TO GRAHAM B. NICHOL
AS A LITTLE TOKEN OF MY ADMIRATION AND AFFECTION
When a woman's voice, pitched to the high note of utter terror, rang out on the late morning quiet of Manniston Road, Lawrence Bristow looked up from his newspaper quickly but vaguely, as if he doubted his own ears. He was reading an account of a murder committed in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and the shrieks he had just heard fitted in so well with the paragraph then before his eyes that his imagination might have been playing him tricks. He was allowed, however, little time for speculation or doubt.
"Murder! Help!" cried the woman in a staccato sharpness that carried the length of many blocks.
Bristow sprang to his feet and started down the short flight of stairs leading from his porch to the street. Before he had taken three steps, he saw the frightened girl standing on the porch of No. 5, two doors to his left. Although he was lame, he displayed surprising agility. His left leg, two inches shorter than the right and supported by a steel brace from foot to thigh, did not prevent his being the first to reach the young woman's side.
Late as it was, half-past ten, she was not fully dressed. She wore a kimono of light, sheer material which, clutched spasmodically about her, revealed the slightness and grace of her figure. Her fair hair hung down her back in a long, thick braid.
Neighbours across the street and further up Manniston Road were out on their porches now or starting toward No. 5. All of them were women.
The girl—she was barely past twenty, he thought—stopped screaming, and, her hands pressed to her throat and cheeks, stared wildly from him toward the front door, which was standing open. He entered the living room of the one-story bungalow. A foot within the doorway, he stood stock still. On the sofa against the opposite wall he saw another woman. He knew at first glance that she was dead.
The body was in a curious position. Apparently, before death had come, the victim had been sitting on the sofa, and, in dying, her body had crumpled over from the waist toward the right, so that now the lower part of her occupied the attitude of sitting while the upper half reclined as if in the posture of natural sleep. One thing which, perhaps, added to the gruesomeness of the sight was that she had on evening dress, a gown of pale blue satin embellished in unerring taste with real old Irish lace.
Although the face had been beautiful under its crown of luxuriant black hair, it now was distorted. While the eyes were closed, the mouth was open, very wide—an ugly, repulsive gape.
He was aware that the woman in the kimono was just behind him—he could feel her hot breath against the back of his neck—and that behind her pressed the neighbours, their number augmented by the arrival of two men. He turned and faced them.
"Call a doctor—and the police, somebody, will you?" he said sharply.
"They have a telephone back there in the dining room," volunteered one of the women on the porch.
Another, a Mrs. Allen who lived in No. 6, had put her arms around the terrified girl and was forcing her into an armchair on the porch.
The others started into the living room.
"Wait a moment," cautioned Bristow. "Don't come in here yet. The police will want to find things undisturbed. It looks like murder."
They obeyed him without question. He was about forty years old, of medium height and with good shoulders, but his chest was too flat, and his face showed an unnatural flush. His mere physique was not one to force obedience from others. It was in his eyes, dark-brown and lit with a peculiar flaming intensity, that they read his right to command.
"Please go through this room to the telephone and call a doctor," he said, singling out the woman who had spoken.
His voice, a deep barytone with a pleasant note, was perfectly steady. He seemed to hold their excitement easily within bounds.
The woman he had addressed complied with his suggestion. While she was doing so, he crossed over to the sofa and put his hand to the wrist of the murdered woman. In order to do that, he had to move a fold of the gown which partially concealed it. The flesh was cold, and he shivered slightly, readjusting the satin to exactly the fold in which he had found it.
"Too late for a doctor to help now," he threw back over his shoulder.
They watched him silently. Low moans were coming constantly from the woman in the chair on the porch.
Bristow took the telephone in his turn and called up police headquarters.
The chief of police, whom he knew, answered the call.
"Hello! Captain Greenleaf?" asked the lame man.
"Yes."
"There's been a murder at Number Five, Manniston Road. This is Lawrence Bristow, of Number Nine."
"Aw, quit your kiddin'," laughed Greenleaf. "What do you want to do, get me up there to hear another of your theories about——"
"This is no joke," snapped Bristow. "I tell you one of the women in Number Five has been murdered. Come——"
But the chief, recognizing the urgency in the summons, had left the telephone and was on his way.
As Bristow turned toward the living room, Mrs. Allen and another woman were carrying the hysterical, moaning girl from the front porch to one of the two bedrooms in the bungalow. Some of the others again started into the living room.
"Let's wait," he cautioned once more. "If we get to moving around in here we may destroy any clues that could be used later."
When they fell back a little, he joined them on the porch, standing always so that he could watch the body and see that no one changed its attitude or even approached it. His eyes studied keenly all the furniture in the room. Save for one overturned stiff-backed chair, it apparently had not been disturbed.
The doctor arrived and, waiting for no information, approached the murdered woman. As Bristow had done, he touched her wrist, and then slipped his hand beneath her corsage so that it rested above her heart. He straightened up almost immediately.
"Dead," he said to Bristow; "dead for hours."
The physician became conscious of the hysterical girl's moans, took a step toward the bedrooms and paused.
"That's right, doctor," Bristow told him. "They need you back there."
The doctor hurried out.
"That is—that was Mrs. Withers, wasn't it?" Bristow, looking at the dead body, asked of the group.
"Yes; and the other is her sister, Miss Fulton," one of them answered.
Bristow had seemed to all of them a peculiar man—too quiet and reserved—ever since he had come to No. 9 four months before. They remembered this now, when he seemed scarcely conscious of the identity of the two girls who had lived almost next door to him during all that time.
Different members of the crowd gave him information: Miss Maria Fulton, like nearly everybody else on Manniston Road, had tuberculosis, and Mrs. Withers had been living with her. They had plenty of money—not rich, perhaps, but able to have all the comforts and most of the luxuries of life. They were here in the hope that Furmville's climate would restore Miss Fulton's health.
Their coloured cook-and-maid had not come to work that morning, it seemed, and Miss Fulton, who was the younger of the two sisters, was on the "rest" cure, ordered by the doctor to stay in bed day and night. Perhaps that was why she had not discovered Mrs. Withers' body earlier in the day.
They gossiped on.
It was like a lesson in immortality—the dead body, with distorted face and twisted limbs, just inside the room; and outside, in the low-toned phrases of the awed women, swift and vivid pictures of what she; when alive, had said and done and seemed.
“Everybody liked her. If somebody had come and told me a woman living on Manniston Road had been killed, she would have been the last one I’d have thought of as the victim.” “All the other beautiful women I ever knew were stupid; she wasn’t.” “Her husband couldn’t come to Furmville very often.” “Loveliest black hair I ever saw.” “She used to be——”
Then followed quick glimpses of her life as they had seen or heard it: a dance at Maplewood Inn where she had been the undisputed belle; a novel she had liked; a big reception at the White House in Washington when, during the year of her début, the French ambassador had called her "the most beautiful American," and the newspapers had made much of it; an emerald ring she had worn; the unfailing good humour she had always shown in the tedious routine of nursing her sister—and so on, a mass of facts and impressions which were, simultaneously, a little biography of her and an unaffected appreciation of the way she had touched and coloured their lives.
Captain Greenleaf, with one of the plain-clothes men of his force, came hurrying up the steps. The crowd fell back, gave them passage, and closed in again.
"Nothing's been disturbed, captain," said Bristow.
"Where is she?" asked Greenleaf anxiously. He was not accustomed to murder cases.
He caught sight of the body on the sofa.
"God!" he said in a low tone, and turned toward the plain-clothes man:
"Come on in, Jenkins—you, too, Mr. Bristow."
The three entered the living room, and Greenleaf, with a muttered word of apology to the on-lookers, closed the door in their faces.
He, too, did what Bristow had done—put his fingers on the dead woman's wrist. He was breathing rapidly, and his hand shook. Jenkins stood motionless. He also was overwhelmed by the tragedy. Besides, he was not cut out for work of this kind. In looking for illicit distillers and boot-leggers, or negroes charged with theft, he was in his element, but this sort of thing was new to him. He had no idea of where to turn or what to do.
"She's dead," Bristow said to the captain. "The doctor says she has been dead a long time—hours."
"Where's the doctor?"
"Back there. Miss Fulton, the sister, is hysterical with fright."
"Who sent for the doctor?"
"I did. I asked one of the women here to telephone."
"Then I'll call the coroner."
He stepped through the open folding doors into the dining room and took down the receiver, looking, as he did so, at the body and its surroundings.
Bristow stooped down, picked up something from the floor near the sofa and dropped it into his vest pocket.
The doctor—Dr. Braley—returned as the captain hung up the telephone receiver.
"Miss Fulton is quieter now," he announced.
"Doctor," requested Greenleaf, "look at this body, will you? What caused death?"
Braley, a thin, quick-moving little man of thirty-five, bent over the dead woman, lifted one of her eyelids, and examined her throat as far as was possible without moving the head.
"She was choked to death," he gave his opinion. "Although the eyes are closed, you see the effect they produce of almost starting from their sockets. And the tongue protrudes. Besides, there are the marks on her throat. You can see them there on the left side."
"How long has she been dead?"
"I can't say definitely. I should guess about eight or ten hours anyway."
That staggered Greenleaf, the idea of this woman dead here in the front room of a bungalow on Manniston Road for eight or ten hours—and nobody knew anything about it! His agitation grew. He felt the need of doing something, starting something.
"How about Miss Fulton?" he asked. "Can I get a statement from her?"
"Not just yet. Give her a little more time to get herself together. Besides, she told me something about the—er—affair. Most remarkable statement—most remarkable."
"What was it?"
"She says," related Braley, "that she only discovered the dead body of her sister a few minutes before she was heard crying for help. Her sister, Mrs. Withers, went to a dance, one of the regular Monday night dances at the inn—Maplewood Inn. She went with Mr. Campbell, Douglas Campbell, the real estate man here. You know him. They left the house at nine o'clock last night. That was the last time Miss Fulton saw Mrs. Withers alive.
"In the meantime, Miss Fulton herself, who is under my orders to stay in bed all the time, was up and dressed so that she might spend the evening with a friend of hers from Washington. His name is Henry Morley. He left this house a little after eleven o'clock, and he left Furmville on the midnight train for Washington.
"Miss Fulton, thoroughly tired out, went to bed and was asleep by half-past eleven. As she has something which she uses when she wants a good sleep, she took some of it last night and did not wake up until after ten this morning. She didn't even hear her sister come in last night.
"When she awoke this morning, she called her sister. Amazed by receiving no answer, she got up to investigate. Mrs. Withers' bed had not been occupied. She then came in here and found the body."
"You mean to say," put in Bristow, "that this sick girl was here all night and heard nothing?"
"That's what she says," confirmed the physician.
"Did she give any idea who the murderer might be?" queried Greenleaf.
"No; she's not sufficiently clear in her mind to advance any theories yet—naturally."
"Let me look around," suggested the captain.
He did so, followed by Bristow and the doctor. Save for the overturned chair, between the sofa and the dining room door, the furniture, for the most part the mission stuff generally found in the furnished-for-rent cottages in Furmville, had not been knocked about in a struggle. That was evident. The two rugs on the floor had not been disturbed. None of the three men touched the overturned chair.
All the windows of the living room and the dining room were closed but not locked, as there was on the outside of each the usual covering of mosquito wiring. The shades were down. The front door did not have the inside "catch" thrown on.
Greenleaf examined the kitchen, the unoccupied bedroom, the bathroom, and the sleeping porch at the back of the house. This last, like the windows, was inclosed in stout wire screens, and nowhere, on either the windows or the sleeping porch, had this screening been broken. The kitchen door was locked. There was no sign of a struggle anywhere. These negative facts were gathered quickly.
Mrs. Allen, summoned from the sister's side, reported that there were no signs of an entrance having been made through any of the three windows in the bedroom in which Miss Fulton now lay quiet.
They made their way back to the living room. In spite of the most painstaking examination of the floor, walls, and furniture of the entire bungalow, they were, so far, without a clue. The murderer had left not the slightest trace of his identity or his manner of entrance to the death chamber.
"As I see it," said the captain when they rejoined Jenkins, "nobody broke into this house last night. But two men had admission to it. They were Mr. Douglas Campbell, the real estate man, and Mr. Henry Morley, who was calling on Miss Fulton. It's up to those two to tell what they know."
"But," objected the doctor, "Miss Fulton says Morley left town last night."
"Humph! Maybe that makes it look all the worse for Morley."
"But," suggested Bristow, "if we find that the front door was unlocked all night, the possibilities broaden."
"How will we find that out?"
"Miss Fulton might remember about it."
"She did mention that," put in Braley; "it was unlocked."
"All the same," insisted Greenleaf, "Morley's got to come back here. Wouldn't you say so?" This question was addressed to Bristow.
The telephone bell rang in the dining room. The chief went to answer it.
"What's that?" Those in the living room heard him. "You? I'm the chief of police. Where are you now? Oh, I see. Come up here, will you? There's been a murder here. Mrs. Withers. Right away? All right; I'll wait for you."
He came back to the living room.
"That was Mr. Henry Morley," he said, "Didn't leave town last night. What do you think of that?"
Before the question was answered the coroner arrived. While Chief Greenleaf told him the circumstances confronting them, Dr. Braley telephoned for a trained nurse for Miss Fulton. In the absence of anybody else to perform the unpleasant task, the doctor went back to take up with the bereaved girl the matter of telegraphing to her family and the details of preparing the murdered woman's body for burial as soon as would be compatible with the plans of the coroner.
"I wonder, Mr. Bristow," suggested Greenleaf, "if I couldn't walk up to your place with you and talk this thing over."
"Glad to have you," agreed Bristow.
The crowd on the porch and in the street began to disperse slowly after the chief had told them none of them could be admitted. In small groups, they made their way to porches or into houses where they lingered, speculating, wondering, advancing impossible theories.
Why had death singled her out? Who would ever have suspected that there had been in her life any foothold for tragedy? The secrecy with which she had been struck down, the ease of the murderer’s coming and going safely, roused their resentment. They sympathized with themselves as well as with the dead woman.
Confusedly, but at the same time with striking unanimity, they felt that this was not merely a mystery, but a mystery made ugly and shocking by base motives and despicable agents. In common with all mankind, they resented mystery. It emphasized their own dependence on chance. They began to guess at the best method for capturing the guilty.
The chief of police and the lame man had reached the porch of No. 9. There Bristow picked up from a table a scrapbook and a bundle of newspaper clippings. Following him into the living room, Greenleaf brought a paste pot and a pair of shears which the other evidently had been using in placing the clippings in the big book. He put them down on a table in one corner near Bristow's typewriter.
"Still figuring 'em out, I see," he said grimly.
He referred to Bristow's habit of reading murder mysteries in the newspapers and working them out to satisfactory solutions. That was Bristow's way of amusing himself while set down in Furmville for the long struggle to overcome the tuberculosis with which he was afflicted. In fact, as a result of this recreation, he had become known to Greenleaf, who had visited him several times.
He had rendered the captain considerable assistance in a minor case shortly after his arrival in the town, and Greenleaf was really amazed by the correctness of the lame man's solutions of most of the murder cases chronicled. He knew that Bristow had been right on an average of nine times out of ten, often clearing up the affairs on paper many days or even weeks ahead of the authorities in various parts of the country.
Bristow had his records in his scrapbooks to prove his contentions. Under each clipping descriptive of a baffling murder he had written a brief outline of his solving of the case and dated it, following this with the date of the correct or incorrect solutions by the authorities.
"But now," the chief added, as they sat down before the open fire, which earlier had fought against the chill of the cool May morning, "you can work one out right on the ground. And I'll be mighty glad to have your help—if you will help."
"Of course," said Bristow. "I'll be more than glad to make any suggestions I can."
The chief went out on the porch and called across the yard of No. 7 to one of his men on guard at No. 5:
"Simpson, when a young man—name's Morley—gets there and asks for me, tell him to come up here to Number Nine."
He came back and referred to Bristow's offer of help:
"For instance?"
"Well," Bristow answered, "as we see it now, there are three possibilities: Campbell, or Morley, or some unknown man or woman, coloured or white, bent on robbery."
"So far, though, we haven't found any signs of robbery."
"I have."
"What were they?"
"The middle, third and little fingers of Mrs. Withers' left hand were scratched, badly scratched, as if rings had been pulled from them by force. And there was a deep line on the back of her neck. It looked black just now, but it was red when it was inflicted. It was too thin to have been made by a finger, but it might have been caused by somebody's having tugged at a chain about her neck until it broke."
"The thunder you say! I didn't notice any of that."
"I'll show you the marks when we go back there."
"But," objected Greenleaf, "I know Mr. Campbell. He's not the sort to steal. And I don't suppose Morley is."
"They say the same thing about bank presidents," Bristow replied with a slight smile, "but some of them get caught at it, nevertheless."
"Yes; but this is different—unless the murdered woman had extremely valuable jewelry."
"That's true. Besides, if the front door was unlocked all night, or, even if somebody knocked at the door and Mrs. Withers answered it, there is your third possibility, any ordinary robbery and murder."
"I believe that's what will come out," Greenleaf said, his troubled face showing his worried consciousness of inability to handle the situation; "but how will we—how will I prove it?"
"Morley and Campbell can make their own statements."
Bristow, going to the dining room door, called toward the kitchen:
"Mattie!"
Replying to his summons, a middle-aged coloured woman appeared.
"Mattie, didn't I hear Perry tell you yesterday that he was to go to work this morning for Mrs. Withers, 'making' her garden?"
"Yas, suh," answered Mattie, still breathing heavily from her hurried return from No. 5.
"Has he been around this morning?"
"Naw, suh."
"Do you know where Mrs. Withers' servant lives?"
"Yas, suh."
"What's her name?"
"Lucy Thomas, suh."
"Well, I want you to go there right away and find out what's the matter with her, why she didn't show up for work this morning. Take your time. Dinner can wait."
When Mattie had gone, Bristow explained:
"This Perry—Perry Carpenter—is a young negro who does odd jobs in this section. He's about twenty-five, I guess. Each of these bungalows has a garden back of it, you know. There are no houses behind us. I don't like Perry's looks. He did some gardening for me Saturday and yesterday."
"You think he——?"
"He's got a bad face. If neither Campbell nor Morley killed Mrs. Withers, why shouldn't we find out where Perry and the servant woman of Number Five are now, and where they were all last night?"
"I reckon that's right," chimed in Greenleaf. "It looks something like a common darky job at that."
"And this," added Bristow, taking something from his vest pocket and handing it to the chief of police, "looks more like it, doesn't it?"
Greenleaf examined the object the other had put into his hand. It was a metal button of the kind ordinarily worn on overall jumpers, and clinging to it were a few fragments of the dark blue stuff of which overalls are commonly made. On the back of the button were stamped in white the words: "National Overalls Company."
"Where did you get this?" asked the chief.
"I picked it up in the room where the dead girl was; and I'd forgotten it until this minute. It was on the floor a few yards from the body. You saw me when I picked it up. You were at the telephone."
"That's right. I remember now. By cracky! That came off of some darky's working clothes. That's sure!"
"The only trouble is," puzzled Bristow, "your negro doesn't wear overalls at night after he has finished work. He dresses up and loafs down town."
"That's true on Saturday nights. Other nights they don't take the trouble to change. And last night was Monday night. No, sir! That's our first clue, that button; the first sign we've had of the murderer."
"Keep it," Bristow told him. "I'm not as confident as you are, but you might have a look at the blouse of Perry's suit of overalls. We can't over-look anything now."
Deep in thought he gazed at the fire. Greenleaf got up and walked to the window, which gave a magnificent view of the great Carolina mountains in the distance. He was not admiring the mountains, however. He was wondering why Mr. Morley had not arrived.
"By the way," he said, "can't I get a drink of water?"
He was in the dining room on his way to the kitchen before Bristow roused himself from his reverie.
"Wait!" he called to the chief. "Let me get it for you."
Greenleaf, however, had gone into the kitchen. Bristow followed him and took a tumbler from a rack on the wall.
The chief drew the tumbler full twice from the faucet and gulped down the water. His hand shook. He was very nervous.
As they turned to leave the kitchen, he uttered an exclamation and, stooping down swiftly, pulled something from under the stove. When he straightened up, he had in his hand another metal button. He turned it about in his fingers, studying it.
"It looks like the one you found in Number Five," he said.
They compared the two. They were identical. The two men stared at each other.
"What do you make of that?" asked Greenleaf.
"I was wondering," Bristow replied, thinking quickly, "when—how that got there." He paused and added: "Mattie doesn't wear overalls."
They returned to the living room.
"But," he continued, "Perry was working for me yesterday. He was in the kitchen talking to Mattie. I wonder—Well, there's one thing; if Perry's blouse has two buttons missing, he'll be confronted with the job of establishing an alibi for all of last night."
"By cracky!" The captain slapped his hands together in evident relief. "I believe we've got him! I'm going to send a man after him."
He went out to the porch and signalled another of his men.
"Drake," he said, "I want you to find a young negro—name's Perry Carpenter—about twenty-five years old. He does odd jobs around here. Any of these other niggers can tell you where he lives. When you find him, take him to headquarters. Keep him there until I come. Get him. Don't lose him!"
When he stepped back into the house, Bristow was regarding him with a smile.
"I hope you're right," he told the chief, "but I've a hunch you're wrong. I believe this murder is more than an ordinary robbery by a darky. Somehow, I have the impression that there's something big mixed up in it."
"Why?"
"I can't say exactly. Perhaps it's because I've been thinking of the beauty of the victim. Or it may be that I was impressed by what the women said about her when we were waiting for you on the porch."
He thought a while, and decided that he had no explanation of why he had made the remark. He had not meant to say it. It had come from him spontaneously, like an endorsement of what all Manniston Road was saying at that very moment: the "the something big in it" loomed up, intangible but demanding notice.
Greenleaf himself, for all his apparent certainty about the guilt of the negro Perry, sensed vaguely the possibility, the hint, that this crime was even worse than it appeared to be. But he would not admit it. He preferred to keep before his mind the easier answer to the puzzle.
"No," he contradicted Bristow; "I believe Perry's the fellow we want. Here we are dealing with facts, not story-book romances."
Just then a young man sprang up the steps of No. 9 and knocked on the door. It was Henry Morley, come to give weight to Bristow's "hunch."
Although it was Chief Greenleaf who opened the door, it was to Bristow that Morley turned, as if he instinctively recognized the superiority of the lame man's personality. Greenleaf, of average height and weight, had nothing of command or domination about him. With his red, weatherbeaten face and mild, expressionless blue eyes, he looked like a well-to-do farmer. He was suggestive of no acquaintance with Tarde, Lombroso or any other authorities on crime and criminals.
"Won't you sit down?" invited Bristow.
The new-comer was tall and slender. In spite of a straight, high-bridged nose and thin lips, his face indicated weakness. His dark-gray eyes had in them either a great deal of worry or undisguised fear. As he took the chair pointed out to him, he was being catalogued by Bristow as showing too much uncertainty, even a womanish timidity. Bristow noticed also that his thick, soft blond hair was carefully parted and brushed, and that his fingers were much manicured.
He breathed in short, quick gasps.
"What is it? How—how did it happen?" he asked, his gaze still on Bristow.
Greenleaf took a seat so that Morley sat between him and Bristow.
"We don't know how it happened," said the chief. "We wanted to know if you could tell us anything."
"I didn't see Mrs. Withers late last night," Morley replied, a nervous tremor in his voice.
"Nobody said you did," commented Bristow.
"No; I know that," Morley agreed in a queer, high voice.
"But you were in the house, Number Five, last evening, weren't you?" Bristow inquired.
"Yes."
"Well, tell us about it."
"I came down here from Washington Saturday," the young man began. "I didn't come to see Mrs. Withers. I came to see Miss Fulton, her sister. Of course, I've seen Mrs. Withers since I've been here; I saw her early last night. You see, last night she went up to the Maplewood Inn for the dinner dance, and, when I called, she was just leaving with a Mr. Campbell. Miss Fulton and I sat on the front porch and in the parlour talking until a little after eleven."
"We understood," put in Bristow, "that Miss Fulton was confined to her bed."
"She was, that is—er—she was supposed to be; but she got up last evening and dressed to receive me."
"I beg your pardon," again interrupted his questioner, "but everything is important here now, and we need information. We have so little of it as yet. I really apologize, but may I ask what your relations with Miss Fulton are?"
Morley hesitated a full minute before he answered.
"If it is to go no further than you gentlemen," he began.
"Of course," the other two agreed.
"Well, then, Miss Fulton and I are engaged to be married."
"Ah! Go ahead." This from the lame man.
"As I said, we talked until a little after eleven. Then I had to leave to catch the midnight train back to Washington."
"But you didn't catch it."
"No. You see, I was stopping at the Maplewood. That's more than a mile from Manniston Road, and it's fully two miles from the railroad station. Somehow, I didn't allow myself enough time, and I missed the train by a bare two minutes."
"What did you do then?"
"What did I do then?"
"Yes—what then?"
"I didn't go back to Maplewood Inn. I took a room for the night at the Brevord Hotel. It's near the station, you know, and I intended to catch the midday train today. Besides, it was late, and I didn't want to take the trouble of walking back or getting a machine to take me back to Maplewood."
He drew out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead, which, as a matter of fact, was perfectly dry. He was tremendously unstrung. Bristow realized this and saw that now, more than at any subsequent time, he would be able to make the young man talk.
"That," he said easily, "accounts for you, doesn't it? Now, I'll tell you. Chief Greenleaf and I are anxious to get some information about the Fulton family. As you know, we people here, being invalids, live pretty much to ourselves. We don't have the strength for much social life, and we don't know much about each other. What can you tell us?"
"Miss Fulton and Mrs. Withers are—were sisters," Morley responded. "Their father, William T. Fulton, is a real estate man in Washington. By the way, Mar—Miss Fulton expects him here this afternoon. She told me so yesterday. Last fall, just before Miss Fulton was taken sick with tuberculosis, he failed, failed for a very large amount of money."
"He was wealthy then?"
"Yes; quite. Mrs. Withers was twenty-five. She married Withers, George S. Withers, of Atlanta, Georgia, when she was twenty-one. But, when Miss Fulton had to come here for her health, Mrs. Withers agreed to come, too, and look after her. Withers isn't wealthy. He's a lawyer in Atlanta, but he hasn't a big income."
"How old is Miss Fulton?" asked Bristow.
"Twenty-three."
"Do you know whether Mrs. Withers had any valuable jewelry—rings, stuff of that kind?"
Morley was for a moment visibly disturbed.
"Why, yes," he answered after a little pause. "When Mr. Fulton failed, Miss Fulton gave up all her jewels, everything, to help meet his debts. Mrs. Withers refused to do this—at least, she didn't do it."
Both Bristow and Greenleaf caught the note of criticism in his voice.
"Just what was the feeling between the two sisters?" pursued Bristow.
Again Morley paused.
"Oh, all right, if you don't feel like discussing that," his interrogator said smoothly. "It's of no consequence. We'll find out about it elsewhere."
"I suppose I might as well," said Morley. "It really doesn't amount to anything much. There has been considerable coolness between the two women."
"Even when Mrs. Withers was here nursing Miss Fulton?"
"Yes. You see, Mrs. Withers was and always has been Mr. Fulton's favourite. Miss Maria Fulton felt this, and she knew that Mrs. Withers came here only because Mr. Fulton asked her to do it. Also, Miss Fulton never forgave Mrs. Withers for not coming forward with her jewels, jewels which her father had given her—for not coming forward with them when he failed."
"Did they ever quarrel?"
"Well, yes. Sometimes, I think, they did. You know how it is with two women, particularly sisters, who are on what might be called bad terms. Then, as I was about to say, Mrs. Withers wasn't making any sacrifice by being here with her sister. Mr. Fulton, in spite of his reduced means, paid her expenses, all of them. Besides, Mrs. Withers had quite a good time here, going to the dances, and so on."
"Do you know, Mr. Morley, whether they had a quarrel yesterday?"
"They didn't so far as I know."
"Miss Fulton said nothing to you about a quarrel?"
"No."
Bristow was silent a few seconds.
"I think that's all, Mr. Morley. We're much obliged to you. Isn't that all, chief?"
"Yes, for the present," Greenleaf answered with a long breath, thankful the other had been there to do the questioning. "That seems to cover everything."
"I wonder if I could see Miss Fulton," Morley said, rising.
"If the doctor will allow it," Greenleaf told him. "You might go down there and see."
Morley put his hand on the doorknob.
"By the way," interjected Bristow once more, and this time his voice was cold, steely; "Mr. Morley, did you wear rubbers last night?"
"Rubbers?" parroted Morley.
"Yes—rubbers."
Morley stared a moment, as if calculating something.
"Why, yes; I believe I did," he said finally.
Greenleaf, glancing down at Morley's feet, noticed what Bristow had seen three seconds after Morley had entered the room—his feet were large, abnormally large for a man of his build. He must have worn a number ten or, perhaps, a number eleven shoe.
"I thought so," Bristow observed carelessly. "I sleep out on my sleeping porch at the back of the house here, and I knew it rained hard from early in the night until seven this morning."
Morley, without commenting on this, looked at the two men.
"Is there anything more?" he inquired.
"No, nothing more; thanks," said Bristow.
The young man went out quickly, slamming the door in his haste.
Bristow answered Greenleaf's questioning look:
"There was no use in our looking round the outside of the house for possible footprints this morning. If there had been any, the rain would have cleared them away. But, when I first ran up on the porch—it's roofed, like mine here—I noticed the dried marks made by a wet shoe hours before, a large shoe, by a large shoe with a rubber sole, or by a rubber shoe."
"The devil you did!"
"I did.—But it may turn out that Perry, or somebody else, or several other people, wore rubber shoes, or rubber-soled shoes last night. Negroes always have large feet."
"Well, I hope my man's found this Perry nigger," said the chief. "He's the fellow we want."
“And yet,” ruminated Bristow, “what young Morley said is interesting enough—two quarreling sisters living together—one decked in jewels, the other deprived of them—the jewels gone this morning.” He smiled and waved his hands comprehensively. “As long as it is a mystery, let’s have it a real mystery. Let’s look at all sides of it. There’s Perry. There’s Morley. And—there’s Miss Maria Fulton.”
"Miss Fulton!"
"Yes—a possibility."
"Oh, I don't connect her up with it any." The chief's voice was tinged with ridicule.
Bristow answered a knock on the door and opened to admit a uniformed policeman.
"Beg your pardon, chief," said the officer, "but I had something for a Mr. Morley. The men on guard down there at Number Five wouldn't let me in to see him—said I'd better see you."
"What have you got, Avery?" asked Greenleaf.