"Edward Clayte," at the name, Cummings clanked around front to stare. "I hold a warrant for your arrest for the theft of nine hundred and eighty seven thousand dollars from the Van Ness Avenue Savings Bank of San Francisco."
He made a sick effort to square his shoulders; fumbled with his hair to toss it back from its straight-down sleekness, as Clayte, to the pompadoured crest of Vandeman. How often I had seen that gesture, not understanding its significance. Cummings, at my side, drew in a breath, with,
"Why – damn it! – he is Clayte!"
"All right," I let the words go from the corner of my mouth at the lawyer, in the same hushed tones he'd used. "See how you like this next one," and finished, loud enough so all might hear,
"And I charge you, Edward Clayte – Bronson Vandeman – with the murder of Thomas Gilbert."
CHAPTER XXIX
UNMASKED
Disgrace was in the air; the country club had seen its vice president in handcuffs. There was a great gathering up of petticoats and raising of moral umbrellas to keep clear of the dirty splashings. It made me think of a certain social occasion in Israel some thousands of years ago, when Absalom, at his own party, put a raw one over on his brother Amnon, and all the rest of King David's sons looked at each other with jaws sagging, and "every man gat himself up upon his mule and fled." Here, it was limousines; more than one noble chariot – filled with members of the faction who'd helped to rush Vandeman into office over the claims of older members – rolled discredited down the drive.
Yet a ball is the hardest thing in the world to kill; like a lizard, if you break it in two, the head and tail go right on wriggling independently. Also, behind this masked affair at the country club was the business proposition of a lot of blossom festival visitors from all over the state who mustn't be disappointed. By the time I'd finished out in front, getting my prisoner off to the lock-up, sending Eddie Hughes, with Capehart and the other helpers he'd picked up to guard the Vandeman bungalow, handed over to the Santa Ysobel police the matter of finding Fong Ling, and turned back to see how Barbara was getting on, the music sounded once more, the rhythmic movement of many feet.
"The boys have got it started again," Jim Edwards joined me in the hall, his tone still lowered and odd from the amazement of the thing. "Curious, that business in there yesterday," a nod indicated the little writing room toward which we moved. "Bronse stepping in, brisk and cool, for you to question him; pleasant, ordinary looking chap. Would you say he had it in his head right then to murder you – or Barbara – if you came too hot on his trail?"
"Me?" I echoed sheepishly. "He never paid me that compliment. He wasn't afraid of me. I think Barbara sealed her own fate, so far as he was concerned, when she let Worth pique her into doing a concentrating stunt at Vandeman's dinner table last night. The man saw that nothing she turned that light on could long stay hidden. He must have decided, then, to put her out of the way. As for his wife – well, however much or little she knew, she'd not defend Barbara Wallace."
At that, Edwards gave me a look, but all he said was,
"Cummings has suffered a complete change of heart, it seems. I left him in the telephone booth, just now, calling up Dykeman. He'll certainly keep the wires hot for Worth."
"He'd better," I agreed; and only Edwards's slight, dark smile answered me.
"There's a side entrance here," he explained mildly, as we came to the turn of the hall. "I'll unlock it; and when Barbara's ready to be taken home, we can get her out without every one gaping at her."
He was still at the lock, his back to me, when a door up front slammed, and a Spanish Cavalier came bustling down the corridor, pulling off a mask to show me Bowman's face, announcing,
"I think you want me in there. That girl should have competent medical attention."
"She has that already," I spoke over my shoulder. "And if she hadn't, do you think she'd let you touch her, Bowman? Man, you've got no human feeling. If you had a shred, you'd know that to her it is as true you tried to take Worth's life with your lying testimony as it is that Vandeman murdered Worth's father with a gun."
"Hah!" the doctor panted at me; he was fairly sober, but still a bit thick in the wits. "You people ain't classing me with this crook Vandeman, are you? You can't do that. No – of course – Laura's set you all against me."
Edwards straightened up from the door. With his first look at that fierce, dark face, the doctor began to back off, finally scuttling around the turn into the main hall at what was little less than a run.
They had Barbara sitting in the big Morris chair while they finished adjusting bandages and garments. Our young cub of a doctor, silver buttoned velveteen coat off, sleeves rolled up, hailed us cheerily,
"That bullet went where it could get the most blood for the least harm, I'd say. Have her all right in a jiffy. At that, if it had been a little further to one side – "
And I knew that Edward Clayte's bullet – Bronson Vandeman's – had narrowly missed Barbara's heart.
"This wonderful girl!" the doctor went on with young enthusiasm, as he bandaged and pinned. "Sitting up there, wounded as she was, and forgetting it, she looked to me more than human. Sort of effect as though light came from her."
"I was ashamed of myself back there in the Square, Mr. Boyne," Barbara's voice, good and strong, cut across his panegyric. "Never in my life did I feel like that before. My brain wasn't functioning normally at all. I was confused, full of indecision." She mentioned that state, so painfully familiar to ordinary humanity, as most people would speak of being raving crazy. "It was agonizing," she smiled a little at the others. "Poor Mr. Boyne helping me along – we'd got somehow into a crowd. And I was just a lump of flesh. I hardly knew where we were. Then suddenly came the sound of the shot, the stinging, burning feeling in my side. It knocked my body down; but my mind came clear; I could use it."
"I'll say you could," I smiled. "From then on, Bill Capehart and I were the lumps of flesh that you heaved around without explanation."
"There wasn't time; and I was afraid you'd find out what had happened to me, and wouldn't bring me here," she said simply. "I knew that the one motive for silencing me was the work I'd been doing for Mr. Boyne."
"Sure," I said, light breaking on me. "And every possible suspect in the Gilbert murder case was under this roof – or supposed to be – the grand march would be the show-down as to that. And just then the clock struck! Poor girl!"
"It was a race against time," Barbara agreed. "If we could get here first, hold the door against whoever came flying to get in, we'd have the one who shot me."
"But, Barbara child," Laura Bowman was working at a sweater sleeve on the bandaged side. "You did get here and caught Bronson Vandeman; it had worked out all right. Why did you risk sitting up in that strained pose, wounded as you were, to concentrate?"
"For Worth. I had to relate this crime to the one for which he'd been arrested. Within the hour, I'd gathered facts that showed me Edward Clayte killed Worth's father. When I brought that man and his crime to stand before me, and Bronson Vandeman and his crime to stand beside it – as I can bring things when I concentrate on them – I found they dove-tailed – the impossible was true – these two were one man." She looked around at the four of us, wondering at her, and finished, "Can't they take me home now, doctor?"
"Sit and rest a few minutes. Have the door open," the young fellow said. And on the instant there came a call for me from the side entrance.
"Mr. Boyne – are you in there? May I speak to you, please?"
It was Skeet Thornhill's voice. I went out into the entry. There, climbing down from the old Ford truck, leaving its engine running, was Skeet herself. Her glance went first to the door I closed behind me.
"Yes," I answered its question. "She's in there." Then, moved by the frank misery of her eyes, "She'll be all right. Very little hurt."
She said something under her breath; I thought it was "Thank God!" looked about the deserted side entrance, seemed to listen to the flooding of music and movement from the ballroom, then lifting to mine a face so pale that its freckles stood out on it, faltered a step closer and studied me.
"They phoned us," scarcely above a whisper. "Mother sent me for the girls and – Ina. Mr. Boyne," a break in her voice, "am I going to be able to take Ina back with me? Or is she – do they – ?"
"Wait," I said. "Here she comes now," as Cummings brought young Mrs. Vandeman toward us. She moved haughtily, head up, a magnificent evening wrap thrown over her costume, and saw her sister without surprise.
"Skeet," she crossed and stood with her back to me, "there's been some trouble here. Keep it from mother if you can. I'm leaving – but we'll get it all fixed up. How did you get here? Can I take you back in the limousine?"
The big, closed car, one of Vandeman's wedding gifts to her, purred slowly up the side drive, circling Skeet's old truck, and stopped a little beyond. Skeet gave it one glance, then reached a twitching hand to catch on the big silken sleeve.
"You can't go to the bungalow, Ina. As I came past, they were placing men around it to – to watch it."
"What!" Ina wheeled on us, looking from one to the other. "Mr. Boyne – Mr. Cummings – who had that done?"
"Does it matter?" I countered. She made me tired.
"Does it matter?" she snapped up my words, "Am I to be treated as if – as though – "
Even Ina Vandeman's effrontery wouldn't carry her to a finish on that. I completed it for her, explicitly,
"Mrs. Vandeman, whether you are detained as an accomplice or merely a material witness, I'm responsible for you. I would have the authority to allow you to go with your sister; but you'll not be permitted to even enter the bungalow."
"It's nearly midnight," she protested. "I have no clothes but this costume. I must go home."
"Oh, come on!" Skeet pleaded. "Don't you see that doesn't do any good, Ina? You can get something at our house to wear."
She gave me a long look, her chin still high, her eyes hard and unreadable. Then, "For the present, I shall go to a hotel." She laid a hand on Skeet's shoulder, but it was only to push her away. "Tell mother," evenly, "that I'll not bring my trouble into her house. Oh – you want Ernestine and Cora? Well, get them and go." And with firm step she walked to her car.
I nodded to Cummings.
"Have one of Dykeman's men pick her up and hang tight," I said, and he smiled back understandingly, with,
"Already done, Boyne. I want to speak to Miss Wallace – if I may. Will you please see for me?"
A moment later, he marched shining and jingling, in through a door that he left open behind him, pulled off his Roman helmet as though it had been a hat, and stood unconsciously fumbling that shoe-brush thing they trim those ancient lids with.
"Barbara," he met the eyes of the girl in the chair unflinchingly, "you told me last night that the only words I ever could speak to you would be in the way of an apology. Will you hear one now? I'm ready to make it. Talk doesn't count much; but I'm going the limit to put Worth Gilbert's release through."
There was a long silence, Barbara looking at him quite unmoved. Behind that steady gaze lay the facts that Worth Gilbert's life and honor had been threatened by this man's course; that she herself was only alive because the bullet of that criminal whom his action unconsciously shielded missed its aim by an inch: Worth's life, her life, their love and all that might mean – and Barbara had eyes you could read – I didn't envy Cummings as he faced her. Finally she said quietly,
"I'll accept your apology, Mr. Cummings, when Worth is free."
CHAPTER XXX
A CONFESSION
In the dingy office of the city prison, with its sand boxes and barrel stove, its hacked old desks, dusty books and papers, I watched Bronson Vandeman, and wondered to see how the man I had known played in and out across his face with the man Edward Clayte, whom I had tried to imagine, whom nobody could describe.
Helping to recover Clayte's loot for Worth Gilbert looked to the opposition their best bet for squaring themselves. Dykeman from his sick bed, had dug us up a stenographer; Cummings had climbed out of his tin clothes and come along with us to the jail. They wanted the screws put on; but I intended to handle Vandeman in my own way. I had halted the lawyer on the lock-up threshold, with,
"Cummings, I want you to keep still in here. When I'm done with the man, you can question him all you want – if he's left anything to be told." I answered a doubtful look, "Did you see his face there in the ball room as he looked up at Barbara Wallace? He thinks that girl knows everything, like a supreme being. He's still so shaken that he'd spill out anything – everything. He'll hardly suppose he's telling us anything we don't know."
And Vandeman bore out expectations. Now, provided with a raincoat to take the place of his Mandarin robe, his trousers still the lilac satin ones of that costume, he surveyed us and our preparations with a half smile as we settled our stenographer and took chairs ourselves.
"I look like hell – what?" He spoke fast as a man might with a drink ahead. But it was not alcohol that was loosening his tongue. "Why can't some one go up to my place and get me a decent suit of clothes? God knows I've plenty there – closets full of them."
"Time enough when th' Shurff gets here," Roll Winchell, the town marshall grunted at him. "I'm not taking any chances on you, Mr. Vandeman. You'll do me as you are."
"Stick a smoke in my face, Cummings," came next in a voice that twanged like a stretched string. "Damn these bracelets! Light it, can't you? Light it." He puffed eagerly, got to his feet and began walking up and down the room, glancing at us from time to time, raising the manacled hands grotesquely to his cigar, drawing in a breath as though to speak, then shaking his head, grinning a little and walking on. I knew the mood; the moment was coming when he must talk. The necessity to reel out the whole thing to whomever would listen was on him like a sneeze. It's always so at this stage of the game.
For all the hullabaloo in the streets, we were quiet enough here, since the lock-up at Santa Ysobel lurks demurely, as such places are apt to do, in the rear of the building whose garbage can it is. Our pacing captive could keep silent no longer. Shooting a sidelong glance at me, he broke out,
"I'm not a common crook, Boyne, even if I do come of a family of them, and my father's in Sing Sing. I put him there. They'd not have caught him without. He was an educated man – never worked anything but big stuff. At that, what was the best he could do – or any of them? Make a haul, and all they got out of it was a spell of easy money that they only had the chance to spend while they were dodging arrest. Sooner or later every one of them I knew got put away for a longer or shorter term. Growing up like that, getting my education in the public schools daytimes, and having a finish put on it nights with the gang, I decided that I was going to be, not honest, but the hundredth man – the thousandth – who can pull off a big thing and neither have to hide nor go to prison."
This was promising; a little different from the ordinary brag; I signaled inconspicuously to our stenographer to keep right on the job.
"When I was twenty-four years old, I saw my chance to shake the gang and try out my own idea," Clayte rattled it off feelinglessly. "It was a lone hand for me. My father had made a stake by a forgery; checks on the City bank. I knew where the money was hid, eight thousand and seventy nine dollars. It would just about do me. I framed the old man – I told you he was in Sing Sing now – took my working capital and came out here to the Coast. That money had to make me rich for life, respected, comfortable. I figured that my game was as safe as dummy whist."
"Yeh," said Roll Winchell, the marshal, gloomily, "them high-toned Eastern crooks always comin' out here thinkin' they'll find the Coast a soft snap."
"Two years I worked as a messenger for the San Francisco Trust Company," Clayte's voice ran right on past Winchell's interruption, "a model employee, straight as they come; then decided they were too big for me to tackle, and used their recommendation to get a clerk's job with the Van Ness Avenue concern. I was after the theft of at least a half million dollars, with a perfect alibi; and the smaller institution suited my plan. It took me four years to work up to paying teller, but I wasn't hurrying things. I was using my capital now to build that perfect alibi."
He glanced around nervously as the stenographer turned a leaf, then went on,
"I'd picked out this town for the home of the man I was going to be. It suited me, because it was on a branch line of the railway, hardly used at all by men whose business was in the city, and off the main highway of automobile travel; besides, I liked the place – I've always liked it."
"Sure flattered," came the growl as Winchell stirred in his chair.
"My bungalow and grounds cost me four thousand; at that it was a run-down place and I got it cheap. The mahogany – old family pieces that I was supposed to bring in from the East – came high. Yet maybe you'd be surprised how the idea took with me. I used to scrimp and save off my salary at the bank to buy things for the place, to keep up the right scale of living for Bronson Vandeman, traveling agent for eastern manufacturers, not at home much in Santa Ysobel yet, but a man of fine family, rich prospects, and all sorts of a good fellow, settled in the place for the rest of his days."
He turned suddenly and grinned at me.
"You swallowed it whole, Boyne, when you walked into my house last night – the old family furniture I bought in Los Angeles, the second-hand library, that family portrait, with a ring on my finger, and the same painted in on what was supposed to be my father's hand."
"Sure," I nodded amiably, "You had me fooled."
"And without a bit of crude make-up or disguise," he rubbed it in. "It was a change of manner and psychology for mine. As Edward Clayte – and that's not my name, either, any more than Vandeman – I was description-proof. I meant to be – and I was. It took – her – the girl," his face darkened and he jerked at his cigar, "to deduce that a nonentity who could get away with nearly a million dollars and leave no trail was some man!"
I raised my head with a start and stared at the man in his raincoat and lilac silk pantaloons.
"That's so," I fed it to him, "She had a name for you. She called you the wonder man."
"Did she!" a pleased smile. "Well, I'll give her right on that. I was some little wonder man. Listen," his insistent over-stimulated voice went eagerly on, "The beauty of my scheme was that up to the very last move, there was nothing criminal in my leading this double life. You see – as I got stronger and stronger here in Santa Ysobel, I bought a good machine, a speedster that could burn up the road. Many's the stag supper I've had with the boys there in my bungalow, and been back behind the wicket as Edward Clayte in the Van Ness Avenue bank on time next morning. I was in that room at the St. Dunstan about as much as a fellow's in his front hall. I walked through it to Henry J. Brundage's room at the Nugget; I stayed there more often than I did at the St. Dunstan, unless I came on here.
"I'd left marriage out. Then that night four years ago when Ina had her little run-in with old Tom Gilbert and got her engagement to Worth smashed, I saw there might be girls right in the class I was trying to break into that would be possible for a man like me. The date for our wedding was set, when Thomas Gilbert remarked to me one afternoon as we were coming off the golf links together, that he was buying a block of Van Ness Savings Bank stock. For a minute I felt like caving in his head, then and there, with the golf club I carried. What a hell of a thing to happen, right at the last this way! Ten chances to one I'd have this man to silence; but it must be done right. Not much room for murder in so full a career as mine – holding down a teller's job, running for the vice presidency of the country club, getting married in style – but every time I'd look up from behind my teller's grille, and see any one near the size of old Gilbert walk in the front door, it gave me the shivers. I'd put more than eight years of planning and hard work into this scheme, and you'll admit, Boyne, that what I had was some alibi. A wedding like that in a town of this size makes a big noise. I managed to be back and forth so much that people got the idea I was hardly out of Santa Ysobel. The Friday night before, I had a stag supper at my house, and Saturday morning if any one had called, Fong Ling would have told them I was sleeping late and couldn't be disturbed. On the forenoon of my wedding day, then, I sat as Edward Clayte in my teller's cage, the suitcase I had carried back and forth empty for so many Saturdays now loaded with currency and securities, not one of which was traceable, and whose amount I believed would run close to a million. It was within three minutes of closing time, when some one rapped on the counter at my wicket, and I looked straight up into the face of old Tom Gilbert.
"I saw a flash of doubtful recognition in his eyes, but didn't dare to avoid them while counting bills and silver to pay his check. If I had done so, he would certainly have known me. As it was, I saw that I convinced him – almost. I watched him as he went out, saw him hesitate a little at the door of Knapp's office – he wasn't quite sure enough. I knew the man. The instant he made certain, he would act.
"The old devil wasn't on terms to attend the reception at the Thornhill place, but I located him in an aisle seat, when I first came from the vestry with my best man. All through the ceremony I felt his eyes boring into my back. When I finally faced him, as Ina and I walked out, man and wife, I knew he recognized me, and almost expected him to step out and denounce me. But no – a fellow leading a double life was all he saw in it; bigamy was the worst he'd suspect me of at the moment. He didn't give Ina much, wouldn't lift a finger to defend her.
"Meantime, the manner of his taking off lay easy to my hand. I'd studied the situation through that skylight, seen Ed Hughes juggle the bolts with his magnets, and mapped the thing out. Gilbert killed there, the room found bolted, was a cinch for suicide. When the reception at the Thornhill house was over, I made an excuse of something needed for the journey, and started across to my bungalow. It was common for all of us to cross through the lawns; I hid in the shrubbery.
"There were people with Gilbert, no chance for me to do anything. I stood there and nearly went out of my hide with impatience over the delays, while he had his row with Worth, when Laura Bowman and Jim Edwards came and braced him to let up on his persecution of them. Mrs. Bowman finally left; he went with her toward the front. Now was my chance; I dodged into the study, jerked his own pistol from its holster, squeezed myself in behind the open door and waited. He came back; I let him get into the room, past me a little, and when at some sound I made, he turned, the muzzle of the gun was shoved against his chest and fired.
"I'd barely finished pressing Gilbert's fingers around the pistol butt when I heard a cry outside, jumped to the door, shut and bolted it just as my mother-in-law ran in across the lawns. I gathered that she'd been there earlier to get those three leaves out of the diary that you were so interested in, Boyne; had just read them and come back to have it out with old Tom. She hung around for five minutes, I should say, beating on the door, calling, asking if anything was wrong.
"My one big mistake in the study was that diary of 1920. It lay open on the desk where he'd been writing. It did tell of his having identified me as Clayte. I'd not expected it, and so I didn't handle it well. Time pressed. I couldn't carry it with me; I tore out the leaf, stuck the book into the drainpipe, and ran.
"And after all," he summed up, "my plans would have gone through on schedule; you never could have touched me with your clumsy, police-detective methods, if it hadn't been for the girl."
He dropped his head and stood brooding a moment, demanded another smoke, got it, shrugged off some thought with a gesture, and finished,
"I was in too deep to turn. It was her life – or mine. Things went contrary. We couldn't get her to come out to the masquerade, where it would have been easy. With those two Mandarin costumes, Fong Ling in my place, I had my time from the hour we put on the masks till midnight. Another perfect alibi. Well – it didn't work. They say you have to shoot a witch with a silver bullet. And she's more than human."
A siren's dry shriek as the Sheriff's gasoline buggy made its way through the crowded street outside. Cummings raised his brows at me, got my nod of permission, and shot his first question at the prisoner.
"Vandeman, where's the money?"
"Not within a hundred miles of here," instantly.
"You took it south with you – on your wedding trip?" Cummings would persist. But our man, so expansive a moment ago, had, as I knew he would at direct mention of his loot, turned sullen, and he started for the San Jose jail, mum as an oyster.