CHAPTER XII
A MURDER
I stood at the door and watched until I saw first Chung's head come into the light on the kitchen porch, then Jim Edwards's black poll follow it. I waited until both had gone into the house and the door was shut, before I went back to Barbara and Worth. They were speaking together in low tones over at the hearth. The three of us were alone; and the blood-stain on the rug, out of sight there in the shadow beyond the table, would seem to cry out as a fourth.
"Barbara," I broke in across their talk, "who was the woman who came here to this place last night?"
She didn't answer me. Instead, it was Worth who spoke.
"Better come here and listen to what Bobs has been saying to me, Jerry, before you ask any questions."
I crossed and stood between the two young people.
"Well," I grunted; and though Barbara's face was white, her eyes big and black, she answered me bravely,
"Mr. Gilbert did not kill himself. Worth doesn't think so, either."
"What!" It was jolted out of me. After a moment's thought, I finished, "Then I've got to know who the woman was that visited this room last night."
For a long while she made no reply, studying Worth's profile as he stared steadily into the fire. No signal passed between them, but finally she came to her decision and said,
"Mr. Boyne, ask Worth what he thinks I ought to say to that."
Instead, "Who was it, Worth?" I snapped, speaking to the back of the young man's head. The red came up into the girl's face, and her eyes flashed; but Worth merely shrugged averted shoulders.
"You can search me," he said, and left it there.
I looked from one to the other of these young people: Worth, whom I loved as I might have my own son had I been so fortunate as to possess one; this girl who had made a place of warmth for herself in my heart in less than a day, whose loyalty to my boy I was certain I might count on. How different this affair must look to them from the face it wore to me, an old police detective, who had bulled through many inquiries like this, the corpse itself, perhaps, lying in the back of the room, instead of the blood-stain we had there on the rug; what was practically the Third Degree being applied to relatives and friends; with the squalid prospect of a court trial ahead of us all. If they'd seen as much of this sort of thing as I had, they wouldn't be holding me up now, tying my hands that were so willing to help, by this fine-spun, overstrained notion of shielding a woman's name.
"Barbara," I began – I knew an appeal to the unaccountable Worth would get me nowhere – "the facts we've got to deal with here are a possible murder, with this lad the last person known – by us, of course – to have seen his father alive. We know, too, that they quarreled bitterly. We know all this. Outside people, men who are interested, and more or less hostile, were aware that Worth needed money – needs it yet, for that matter – a large sum. I suppose it is a question of time when it will be known that Worth came here last night; and when it is known, do you realize what it will mean?"
Worth had sat through this speech without the quiver of a muscle, and no word came from him as I paused for a reply. Little Barbara, big eyes boring into me as though to read all that was in the back of my mind, nodded gravely but did not speak. I crossed to the shelves and took down the diary whose leather back bore the date of 1916. As I opened it, finding the place where its pages had been removed, I continued,
"You and I know – we three here know – " I included Worth in my statement – "that the crime was neither suicide nor patricide; but it is likely we must have proof of that fact. Unless we find the murderer – "
"But the motive – there would have to be motive."
Barbara struck right at the core of the thing. She didn't check at the mere material facts of how a murder could have been done, who might have had opportunity. The fundamental question of why it should have been was her immediate interest.
"I believe I've the motive here," I said and thrust the mutilated volume into her hand. "Some one stole these leaves out of Mr. Gilbert's diary. The books are filled with intimate details of the affairs of people – things which people prefer should not be known – names, details and dates written out completely. It's likely murder was done last night to get possession of those pages."
She went to the desk and glanced over the book; not the minute examination with the reading glass which I had given it; that mere flirt of a glance which, when I had first noticed it the night before at Tait's, skimming across that description of Clayte, had seemed so inadequate. Then she turned to me.
"Mr. Gilbert cut these out himself," she pronounced.
That brought Worth's head up and his face around to stare at her.
"You say my father removed something he had written?" he asked. Barbara nodded. "He never changed a decision – and those books were his decisions."
"Then this wasn't a correction, but he cut it out. Can't you see, Mr. Boyne? Those leaves were removed by a man who respected the book and was as careful in his mutilation of it as he was in its making. It is precisely written – I'm referring to workmanship, not its literary quality – carefully margined, evenly indented on the paragraph beginnings. And so, in this removal of three leaves, the cutting was done with a sharp knife drawn along the edge of a ruler – " I picked up from where they lay on the blotting pad, a small pearl-handled knife, its sharp blade open, and the ruler I had seen when looking down from the skylight, and placed them before her. She nodded and continued,
"There is a bit of margin left so no other leaves can be loosened by this removal. The marking out of the run-over has been neatly ruled, done so recently that the ink is not yet black – done with that ink in the stand. It was blotted with this." She lifted a hand-blotter to show me the print of a line of ink. There were other markings on the face of the soft paper, and I took it eagerly. Barbara smiled.
"You will get little from that," she said. I had not even seen her give it attention. "Scattered words – and parts of words, blotted frequently as they were written. Perhaps, with care, we might learn something, but we can turn more easily to the last pages of his diary and – "
"There are no last pages," I interrupted. "The 1920 book is missing."
"Gone – stolen?" she exclaimed. It brought a smile to my face. For the first time in my experience of this pretty, little bunch of brains, she had hazarded a guess.
"Gone," I admitted coolly – a bit sarcastically. "I've no reason to say stolen."
"But – yes, you have – you have, Mr. Boyne! If it is gone, it was stolen. Is it gone – are you sure it is gone?" Eagerly her eyes were searching desk, cabinet, the shelf where the other diaries made their long row. I satisfied her on that score.
"I have searched the study thoroughly; it is not in this room."
"Was here last night," Worth cut in. "I saw it on the desk."
"And was stolen last night," Barbara reaffirmed, quickly. "These books are too big to be slipped into a pocket, so we can't believe it was left upon Mr. Gilbert's person; and he wouldn't lend it – wouldn't willingly let it go from his possession. So it was stolen; and the man who stole it – killed him." She shuddered.
That was going too swift for me to follow, but I saw on Worth Gilbert's face his acceptance of it. Either conviction of Barbara's infallibility, or some knowledge locked up inside his own chest, made him certain the diary had been stolen, and the thief was his father's murderer. In a flash, I remembered his words, "putting every damn' word of our row into it," and I shot straight at him,
"Did you take that book, Worth?"
He only shook his head and answered,
"You heard what Bobs said, Jerry."
If he took the book he killed his father; that was Barbara's inference, Worth's acceptance. I threw back my shoulders to cast off the suspicion, then reached across to place my fingers under the girl's hand and pull from it the only record of that last written page, the blotter.
"Will you read me that?" I asked her. "Every word and part of a word – every letter?"
Her eyes smiled into mine with a reassurance that was like balm. Worth rose and found her a hand-glass on the mantel, passing it to her, and with this to reverse the scrawlings, she read and I wrote down in my memorandum book two complete words, two broken words and five single letters picked from overlying marks that were too confused to be decipherable. Though the three of us struggled with them, they held no meaning.
Worth's interest quickly ceased.
"I'll join Jim Edwards in the house," he said, but I stopped him.
"One minute, Worth. There was a woman visitor here last night. It would seem she carried away with her the diary of 1920 and three leaves from the book of 1916. I want you – you and Barbara – to tell me what you know that happened here in Santa Ysobel on the dates of the missing pages, May 31 and June 1, 1916."
Barbara accepted the task, turning that wonderful cinematograph memory back, and murmured,
"I never tried recollecting on just a bare date this way, but – " then glanced around at me and finished – "nothing happened to me in Santa Ysobel then, because I wasn't in Santa Ysobel. I was in San Francisco and – "
"And I was in Flanders, so that lets me out," Worth broke in brusquely. "I'll go into the house."
"Wait, Worth." I placed a hand on his shoulder. "Go on, Barbara; you had thought of something."
"Yes. Father died in January of that year, and in March I had to vacate the house. It had been sold, and they wanted to fix it over. I left Santa Ysobel on the eighteenth of March, but they didn't get into the house until June first."
Again Worth interrupted.
"Which jogs my memory for an unexciting detail." He smiled enigmatically. "I was jilted June first."
"In Flanders?" How many times had this lad been jilted?
"No. Right here. I wasn't here of course, but the letter which did the trick was written here, and bore that date – June one, 1916."
"How do you get the date so pat?"
"It was handed me by the mail orderly – I was on the Verdun sector then – on the morning of the Fourth of July. Remember the date the letter was written because of the quick time it made. Most of our mail took from six weeks to eternity. What are you smiling at, Bobs?"
"Just a little – you don't mind, do you? – at your saying you remember Ina's letter by the quick time it made in reaching you."
"Who bought your house, Barbara?" I asked her.
"Dr. Bowman – or rather Mrs. Bowman's uncle bought it and gave it to her."
"And they went in on the first of June, 1916?" I was all excitement, turning the pages of the diary to get to certain points I remembered. "What can either one of you tell me about the state of affairs at that time between Dr. Bowman and his wife – and that man who was just in here – Jim Edwards?"
Worth turned a hostile back; Barbara seemed to shrink in her chair. I hated like a whipping to pull this sort of stuff on them, but I knew that Barbara's knowledge of Worth's danger would reconcile her to whatever painful thing must be done, and I had to know who was that visitor of last night.
"Is that – that stuff in those damnable books?" I saw the hunch of Worth's broad shoulders.
"Some of it is – some of it has been cut out," I replied.
"And you connect Jim Edwards with this crime?"
"I don't connect him – he connects himself – by them, and by his manner."
"Burn them!" He faced me, came over and reached for the book. "Dump the whole rotten mess into the fire, Jerry, and be done with it."
"Easy said, but that would sure be a short cut to trouble. Tell me, I've got to know, if you think this man Edwards – under great provocation – capable of – well, of killing a fellow creature."
"Jerry," Worth took the book out of my hand and laid it on the table, "what you want to do is to forget this – dirt – that you've been reading, and go at this thing without prejudice. If you open any trails and they lead in my direction, don't be afraid to follow them. This thing of trying to find a criminal in some one that my father has already deeply injured – some one that he's made life a hell for – so that suspicion needn't be directed to me, makes me sick. If I'd allow you to do it, I'd be yellow clear through."
That was about the longest speech I'd heard Worth Gilbert make since his return from France. And he meant every word of it, too; but it didn't suit me. This "Hew to the line" stuff is all right until the chips begin whacking the head of your friend. In this case there wasn't a doubt in my mind that when a breath of suspicion got out that Thomas Gilbert had not killed himself, that minute would see the first finger point at Thomas Gilbert's son as the murderer. So I grumbled,
"Just the same, Edwards has something on his mind about last night."
"He has – and it's pretty nearly tearing him to pieces," Worth admitted, but would go no further.
"He was here last night, I'm sure – and Mrs. Bowman was with him," I ventured.
Barbara, who had been sitting through this her eyes on Worth, turned from him to me and pronounced, gently,
"Yes, he was here, and Laura was with him."
"Bobs!" Worth spoke so sternly that she glanced up startled. "I'll not stand for you throwing suspicion on Jim."
"Did I – do that?" her lip trembled. Worth's eyes were on the fire.
"Don't quarrel with the girl," I remonstrated. Barbara had told me the visitor; I covered my elation with, "She's only looking out for your safety."
"I can look out for myself," curtly. He turned hard eyes on us. It made me feel put away from him, chucked out from his friendship. "And I never quarreled with anybody in my life. Sometimes – " he turned from one to the other of us, speaking slowly, "Sometimes I seem to antagonize people, for no reason that I can see; and sometimes I fight; but I never quarrel."
"No offense intended – or taken," I assured him hastily. My heart was full of his danger, and I told myself that it was his misery spoke, and not the true Worth Gilbert. But a very pale and subdued Barbara said tremulously,
"I guess I'd better go home now," suggesting, after the very slightest pause, "Mr. Boyne can take me."
"Don't, Bobsie." Worth's voice was gentle again, but absent. It sounded as though he had already forgotten both of us, and our possible cause of offense. "Go to the house with Jerry. I'll bar the door and follow."
"Can't I help with that?" I offered.
"No. Eddie will give me a hand if I need it. Go on. I'll be with you in a minute."
CHAPTER XIII
DR. BOWMAN
But it was considerably more than a minute before Worth followed us to the house. We walked slowly, talking; when I looked back from the kitchen porch, Worth had already come outside, and I thought Eddie Hughes was with him, though I heard no voices and couldn't be sure on account of the shrubbery between.
Getting into the house we found that Chung had the downstairs all opened up through, lights going, heat turned on from the basement furnace; everywhere that tended, homelike appearance a competent servant gives a place. On the hall table as we passed, I noticed a doctorish top coat, with a primly folded muffler laid across it.
"Dr. Bowman is here," Barbara said hardly above her breath.
We listened; no sound of voices from the living room; then I got the tramp of feet that moved back and forth in there. We opened the door, and there were the two men; a queer proposition!
Bowman had taken a chair pretty well in the middle of the room. It was Jim Edwards whose feet I had heard as he roamed about. No word was going between them; apparently they hadn't spoken to each other at all; the looks that met or avoided were those strange looks of persons who live in lengthened and what might be termed intimate hostility.
"Ah – Boyne – isn't it?" Bowman greeted me; I thought our coming relieved the situation. He shook hands, then turned to Barbara with, "Mrs. Thornhill said you were here; I told her I would bring you back with me."
I rather wondered not to hear him insist on being taken at once to the study, but his next words gave the reason. He'd reached Santa Ysobel too late for the inquest itself, but not too late to make what he informed us was a thorough investigation of everything it treated of.
Barbara and I found places on the davenport; Edwards prowled up and down the other end of the room, openly in torment. Those stormy black eyes of his were seldom off Bowman, while the doctor's gray, heavy-lidded gaze never got beyond the toes of the restless man's moving boots. He had begun a grumbling tale of the coroner's incompetence and neglect to reopen the inquest when he, the family physician, arrived, as though that were important, when Worth came in.
Instantly the doctor was on his feet, had paced up to the new master of the house, and began pumping his arm in a long handshake, while he passed out those platitudes of condolence a man of his sort deals in at such a time. The stuff I'd been reading in those diaries had told me what was the root and branch of his friendship with the dead man; it made the hair at the back of my neck lift to hear him boasting of it in Jim Edwards' presence, and know what I knew. "And, my dear boy," he finished, "they tell me you've not been to view the body – yet. I thought perhaps you'd like to go – with me. I can have my machine here in a minute. No?" as Worth declined with a wordless shake of the head.
I hoped he'd leave then; but he didn't. Instead, he turned back to his chair, explaining,
"If Mrs. Thornhill's cook hadn't phoned me, when Mrs. Thornhill had a second collapse last night, I suppose I should be in San Francisco still. The coroner seemed to think there was no necessity for having competent medical testimony as to the time of death, and the physical condition of the deceased. I should have been wired for. The inquest should have been delayed until I arrived. The way the thing was managed was disgraceful."
"It was merciful." Jim Edwards spoke as though unwillingly, in a muttered undertone. Evidently it was the first word he'd addressed to Bowman – if he could be said to address him now, as he finished, "I hadn't thought of an inquest. Yet of course there'd be one in a case of suicide."
Bowman only heard and wholly misconstrued him, snatching at the concluding words,
"Of course it was suicide. Done with his own weapon, taken from the holster where we know it always hung, fully loaded. The muzzle had been pressed so close against the breast when the cartridge exploded that the woolen vest had taken fire. I should say it had smouldered for some time; there was a considerable hole burned in the cloth. The flesh around the wound was powder-scarred."
Worth took it like a red Indian. I could see by the glint of his eye as it flickered over the doctor's face, the smooth white hands, the whole smooth personality, that the boy disliked, and had always disliked him. Yet he listened silently.
I rather hoped by leading questions to get Bowman to express the opinion that Thomas Gilbert had been killed in the small hours of the morning. Circumstances then would have fitted in with Eddie Hughes. Eddie Hughes was to me the most acceptable murderer in sight. But no – nothing would do him but to stick to the hour the coroner had accepted.
"Medical science cannot determine closer than that," he was very final. "The death took place within an hour preceding midnight."
"You are positive it couldn't be this morning?" I asked.
"Positive."
Well, Dr. Bowman's testimony, if accepted at the value the doctor himself placed upon it, would clear Worth of suspicion, for the lad was with me at Tait's from a few minutes past ten until after one; and Jim Edwards, now pacing the floor so restlessly, had also been there the greater part of that time. I had had too much experience with doctor's guesses based on rigor mortis to let it affect my views.
In the minute of silence, we could hear Chung moving about at the back of the house. The doctor spoke querulously.
"Never expect anything of a Chinaman, but I should think when the chauffeur found the body he might have had sense enough to summon friends of the family. He could have phoned me – I was only in San Francisco."
"He could have phoned me at the ranch," Jim Edwards' deep voice came in.
"You? Why should he phone for you?" Bowman wheeled on him at last. "I was the man's physician, as well as his close friend. Everybody knows you weren't on good terms with him. Gad! You wouldn't be here in this house to-night, if he were alive."
In the sort of silence that comes when some one's been suddenly struck in the face, Worth crossed to Edwards and laid an arm along his shoulders.
"I've asked Jim to stay in my place, here, in my house, while I'm away over Monday – and he can do as he likes about whom he chooses to have around."
Bowman gradually got to his feet, his face a study.
"I see," he said. "Then I'll not trespass on your time any longer. I felt obliged to offer my services … patients of mine … for years … in affliction …" a gleam of anger came into his fishy eyes. "I've been met with damned insolence… Claiming of the house before your father's decently in his grave." He jerked fully erect. "Leave your affairs in the hands of that degenerate. If he doesn't do you dirt, you'll be the first he's let off! Come, Miss Barbara," to the girl who sat beside me, looking on mutely observant.
"Thank you, doctor." She answered him as tranquilly as though no voice had been raised in anger in that room. "I think I'll stay a little longer. Jim will take me home."
The doctor glared and stalked out. To the last I think he was expecting some one to stop him and apologize. I suppose this was what Worth described naïvely as "antagonizing people without intending to." Well, it might not be judicious; I certainly was glad the doctor was so sure of the time at which his friend Gilbert had met death; yet I couldn't but enjoy seeing him get his. As soon as the man's back was turned, Edwards beckoned Barbara to the window. Worth and I left them talking together there in low tones, he to get something he wanted from a case in the hall, where he called me to the phone, saying long distance wanted me. While I was waiting for my connection (Central, as usual, having gotten me, now couldn't get the other party) the two came from the living room and Barbara said "Good night" to us in passing.
"Those two seem to have something on hand," I commented as they went out. "The little girl gave Bowman one for himself – in the nicest possible way. Don't wonder Edwards likes her for it."
"Poor Laura Bowman! Her friends take turns giving that bloodless lizard she's tied to, one for himself any time they can," Worth said. "My mother used to handle the doctor something like that; and now it's Barbara – little Bobsie Wallace – God bless her!"
He went on into the dining room. I looked after his unconscious, departing figure and thought he deserved a good licking. Why couldn't he have spoken that way to the girl herself? Why hadn't he taken her home, instead of leaving it to Edwards? Then I got my call and answered,
"This is Boyne. Put them through."
In a minute came Roberts' voice.
"Hello, Mr. Boyne?"
"Yes. What you got?"
"Telegram – Hicks – Los Angeles. He's located Steve Skeels – "
"Read me the wire," I broke in.
"All right." A pause, then, "'Skeels arrived here from 'Frisco this morning shall I arrest?'"
"Good!" I exclaimed. "Wire him to keep Steve under surveillance and await instructions. Tell him not to lose him. Get it, Roberts? Hustle it. I'll be in by nine. Good-by," and I hung up.
I looked around; Worth had gone into the dining room; I stepped to the door and saw him kneeling before an open lower door of the built-in sideboard, and noted that the compartment had been steel lined and Yale-locked, making a sort of safe. A lamp at the end of an extension wire stood on the floor beside him; he looked around at me over his shoulder as I put my head in to say,
"Stock in your old suitcase has gone up a notch, Worth. We've caught Skeels."
"So soon?" was all he said. But my news seemed to decide something for him; with a sharp gesture of finality, he put into his breast pocket the package of papers he had been looking at.
When a little later, Edwards came in, Worth was waiting for him in the hall.
"Do we go now?" the older man asked, wincing. Worth nodded.
"Take your machine, Jim," he said. "We can park it at Fuller's and walk back from there. Boyne's roadster is in our garage."
"Anything wrong with Eddie Hughes?" Edwards asked as he stepped in to get his driving gloves. "I passed him out there headed for town lugging a lot of freight, and the fellow growled like a dog when I spoke to him."
"I fired him. Come on, Jim – let's get out of this."
"Hold on, Worth," I took a hand. "Fired Hughes? When?"
"While I was fixing up that door – after you and Bobs came to the house."
"What in God's name for?" I asked in exasperation.
"For giving me back talk," said the youth who never quarreled with any one.
He and Edwards tramped out together. I realized that the hostile son and an alienated friend had gone for a last look at the clay that had yesterday been Thomas Gilbert. Of course Worth would do that before he left Santa Ysobel. But would Edwards go in with him – or was he only along to drive the machine? It might be worth my while to know. But I could ask to-morrow; it wasn't worth a tired man's waiting up for. We must make an early start in the morning. I went upstairs to bed.