmured "Good
evening" to Sands, being afraid to say more.

At the Junction she was going to get off, take the branch line to
Hazelmere and transfer there to the Philadelphia Express. In the women’s
waiting-room, which would probably be deserted at that hour, she
intended taking off Sylvia’s coat and hair and reappearing as the modest
and insignificant lady’s maid. She had thought this out in the
afternoon, deciding that Sylvia would probably communicate with her
mother in the morning and that the theft would then be discovered.
Inquiries started for the woman who had been seen on the train would
lead to nothing, as that woman would have dropped out of sight at the
Junction.

Everything worked without a hitch. The waiting-room was empty and she
had ample time to take off the hair and put it in the bag, hang the coat
over her arm with the lining turned out, and even pinch the small, soft
hat into another shape. No one would have thought the woman who went
into the waiting-room was the woman who came out.

And then came the first mishap—as she opened the door she stepped almost
into Dr. Fowler. She was terror stricken, but even then neither her luck
nor her wits left her, for almost the first sentence he uttered showed
her that he knew of the elopement and gave her a lead what to say. She
must have been a pretty nervy woman the way she jumped at that lead.
Right off the bat she invented the story about being sent by Sylvia to
Philadelphia—to wait there at the Bellevue-Stratford.

The Doctor was furious and ordered her into his auto. There was nothing
for it but to obey and in she got, sitting in the back. As she was
stepping up, he close beside her, she remembered the gold mesh purse
plain in her hand. Like a flash she bent forward and jammed it down
between the back and seat.

The ride up the Riven Rock Road was just as the Doctor described it. It
was after the lamp had been broken and he was back in the car starting
it up, that she slipped out. She was determined to get away with all her
loot and took the bag and coat with her, but between the hurry and fear
of the moment forgot the purse.

She wandered through the woods till she saw a small scattering of lights
which she took for one of the branch line stations. When the dawn came
she had lost some of her nerve and felt it was too risky to carry the
extra things. So she hid them at the root of a tree, took off the hat,
tying the veil over her head, and walked across the fields to the
station. As it was Monday morning there were a lot of laborers, men and
women, on the platform. She mingled with them, looking like them in her
muddy clothes and tied up head, and got away to Hazelmere without being
noticed.

She was feeling safe in her furnished room in Philadelphia when she read
of the murder in the papers. That scared her almost to death and she lay
as close as a rabbit in a burrow, afraid to go out and cooking her food
on a gas ring. It was the man she had stolen for who gave her away. When
she refused to raise money on the jewels, he stole the lavalliere and
pawned it.

Under the trees where she said she’d left them, the police found the
coat and hat. Beside them was the bag stuffed full of lingerie, gloves
and silk stockings, and with the false hair crowded down into the inside
pocket.

Besides clearing the Doctor her confession threw light on two important
points—one that Sylvia had left the house at a little after six, and the
other that Reddy had been at the meeting place at the time he said.




X


After the excitement of the French woman’s arrest there was a sort of
lull. For a few days people thought we were going to move right on and
lay our hands on the murderer. But outside of proving that the Doctor
wasn’t the guilty one the crime was no nearer a solution than it had
been the day it happened. Though there was still a good deal of talk
about it, it began to die down in the public interest and it was then
that the papers got to calling it "The Hesketh Mystery" in place of "The
Hesketh Murder."

The reporters left the Inn and went back to live in town, coming in
every few days to snoop around for any new items that might have turned
up. Babbitts came oftener than the others and stayed later, and he and I
had several more walks. We were getting to be like partners in some kind
of secret business, meeting after dark, and pacing along the roads round
the village, with the stars shining overhead and the ground hard and
crumbly under our feet.

If you’d met us you’d have set us down for a pair of lovers, walking
side by side under the dark of the trees. But if you’d followed along
and listened you’d have got cured of that romantic notion mighty quick.
Our flirtation was all about evidence, and leads, and clues—not so much
as a compliment or a baby stare from start to finish. I don’t believe if
you’d asked Babbitts he could have told you whether my eyes were brown
or blue, and as for me—outside his being a nice kid he didn’t figure out
any more important than the weathervane on the Methodist Church.

It was "the case" that drew us together like a magnet drawing nails.
We’d speculate about it, look at it all round as if it was something we
had hold of in our hands. I guess it was the mysteriousness of it that
attracted him, and the reward, too. There was more in it for me as you
know—but he never got a hint of _that_.

It was one evening, nearly four weeks after the murder that he gave me a
shock—not meaning to, of course, for even then I’d found out he was the
kind that wouldn’t hurt a fly. We were talking of Jack Reddy, who we’d
seen that evening in the village, the first time since the inquest.

"You know," said Babbitts, "it’s queer but I keep thinking of that yarn
of Jasper’s, that evening in the Gilt Edge."

I drew away like he’d stuck a pin into me.

"Why do you think about _that_?" I asked loud and sharp.

"Why," he said, slow as if he was considering, "I suppose because it was
so plausible. And I’ve been wondering if many other people have thought
of it."

"I guess they have," I answered kind of fierce; "there’s fools enough in
the world, God knows, to think of anything. I make no doubt there’s
people who’ve tried to work out that _I_ did it, the reward tempting
them to lies and sin."

Babbitts looked at me surprised.

"What’s there to get mad about?" he asked. "I’m not for a moment
suggesting that Reddy really had any hand in it. Why, he could no more
have killed that girl than _I_ could kill _you_."

I simmered down—it was awful sweet the way he said it.

"Then you oughtn’t to be casting suspicions on an innocent man," I said,
still grouchy.

"Oh, you’re such a little pepper pot. Do you think for a moment I’d say
this to anybody but you. Look at me!" I looked into his eyes, clear as a
baby’s in the starlight. "If you believe I’m the sort of fellow who’d
put a slur on Reddy I wonder you’ll come out this way and walk with me."

I smiled, I couldn’t help it, and Babbitts, seeing I was all right
again, tucked his hand inside my arm and we walked on, very friendly.
Being ignorant of the true state of my feelings, he went straight back
to the subject.

"Now understand that I mean nothing against Reddy and that I’ve never
said this to a soul but you, but ever since the inquest there’s been one
thing that’s puzzled me—the length of time he was out that night."

"He explained that," I said.

"I know he did, and everybody’s accepted his explanation. But seven
hours in a high-powered racing car! He could have gone to Philadelphia,
taken in a show and come back."

"But he told all about it," I insisted.

"He did," said Babbitts, "but I’ll tell you something, Miss
Morganthau—between ourselves not to go an inch farther—Reddy’s story
impressed me as the undiluted truth till he got to _that_ part of it."

"What do you mean?" I said, low, and being afraid I was going to tremble
I pulled my arm away from him.

"This—I was watching him very close, and when he began to talk about
that night ride, some sort of change came over him. It was very subtle,
I never heard anyone speak of it, but it seemed to me as if he was
making an effort to give an impression of frankness. The rest of his
testimony had the hesitating, natural tone of a man who is nervous and
maybe uncertain of his facts, but when he came to that he—well, he
looked to me as if he was internally bracing himself, as if he was on
dangerous ground and knew it."

If I’d been able to speak as well as that those were exactly the words I
would have used. I cleared my throat before I answered.

"Looks like to me, Mr. Babbitts, that you ought to be writing novels
instead of press stories."

"Oh, no," he said careless, "but, you see, I’ve been on a number of
cases like this and a fellow gets observant. It’s queer—the whole thing.
If that French woman’s evidence is to be trusted Miss Hesketh _did_
leave the house early to keep that date with the Voice Man."

I didn’t say a word, looking straight before me at the lights of
Longwood through the trees. Babbitts, with his hands in his pockets
swinging along beside me, went on:

"That’s what’s made me think of Jasper’s hypothetical case. Do you
remember? He said Reddy’d come down to the meeting place, found Miss
Hesketh with the other man and got into a Berserker rage. Say what you
like, it does work out."

When he bid me good night at Mrs. Galway’s side door he wanted to know
why I was so silent? Even if I’d wanted to give a reason I hadn’t one to
give. Don’t you believe for a minute I was really worried—it was just
that I hated anyone even to yarn that way about Jack Reddy. Poor—me—if
I’d known then what was coming!

It began to come two days later, the first shadow that was going to
darken and spread till—but I’m going on too quick.

I’d just had my lunch, put away my box and swept off the crumbs, when I
got a call for the depot from the Rifle Run Camp. That’s a summer
resort, way up in the hills beyond Hochalaga Lake. The voice, with a
brogue on it as rich as butter, was Pat Donahue’s, Jim’s eldest son, a
sort of idle scamp, who’d gone up to the camp to work last summer and
had stayed on because there was nothing to do—at least that’s what Jim
said.

I made the connection and listened in, not because I was expecting
anything worth hearing, but because I wasn’t taking any chances. I guess
Pat Donahue was the last person anyone would expect to come jumping into
the middle of the Hesketh mystery—but that’s what he did, with both
feet, hard.

I didn’t pay much attention at first and then a sentence caught my ear
and I grew still as a statue, my eyes staring straight in front, even
breathing carefully as if they could hear.

It was Pat’s voice, the voice answering Jim’s at the Depot:

"Me and Bridger was in to Hochalaga Lake yesterday forenoon, fishin’
through the ice. Can you hear me, Paw?"

"Fine. Are you payin’ for a call to tell me you’re that idle you have to
play at fishin’?"

"Jest you listen close and hear me before you come back. I seen in the
papers that Miss Hesketh that was murdered had one glove lost. Do you
mind what the one that wasn’t lost looked like?"

"Sure I do—why shouldn’t I? Didn’t I see it at the inquest?"

"Will you be answering me instead of tellin’ me what you saw?"

"Ain’t I doin’ it? It was a left-hand glove, light gray with three pearl
buttons and a furrener’s name stamped in the inside."

"Well, then, I got the feller to it—right hand. I found it on the wharf
at the lake, in front of the bungalow. Seeing that there’s ten thousand
dollars reward offered, I thought I’d be a blowin’ in the price of a
call to tell you, though it’s so ungrateful ye are for the news I’m
sorry I done it. But I’ll not bother you no more, for it’s in to the
District Attorney I’ll be goin’ with the evidence."

That was what he did, that very afternoon. By the next day everybody in
Longwood knew how Pat Donahue had found Sylvia Hesketh’s missing glove
on the wharf just in front of the Reddy bungalow. There was a person who
didn’t close an eye that night, and I guess you know what her name was.

Gee, those were awful days that followed! When I think of them now I can
feel a sort of sinking come back on me and my face gets stiff like it
was made of leather and couldn’t limber up for a smile. Each morning I’d
get up scared sick of what I was going to hear that day, and each
evening I’d go to bed filled with a darkness as black as the night
outside.

I couldn’t believe it and yet—well, I’ll tell you and you can judge for
yourself.

The police went out to Hochalaga and made a thorough examination of the
house and its surroundings.

The bungalow stood at one end of the lake right on the shore, with a
little wharf jutting out in front of it into the water. The door opened
into a big living-room, furnished very pretty and comfortable with green
madras curtains at the windows, a green art rug on the floor, and wicker
chairs with green denim cushions. At one side was a big brick fireplace
with a copper kettle hanging on a crane and over in a corner was a desk
with a telephone on it. Along the walls were bookcases full of books and
in the center was a table with chairs drawn up at either side of it.

The police noticed right off that it didn’t have the damp, musty feel of
a place shut up through a long spell of rain. The air was cold and dry
and they could scent the odor of wood fires and a slight faint smell of
cigar smoke. Then they saw that the fireplace was piled high with ashes
and that several cigarette ends were scattered on the hearth. On the
center table was a shaded lamp and near it a match box with burnt
matches strewn round on the floor. The desk drawer was open and the
papers inside all tossed and littered about as if someone had gone
through them in a hurry. Two armchairs stood on either side of the table
and another was in front of the fireplace. All over the floor were earth
stains as if muddy feet had been walking about. There were no signs that
the place had been broken into—windows and doors were locked and the
locks in good condition.

Outside against the wall of the house they found a pile of broken china,
what seemed to be the remains of a tea set. It was not till the search
was nearly ended that one of the men, studying the grass along the
roadside for traces of footprints, came on a gasoline drum hidden among
the bushes.

But that wasn’t the worst—leading up the road to within a few yards of
the wharf were the tracks of auto wheels. At the time when these tracks
were made the road was deep in mud which, about the wharf, had evidently
been a regular pool. The driver of the motor had stopped his car at the
edge of this, got out and walked through it to the bungalow. Clear as if
they had been cast in plaster his footprints went from where the ruts
ended to the edge of the wharf. There, just at the corner of the planks,
three small, pointed footprints met them—a woman’s. Either the man had
carried the woman or she had picked her way along the grass by the
roadside, and joining him on the planks had made a step or two into the
soft earth. On the wharf the prints were lost in a broken caking of mud.
The man’s went back to the car, close to where they had come from it,
and they returned as they had come—alone.

Jack Reddy’s shoes fitted the large prints and Sylvia Hesketh’s the
small ones!

It came on Longwood with an awful shock. The faces of the people were
all dull and dazed looking, as if they were knocked half silly by a
blow. They couldn’t believe it—and yet there it was! The papers printed
terrible headlines—"The Earth gives up a Murderer’s Secret"—and "Jack
Frost versus Jack Reddy." There were imaginary accounts of how Mr. Reddy
could have done it, and Jasper, in his paper, had a long article worked
out like the story he’d told us that night in the Gilt Edge, but with
all the holes filled up. Everything was against Mr. Reddy, even the
telephone message that Sylvia had sent him from the Wayside Arbor
couldn’t be traced. The Corona operator could remember nothing about it
and there was no record—only Jack Reddy’s word and nobody believed it.

They had him up before the District Attorney and his examination was
published in the papers. I can’t put it all down—it’s not necessary—but
it was bad. After I read it I sat still in my room, feeling seasick and
my face in the glass frightened me.

When they asked him if he had been at the bungalow that night he said he
had, he had gone there after he had given up his hunt for Sylvia.

"Why didn’t you say this at the inquest?" was asked.

He answered "that he hadn’t thought it was necessary—that——" then he
stopped as if he wasn’t sure and after a moment or two said: "I didn’t
see that it threw any light on the murder, as I was alone."

"You wished to conceal the fact that you were there, then?"

To that he answered sharp:

"I did not—but I saw no reason to give my movements in detail, as they
were of no importance."

"Why did you go there?"

"I was angry and excited and it was a place where I could be quiet."

Asked how long he had been in the bungalow he said he wasn’t sure—it
might have been an hour or two. He had lit the fire and sat in front of
it thinking and smoking cigarettes.

"Didn’t you hunt in the desk for something?"

He answered with a sort of shrug as if he’d forgotten.

"Oh, yes—I was hunting for a bill I thought I left there."

To the questions about Sylvia—whether she had been there with him—he
answered almost violently that she had not, that he had not seen her
there or anywhere else that night.

"Did you notice any footprints in the mud when you came?"

"I did not."

"There were no evidences on the wharf or in the house of anyone having
been there before you?"

"None. The bungalow was locked and undisturbed."

Then they switched off on to the gasoline drum and asked him if he had
filled the tank there and he said he might have but he didn’t remember.

"Was it dark when you left the place?"

"No—very bright moonlight."

"You remember that?"

"Yes. I recollect thinking the ride back would be easier than the ride
up in the dark."

"Why did you say at the inquest that you filled the tank somewhere on
the turnpike?"

"I suppose I thought I had. In the angry and excited state I was in
small things made no impression on me. I had no clear memory of where
I’d done it."

All the papers agreed that his testimony was unsatisfactory and made
much of his manner, which, under an effort to be calm, showed a
spasmodic, nervous violence.

A day later he was arrested at Firehill and taken to Bloomington jail to
await indictment by the Grand Jury.


[Illustration: _A day later he was arrested at Firehill and taken to
Bloomington jail_]


That night—shall I ever forget it! I heard the sounds in the street
dying away and then the silence, the deep, lovely silence that comes
over the village at midnight. And in it I could hear my heart beating,
and as I lay with my eyes wide open, I could see on the darkness like a
picture drawn in fire, Jack Reddy in the electric chair.




XI


Looking back now I can remember dressing the next morning, all trembly
and with my hands damp, and my face in the glass, white and pinched like
an East Side baby’s in a hot wave. But there wasn’t anything trembly
about the thinking part of me. That was working better than it had ever
worked before. It seemed to be made of steel springs going swift and
sure like an engine that went independent of the rest of my machinery.

And, thank God, it did work that way, for it had thought of something!

The idea came on me in the second part of the night, flashed out of the
dark like a wireless. I’d been wondering about the man who made the
telephone date with Sylvia—the Unknown Voice they’d got to calling him.
People thought as Jasper had said, that Reddy had found her with this
man and there had been a terrible scene. But whatever had happened the
Unknown Voice was the clew to the mystery. The police had tried to
locate him, tried and failed. Now _I_ was going to hunt for him.

My plan was perfectly simple. From what I had seen myself and heard from
Anne Hennessey I was sure I knew every lover that Sylvia had had. I was
going to call each one of them up on the phone and listen to their
voices, and I wasn’t going to tell a soul about it. Everybody would
say—just as you say as you read this—"but all those men gave
satisfactory alibis." I knew that as well as anyone, but it didn’t cut
any ice with me, I didn’t care what they’d proved. I was going to hear
their voices and see for myself. If I was successful, then I’d tell
Babbitts and have him advise me what to do. I’d heard Jack Reddy had
retained Mr. Wilbur Whitney, the great criminal lawyer, but I wouldn’t
have known whether to go to him or the police or the District Attorney
and if I did it at all I wanted to do it right.

Now that there were three of us in the Exchange my holiday had been
changed to Monday, and I made up my mind not to put my plan into
execution till that day. I didn’t want to be hurried, or confused, by
possible interruptions, and also I wanted to hear the voices at short
range and could do that better from the city. I telephoned over to
Babbitts that I’d be in town Monday to do some shopping, and he made a
date to meet me at the entrance of the Knickerbocker Hotel and dine with
me at some joint near Times Square.

Monday morning I was up bright and early and dressed myself in my best
clothes. From the telephone book I got the numbers of the four men who
were known to have been Sylvia’s lovers and admirers—Carisbrook,
Robinson, Dunham and Cokesbury. I had found out from Anne what their
businesses were and I had no trouble in locating them. With the slip of
paper in my purse I took the ten-twenty train and was in town before
midday.

On the way over I worked out what I’d say to each of them. I was going
to ask Carisbrook, who was a soft, dressed-up guy, if he knew where
Mazie Lorraine, a manicure who’d once been in the Waldorf, had moved to.
It was nervy but I wanted to give him a dig, he having put on airs and
treated me like a doormat. Robinson was easy—he had a common name and
I’d got the wrong man. Excuse _me_, please, awful sorry. Dunham was a
lawyer and I was a dressmaker that a customer wouldn’t pay. And
Cokesbury was easy, too—I’d heard Cokesbury Lodge was for rent and was
looking for a country place.

I got Carisbrook first and he was as mad as a hornet.

"I don’t know what you’re talking about. _Manicure_? I don’t know any
manicure called Lorraine or anything else. I’ve never been manicured in
the Waldorf—or any other hotel—in the city. The woman is a liar——" and
so forth and so on, sputtering and fizzing along the wire. I had hard
work not to laugh and in the middle of it I hung up, for he had a thin,
high squeak on him like an old maid scared by a mouse.

Robinson was a sport, I liked _him_ fine:

"Don’t apologize. It’s the penalty of being called Robinson. Still
there’s a bright side to every cloud. It might have been Smith, you
know."

It wasn’t Robinson. He talked with a dialect that sounded like Jasper’s,
English, I guess.

Dunham was very smooth and awful hard to get rid of. He kept on asking
questions and I had to think quick and speak unnaturally intelligent. In
the middle of it—I’d got what I wanted—I said it was too complicated to
tell over the phone and I’d be in to-morrow at two and my name was Mrs.
Pendleton.

It wasn’t Dunham.

When I tackled Cokesbury I ran into the first snag. I tried his office
and a real pleasant young man (you get to know a young voice from an old
one) asked me what I wanted. I said business, and he answered:

"What is the nature of your business, Madam?"

"I’d rather tell that to Mr. Cokesbury," I said.

"Mr. Cokesbury doesn’t like to be interrupted in the office. If you’ll
tell me what you want to see him about——"

"Say, young feller," said I, in a cool, classy way, "suppose we stop
this pleasant little talk, and you trot into Mr. Cokesbury and say a
lady’s waiting on the wire."

"Very well," he answered, calm and cheerful, "I’ll do just as you say."

There was a wait and then he was back.

"Mr. Cokesbury says it’s impossible for him to come to the phone and
will you kindly tell me what your business is."

"I guess I’ll have to wait till he’s not so busy," I answered, languid,
like I’ve heard ladies when they’re mad and don’t want to show it, and I
hung up.

Afterward I saw I’d made a mistake, for, when I called up two hours
later that polite guy was still on the job and handed me the same line
of talk.

I went into a drugstore and looked up Cokesbury—Edward L., residence. It
was in the East Fifties and at six I tried him there.

I drew a man that I guess was a servant:

"Is Mr. Cokesbury home?"

"Who is it?"

"That doesn’t matter. I want to know if he’s home."

"I don’t know, ma’am. Will you please give me your name?"

"Say, you’re not taking the census or compiling a new directory, you’re
answering the phone. Tell Mr. Cokesbury a party wants to see him on
business."

"I have orders, ma’am, not to bother Mr. Cokesbury with messages unless
I know who they’re from," said the voice, and then I knew he _was_
there.

"I’m sure he’ll come if you say it’s a _lady_," I said, sort of coaxing
and sweet.

"I’ll try, ma’am," said the voice, and I could hear the echo of his feet
as he walked off.

Presently he was back.

"Beg pardon, ma’am, but Mr. Cokesbury says he can’t possibly come and
please to give me the message."

By that time I was getting mad.

"You ought to get double pay, for you seem to be a District Messenger
boy as well as a butler. If it’s not too much trouble would you mind
telling me what Mr. Cokesbury’s friends do when they want a word with
him over the phone?"

"They tell the butler who they are and what they want, ma’am. That’s the
orders in this house. Good-bye."

When Babbitts and I were sitting at a table in a little dago joint near
Broadway, I couldn’t help but tell him what I’d been doing.

He looked at me with his eyes as big as half-dollars and then began to
laugh.

"Well, what do you make of that? Spending your holiday and your nickels
rounding up a lot of men that rounded themselves up weeks ago."

"I want to get that voice."

"But everyone of them have proved that voice couldn’t be theirs."

"Maybe they did," said I, "but I want to know it myself."

"Listen to her," he said, looking round the table as if a crowd was
collected, "calmly brushing aside the police, the detectives, the might
of the law and the strong arm of the press."

"And anything else that stands round trying to discourage me."

"Far be it from me to discourage you in any eccentricity that may
develop. But there’s no need in following up Cokesbury, for we know that
he was marooned in Cokesbury Lodge."

"I don’t care what we know. The only things I believe are the things I
see myself."

"Thomas!" he said, laughing, and I didn’t see any sense in his calling
me that, but he often said things I wasn’t on to. "Do you intend to camp
on his trail all night?"

"I do," I answered. "As soon as you get through lapping up that red ink
I’m going to go to the nearest pay station and ring up Edward L.,
residence."

"I’ll toddle along," he said. "Anything goes with me that adds to the
entertainment of Mary McKenna Morganthau."

He held up his glass as if he was drinking a toast, and something about
the look of him—I don’t know what—made me get all embarrassed. It never
happened before and it took me so by surprise I blushed and was glad I’d
dropped my gloves on the floor so I could bend down and hide how red my
face was.

I tried Edward L., residence, at a drug store on Broadway and again I
drew that butler gink, who was sort of sassy and hung up quick. Then we
walked along and I could see that Babbitts was getting interested.

"Tell you what," he said, "that servant knows you. I’ll make the
connection, say I want to see Cokesbury on business, and if I get him,
hand on the receiver to you."

We fixed it that way, went into a hotel, and I stood at the door of the
booth while Babbitts got the house. Standing at his elbow I could see he
was up against the same proposition as I had been. He finally had to say
he wanted to see Mr. Cokesbury about renting Cokesbury Lodge.

He turned to me with his hand over the mouthpiece and said:

"He’s there and he won’t come."

"Has the servant gone to get him?"

"Yes. He wouldn’t say whether his boss was home or not, but his
willingness to take the message gave him away. Now stand close and if
it’s a new voice I won’t say a word, just get up and let you slide into
my place." He started and turned back to the instrument. "Yes. What?" I
could see a look of surprise come over his face. "Soon? You don’t
know—in a few days. Hasn’t any idea of renting. Thanks. That’s
all—good-bye."

He hung up and turned to me:

"It was the servant. Cokesbury hasn’t any intention of renting and is
leaving for Europe."

"For Europe!" I cried out. "_When?_"

"The man didn’t know exactly. He said he thought in a few days."

We walked down the street silent and thoughtful. The only feeling I had
at first was disappointment. I didn’t get the whole thing clear as
Babbitts did. It came on him all in a minute, he told me afterward.

We were on Broadway as light as day with the signs and people walking by
us and crowding in between us as if they were hurrying to catch trains.
I felt Babbitts’ hand go round my arm, steering me into a side street.
It was darker there and there were only a few passers-by. We slackened
up and still with his hand around my arm, he bent his face down toward
my ear and said low, as if he was afraid someone was listening:

"Kiddo, are you on?"

"To what?"

"Cokesbury. Don’t you get it? He won’t answer the phone."

"Do you mean he won’t answer at all?"

"Not unless it’s someone he knows. He’s got his clerks in the office
holding the fort and his servants at home."

We were just under a lamp and I stopped with my mouth falling open, for
sudden, like a flash of light, it came to me.

"Soapy!" I gasped and wheeled round on him. His face bent down toward
me, was intent like a hunting dog’s when it sees a bird, his eyes,
bright and fixed, looking straight into mine.

"You’ve made the first real discovery in this case, Molly Morganthau.
Cokesbury’s scared, d——d scared, so scared he’s lost his nerve and is
lighting out to Europe."

We walked round into Bryant Park and sat down on a bench. We were so
excited we didn’t notice anything—that I’d grabbed Babbitt’s hand and
kept hold of it, that it was freezing cold, that we’d got on a bench
with a drunk all huddled up on the other end. We were as certain as if
he’d confessed it that Cokesbury was the Unknown Voice and that he’d
killed Sylvia Hesketh. We just brushed his alibi aside as if he’d never
made one and planned how I was to hear him before he got away to Europe.
We laid plots there in the dark, sitting close together to keep warm,
with the drunk all lopped over and muttering to himself on the seat
beside us.

When Babbitts left me at the Ferry we’d fixed it that he was to call me
up the next day and tell me what he’d done in town and I was to tell him
what I’d accomplished at my end of the line.

The next morning I tried Cokesbury’s office with the same results. At
one Babbitts called me and said he’d tried twice to get him as a test
and been told that Mr. Cokesbury wasn’t down to-day and his whereabouts
were unknown. By inquiries at the steamship offices he’d found that Our
Suspect—that’s what we called him on the wire—had taken passage on the
_Caronia_ for the following Saturday. That was four days off—four days
to hear the man who wouldn’t answer the phone.

That afternoon I had an idea, called up Anne Hennessey and asked her to
meet me at the Gilt Edge for supper. She came and afterward in my room
at Galway’s I told her—I had to, but she’s true-blue and I knew it—and
she agreed to help. She was to come to the Exchange the next morning,
call up Cokesbury and say she was Mrs. Fowler, who wanted to bid him
good-bye before he left. While she spoke—imitating Mrs. Fowler—I was to
listen. We did it—though she’d have lost her job if she’d been found
out—and I heard the clerk tell her that Mr. Cokesbury wasn’t in his
office, that he didn’t know where she could find him, and that it was
very little use trying to get him on the phone as he was so much
occupied prior to his departure.

When Anne came out of the booth I was crying. I guess I never before in
my life had my nerves as strung up as they were then.

It wasn’t long after that that I had a call from Babbitts. He’d been
able to do nothing. When he heard of my last attempt he said:

"He’s not answering any calls at all now. His own mother couldn’t get
him. It’s no use trying that line any more. We’ve got to think up some
other way."

That was Wednesday—I had only three days. Three days and I hadn’t an
idea how to do it. Three days and Jack Reddy was waiting indictment in
Bloomington jail. We couldn’t stop Cokesbury going or get anybody else
to stop him unless we could light on something more definite than a
hello girl’s suspicions.




XII


Thursday afternoon I was sitting in the Exchange, feeling as if the
bottom had fallen out of the world. I hadn’t given up yet—I’m not the
giving-up kind—but I _couldn’t_ think of anything else to do. I’d tossed
on my bed all night thinking, I’d dressed thinking, I’d tried to eat
thinking, I’d put in the plugs and made the connections thinking—and
nothing would come.

Two days more—two days more—two days more—those three words kept going
through my head as if they were strung on an endless chain.

And then—isn’t it always that way in life? Just when you’re ready to
throw up the sponge and say you’re beaten, Bang—it comes!

It came in the shape of a New York call for Azalea.

Like a dream, for I was pretty nearly all in, I could hear the
operator’s voice:

"That you, Longwood? Give me Azalea, 383."

And then me answering:

"All right. Azalea 383. Wait a minute."

I plugged in and heard that queer grating sound as if the wires were
rubbing against each other:

"Hello, New York. All right for Azalea 383."

And then a woman’s voice, clear and small.

"Here’s your party. Just a minute. There you are—Azalea 383."

Then a man’s voice far away as if it might be in Mars:

"Hello, is that Azalea 383?"

"Yep—the Azalea Garage," that was close and plain.

"This is Mr. Cokesbury’s butler——" Believe _me_, I came to life.
"Cokesbury, Cokesbury of Cokesbury Lodge—get it?"

"Yep."

"I’ve a message for Miner—the manager."

"Fire away, I’m Miner."

"He wants to know if you found a raincoat in that auto he had from you
last time he was down? _Raincoat_, waterproof. Do you hear?"

"Yes sir, I hear perfect. We’ve got it and I’d ’a’ sent it back but I
thought he’d be down again any time and it was just as well to keep it
here."

"That’s all right. The coat doesn’t matter—but he’s lost a key that
does. Thinks maybe he left it in the pocket. Have you found any key?"

"I haven’t looked. Hold the wire while I see?"

There was a pause while I prayed no one would come in or call up. My
prayer was answered. There was nothing to interrupt when I heard the
garage man’s voice again:

"The key’s there."

"Good work! Mr. Cokesbury’s had the house here upside down looking for
it. He wants you to do it up careful and give it to Sands the Pullman
conductor on the six-twenty to-night. I’ll come across and get it off
him at Jersey City."

"All right. Will I send the raincoat along, too?"

"No, he don’t want that. He’s goin’ to Europe Saturday and I guess he’s
calculating to buy a new one. Thanks for your trouble. Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

I dropped the cam, sat tight, and thought. People kept coming in and out
and calls came flashing along the wires and I worked swift and steady
like an operator that’s got no thought but for what’s before her.

But my mind was working like a steam engine underneath. How could I get
him—how could I get him? It was as if I had two brains, one on the top
that went mechanical like a watch and one below that was doing the real
business.

Before the afternoon was over I’d decided on a line of action.

I called up Katie Reilly and asked her if she’d relieve me at
five-thirty instead of six—that I’d an invitation to go down to a party
at Jersey City and I was keen to get there early. She agreed and at six
I was on the platform of the station waiting for the New York train.

I took a seat in the common coach and at Azalea watched from the window
and saw a man on the platform give Sands a packet. I knew Sands well and
when he passed back through my car nodded to him and he stopped and
stood in the aisle talking.

It wasn’t long before I said, careless:

"I hear Cokesbury Lodge is for rent."

"I ain’t heard it," said Sands, "but I ain’t surprised. Now he’s sent
his family away he don’t want a house that size on his hands."

"Has he been down lately?"

"No—not for—lemme see—it’s several weeks. Yes—the last time was the
Sunday before Sylvia Hesketh’s murder."

I knew all that but it doesn’t do to jump at what you’re after too
quick.

"Lucky for him he could prove his car was on the blink that time," I
said, looking languid out of the window.

"Sure. He and Reddy were the only ones of her fellers within striking
distance. But no one ever’d suspicion Cokesbury. He ain’t the murderin’
kind, too jolly and easy. I hear he’s goin’ to Europe."

"Is he now? Where’d you hear that?"

"From Miner, that runs the Azalea Garage. He come down to the station
just now and gave me a package. Something Cokesbury left in the motor
the last time he was down. I’m to hand it over to his servant at Jersey
City."

"Is it love letters that he don’t want to leave behind?"

"No, I guess he’s careful of them. Here it is," he drew out of his
breast pocket an envelope with Cokesbury’s name and address written on
it and held it out to me. "That ain’t no love letter."

I pinched it.

"It’s a key. It may open the desk where the love letters are kept."

"I guess he’s too fly to keep any dangerous papers like that around."

"Yes," I says, "they might set the house on fire."

"Well, ain’t you the sassy kid," says he and then the train slowing up
for a station he walked on up the aisle.

In the Jersey City depot I went like a streak for the Telephone
Exchange. My one chance was to catch him at dinner and I gave the
operator the number of his house. When she pointed to the booth I was
trembling like a leaf.

The voice that answered me was a woman’s—Irish—the cook’s, I guess. She
began right off: "Yes, this is Mr. Cokesbury’s residence, but you can’t
see him."

"Wait," I almost screamed, scared that she was going to disconnect,
"this is important. It’s about a key I’ve just found. If Mr. Cokesbury’s
there tell him a lady wants to see him about a key she picked up a few
minutes ago on the New Jersey train."

"All right. Hold the wire."

I knew he’d come. My heart was beating so I had to hold it hard with my
free hand and I had to bite my lips to make them limber. But, honest to
God, when I heard him—clear and distinct right in my ear—I thought I was
going to faint. For at last I’d got the Voice!

"What’s this about finding a key?" he said gruff and sharp.

"Am I speaking to Mr. Cokesbury?"

"You are. Who is it?"

"No one you know, sir. I’ve just come in from Philadelphia and on the
Pullman step I found a package which seems to have a key in it. I
noticed that it was addressed to you and I looked you up in the
telephone book and am phoning now from Jersey City."

He was very cordial then. His voice was the same deep, pleasant one he’d
used to Sylvia.

"That’s very kind of you and very thoughtful. I can’t thank you enough.
The package was given to the Pullman conductor and he’s evidently
dropped it."

"Then shall I give it to the Pullman conductor now?"

"If you’ll be so kind. My servant’s gone over there to get it. Just hand
it to the conductor—a tall, thin man, whose name is Sands."

"I’ll do it right off. Ain’t it lucky I found it?"

"Very. I’m deeply grateful. It would have put me to the greatest
inconvenience if it had been lost. I’d like to know to whom I’m
indebted."

"Oh, that don’t need to bother you. I’m just a passenger traveling down
on the train. Awful glad I could be of any service. Good-bye."

I waited a minute till I got my heart quieted down, then took a call for
Babbitts’ paper. Luck was with me all round that night, for he was
there. I couldn’t tell him everything—I was afraid—but I told him enough
to show him I’d landed Cokesbury and he answered to come across to town
and he’d meet me at the Ferry. I caught a boat as it pulled out of the
slip and at the other side he was waiting for me.

"Come on," he said, putting his hand through my arm and walking quick
for the street, "I got a taxi here. We’ll charge it up to the defense."

I got in, supposing he was going to take me somewhere to dinner, but he
wasn’t. When I heard where we were bound I was sort of scared—it was to
Wilbur Whitney’s house, Jack Reddy’s lawyer.

"He’s expecting us," Babbitts explained. "I called him up right after
I’d heard from you. You see, Kiddo, we don’t want to lose a minute for
we can’t stop Cokesbury going unless we got something to stop him for."

Mr. Whitney’s house was a big, grand mansion just off Fifth Avenue. A
butler let us in and without waiting to hear who we were showed us into
a room with lights in bunches along the walls, small spindly gold chairs
and sofas, and a floor that shone like glass between elegant soft rugs.
There was some class to it and Babbitts and I looked like a pair of
tramps sitting side by side on two of the gold chairs. I was nervous but
Babbitts kept me up, telling me Mr. Whitney was a delightful gentleman
and was going to jump for all I had to say. Then we heard steps coming
down the stairs—two people—and I swallowed hard being dry in the mouth,
what with fright and having had no supper.

Mr. Whitney was the real thing. He was a big man, with a square jaw and
eyes deep in under thick eyebrows. He spoke so easy and friendly that
you forgot how awful sharp and keen those eyes were and how they watched
you all the time you were talking. A young man came with him—a real
classy chap—that he introduced to me as his son, George.

They couldn’t have acted more cordial to me and Babbitts if we’d been
the King and Queen of Spain. When they sat down and asked me to tell
them what I knew I loosened up quite natural and told the whole story.

The young man sat sideways on the gold sofa, smoking a cigarette and
looking into the air with his eyes narrowed up as if he was spying at
something a long ways off. Mr. Whitney was sort of slouched down in an
easy chair with his hands—white as a woman’s—hanging over the arms. Now
and then he’d ask me a question—always begging my pardon for
interrupting—and though they were so calm and quiet I could feel, as if
it was in the air, that they were concentrated close on every word I
said.

When I got through Mr. Whitney said, very cheerful, as if I’d been
telling some yarn in a story book:

"That’s very interesting, Miss Morganthau, and very well told. Quite a
narrative gift, eh George?" and he looked at his son.

"First-class story," said George, and as careless as you please flicked
off his cigarette ashes on the rug.

Mr. Whitney leaned forward clasping his big white hands between his
knees and looking into my face, half-smiling but with something terrible
keen behind the smile.

"How can you be so sure of the voice, Miss Morganthau? I don’t know
whether on the phone I could recognize the voice of my own son here."

"You get that way in my work," I answered. "Your ear gets trained for
voices."

"You’re absolutely certain," said young Mr. Whitney, "that in that
message you overheard, the man spoke of coming to the meeting place in
his auto?"

"Yes, sir, I’m certain he said that."

He turned and looked at his father.

"And investigations have shown he had no auto, he telephoned to no other
garage for one, he kept no horses, and to get there on his own feet,
would have had to walk through bad country roads a distance of
twenty-five miles."

"Um," answered old Mr. Whitney as if he wasn’t interested and then he
said to me: "In this message you heard to-day no suggestion was given of
what that key was the key of?"

"No, sir. The man just said it was important and Mr. Cokesbury’d had the
house upside down looking for it."

"Um," said Mr. Whitney again. "I rather fancy, Miss Morganthau, you’ve
done us a double service; in hunting for a voice, you’ve stumbled on a
key."

Young Mr. Whitney laughed.

"It’s probably the key of his front door."

"Perhaps," said his father, and looked down on the carpet as if he was
thinking.

Then Babbitts spoke up:

"Don’t criminals, no matter how careful they are, often overlook some
small clew that maybe is the very thing that gives them away?"

"Often," said Mr. Whitney. "In most crimes there’s a curious lack of
attention to detail. The large matters are well conceived and skillfully
carried out. And then some minor point is neglected, sometimes
forgotten, sometimes not realized for its proper value."

He got up and shook himself like a big bear and we all rose to our feet.
I was feeling pretty fine, not only the relief of having delivered the
goods, but proud of myself for getting through the interview so well.
Mr. Whitney added to it by saying:

"You’re a pretty smart girl, Miss Morganthau. _You_ don’t know and _I_
don’t know yet the full value of the work you’ve done for me and my
client. But whatever the outcome may be you’ve shown an energy and
keenness of mind that is as surprising as it is unusual."

I just swelled up with importance and didn’t know what to say. Behind
Mr. Whitney I could see Babbitts’ face, all beaming and grinning, and I
was so glad he was there to hear. And then—just when I was at the
top-notch of my pride—Mr. George Whitney, who’d been silent for a while,
said suddenly:

"If you don’t mind me asking, Miss Morganthau, I’d like to know what
lucky chance made you listen in to that conversation between Miss
Hesketh and the Unknown Man."

Believe me I came down to earth with a thud. How could I tell them? Say
I listened to everything in the hope of hearing Jack Reddy talking to
Sylvia. I looked down on the floor, feeling my cheeks getting as red as
fire.

"Go ahead," said Babbitts. "Don’t be afraid to say anything."

"We’re as close here as the confessional," said old Mr. Whitney, smiling
at me like a father.

I had to say something and took what seemed to me the most natural.

"I’d heard Miss Hesketh was a great one for jollying up the men and I
wanted to hear how she did it."

And they all—that means Babbitts, too—just burst out and _roared_.

"Good for you, Miss Morganthau," said Mr. Whitney, and he put his hand
on my shoulder and gave it a shake. "Only I’ll bet a hat you didn’t need
any teaching."

He turned to his son and said something about "the car being there," and
then back to me:

"Now for a few days, Miss Morganthau, I’ll expect you to be off duty in
a place accessible by telephone."

"Off duty!" I exclaimed. "How can I do that?"

He smiled in his easy way and said:

"We’ll attend to that, don’t you worry about it. Go home and stay there
till you get a call from me. If anyone asks what’s the matter say you’re
ill and laid off for a few days. Don’t bother about reporting at the
office; that’ll be arranged. And I need hardly tell you not to speak a
word of what you’ve discovered or of this interview here to-night."

"She won’t," said Babbitts. "I’ll go bail for that."

He gave Mr. George Whitney Mrs. Galway’s telephone number and then we
shook hands all round. I was just wondering what was the quickest way to
the Ferry when Mr. Whitney said:

"The motor’s waiting for you and I’m sure Mr. Babbitts will escort you
to the boat. Good night and remember—hold yourself ready for a call to
come to my office."

The car waiting outside was Mr. Whitney’s own. Gee, it was swell! A
footwarmer and a fur rug and a clock and a bottle of salts for me to
sniff at. I didn’t tell Babbitts I’d had no dinner, for I was ashamed to
have the chauffeur stop at the kind of joints we patronize, and so I
bore the ache in my insides and tried to believe the footwarmer and the
salts made up for it.




XIII


At noon the next day—Friday—I was called to Mrs. Galway’s phone. It was
Mr. George Whitney telling me to come over to the city at once. I wasn’t
to bother about addresses or finding my way. I’d be met at the Ferry and
taken to Mr. Whitney’s office in Broad Street—all I was to do was to say
nothing to anybody and come.

I did both.

At the Ferry a fine-looking chap came up to me, with his hat in his
hand, and asked me if I was Miss Morganthau. For a moment I was uneasy,
thinking maybe he was a masher, when he turned to a kind-faced elderly
woman beside him and said:

"This is Mrs. Cresset, who’s come over on the boat with you and is going
to Mr. Whitney’s office, too."

Then I knew it was all right and we three got into a taxi. On the way
across to Broad Street he told us what we were to do. It was nothing
much. All Mr. Whitney wanted of us was that we’d sit in the inner office
and listen to some gentleman talking in the next room. If we heard the
voice I’d got on the wire and Mrs. Cresset had heard the night of the
murder we were to say nothing, but sit perfectly still till we were
called.

"If you recognize the voice make no sign or sound. All we ask of you is,
if you’re not certain of the identification, to say so."

The office was a great big place, rooms opening out of rooms, and a
switchboard with a girl at it, dressed very neat and not noticing us as
we passed her. Mr. George Whitney met us and took us into a room
furnished fine with leather armchairs and books all up the walls and a
wide window looking out over the roofs and skyscrapers. There was a door
at one side, and this he opened a crack and told Mrs. Cresset to sit
down close to it with me opposite. He cautioned us to be quiet and not
to move or even whisper till we were called.

We sat there for a while with nothing happening. We could hear voices,
and now and then people walking and doors shutting, and once a bell
tinkled far off in the distance. Then suddenly I heard someone—Mr.
George Whitney, I think—say, "Show him in, the private office," and
heavy steps coming up the passage, past our door and into the next room,
then old Mr. Whitney’s voice, very loud and cheerful.

"Ah, Mr. Cokesbury, this is truly kind of you. I have to apologize for
taking up your time, just as you’re leaving, too, but we hoped you might
help us in some minor points of this curious case."

The voice that answered was Cokesbury’s; I knew it well now. At the
sound of it Mrs. Cresset gave a start and leaned forward, her ear close
to the door.

He was as cordial and hearty as if he was at a pink tea.

"Only too glad to be of service, Mr. Whitney. If I had thought I could
be of any help I would have offered before. Fortunately for me—as you
probably know—I was held up in my place on the day of the murder. If my
car had been in working order I suppose I’d have been quite a prominent
figure in the case by now."

He laughed out, a deep, rich sort of laugh, and it made my flesh creep
to think he could do it with that girl’s death at his door.

The talk went on for a bit, back and forth between them, Mr. Whitney
asking him some questions about the roads, the distances, and Miss
Hesketh’s friends; he answering as calm and fluent as if he’d hardly
known her at all.

In the middle of it the clerk who had met us at the Ferry came softly
in, and without a word, beckoned us to follow him through a door that
led into another room. We rose up as stealthily as burglars and stole
across the carpet without making so much as a creak or a rustle. When we
were in he shut the door, told us to wait there, and left us. We sat,
afraid to speak, staring at each other and wondering what was going to
happen next. In a few minutes the door opened and Mr. Whitney came in.

"Well?" he said, turning to me, "are you as sure as you were over the
phone?"

"Certain," I answered. "It’s the man."

He looked at Mrs. Cresset.

"How about you, Mrs. Cresset? Remember, a mistake in a matter like this
is a pretty serious thing."

Mrs. Cresset was as sure as I was.

"I couldn’t tell the man from Adam," she said, "but I knew his voice the
minute I heard it."

"Very well. Now I want you to come into the private office. Don’t be
frightened; nothing disagreeable’s going to happen. All you have to do
is to answer simply and truthfully any questions I may put to you. Come
along."

We followed him up the passage to the room where he’d been talking.
Sitting in a large chair by the desk was the man I’d seen that day in
the woods with Sylvia Hesketh. He didn’t look so robust and hearty as he
had then; his skin was paler and his forehead lined; but I noticed his
large coarse hands with the hair on them—a murderer’s hands—_they_ were
the same.

When he saw us, walking in solemn behind Mr. Whitney, his face changed.
It’s hard to explain how it looked, but it was as if the muscles
tightened up and the eyes got a fixed startled expression like you see
in the eyes of an animal you’ve come on sudden and scared. He rose to
his feet and I saw one of his hands close till the knuckles turned
white. Mr. George Whitney, who was standing near by, watched him like a
cat watching a mouse.

Old Mr. Whitney spoke up as genial as if he was introducing us at a
party.

"These ladies, Mr. Cokesbury, come from Longwood and its vicinity. Miss
Morganthau is one of the operators in the Telephone Exchange, and Mrs.
Cresset you’ve met before, I think, one night at Cresset’s Farm."

Mrs. Cresset bowed very polite and made as if she was going to shake
hands. But Cokesbury didn’t meet her half or a quarter way. He turned to
the men and—I guess he did it without knowing—looked like lightning from
one to the other—a sort of wild glance. They never took their eyes off
him, and there was something awful about their stare, for all both of
them were behaving so pleasant. Under that stare he got as white as a
sheet, but he tried to put up a bluff.

"Cresset," he said, "Cresset? There’s some mistake. I never saw her
before in my life."

"That’s quite true," said Mr. Whitney, "you didn’t see her nor she you.
If you remember it was very dark. But you spoke to her and she’s willing
to swear that yours was the voice she heard. Aren’t you, Mrs. Cresset?"

"Yes, sir," said Mrs. Cresset, as solid and sure as the Bartholdi
statue. "This is the gentleman that asked me the way that night. I’d
know his voice among a thousand."

"What night?" said Cokesbury. "I don’t know what she’s talking about."

It was pitiful to see him trying to keep it up with his face gray and
his hands trembling.

Mr. Whitney went on as if he didn’t notice anything.

"And Miss Morganthau here is also ready to swear to your voice as the
one she overheard on the phone Saturday, November the twentieth, in a
conversation with the late Miss Hesketh—a message you’ve probably seen a
good deal about in the papers."

I saw one of those big, hairy hands make a grip at the back of the
armchair. I thought he was going to fall and couldn’t take my eyes off
him till Mr. Whitney turned to me and said in that bland society way:

"Perhaps you’ll be so good, Miss Morganthau, as to tell Mr. Cokesbury of
your efforts during the past week to get him on the phone."

I told him the whole thing and ended up with the story of how I fooled
him about the key. And, honest to God, though I thought I was talking to
a murderer, I was sorry for him.

All the life seemed to leave him and he got as haggard as an old man,
with his lips shaking and the perspiration in beads on his forehead.
When I got through he suddenly gave a sort of groan, dropped back into
his chair and put his hands over his face. I was glad it was hidden, and
I was glad when Mr. Whitney turned to me and Mrs. Cresset and said quick
and commanding:

"That’ll do. You can go into the other room. Ring the bell, George."

We huddled out into the passage where we met that spry clerk coming up
on the jump. He went into the office and shut the door, and we could
hear a murmur of voices, we standing up against the wall not knowing
what to do next.

Presently the clerk came out again, rounded us up and sent us into the
room down the hall where Mr. Whitney had talked to us. He told us to
wait there for a minute, then lit out as if he was in a great hurry. We
stood stiff in the middle of the floor, expecting to hear the tramp of
policemen and then Cokesbury being dragged off to jail. But it was all
very still. I never supposed when you caught a criminal the proceedings
would be so natural and dignified.

After a while the clerk came back. He said Mr. Whitney’d sent us his
thanks for our kindness in coming—I never saw people waste so many words
on politeness—and hoped we’d excuse him from thanking us in person, but
he was just now very busy. He warned us not to say a word to anyone of
what had transpired, and then a boy coming to the door and saying, "It’s
here," he told us a taxi was waiting below to take us to the Ferry.

If we couldn’t talk to anyone else we could to each other and I guess we
did more gabbing going down in the taxi and across in the boat than Mrs.
Cresset had done for years. She told me about the night when Cokesbury
had come to her house. It was wonderful to see how luck was with him—the
way it sometimes is with sinners. Usually at that hour she was round in
the kitchen and when he knocked would have opened the door and seen his
face in the lamplight. But she’d gone upstairs early as her little
daughter had a cold.

To go back over the small things that happened would make you sure some
evil power was protecting him. That morning the little girl’s cold
wasn’t bad and she’d gone to school as usual. But at the schoolhouse she
heard that the dancing bear—the one I saw in Longwood which had been
performing along the pike on its way back to Bloomington—had been at
Jaycock’s farm and might be round by Cresset’s that afternoon. Like all
children, she was crazy about the bear, and after school hours she and a
chum slipped off and stood around in the damp, waiting. But the bear did
not show up and when she came home, crying with disappointment, the cold
was heavy on her. Her mother bundled her off to bed and went up early to
sit with her. Only for that, Cokesbury would probably have been landed
in jail weeks before, the State saved money and two innocent men saved
shame and suffering.

"That’s the way it is with the Devil’s own," I said. "I guess he takes
care of them for a while; jollies them along the downward path."

"It looks like that was the case," said Mrs. Cresset, her kind, rosy
face very solemn. "But the power of evil gets broke in the end. ’Murder
will out’—that’s true if anything is. Think of that man feeling so safe
and every hour the cords tightening round him."

"And _we_ did it," said I, awful proud. "We found the cords and then
pulled on them."

"We did," says she. "I never thought to be the one to put a
fellow-creature behind bars, but I have and my conscience tells me I’ve
done right."

My, but we both felt chesty!

The next morning Babbitts phoned me to say he’d be over Sunday evening.
The information of "Our Suspect" would be given to the press Sunday
morning for the Monday papers and after it was in he’d come across and
tell me about it.

Mr. Whitney had arranged for me not to go back to work till Tuesday and
though I suppose the rest was good for me, the strain of waiting wore on
me something dreadful. I kept wondering how Cokesbury had done it, and
how he was going to explain this and account for that. Most of Sunday I
lay on the bed trying to read a novel, but a great deal more interested
in the hands of the clock than I was in the printed pages.

When it began to darken up for evening I told Mrs. Galway I was
expecting a gentleman caller and asked for the loan of the parlor. She’s
a great one for love affairs and it always discouraged her that I had no
regular company. Now she thought I’d got a steady at last and wanted to
lend me her cameo pin, and decked up the parlor as if the minister was
coming to call, with the hand-painted leather cushion and the punch-work
tablecloth.

Long before Babbitts was due I was sitting by the stove, burning bright
and clear, with the drop light throwing a glow over the center table.
Upstairs I could hear Mrs. Galway tramping round as she went to bed,
which was considerate of her as she was something of a night bird. When
I heard his knock at the side door, I gave a sort of squeal of
excitement and ran to let him in.

"Well?" I said, grabbing his arm, too worked up to say good evening,
"has he confessed?"

"Yes," he said, "he has and he’s told an uncommon queer story."

"He killed her?"

"That’s the queerest part of it," said Babbitts slowly, "he didn’t."




XIV


Now I don’t believe if I gave you twenty guesses you’d know what I did
when I heard those words—burst out crying.

It wasn’t because I wanted Cokesbury to be executed; it wasn’t because I
wanted the reward; it wasn’t even that I was so crazy to have Jack Reddy
exonerated—it was just because I was so disappointed—so _foiled_—that I
couldn’t seem to bear it.

I cried so hard I didn’t know what I was doing, and I suppose that’s the
reason I leaned on Babbitts’ shoulder, it being the nearest thing handy.
He brought me to my senses, patting me on the arm and saying sort of
soothing as if he was comforting a child who’d broken her doll:

"There, there—don’t cry—it’ll be all right soon. We’ll get the right
man. Don’t take it to heart that way."

Then I began to laugh, for it did seem so comical—me crying because
Cokesbury wasn’t a murderer, and Babbitts telling me not to take it to
heart as if I’d been disappointed in not seeing the electrocution. The
laughter and tears got mixed up together and I don’t know where I’d have
landed if I hadn’t seen he was getting frightened and wanted to call
Mrs. Galway. That pulled me up, and I got a hold on myself. In a few
minutes we were sitting side by side in front of the stove, the storm
over, all but a little hiccupy kind of sob, that came upon me unexpected
at intervals.

For the next hour we sat there without moving while Babbitts told me
Cokesbury’s story.

I’ll put down what he said as near his words as I can remember it. The
way he told it was better than any of the newspaper accounts, even his,
though he got a raise of salary for the way he’d handled it:

"Cokesbury says he didn’t kill Sylvia Hesketh and I believe him and so
do the Whitneys. Besides the corroborative evidence is absolutely
convincing. He’s not a murderer but he’s a coward—no good at all—and
that explains why he didn’t come out after the crime and tell what he
knew. Instead he got in a panic, lost what little nerve he had, and was
skipping out to Europe when you nabbed him.

"He was in love with Sylvia Hesketh, if you call that sort of thing
love. Anyway, instead of being simply what you might describe as a beau
of hers, he was mad about her. I fancy even she, poor girl, didn’t
realize the passion she’d kindled, but was like a child playing with a
dynamite bomb. It appears she saw more of him than anybody guessed.
After the first flirtation at Bar Harbor, he came down to Cokesbury
Lodge nearly every Sunday and used to meet her in the woods and on the
side roads, and make dates with her for theaters and concerts in town.
He kept it quiet for he knew without being told that the Doctor wouldn’t
stand for it. His hope was that, willful and unstable as he knew her to
be, he’d eventually win her by his persistence and devotion.

"It was one of those situations that may end in nothing or may end as
this one did in a tragedy. The girl was foolhardy and flirtatious; the
man infatuated. Very quickly he got on to the fact that he was not the
only victim of her beauty and her wiles. He watched and questioned and
found out about the other men. Of them he soon saw that Reddy was the
favored one and a deadly jealousy seized him, for Reddy might have
attracted any woman.

"When he tried to find out from her how she stood with Reddy he could
get no satisfaction. She’d tell him one thing one day and another the
next. She kept them all guessing, but it didn’t mean to any of the
others what it meant to Cokesbury. All through October he spied and
queried, and learnt that she was meeting Reddy in his car and going off
for long jaunts with him. He says he was half mad with jealousy and
fear, but he hid it from her.

"That’s the way things were when he sent the phone message that you
caught. You sized him up just right. When she told him she had a date
that was a secret, he got a premonition of the truth, the way a man does
when his reason is under the dominion of his emotions. He felt certain
she was going off with Reddy, and the brakes that he’d kept down till
then were lifted. He determined he’d find out and if it was true stop
them if the skies fell.

"And now here comes the queer part of the story. If anybody’d guessed it
a lot of things that were dark would have been as clear as daylight. He
_did_ keep the date you heard him make on the phone."

"How could he? He had no car, or horse, or anything."

"Only part of that’s true—he had no car, or horse, but he _did_ have
something."

"What?"

"An aeroplane."

I fell back staring at him.

"An aeroplane—in Cokesbury Lodge?"

"In the garage there. _That’s_ why he wouldn’t rent the house; _that’s_
why he kept going down over Sunday all summer. The year he was in France
he’d done a lot of flying and was fascinated by it. Before he left there
he was an expert aviator, but his wife hated it and it was one of their
grounds of dissension. After she died he had a machine brought down in
sections, set it up himself, and kept it in the garage. Not a soul knew
it. He only flew at night for he wanted it kept a secret."

"Why—what for?"

"Because—here’s the best thing I’ve heard about him—he carried a heavy
life insurance policy secured to his children. Cokesbury’s not a rich
man, though he has a good business, and if he died his children would
have had to live on what their mother left them, which wasn’t much. If
it was known that he was aviating the policy would have been
invalidated, so he indulged his secret passion at night. The isolated
position of the house made it easy to escape detection and his machine
was equipped with a very silent muffler. No one had a glimmering of it,
not even Sylvia.

"The phone message you heard was sent from the station at Jersey City
and when he sent it he _did_ intend coming to Mapleshade in his motor.
When he got to Azalea and found the car unmended in the garage he flew
into a rage, as he thought his plans were blocked. Alone in the Lodge,
ravaged by jealousy, he lost all caution and decided to take out the
aeroplane.

"You remember that there was a moon that night, but that in the evening
the skies were clouded and the air breathless. The darkness and the
weather were on his side and he came down in a field about ten minutes
walk from the house, closing the cut-out as he descended. He was early
and hid himself among some trees where he could watch the front door. He
says it was while he was waiting there for her that the idea came to him
of frustrating an elopement by carrying her off.

"He was laying round in his mind how he would get the truth from her,
when he saw her come out and gave a low whistle. She heard it and came
toward him. It was not till she was close to him and he could see the
outlines of her figure through the dark, that he made out a bag in her
hand. _Then_ he knew for certain she was going and decided on his
course.

"In all his other dealings with her he had found her subtle and evasive.
Now, perhaps because for the first time in her life she had decided on a
positive action, she went straight to the point. Without any preamble
she told him what she was going to do and that within a half-hour Reddy
would be waiting for her in the Lane.

"He showed no anger or surprise, apparently accepting the situation in
the most friendly spirit. He says he thought she was relieved, having
expected a scene with him. When he had disarmed her of her suspicions,
he told her of the airship and asked her if she wouldn’t like to come up
for a spin before Reddy arrived. They had over half an hour and he could
take her for a short flight and would bring her down in ten or fifteen
minutes.

"Everybody agrees that she was a bold, venturesome girl, and the idea
appealed to her, as she had never been up. They walked quickly through
the fields and bit of woodland to the aeroplane. She was in high spirits
as she tucked herself in; he could hear her laughter as he took his
seat, and then, closing the cut-out, they soared up.

"They rose high—about two thousand feet, he thought—and then he headed
East. They were winging their way over Cokesbury Lodge on toward the
hills in the distance when Reddy must have sighted the lights of
Longwood as he came down the Firehill Road.

"Cokesbury swears he had no intention of kidnapping her. He says he had
no definite idea of where he was going, that his plan was simply to get
her away from Reddy and put an end to the marriage. Personally, I don’t
believe him. I think he had a perfectly clear idea of carrying her off
to Cokesbury Lodge, and that his chivalrous scheme was to put her into
such a compromising position she would be willing to marry him. Maybe
I’m wrong—I don’t know. Anyway, he very soon saw you can’t abduct a
high-spirited, hot-tempered girl against her will.

"After about fifteen or twenty minutes he was conscious of her getting
uneasy and speaking to him—words that he couldn’t hear but that he knew
to be at first startled questions, then angry commands. He shouted
replies, but the great machine kept steadily on its way, neither turning
nor dipping downward. Then she realized and broke into a fury, turning
upon him in the dark, putting her face close to his and screaming for
him to bring her down. The noise made it impossible to argue with her,
and fearful of what she might do, he held her off with his elbow, the
delicately balanced machine swaying as she seized his arm and shook it,
lunging up against him, her cries of rage rising above the thunder of
the screw.

"Can’t you imagine it? The big ship sailing through the night with the
lights of farms and little towns sliding by far below, and above the sky
muffled deep in black clouds. Poised between them the man and woman,
each gripped by a different passion—suspended there like two naked souls
in a sort of elemental battle of the sexes.

"He admits he was scared and if he could have spoken to her would have
pacified her with all sorts of assurances. But speech was out of the
question, and when she made a sudden lunge across him for the wheel he
realized she would kill them both if he didn’t bring her to earth.
Throwing her back with a blow of his elbow, he yelled that he was coming
down and as she felt the machine begin its glancing, downward glide she
fell back into her place, suddenly quiet, then leaned forward scanning
the country below them.

"A momentary break of the clouds let a little light spill through and by
this he saw a bare, bold landscape darkened by woods, and with the gleam
of a large body of water to the right, showing against the blackness
like polished steel. He made a landing in an open space, an uncultivated
field with a hillock in the center covered with grass and surrounded by
trees. The water had drained off this and it was quite dry.

"She was hardly out on the ground and he was preparing for an
explanation when to his surprise she curtly told him to follow her and
led the way along a ridge that skirted the lake. This, too, was dry, a
fact curiously in his favor, for their feet left no tracks, the grass
closing on the trail they swept through it. She did not address him
again till, the dim shape of a house appearing, he asked her if she was
going there and she answered in the same, curt way: Yes; she was cold. A
wharf jutted out in front of the house and in stepping from the grass to
the planks he made a motion to help her, but she started away from him
as if he was a snake, making two or three steps into the liquid mud that
ran up to the wharf’s edge. It was then he thought she dropped the
glove. Once again on the planks she took a key from her purse, fitted it
in the lock and opened the door.

"The room was pitch dark and Cokesbury stood in the doorway while she
went in. She moved about as if she was accustomed to the place, lit a
lamp, set a match to the fire already laid and gave him a copper kettle
to fill with water from the lake. When he came back with it the table
was set out with tea things and the fire was leaping up the chimney. She
hung the kettle on a crane, swung it over the flames and then, turning
to him, said:

"’Do you know where you are?’ He said he didn’t and she answered:
'You’re in Jack Reddy’s bungalow at Hochalaga Lake, the place where I’ve
spent the happiest days of my life.’

"He looked at her in amazement and she smiled scornfully back at him.
'You fool!’ she said, ’to think you could come blundering in and stop me
from marrying the only man of all of you who’s worth a heartbeat.’

"She made tea and then motioned him to sit down by the table, taking a
seat at the other side. Facing each other in the lamplight they had a
conversation that put an end to all his dreams. For the first time in
his acquaintance with her he thought she spoke frankly. She told him of
her friendship with Reddy from the start, and how the Doctor’s senseless
opposition had fanned a boy-and-girl flirtation into a passionate love
affair.

"When the quarrels began at Mapleshade they found that they could meet
without fear of detection at the Lake, she going out there in her car
and he in his. She had her own key and often, during the autumn, she had
gone to the bungalow in the morning, Reddy had joined her and they had
spent the day together, canoeing and fishing on the lake, cooking a
picnic meal over the fire, and driving home in the afternoon, the racer
towing her car till they came to the turnpike.

"Cokesbury says he thinks at first it was only the spirit of romance and
adventure which made her do such a rash thing, but that in the end
Reddy’s devotion and chivalrous attitude made a deep impression on her
and she came as near loving him as she could any man. He says there is
no doubt that the meetings were perfectly innocent and that Reddy had
behaved from the start as a gentleman.

"’Whether she really loved him or not,’ he said, ’he’d taught her to
respect him.’

"They talked for over an hour, taking the tea she had made and Cokesbury
smoking a cigar. He remembered leaving the butt in the saucer of his
cup. It was half-past eight when they rose to go. Sylvia put out the
lamp but the fire was still burning and the tea things were left on the
table. Cokesbury says he promised to take her home, that he saw his case
was hopeless, and he’d made up his mind to have done with her forever.

"The sky was clouded over and it was as dark as a pocket when they went
back to the aeroplane. He had to direct the machine by guesswork, the
country black below him and the sky black above. He swears that he
intended to take her back to Mapleshade, and I believe him. No man—not
even a bad egg like Cokesbury—wants to run away with a woman who hands
out the line of talk that girl had in the bungalow.

"Anyway, we’ve only his word for the statement that he completely lost
his bearings. He could see no lights and after making an exploratory
circle, realized he hadn’t the slightest idea which way to go. To make
matters worse, he could hear from shouted remarks of hers that her
suspicions were on the alert and that she was ready to flare up again.
By this time there wasn’t much of the lover left in him. According to
his own words he was as anxious to get her home again as she was to be
there. With his head clear and his blood cold he did not relish a second
flight with a woman fighting like a wildcat.

"This was the situation—she, angry and disbelieving; he, scared and
unable to conciliate her—when the twinkle of a light caught his eye and
he decided to come down and ask his way. They dropped into a stretch of
grass land among fields, with the light shining some way off through a
screen of trees. Farther away, just a spark, he saw another light. He
told her to wait while he went to inquire, and walked off toward the one
that was nearest.

"It was Cresset’s Farm. There he had the interview with Mrs. Cresset,
telling her he had an auto in order to explain his presence. When he
went back he found that Sylvia had disappeared. At first he didn’t know
what to do, realizing that if the story of their flight got abroad,
there would be the devil to pay. He was certain she had disbelieved him
and had taken the opportunity to get away from him. She was either
hiding or had gone for the second light. This being the most plausible,
he walked toward it—quite a distance across fields and through woods—and
brought up at a ramshackle roadhouse—the Wayside Arbor.

"He stole round from the back to a side window and there, through a
crack in the shutter, looked in and saw Sylvia talking to Hines. He says
he stayed there for some minutes, afraid if he went in after her she
would make a scene and start a scandal. Then his eyes fell on the
telephone booth and he felt sure she had telephoned either to her own
home or to Reddy. Her air of waiting—she was sitting by the stove with
her feet on its lower edge—confirmed him in this and he decided to let
her alone.

"He went back to the aeroplane, wondering what would be the outcome of
the whole crazy escapade. He says he felt confident of her cleverness to
hush the thing up, but he was uneasy. His discomfort wasn’t lessened
when he found that she had left her bag in the machine, and on his way
home one of the things that preoccupied him was thinking up the best way
of getting the bag back to her.

"Monday morning he went to town in a state of suspense. If she should
tell there was no knowing what might happen and he was on the alert for
a visit from the Doctor or even Reddy. But the day passed without any
sign of trouble, and he was just calming down, thinking she had either
found Reddy and gone with him or invented some story to quiet the
Mapleshade people, when he read of the murder in the evening paper.

"_Then_, you better believe he was frightened. He knew the bag was
hidden in his room at the Lodge and that as far as he could tell, not a
soul had seen the airship. As to Mrs. Cresset, he felt safe for she
couldn’t possibly have made out a feature in the darkness."

"But," I cried out, "why if he hadn’t done it——"

"That’s all right," Babbitts interrupted. "He hadn’t done it, but I tell
you he was a coward. He was in a sweat for fear of being suspected, of
being pulled in as a witness, of his reputation, his business, his
position. He wanted to keep out of it at any cost."

"What a cur!" I said.

"Oh, he’s that and more, and he’s ready to admit it himself. But it
wasn’t as smooth sailing as he thought it would be. After the inquest he
read of the overheard phone message and that brought him up with a jolt.
He got in a state of terror, realizing too late that his silence was
more incriminating than any confession.

"Every day his fears grew worse. He wouldn’t answer any phone calls,
faking up reasons to his clerks and his servants. Finally it got on his
nerves so he couldn’t stand it and he made ready to skip to Europe. The
key was what tripped him up. Do you remember Mr. Whitney saying how
criminals overlooked important details? Well, what he overlooked was the
key of the garage. In his preoccupation on Monday morning he had put it
in the pocket of the raincoat he was accustomed to leave in the auto and
had simply forgotten it. Then when he went to pack his things he
couldn’t find it, hunted in a nervous frenzy and finally had his man
telephone over to Miner’s place. You and the key were the combination
that beat him."

"But Jack Reddy?" I said. "Was he going to slink off and let him be
tried for the murder when he could have cleared it all up?"

"He _says_ not and I guess the fellow’s not as yellow as to have stood
by and let an innocent man go to his death. He says there wasn’t enough
evidence to convict Reddy and if things had gone badly he would have
come out and told what he knew. And I think that’s true—anyway, we’ll
give him the benefit of the doubt."

"How can you be so sure? How do you know he’s _not_ the murderer after
all?"

"Oh, there’s no doubt. Everything fits in too well. The police were out
at Cokesbury Lodge on Saturday and saw the aeroplane and found Miss
Hesketh’s bag. Both the Whitneys—father and son, who’ve had a vast
experience in this sort of case—say there’s no question of his
innocence."

We sat silent for a spell, looking at the stove, then I said:

"We’re back just where we were in the beginning."

Babbitts leaned forward and shook down some ashes.

"The case is, but we’re not," he said.

"How do you make that out?" I asked.

"Six weeks ago we didn’t know each other and now we’re friends."

"That’s so," I said, and we both sat staring thoughtfully at the red eye
of the stove.




XV


Cokesbury’s story made a great sensation. Even if it didn’t bring us any
nearer to finding the murderer, it explained the mystery of Sylvia’s
movements up to the time she appeared in the Wayside Arbor, and it
cleared Jack Reddy. Babbitts told me that the Whitneys were doing some
legal stunts—I won’t tell what they were for I’d never get them
straight—to have him liberated, and that they would soon issue a
statement to the press.

When it came out everybody saw why he had said such contradictory things
about those seven hours on the road.

Babbitts and I had guessed right when we thought he was holding
something back and when I heard why I was grateful to him. Yes,
grateful, that’s the word. And I’ll tell you why I use it. He was my
hero and he stayed a hero, didn’t fall down and disappoint me, but made
me know there were people in the world who could stick to their standard
no matter _what_ happened. Don’t you think that’s a thing to be grateful
for?

The reason he didn’t tell was to protect the memory of that poor dead
girl, who couldn’t rise up and protect herself. He knew what wicked lies
would be told and believed and he was going to shield her in death as he
would have in life.

That night after he had searched the roads, he suddenly thought that in
some wild freak she had gone to the bungalow in her own car and phoned
him from there. As soon as the idea entered his head he went out to the
lake. One glance showed him someone had been there before him—the room
was warm, the fire still smouldering on the hearth. He lit the light and
saw the two teacups and the cigar butt on the saucer. He examined the
doors and windows and found that they were locked and there was no sign
of anyone having broken in. The only person beside himself who had a key
to the bungalow was Sylvia.

Then he knew she had been there with another man and one of those fierce
rages came on him.

For a spell he was outside himself. He thought of things that never
happened, the way people do in a fury—imagined Sylvia sending him the
phone message with the other man standing by and laughing. He tore her
letters out of the desk and threw them in the fire and smashed the tea
things against the side of the house. He was half crazy, thinking
himself fooled and made a mock of by the woman he had loved.

When his rage quieted down he sat brooding over the fire for a long
time. It was moonlight when he left, bright enough for him to fill the
tank. He had never thought about any inquiries for the missing drum till
at the inquest the question of the gasoline was sprung on him. Then he
lied, feeling certain that no one would ever go out to the lake. It was
his intention to go there himself, hide the drum and clear out the
cottage, but he put it off, hating to go near the place. If Pat Donahue
hadn’t gone there to fish through the ice—a thing no one would have
dreamed of—the secret of the bungalow would never have been discovered.

One of the features of the case that he couldn’t understand and that he
spent the days in jail speculating about, was how she had reached the
lake. The mud showed the tracks of only one auto, his own. He could find
no solution to this mystery and he could speak to no one about it.
Whatever happened to him, he had made up his mind he would never give
her up to the evil-minded and evil-tongued who would blacken and tear to
pieces all that was left of her.

He was liberated, and, believe me, Longwood rejoiced. It was as if a
king who had been banished had come back to his throne.

I don’t think he was home two days when he telephoned in asking me if he
could come to see me and thank me for what I’d done. Wasn’t that like
him? Most men would have been so glad to get out of jail they’d have
forgotten the hello girl who’d helped to free them, but not Jack Reddy.

He came in the late afternoon, at the time I got off. I’ll never forget
it. Katie Reilly was at the switchboard and I was standing at the
window, watching, when I saw the two lights of the gray racer coming
down the street.

I ran and opened the door—I wasn’t bashful a bit—and when I saw him I
gave a little cry, for he looked so changed, pale and haggard and older,
a good many years older. But his smile was the same, and so was the
kind, honest look of his face. Before he said a word he just held out
his hand and mine went into it and I felt the clasp of his fingers warm
and strong. And—strange it is, but true—I wasn’t any more like the girl
who used to tremble at the mere sight of him, but was calm and quiet,
looking deep and steady into his eyes as if we’d got to be friends, the
way a man might be friends with a boy.

"Miss Morganthau," he said, "I’ve heard what you’ve done, and I want to
thank you."

"You needn’t have taken all the trouble to come in from Firehill, Mr.
Reddy," I answered. "You could have said it over the wire."

"Could I have done this over the wire?" he said, giving my hand a shake
and a squeeze. "You know I couldn’t. And that’s what I wanted to do—take
a grip of the hand that helped me out of prison."

I said some fool words about its being nothing and he went on smiling
down at me, yet with something grave in his face.

"I want to do more—ask a favor of you. I hope it won’t be hard to grant
for I’ve set my heart on it. Can I be your friend?"

"Oh, Mr. Reddy," I stammered out, "you make me proud," and suddenly
tears came into my eyes. I don’t know why unless it was seeing him so
changed and hearing him speak so humble to a common guy like me.

"Oh, come now," he said, "don’t do anything like that. You’ll make me
think you don’t like the idea."

I sniffed, wanting to kick Katie Reilly, who was gaping round in her
chair, and I guess getting mad that way dried up my tears.

"It’s your friend I’ll be till the end of my life, Mr. Reddy," I
answered. "And the only thing I’m sorry for is that I didn’t get the
right man the way I thought I’d done."

"Never mind about that," said he, his face hardening up, "we’ll get him
yet. Don’t let’s think of that now. It’s the end of your day, isn’t it?
If you’re going home will you let me take you there in my car?"

There was a time when if I’d thought I’d ever ride beside Jack Reddy in
that racer I’d have had chills and fever for a week in advance.

But now I sat calm and still beside him as he rode me through Longwood
to Mrs. Galway’s door.

As we swung up the street he talked very kind to me, complimenting me
something awful, and saying that if he ever could do anything for me to
let him know and he’d do it if it was within the power of man.

"You see, Miss Morganthau," he said as we drew up in front of the Elite,
"a man in my position feels pretty grateful to the person who’s lifted
off him the shadow of disgrace and death."

Up in my room I sat quiet for a long time thinking. The thing that
phased me was why I’d changed so, come round to feel that while he was
still a grand, strong man, I’d always look up to and do anything for,
I’d quit having blind staggers and heart attacks when he came along.

Something had sidetracked me. I didn’t know what. All I did know was
that two months ago if he’d asked me to be his friend I’d not have known
there was such a thing as food in the world. And that evening at
half-past seven, being too lazy to go to the Gilt Edge, I was so hungry
I had to go down to Mrs. Galway and beg the loan of three Uneedas and a
hard boiled egg.

It was one evening, not long after, that Anne Hennessey came in to see
me. Babbitts was coming that night and Mrs. Galway had given up the
parlor again and was in bed with a novel and a kerosene lamp. Anne was
quite excited, the reason being that Mrs. Fowler had given her a
present. She took it careful out of a blue velvet case and held it up in
the glow of the drop light. It was a diamond cross and the minute I set
eyes on it I knew where I’d seen it before.

"Sylvia’s," I said, low and sort of awed.

Anne nodded.

"Yes, the one she had on that night. Mrs. Fowler said she wanted to give
me something that had been hers. I wouldn’t have taken anything so
handsome but I think the poor lady couldn’t bear the sight of it,
reminding her of her sorrow as it did."

She moved it about and the stones sparkled like bits of fire in the
lamplight. I stretched out my hand and took it, for diamonds tempt me
like meat the hungry—that’s the Jew in me, I suppose.

"You won’t call the King your cousin when you wear this," I said, and I
held it against my chest, looking down at the brightness of it.

"That’s just where Sylvia had it on," said Anne almost in a whisper,
"where the front of her dress crossed. One of the police officers told
me."

My mother was a Catholic and it’s Catholic I was raised, for though my
father was a Jew he loved my mother and let her have her way with me.

"Wouldn’t you think," I said, "that when the murderer saw the cross on
her it would have stayed his hand?"

"Wouldn’t you," said Anne, "but to men as evil as that the cross means
nothing. And then out in the dark that way, he probably never saw it."

Babbitts’ knock sounding, I handed it back to her and let him in,
feeling bashful before Anne, who didn’t know how often Mrs. Galway was
retiring at eight-thirty. She left soon after, saying Mrs. Fowler liked
her to be round in the evening, which was news to me, as she’d told me
that the Fowlers always sat in the sitting-room together, the Doctor
reading aloud till Mrs. Fowler got sleepy.

After she’d gone, Babbitts and I drew up to the stove, cozy and
cheerful, with our feet on the edge of it. We’d come to know each other
so well now that we’d other topics beside "the case," but that night we
worked around to it, me picking at the box of candy Babbitts had brought
and rocking lazily as contented as a child.

Babbitts was still keen for that reward. He said to me:

"You had your fingers on it once, and it’s my wish that you’ll get your
whole hand on it next time."

"What a noble character," said I, "calculating for little Molly to get
it all! Where do _you_ come in?"

"Oh, don’t bother about me," says he. "You’ve a bad habit of thinking
too much where other people come in. You got to quit it—it isn’t good
business. Now what I want to arrange is for you and me to make an
excursion out to the Wayside Arbor some afternoon."

"The Wayside Arbor—what’ll we do there?"

"Take a look over the ground. You see, with the process of elimination
that’s been going on things have narrowed down to the vicinity of the
crime. It’s my opinion that the murder was not only committed but was
planned round there. The police are losing heart and not doing much. As
far as I can find out Fowler’s detectives—Mills and his crowd—are
getting their pay envelopes regular but not getting anything else.
Now—just for devilment—let _us_ combine our two giant intellects and see
what we can see."

"Haven’t they gone over every inch of it?"

"They have—with a fine-tooth comb. But that doesn’t prevent us going
over it and taking our fine-tooth combs along."

"Isn’t Hines under surveillance?"

"Good Lord," says he laughing, "_everybody’s_ under surveillance.
There’s not one of the suspects but knows he’s expected to stay put and
is doing it. But who’s getting anywhere? There’s no reason why we
shouldn’t go out that way, call on Mrs. Cresset, and take a look in at
the Wayside Arbor ourselves."

"I’m game," I said, "though I can’t see what good it’s going to do."

"It’ll give us a half-day together," said he. "I don’t know how you feel
about it but that looks worth while to me."

We made a date for the following Monday, my holiday, just eight weeks
from the murder.

The next morning I had a surprise—a kind that hasn’t often come my way.
It was a letter directed in typewriting with a half-sheet of paper
inside it inclosing a fifty-dollar bill. On the paper, also typed, was
written:

    For Miss Morganthau—A small return for her recent good work in
    the Hesketh Murder Case.

That was all—no name, no date, no handwriting. I don’t know what made me
think right off of Mr. Whitney, unless it was because there was no one
else who knew of what I’d done and could have afforded to send that
much. The only other person it could have been was Jack Reddy, and
somehow or other, after he’d asked me to be his friend, I felt certain
he wouldn’t send me money, no matter what I’d done for him. Friends
don’t pay each other.

I guess there wasn’t a more elated person in Longwood that morning than
yours truly. I’d had that much before—saved it—but I’d never had it fall
out of the sky that way in one beautiful, crisp, new bill.

The Jew and the Irish in me had some tussle, one wanting to salt it down
in the bank and the other to blow it in. But that time the Irish had a
walk-over, probably because I was limp and weary with all the excitement
of the last two months and felt the need of doing something foolish to
tone me up. When I thought of the clothes I could buy with it, the Jew
just lay down without a murmur and you’d have supposed I was all County
Galway if you’d seen me writing a list of things on the back of the
envelope. If it’ll make you think better of me I’ll confess that I
wanted to look nice on that trip with Babbitts, the first real jaunt
we’d ever taken, for I didn’t count those times in New York when we were
sleuthing after Cokesbury. Just once in my life I was going to have a
real blowout, and I wanted the chap who was taking me to feel he’d some
lady with him.

With three of us in the office I fixed things so I got Saturday
afternoon and I hiked over to town with that bill burning in my purse
like a live coal. And, my it was great spending it! I was cool on the
outside, looking haughty at the goods and casting them aside
contemptuous on chairs, but inside I was drunk with the feeling of
riches.

I bought a one-piece silk dress that fitted me like every measure was
mine and a long black plush coat, rich fine plush like satin, that was
draped something elegant and fastened in front with a novelty ornament.
For a hat I selected a small dark felt, nothing flashy, no trimming,
just a rosette at one side. And with the last three dollars a purse,
black striped silk, oval shaped with a ribbon to hang it to your wrist.

It was six when I got home, carrying the boxes myself—all but the coat;
that I _had_ to wear—pretty nearly dead with the weight of them, but not
regretting—neither the Jew nor the Irish—one nickel of it.

Midday Monday, when I came down to the parlor where Babbitts was
waiting, he put his hand over his eyes like the Indians in front of
cigar stores and pretended to stagger.


[Illustration: _I came down to the parlor where Babbitts was waiting_]


"What good deed have I ever done," says he, "that I’m allowed to walk
the world with such a queen!"

Then I felt certain that to break loose now and again is a healthy
change.




XVI


It was a long ride to Cresset’s Crossing, first on the main line to the
Junction and then just time to make a close connection with the branch
line to the Crossing.

It was three when we reached there and started out to walk to Cresset’s
Farm. There’d been rain the day before and the road was muddy, with
water standing here and there in the ruts. The weather was still
overcast, the sky covered with clouds, heavy and leaden colored. It was
cold, a raw, piercing air, and we walked fast, I—careful of my new
dress—picking my steps on the edge of the road and Babbitts tramping
along in the mud beside me.

I’d never been up there at that season and I thought it was a gloomy,
lonesome spot. The land rolled away with fences creeping across it like
gray snakes. Here and there were clumps of woods, purplish against the
sky, and between them the brown stretches of plowed land, that in the
springtime would be green with the grain. Now, under those dark,
low-hanging clouds with the naked trees and the bare, empty fields, it
looked forlorn and dreary. It was as still as a picture, not a thing
moving, but one man, someways off, walking along the top of a hill. You
could see him like a silhouette, going slow, with a bundle on a stick
over his shoulder, and a bit of red round his neck. When he got to the
highest point he stopped and looked down on the road. He couldn’t see
us—the trees interfered—and he seemed, as Babbitts said, like the spirit
of the landscape—sort of desolate and lonely, plodding along there,
solitary and slow, between the earth and the sky. Then presently even he
was gone, disappearing over the brow of the hill.

When we passed the Riven Rock Road and I could see the Firehill one,
making a curving line through the country beyond, I had a creepy
feeling, thinking of what had happened there eight weeks ago.

"Where’s the place?" I said, almost in a whisper, and Babbitts pointed
ahead with his cane.

"A little further on, where the bushes grow thick there."

Right along from the station, clumps and bunches of small trees had
edged the way like a hedge. After we passed the Riven Rock Road they
grew thicker, making a sort of shrubbery higher than our heads. I
remembered that just before the murder men had been cutting these for
brushwood and even now we passed piles of branches, dry and dead, with
little leaves clinging to them like brown rags. Where the Firehill Road
ran into the turnpike the growth was tangled and close, almost a small
wood.

It wasn’t far beyond that Babbitts pointed out the place. There was an
edge of shriveled grass and on this she had been found with the branches
piled over her. He drew with his cane where she had lain between the
trees and the road.

"You can see just how the murderer worked," he said. "He attacked Miss
Hesketh here, burst out of the darkness on her and killed her with one
blow—you remember there was no sign either about her or the surroundings
of a struggle—and almost immediately heard the Doctor’s auto horn. We
can place that by the scream the Bohemian woman heard."

"Do you think he was there when the Doctor passed?" I asked.

"Of course he was. He hadn’t had time to arrange the body. That was done
after the Doctor had gone by—done after the moon came out. Reddy said it
was as bright as day when he got there. By that brightness the murderer
did the work of concealment."

I stepped back into the mud and looked down to where the Firehill Road
entered the turnpike a few yards farther on.

"He must have heard Mr. Reddy’s horn before the car came in sight. By
that time he had probably finished and stolen away."

"I don’t think so," said Babbitts. "He couldn’t have done it without
some noise and Reddy, who was listening and watching for Sylvia, was
positive there wasn’t a sound. That human devil was back among the
bushes when Reddy’s car came round the turn. And he must have stayed
there—afraid to move—watching Reddy, first as he waited, then as he
slowly ran back and forth. God, what a situation—one man looking for the
woman he loved, her murderer hidden a few yards from him, and between
them both her dead body!"

I seemed to see it: the road bathed in moonlight, the murderer huddled
down in the black shadow, and Reddy in the car looking now this way and
now that, expecting her to come. How terribly still it must have been,
not a sound except the rustling of the withered leaves. I could imagine
the light from the racer’s lamps, shooting out in two long yellow rays,
showing every rut and ridge, so that that grim watching face had to draw
down lower still in the darkness of the underbrush. Did he know who
Reddy was waiting for? What did he feel when the auto moved and one
swerve sideways would have sent those yellow rays over the heap of
branches on the grass? As Babbitts said, he must have been afraid to
move, must have cowered there and seen the racer glide away and then
come back; and still bent behind the network of twigs have watched the
man at the wheel, as he looked up and down the road, waited and
listened, every now and then sounding the horn, that broke into the
silence like a weird, hollow cry.

"Oh, come on," I said suddenly, seizing Babbitts’ arm. "Let’s go up to
Cresset’s where it’s bright and cheerful."

We had a lovely time at Cresset’s. My, but they were a nice family!
Farmer Cresset, a big, kind, jolly man and his two sons, splendid,
sun-burned chaps, and his little daughter, as fresh as a peach and as
shy as a kitten. I loved them all, and Mrs. Cresset best. She made me
think of my mother, not that she looked like her, but I guess because
she had something about her that’s about all women who’ve had families
they loved.

They gave us tea and cake and they joked Babbitts good and hard about
coming out there and pretending to be a tourist.

"Never mind, son," Farmer Cresset said, "you got it out of the old
woman. I couldn’t make her tell; seemed like she thought she’d be
arrested for the crime if she up and confessed about that feller."

It was getting on for evening when we left to go to the Wayside Arbor.
We’d planned to have our supper there and then go back by the branch
line, catching a train at the Crossing at eight-thirty. The Cressets
were real sorry to have us go, especially there.

"It ain’t a nice place," said Mrs. Cresset, as she kissed me good-bye,
"but we’re hoping to see it cleared out soon. Tom’s stirring Heaven and
earth to get Hines’ license revoked."

"I guess Heaven’s lending a hand," said the farmer, "for I hear Hines’
business is bad since the fatality. We’ve a lot of foreign labor round
here and they’re mighty superstitious and are giving his place the
go-by."

It was dark when we saw the lights of the Wayside Arbor, shining out
across the road. We’d expected a moon to light us home, but the clouds,
though they weren’t as thick as they had been, were all broken up into
little bits over the sky, like Heaven was paved with them.

The Arbor was quiet as we stepped up and opened the bar door, and there,
just like on the night of the murder, was Hines, sitting by the stove
reading a newspaper. He jumped up quick and greeted us very cordial and
you could see he was glad to get a customer. He sure was a tough looking
specimen with a gray stubble all over his chin, and a dirty sweater
hanging open over a dirtier shirt that had no collar and was fastened
with a fake gold button that left a black mark on his neck. If I thought
his looks were bad that day in the summer I thought they were worse now,
for he seemed more down and dispirited than he was then.

We asked him if we could have supper and he went out, calling to Mrs.
Hines, and we could hear someone clattering down the stairs and then a
whispering going on in the hall. When he came back he said they’d get us
a cold lunch, but they didn’t keep a great deal on hand, seeing as how
they hadn’t much call for meals at that season.

You could see that was true. I never was in such a miserable,
poverty-stricken hole. Leaving Babbitts talking to Hines in the bar, I
went back into the dining-room, a long, shabby place that crossed the
rear of the house. It was as dingy as the rest of it, with the paper all
smudged and peeling off the walls and worn bits of carpet laid over the
board floor. At the back two long windows looked out on the garden.
Glancing through these I could see the arch of the arbor, with the wet
shining on the tables and a few withered leaves trembling on the vines.

When I turned back to the room I got a queer kind of scare—a thing I
would have laughed at anywhere else, but in that house on that night it
turned me creepy. There was a long, old-fashioned mirror on the opposite
wall with a crack going straight across the middle of it. As I caught my
reflection in it, I raised my head, wanting to get the effect of my new
hat, and it brought the crack exactly across my neck. Believe me I
jumped and then stood staring, for it looked just as if my throat was
cut! Then I moved away from it, pulling up my collar, ashamed of myself
but all the same keeping out of range of the mirror.

In the bar I could hear the voices of Babbitts and Hines, Hines droning
on like a person who’s complaining. From behind a door at the far end of
the room came a noise of crockery and pans and then a woman’s voice,
peevish and scolding, and another woman’s answering back. I don’t think
I ever was in a place that got on my nerves so and what with the cold of
the room—it was like a barn with no steam and the stove not lit—I sat
all hunched up in my coat thinking of Sylvia Hesketh coming _there_ for
shelter!

Suddenly the door at the end of the room opened and Mrs. Hines came in.
She was the match of it all, with her red nose and her little watery
eyes and her shoes dropping off at every step so you could hear the
heels rapping on the boards where the carpet stopped. She began talking
in a whining voice, and as she set the table, told me how the business
had gone off, and they didn’t know what they were going to do.

Her hands, all chapped and full of knots like twigs, smoothed out the
cloth and put on the china so listless it made you tired to look at
them. It was better talking to her than sitting dumb with no company but
dismal thoughts, so I encouraged her and between her trailings into the
kitchen and her trailings out I heard all about their affairs.

For a while after the murder they’d done a lot of business—it made me
sort of shrivel up to see she didn’t mind that; anything that brought
trade was all the same to her—but now, nothing was doing. Only a few
automobiles stopped there and the farmhands had dropped off, so their
custom hardly counted. And Tecla Rabine, the Bohemian servant, who was a
first-class girl, if she did have grouchy spells, had got so slack she’d
have to be fired, and she, Mrs. Hines, didn’t see how she was to get
another one what with the low wages and the lonesomeness.

She trailed off into the kitchen again and I could hear her snapping at
someone and that other woman’s voice growling back. I supposed it was
Tecla Rabine, though it didn’t sound like her, my memory of her at the
inquest being of a fat, good-natured thing that wouldn’t have growled at
anybody. And then the door was opened with one swift kick and Tecla came
in, carrying a plate of bread in one hand and a platter with ham on it
in the other. She didn’t look grouchy at all, but gave me that broad,
silly sort of smile I remembered and put the things down on the table!

"Well, Tecla," I asked for something to say, "how are _you_ getting on?"

"Ach!" she answered disgusted, and pounded over the creaky floor to a
cupboard out of which she took some dishes. "Me? I get out. What for do
I stay? No luck here, no money. Who comes—nobody. Everything goes on the
blink."

She put the things on the table and then stood looking at me, squinting
up her little eyes and with her big body, in a dirty white blouse and a
skirt that didn’t meet it at the waist, slouched up against the table.

"I heard business was bad," I said, and thought that in spite of her
being such a coarse, fat animal, she was rosy and healthy looking, which
was more than you could say for the other two.

"What do I get?" she said, spreading out her great red hands, "not a
thing. Maybe five, ten cents. Every long time maybe a quarter. Since
that lady gets killed all goes bad. The dagoes say ’evil eye.’ They walk
round the house that way," she made a half-circle in the air with her
arm, "looking at it afraid. Me, too, I don’t like it."

"It sure is awful dismal," I agreed.

"No good," she said. "Last year this time all the room
full—to-night—_one_ man"—she held up a finger in the air—"one only man,
and he have lost what makes us to laugh. When I see him, I say, 'Hein,
Tito, good luck now you come. Make the bear to dance.’ And he says this
way"—she hunched up her shoulders and pushed out her hands the way the
Guineas do—"’Oh, Gawda, there is no more bear; he makes dead long
time.’"

"Bear?" I said, and then I remembered. "You mean the one that went round
with the acrobats. It’s dead, is it?"

Tecla nodded.

"Gone dead in the country. And he says he starve now with no bear to get
pennies. The boss says we all starve, and gave him a drink and cheese
and bread. Ach!"—she shook her head, as if the loss of the bear was the
last straw—"I no can stand it—nothing doing, no money, no more laughs—I
quit."

I didn’t blame her. If you gave me two hundred a month I wouldn’t have
stayed there.

Just then Babbitts came in and we began our supper; cold ham and stale
bread and coffee that I know was the morning’s heated over. Tecla went
into the kitchen and I said to him, low and guarded:

"What’s Hines been saying to you?"

He answered in the same key:

"Oh, putting up a hard luck story. Cresset needn’t bother. He wants to
pull up stakes and go West."

"Will they let him?"

"That’s one of the things he’s been talking about. He says if he makes a
move it’ll look suspicious, and if he stays he’ll be ruined. He
certainly is up against it."

I shot a glance from the kitchen to the bar door and then leaned across
the table, almost whispering:

"I don’t see that our investigations have got us anything but a bad
supper."

"Neither do I," he whispered back. "The place looks like a stage setting
for The Bandits’ Den, but the people don’t impress me that way at all."

The kitchen door swung back and Mrs. Hines came in with a pumpkin pie
that tasted like it was baked for Thanksgiving. She hovered round,
fussing about us and joining in the conversation. You could see she was
hungry for someone to talk to. Both she and her husband impressed me
that way, as if they were most crazy with the dreariness of the place,
and were ready to fasten on anybody who’d speak civil to them and listen
to their troubles.

Before we left, Babbitts went into the bar to settle up and I,
remembering Tecla’s complaints, called her in from the kitchen and
fished a quarter out of my new purse. She was as pleased as a child,
grinning all over, and wanting to shake hands with me, which I hated but
couldn’t avoid.

When we were once more in the road I gave a gasp of relief. I felt as if
I’d crept out from under a shadow, that was gradually sinking into me,
down to the marrow of my bones. The night was cold, but a different
kind; fresh and clear, the smell of the damp fields in the air, and the
country quiet and peaceful.

We had a good two miles before us and stepped out lively. It was dark;
the clouds mottled over the sky; and in one place, where the moon was
hidden, a little brightness showing through the cracks. Babbitts said he
thought they’d break and that we’d have the moonlight on our way back.

All around us the landscape stretched black and still. When you got
accustomed to it, you could see the outlines of the hills against the
sky, one darkness set against another, and the line of the road showing
faint between the edgings of bushes. We couldn’t hear anything but our
own footsteps, soft and padding because of the mud, and off and on the
rustling of the twigs as I brushed against them. I don’t remember ever
being out on a quieter night, and there was something lovely and
soothing about it after that horrible house.

We hadn’t gone far—about ten minutes, I should think—when I suddenly
clasped my wrist and felt that my purse was gone. I had taken it off to
give Tecla the quarter and I remember I’d laid it on the supper table
when she made me shake hands.

"Oh dear!" I said, stopping short. "What shall I do—I’ve left my purse
there."

Babbitts stared at me through the dark.

"At Hines’?"

"Yes, on the supper table. And it’s new, I’d only just bought it. Oh, I
_can’t_ lose it."

"You needn’t. We’ve time, but you’ll have to hit up the pace. Come on
quick—that’s not just the place I’d select to leave a purse in."

He turned to go but I stood still. I hated going back there and it was
lovely walking slowly along through the sharp chill air and the peaceful
night.

"You go," I said, coaxing. "I’ll saunter on and you can catch me up."

"Don’t you mind being alone? Aren’t you afraid?"

"Afraid?" I gave a laugh. "I’m much more afraid in that queer joint.
Besides, I can’t go as fast as you can and whatever happens we’ve got to
catch that train."

"If you don’t mind that’s the best plan. I’ll run both ways."

"Then hustle and I’ll walk on slowly. But come whether you find the
purse or not, for that’s the last train to the Junction to-night, and we
mustn’t lose it."

"Right you are, and we won’t lose anything, the train or the purse. I’ll
make it a rush order. Go slow till I come."

He turned and went off at a run and I walked on. At first I could hear
the thud of his feet quite plainly and then the sound was suddenly
deadened and I knew he was on the moist turf by the roadside. The
silence closed down around me like a black curtain that seemed to be
shutting me off from the rest of the world. I walked on slowly,
gathering my skirts up from the wet and the twigs, as noiseless as a
shadow in the dark of the trees.

I don’t know how much further I went, but not very far because I could
just make out the line of the Firehill Road curving down between the
fields, when I heard behind me a fitful, stealthy rustling in the
bushes.




XVII


In beginning this chapter, which is going to end my story of the Hesketh
Mystery, I want to say right here that I’m no coward. The reason that
things happened as they did was that I was worn out—more than I knew—by
the strain and excitement of the last two months. Also I do think that
most any girl would have lost her nerve if she’d been up against what I
was.

The gloom of that dreadful Wayside Arbor was still on me as I walked
along with Babbitts. After a few moments I thought it had gone off and
when I told him I wasn’t afraid I said what seemed to me the truth. But
when the sound of his footsteps died away, the loneliness crept in on
me, seemed to be telling me something that I didn’t want to hear. Down
deep I knew what it was, and that every step was taking me closer to
what I was afraid of—the place where Sylvia Hesketh had been murdered.

It was when I was peering out ahead, trying to locate it, telling myself
not to be a fool and gathering up my courage, that I heard that faint,
stealthy rustling behind me.

I stopped dead, listening. I was scared but not clear through yet, for I
knew it might be some little animal, a rabbit or a chipmunk, creeping
through the underbrush. I stood waiting, feeling that I was breathing
fast, and as still as one of the telegraph poles along the road. The
trees hid me completely. A person could have passed close by and not
seen me standing there in my black cloak against the black background.

Then I heard it again, very soft and cautious, a crackle of branches and
then a wait, and presently—it seemed hours—a crackle of branches again.
I moved forward, stepping on tiptoe, stifling my breath, my head turned
sideways, listening, listening with every nerve. Even then I wasn’t so
terribly frightened, but I was shivery, shivery down to my heart, for I
could hear that, whether it was beast or human, it was on the other side
of the trees, just a little way back, going the way I was.

It only took a few minutes—me stealing forward and it coming on, now
soft as it stepped on the earth, now with a twig snapping sharp—to tell
me I was being followed.

When I got that clear, the last of my courage melted away. If it had
been anywhere else, if it hadn’t been so dark, if there’d been a house
or a person within call, but, oh, Lord, in that lonesomeness, far off
from everything—it was awful! And the awfullest part was that right
there in front of me, getting nearer every minute, was the place where
another girl had been murdered on a night like this.

I tried to pull myself together, to remember that Babbitts would be back
soon, but I couldn’t stop my heart from beating like a hammer, terrible
thuds up in my throat. Way off through the trees I could see the twinkle
of Cresset’s lights and I thought of them there; but it was as if they
were at the other end of the world, too far for me to reach them or for
them to hear my call.

I don’t know why I walked on, but I think it was pure fear. I was afraid
if I stopped that dreadful following thing would overtake me. Once I
tried to look back but I couldn’t. I thought I might see it and I stole
forward, now and then stopping and listening and every time hearing the
crackle and snap of the twigs as it crept after me. I could see now the
place where Sylvia was found, the shrubs curving back from the road as
if to leave a space wide enough for her body.

The sight made me stop and, as I stood there still as a statue, I heard
the sounds behind me get louder, as if a big body was feeling and
pushing its way between the trees, not so careful now, but trampling and
crushing through the interlaced boughs. Then for the first time in my
life I knew what it means when they say your hair stands on end. Down at
the roots of mine there was a stirring all over my head and my heart! It
was banging against my chest, blow after blow, as if it was trying to
break a hole.

The sky began to brighten. I got a sort of impression of those cracks in
the clouds parting and the moonlight leaking through; but I didn’t seem
to see it plain, everything in me was turned to terror. The noise behind
me was closer and louder and through it I heard a breathing, deep,
panting breaths, drawn hard. Then I knew if I turned I could have seen
what was following me, seen its awful face, glaring between the branches
and its bent body, crouched, ready to spring.

It’s hard for me to tell what followed—everything came together and I
couldn’t see or think. I remember trying to scream, to give one shriek
for Babbitts, and no sound coming, and that the thing, as if it knew
what I was doing, made a sudden crashing close at my back. The
brightness of the sky flashed in my eyes. I saw the clouds broken open,
and the moon, big and white, whirling round like a silver plate. I tried
to run but the earth rose up in waves and I staggered forward over them,
wave after wave, with the moon spinning close to my eyes, and then
blackness shutting down like the lid of a box.

The next thing I remember was the sky with clouds all over it and in one
place an opening with a little star as big as a pinhead set in the
middle. I looked at that star for a long time, having a queer feeling
that I was holding on to it and it was pulling me up. Then I felt as if
something was helping the star, a strong support under my shoulders that
raised me still further, and while I seemed to be struggling out of a
darkness like water, I heard Babbitts’ voice close to my ear:

"Thank God, she’s coming out of it."

I turned my head and there was his face close to mine. A strong yellow
light shone on it—afterward I saw it came from a lantern on the
ground—and without speaking I looked into his eyes, and had a lovely
feeling of rest as if I’d found something I was looking for.

"You’re all right?" he said; "you’re not hurt?"

"I’m very well, thank you," I said back, and my voice was like a
whisper.

The support under my shoulders tightened, drew me up against him, and he
bent down and kissed me.

We said no more, but stayed that way, looking at each other. I didn’t
want to move or speak. I didn’t feel anything or care about anything. It
seemed like Babbitts and I were the only two people in the whole world,
as if there _was_ no world, just us, and all the rest nothing.

After that—he’s often told me it was only a minute or two, though if
you’d asked me I’d have said it was hours—I began to look round and take
notice. I heard queer sounds as if someone was groaning in pain, and saw
the shrubs and grass plain by the light of two lanterns standing on the
ground. Near these was a man, lit up as far as his knees, and close by
him, all crumpled on the earth, another person. The lanterns threw a
bright glow over the upper part of that figure, and I saw the head and
shoulders, the hair with leaves and twigs in it and round the neck a red
bandanna. Then I made out it was a man and that it was from him the
sounds were coming—moans and groans and words in a strange language.

"What is it?" I whispered to Babbitts. "What’s happened?"

And he whispered back:

"I’ll tell you later. You’re all right—that’s all that matters now."

It was like a dream and I can only tell it that way—me noticing things
in little broken bits, as if I was at the "movies" and kept falling to
sleep, and then woke up and saw a new picture. The man who was standing
turned round and it was Hines. He looked across the road and gave a
shout and others answered it, and lights danced up and down, coming
closer through the dark. Then men came running—Farmer Cresset and his
sons—and behind them Mrs. Hines, with her clothes held up high and her
thin legs like a stork’s. I could hear them breathing as they raced up
and one man’s voice crying:

"It’s all right, is it? There ain’t been no harm done?"

After that the men were in a group talking low, the lanterns in their
hands sending circles and squares of light over the bushes and the
grass. Presently Farmer Cresset broke away and went to the figure on the
ground. He tried to pull him up, but the man squirmed out of his hand
and fell back like a meal sack, his face to the earth, the moans coming
from him loud and awful.

After a while they put me on something long and hard with a bundle under
my head and took me away up the road and through the woods. It was dark
and no one said anything, the Cresset boys carrying what I was on and
Babbitts walking alongside. As we started I heard someone say the Farmer
would stay with Hines and "communicate with the authorities." And then
we went swinging off under the trees, the footsteps of the men squashing
in the mud. Soon there were lights twinkling through the branches, and
just as I saw them and heard a dog bark, and a woman call out, my heart
faded away again and that blackness swept over me.

I didn’t know till afterwards how long I was sick—weeks it was—lying in
Mrs. Cresset’s spare room with that blessed woman caring for me like her
own daughter. No people in this world were ever better to another than
that family was to me. And others were good—it takes sickness and
trouble to make you value human nature—for when I got desperate bad Dr.
Fowler came over and took a hand. Mrs. Cresset herself told me that
respecting Dr. Graham as she did, she thought I’d never have come
through if Dr. Fowler hadn’t given himself right up to it, staying in
the house for two days the time I was worst. And not a cent would he
ever take for it, only a pair of bed slippers I knitted for him while I
was getting better.

It was not till I was well along on the upgrade that I heard what
happened on that gruesome night. I was still in bed, sitting up in a
pink flannel jacket that Anne Hennessey gave me, with the sunlight
streaming in through the windows and a bunch of violets scenting up the
room. Babbitts had brought them and it was he that told me, sitting in a
rocker by the bedside and speaking very quiet and gentle so as not to
give me any shock. For without my knowledge, just like an instrument of
fate, it was I that had solved the Hesketh mystery.

Neither man nor woman had killed Sylvia Hesketh. The murderer was the
dancing bear.

The man they found on the ground beside me that night was its owner,
Tito Malti, the dago I had seen nearly three months before making the
bear dance at Longwood, and the man Babbitts and I had seen that
afternoon on the hill. Hines and Farmer Cresset carried him—he was
unable to walk at first—to the Wayside Arbor and in the bar there he
told them his story.

He had been associated with the acrobats for several years, working over
the country with them during the summer and lying up in small towns for
the winter. That spring, when the company went out on their tour, he had
noticed that his bear (he called it Bruno and spoke of it like a human)
showed signs of bad temper. It was a big strong beast, but was getting
old and a viciousness that it had always had was growing on it. He kept
quiet about it as he hoped to get through the season without trouble and
knew, if the company thought it was dangerous, they wouldn’t stand for
having it around. All the summer he wandered with them, guarding the
bear carefully, never leaving it unmuzzled, and sleeping beside it at
night.

Toward the end of the season it began to grow worse. It had tried to
attack one of the acrobats and there had been a quarrel. He saw he’d
have to part from them, but they patched up the fight and he stayed on
for their last performance at Longwood, where the business was always
good.

After that they separated, the company going into winter quarters at
Bloomington and Malti telling them he would take Bruno across country
and make a little extra money at the farms and villages. He did intend
to do this but he really wanted to get off by himself, watch the animal,
and try and gain his old control over it.

He started, working round by the turnpike, letting Bruno perform when he
seemed good tempered, but a good part of the time being afraid to. In
this way he made enough money to keep himself, sleeping when the nights
were bad, in barns and on the lee side of hayricks, the bear chained to
him.

On the night of the murder he had got round as far as the Wayside Arbor.
His intention had been to take his supper there—he knew the place
well—and have the bear dance for the Italian customers. But by the time
he reached the Arbor he didn’t dare. For some days Bruno had been sullen
and savage—that afternoon Malti had had to beat him with the iron-spiked
staff he always carried. The poor man said he was half crazy with fright
and misery. He told Hines and Cresset, who said he was as simple as a
young child, that what between his fear of getting into trouble with the
authorities and his fear of losing the bear which was all he had in the
world, he was distracted.

In the afternoon he had begged some food at a farm and with this in his
pocket he tracked across the fields and woods to the turnpike near the
Firehill Road. Here—it being a lonely spot—he sat down in the shade of
the trees that hid him from the highway and ate his supper. As he had
been on the tramp for days he was dropping with fatigue and, seeing the
bear seemed quiet, he stretched out and with the chain in his hand, had
fallen asleep.

He was wakened by a scream—the most awful he had ever heard. Half asleep
as he was, he leaped to his feet, feeling in the dark for the chain. It
was gone and the bear with it.

The scream had come from the other side of the trees. With his staff in
his hand he burst through them and in the darkness saw dimly the shape
of that fearful, great beast reared upon its hind legs, with a black
thing lying at its feet. He yelled and struck it in the face with the
staff and it dropped down to all fours, growling and terrible, but as if
the sound of his voice and the blows had cowed it. Then he grabbed for
the chain, moving along the ground like a snake, and holding it, knelt
and looked at the black thing—the thing the scream had come from.

He raised it and saw the faint white of the face and hands and felt by
the clothes it was a woman. He knew the way an enraged bear
attacks—rising up to its hind legs and giving a blow with its paw, a
blow that if the body it strikes is unprotected, can break bones and
tear muscles out of their place. In the dark he felt the woman till his
hand came on the trickle of blood on her face. That told him the brute
had struck at her head, and sick and trembling, he lit a match and held
it low over her. The hat had protected her from the claws; without it
they would have torn through the scalp like the teeth of a rake. But
when he saw her face and felt of her pulse, he knew that that savage
blow had broken her skull and she was dead.

At first he was too paralyzed to think, kneeling there beside her with
the bear crouched at the end of his chain, not stirring as if it was
scared at what it had done. Then the horn of the Doctor’s auto woke him
and, clutching the body, he drew back into the shadow. The car passed at
furious speed, its noise drowning any sound that that strange and awful
group might have made. Shaking in every limb he laid his burden on the
grass and tried to compose it, putting back the hat which was torn off,
but was caught to the hair by its long pin.

While he was doing this the clouds broke and he was drawing the coat
about her when the moon came out bright as day. By its light he saw the
pearl necklace and in his own words, "All the badness in his heart came
up into his head."

When he told that part of his story he wrung his hands and sobbed,
declaring over and over that he was an honest man and a good Catholic.
Never before had he stolen, though often he had gone cold and hungry.
But he knew now that he must kill the bear, and then he would be left an
old man without a penny or any way to earn one. "And the pearls," he
moaned out, "what are they to the dead? And to me, who must live, they
mean riches forever."

He said his hands shook so he couldn’t find the clasp and to get at it
he pulled open the coat. And then he gave a cry and drew back like he
was burnt, for there on the breast of the dead woman, sparkling like a
thing of fire, was the cross.

Babbitts said the two men were greatly impressed by the way he acted
when he told this. The perspiration broke out on his face and he crossed
himself, bowing his head and shuddering. "It was God’s voice," he
whispered. "It said: ’Stop, Tito; hold your hand. No man can rob the
dead.’"

So he closed the coat, folded the arms across the chest and covered all
with branches he found in a pile near by. As he moved about the bear
watched him, not stirring, as if it knew it was guilty and was waiting
to see what he would do to it.

When the work was finished the two of them stole away, as noiseless as
shadows. His head was clear enough to think of the footprints and he
kept on the grass till he was near the Firehill Road. He was approaching
this when he heard Reddy’s horn, and with the bear following, he slipped
through a break in the trees into the open space beyond. Here, huddled
into the blackness under the boughs, he saw the car swing past. It went
a little way down the road and then stopped and stood for what seemed to
him a long time, every now and then the horn sounding. When it finally
started again he moved on, the bear padding silently beside him. He said
the car came back soon and passed and repassed him a number of times.
Each time he was ready for it, the noise and the lamps warning him of
its approach. Crowded up against the bear, he watched it through the
branches, all the road bright in front of it where the lamps threw their
two long shoots of light.

When they asked him if he wasn’t afraid of the bear making some sound he
shook his head and said just like a child:

"Bruno? No—he is wise like a man. When I look him in the eye I see he
knows he is a murderer and must die, and it makes him very quiet."

He had made up his mind to kill Bruno. As he told the men about it the
tears ran down his face, for he said the bear was like his brother. When
Reddy had gone, he made off, Bruno walking at the end of the chain
behind him, both keeping to the grass edges of the fields. All night
they walked, those two—and strange they must have looked slipping across
the moonlit spaces, two black shadows moving over the lonesomeness, not
a sound from either of them, one leading the other to his execution.

At dawn they entered the woods. There, when the light was clear enough
to see, that poor, scared dago killed the bear with the knife he had
carried all summer. The rest of the day he spent scooping a grave for
him. When he told how he dragged the great body into the hole and
covered it with earth, he put his hands over his face, rocking back and
forth, and crying like a baby.

After that he went to Bloomington and joined the acrobats, telling them
the bear had died. They thought no more about it and welcomed him back,
sharing their quarters with him and promising him a place with them in
the summer.

But his knowledge of the crime haunted him. Like all those dagoes, he
was superstitious and full of queer notions. Babbitts said he was as
ignorant as the animal he was so fond of, seeming to think as they
couldn’t hang the bear they might hang him in its place. He wanted to go
to the priest and confess, but when he heard people talking of the
murder he was afraid. After a while he couldn’t eat or sleep and the
torment of his terror and remorse was like to drive him crazy.

Finally he couldn’t stand it any more and got the idea that if he could
go back to the place and offer up prayers there he might get some
relief. He told the acrobats he was going to hunt for work on a farm,
left Bloomington and once again walked across the country.

It was night when he reached the region he was bound for, and feeling
too weak and sick to go straight to the spot, he went to the Wayside
Arbor to beg for food which would give him strength to bear the task he
had set himself. They gave him what he asked for and he took it to his
old nook under the trees and there in the cold and dark ate ravenously.
Then, just as on that other night, he lay down and the sleep that had
left him for so long came back to him.

He never heard us pass, but I guess without his knowing it we wakened
him, for he said he was sitting up, rubbing his eyes, when he heard
Babbitts’ footsteps as he ran back to the inn.

He listened and, making sure no one else was on the road, got up and
began to steal cautiously forward. He felt sure that God would hear his
prayers after he had walked so far and his misery had been so great.

I guess the poor thing was about all in, and was as scared when he came
near the place as I was. Of course he had no idea I was in front of him
and wasn’t following me as I thought. With the trees between, both of us
were making for the same spot, the only difference being that while I
heard him he never heard me.

What he saw when he broke through the hedge would have terrified anyone,
let alone a man in the state he was. For there, just as he had last seen
her, lay a woman in a black coat with the moonlight shining on her dead
white face—a ghost waiting to accuse him.

They say the shriek he gave was the most awful that man ever heard.
Babbitts, who was on his way back, said it sounded like it came from a
lost soul in Hell. He tried to yell back, but couldn’t and ran like a
madman, and when he got there saw me lying as if I was dead in the
moonlight and a wild, screaming figure crouched on the ground beside me.
The two Hines heard it. Hines picked up a lantern and ran with Mrs.
Hines at his heels. When he came up he found Babbitts kneeling over me,
half crazy, thinking I was murdered, too. They felt my pulse and found
it was going and sent Mrs. Hines on the run to Cresset’s. She lit out,
calling and crying as she flew through the woods, and met the Cresset
crowd, hiking along with their lanterns, having heard her and not
knowing _what_ had happened.

Well—that’s the end of my story. Oh, I forgot the reward—_I_ got it. I
oughtn’t to have for I didn’t do anything but fall in a faint, which was
the easiest thing I could do. But Mrs. Fowler and the Doctor wouldn’t
have it any other way, so I gave in. Not that I didn’t want to. Believe
me, Jew or Gentile gets weak when ten thousand dollars is pressed into
her palm. It’s invested and I get good interest on it, but I’m saving
that up. You never can tell what may happen in this world.

As to the rest of us—the bunch that in one way or another were drawn
into the Hesketh mystery—we’re all scattered now.

Jack Reddy’s not living at Firehill any more. He’s taken an apartment in
town where the two old Gilseys look after him like he was their only
son, and he’s studying law in Mr. Whitney’s office. Sometimes Sunday he
comes to see us, just as cordial and kind and handsome as ever, and it’s
I that’ll be glad when he tells me he’s found the right girl—God bless
him!

Cokesbury Lodge is sold and Cokesbury’s living in town, too. They say
his part in the Hesketh case sort of finished him. High society wouldn’t
stand for it, which shows you can’t believe all you hear about the idle
rich. I’ve heard that he’s seen round a lot with an actress-lady and one
of the papers had it he was going to marry her.

The Fowlers went to Europe. They’re living in Paris now and I hear from
Anne Hennessey, who corresponds with Mrs. Fowler, that they’re going to
reside there. Anyway, Jim Donahue told me last time I was down at
Longwood that Mapleshade was to let.

Annie’s got a new job in town, on Fifth Avenue, grand people who never
quarrel. She dines with us most every Sunday and we sit till all hours
talking over the past, like people who’ve been in some great disaster
and when they get together always drift back to the subject.

Me?—you want to know about me?

Well, I’m living uptown on the West Side in the cutest little flat in
New York—five rooms, on a corner, all bright and sunny. And furnished!
Say, I wish I could show them to you. When Mrs. Fowler broke up she gave
me a lot of the swellest things. Why, I’ve got a tapestry in the parlor
that cost five hundred dollars and cut glass you couldn’t beat on Fifth
Avenue.

It’s on 125th Street, near the Subway. We had to be near that for
Himself—he likes to stay as late as he can in the morning and get up as
quick as he can at night. If you’re passing that way any time, just drop
in. I’d love to see you and have you see my place—and me, too. You’ll
see the name on the letter-box—Morganthau? Oh, quit your kidding—it’s
_Babbitts_ now.



THE END