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31 chapters
CHAPTER I. I GO TO PITTSBURG
CHAPTER I. I GO TO PITTSBURG
McKnight is gradually taking over the criminal end of the business. I never liked it, and since the strange case of the man in lower ten, I have been a bit squeamish. Given a case like that, where you can build up a network of clues that absolutely incriminate three entirely different people, only one of whom can be guilty, and your faith in circumstantial evidence dies of overcrowding. I never see a shivering, white-faced wretch in the prisoners’ dock that I do not hark back with shuddering hor
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CHAPTER II. A TORN TELEGRAM
CHAPTER II. A TORN TELEGRAM
I lunched alone at the Gilmore house, and went back to the city at once. The sun had lifted the mists, and a fresh summer wind had cleared away the smoke pall. The boulevard was full of cars flying countryward for the Saturday half-holiday, toward golf and tennis, green fields and babbling girls. I gritted my teeth and thought of McKnight at Richmond, visiting the lady with the geographical name. And then, for the first time, I associated John Gilmore’s granddaughter with the “West” that McKnigh
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CHAPTER III. ACROSS THE AISLE
CHAPTER III. ACROSS THE AISLE
No solution offering itself, I went back to my berth. The snorer across had apparently strangled, or turned over, and so after a time I dropped asleep, to be awakened by the morning sunlight across my face. I felt for my watch, yawning prodigiously. I reached under the pillow and failed to find it, but something scratched the back of my hand. I sat up irritably and nursed the wound, which was bleeding a little. Still drowsy, I felt more cautiously for what I supposed had been my scarf pin, but t
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CHAPTER IV. NUMBERS SEVEN AND NINE
CHAPTER IV. NUMBERS SEVEN AND NINE
Afterwards, when I tried to recall our discovery of the body in lower ten, I found that my most vivid impression was not that made by the revelation of the opened curtain. I had an instantaneous picture of a slender blue-gowned girl who seemed to sense my words rather than hear them, of two small hands that clutched desperately at the seat beside them. The girl in the aisle stood, bent toward us, perplexity and alarm fighting in her face. With twitching hands the porter attempted to draw the cur
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CHAPTER V. THE WOMAN IN THE NEXT CAR
CHAPTER V. THE WOMAN IN THE NEXT CAR
With the departure of the conductor and the doctor, the group around lower ten broke up, to re-form in smaller knots through the car. The porter remained on guard. With something of relief I sank into a seat. I wanted to think, to try to remember the details of the previous night. But my inquisitive acquaintance had other intentions. He came up and sat down beside me. Like the conductor, he had taken notes of the dead man’s belongings, his name, address, clothing and the general circumstances of
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CHAPTER VI. THE GIRL IN BLUE
CHAPTER VI. THE GIRL IN BLUE
I was growing more and more irritable. The thought of what the loss of the notes meant was fast crowding the murder to the back of my mind. The forced inaction was intolerable. The porter had reported no bag answering the description of mine on the train, but I was disposed to make my own investigation. I made a tour of the cars, scrutinizing every variety of hand luggage, ranging from luxurious English bags with gold mountings to the wicker nondescripts of the day coach at the rear. I was not a
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CHAPTER VII. A FINE GOLD CHAIN
CHAPTER VII. A FINE GOLD CHAIN
The conductor held it out to me, his face sternly accusing. “Is this another coincidence?” he asked. “Did the man who left you his clothes and the barred silk handkerchief and the tight shoes leave you the spoil of the murder?” The men standing around had drawn off a little, and I saw the absolute futility of any remonstrance. Have you ever seen a fly, who, in these hygienic days, finding no cobwebs to entangle him, is caught in a sheet of fly paper, finds himself more and more mired, and is fin
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CHAPTER VIII. THE SECOND SECTION
CHAPTER VIII. THE SECOND SECTION
Have you ever been picked up out of your three-meals-a-day life, whirled around in a tornado of events, and landed in a situation so grotesque and yet so horrible that you laugh even while you are groaning, and straining at its hopelessness? McKnight says that is hysteria, and that no man worthy of the name ever admits to it. Also, as McKnight says, it sounds like a tank drama. Just as the revolving saw is about to cut the hero into stove lengths, the second villain blows up the sawmill. The her
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CHAPTER IX. THE HALCYON BREAKFAST
CHAPTER IX. THE HALCYON BREAKFAST
We were still dazed, I think, for we wandered like two troubled children, our one idea at first to get as far away as we could from the horror behind us. We were both bareheaded, grimy, pallid through the grit. Now and then we met little groups of country folk hurrying to the track: they stared at us curiously, and some wished to question us. But we hurried past them; we had put the wreck behind us. That way lay madness. Only once the girl turned and looked behind her. The wreck was hidden, but
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CHAPTER X. MISS WEST’S REQUEST
CHAPTER X. MISS WEST’S REQUEST
The surprising change in her held me speechless. All the animation of the breakfast table was gone: there was no hint of the response with which, before, she had met my nonsensical sallies. She stood there, white-lipped, unsmiling, staring down the dusty road. One hand was clenched tight over some small object. Her eyes dropped to it from the distant road, and then closed, with a quick, indrawn breath. Her color came back slowly. Whatever had caused the change, she said nothing. She was anxious
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CHAPTER XI. THE NAME WAS SULLIVAN
CHAPTER XI. THE NAME WAS SULLIVAN
I had my arm done up temporarily in Baltimore and took the next train home. I was pretty far gone when I stumbled out of a cab almost into the scandalized arms of Mrs. Klopton. In fifteen minutes I was in bed, with that good woman piling on blankets and blistering me in unprotected places with hot-water bottles. And in an hour I had a whiff of chloroform and Doctor Williams had set the broken bone. I dropped asleep then, waking in the late twilight to a realization that I was at home again, with
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CHAPTER XII. THE GOLD BAG
CHAPTER XII. THE GOLD BAG
I have always smiled at those cases of spontaneous combustion which, like fusing the component parts of a seidlitz powder, unite two people in a bubbling and ephemeral ecstasy. But surely there is possible, with but a single meeting, an attraction so great, a community of mind and interest so strong, that between that first meeting and the next the bond may grow into something stronger. This is especially true, I fancy, of people with temperament, the modern substitute for imagination. It is a n
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CHAPTER XIII. FADED ROSES
CHAPTER XIII. FADED ROSES
I was in the house for a week. Much of that time I spent in composing and destroying letters of thanks to Miss West, and in growling at the doctor. McKnight dropped in daily, but he was less cheerful than usual. Now and then I caught him eying me as if he had something to say, but whatever it was he kept it to himself. Once during the week he went to Baltimore and saw the woman in the hospital there. From the description I had little difficulty in recognizing the young woman who had been with th
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CHAPTER XIV. THE TRAP-DOOR
CHAPTER XIV. THE TRAP-DOOR
By Sunday evening, a week after the wreck, my inaction had goaded me to frenzy. The very sight of Johnson across the street or lurking, always within sight of the house, kept me constantly exasperated. It was on that day that things began to come to a focus, a burning-glass of events that seemed to center on me. I dined alone that evening in no cheerful frame of mind. There had been a polo game the day before and I had lent a pony, which is always a bad thing to do. And she had wrenched her shou
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CHAPTER XV. THE CINEMATOGRAPH
CHAPTER XV. THE CINEMATOGRAPH
On Monday I went out for the first time. I did not go to the office. I wanted to walk. I thought fresh air and exercise would drive away the blue devils that had me by the throat. McKnight insisted on a long day in his car, but I refused. “I don’t know why not,” he said sulkily. “I can’t walk. I haven’t walked two consecutive blocks in three years. Automobiles have made legs mere ornaments—and some not even that. We could have Johnson out there chasing us over the country at five dollars an hour
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CHAPTER XVI. THE SHADOW OF A GIRL
CHAPTER XVI. THE SHADOW OF A GIRL
Certain things about the dinner at the Dallas house will always be obscure to me. Dallas was something in the Fish Commission, and I remember his reeling off fish eggs in billions while we ate our caviar. He had some particular stunt he had been urging the government to for years—something about forbidding the establishment of mills and factories on river-banks—it seems they kill the fish, either the smoke, or the noise, or something they pour into the water. Mrs. Dallas was there, I think. Of c
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CHAPTER XVII. AT THE FARM-HOUSE AGAIN
CHAPTER XVII. AT THE FARM-HOUSE AGAIN
McKnight is always a sympathizer with the early worm. It was late when he appeared. Perhaps, like myself, he had not slept well. But he was apparently cheerful enough, and he made a better breakfast than I did. It was one o’clock before we got to Baltimore. After a half hour’s wait we took a local for M——, the station near which the cinematograph picture had been taken. We passed the scene of the wreck, McKnight with curiosity, I with a sickening sense of horror. Back in the fields was the littl
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CHAPTER XVIII. A NEW WORLD
CHAPTER XVIII. A NEW WORLD
Hotchkiss jotted down the bits of telegram and rose. “Well,” he said, “we’ve done something. We’ve found where the murderer left the train, we know what day he went to Baltimore, and, most important of all, we have a motive for the crime.” “It seems the irony of fate,” said McKnight, getting up, “that a man should kill another man for certain papers he is supposed to be carrying, find he hasn’t got them after all, decide to throw suspicion on another man by changing berths and getting out, bag a
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CHAPTER XIX. AT THE TABLE NEXT
CHAPTER XIX. AT THE TABLE NEXT
McKnight and Hotchkiss were sauntering slowly down the road as I caught up with them. As usual, the little man was busy with some abstruse mental problem. “The idea is this,” he was saying, his brows knitted in thought, “if a left-handed man, standing in the position of the man in the picture, should jump from a car, would he be likely to sprain his right ankle? When a right-handed man prepares for a leap of that kind, my theory is that he would hold on with his right hand, and alight at the pro
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CHAPTER XX. THE NOTES AND A BARGAIN
CHAPTER XX. THE NOTES AND A BARGAIN
I went back slowly to where the woman sat alone. She smiled rather oddly as I drew near, and pointed to the chair Bronson had vacated. “Sit down, Mr. Blakeley,” she said, “I am going to take a few minutes of your valuable time.” “Certainly.” I sat down opposite her and glanced at a cuckoo clock on the wall. “I am sorry, but I have only a few minutes. If you—” She laughed a little, not very pleasantly, and opening a small black fan covered with spangles, waved it slowly. “The fact is,” she said,
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CHAPTER XXI. McKNIGHT’S THEORY
CHAPTER XXI. McKNIGHT’S THEORY
I confess I was staggered. The people at the surrounding tables, after glancing curiously in my direction, looked away again. I got my hat and went out in a very uncomfortable frame of mind. That she would inform the police at once of what she knew I never doubted, unless possibly she would give a day or two’s grace in the hope that I would change my mind. I reviewed the situation as I waited for a car. Two passed me going in the opposite direction, and on the first one I saw Bronson, his hat ov
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CHAPTER XXII. AT THE BOARDING-HOUSE
CHAPTER XXII. AT THE BOARDING-HOUSE
I had not been home for thirty-six hours, since the morning of the preceding day. Johnson was not in sight, and I let myself in quietly with my latchkey. It was almost midnight, and I had hardly settled myself in the library when the bell rang and I was surprised to find Hotchkiss, much out of breath, in the vestibule. “Why, come in, Mr. Hotchkiss,” I said. “I thought you were going home to go to bed.” “So I was, so I was.” He dropped into a chair beside my reading lamp and mopped his face. “And
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CHAPTER XXIII. A NIGHT AT THE LAURELS
CHAPTER XXIII. A NIGHT AT THE LAURELS
I slept most of the way to Cresson, to the disgust of the little detective. Finally he struck up an acquaintance with a kindly-faced old priest on his way home to his convent school, armed with a roll of dance music and surreptitious bundles that looked like boxes of candy. From scraps of conversation I gleaned that there had been mysterious occurrences at the convent,—ending in the theft of what the reverend father called vaguely, “a quantity of undermuslins.” I dropped asleep at that point, an
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CHAPTER XXIV. HIS WIFE’S FATHER
CHAPTER XXIV. HIS WIFE’S FATHER
I jumped up and seized the fire tongs. The cat’s wail had roused Hotchkiss, who was wide-awake at once. He took in my offensive attitude, the tongs, the direction of my gaze, and needed nothing more. As he picked up the candle and darted out into the hall, I followed him. He made directly for the staircase, and part way up he turned off to the right through a small door. We were on the gallery itself; below us the fire gleamed cheerfully, the cat was not in sight. There was no sign of my ghostly
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CHAPTER XXV. AT THE STATION
CHAPTER XXV. AT THE STATION
So it had been the tiger, not the lady! Well, I had held to that theory all through. Jennie suddenly became a valuable person; if necessary she could prove the connection between Sullivan and the murdered man, and show a motive for the crime. I was triumphant when Hotchkiss came in. When the girl had produced a photograph of Mrs. Sullivan, and I had recognized the bronze-haired girl of the train, we were both well satisfied—which goes to prove the ephemeral nature of most human contentments. Jen
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CHAPTER XXVI. ON TO RICHMOND
CHAPTER XXVI. ON TO RICHMOND
Strangely enough, I was not disturbed that day. McKnight did not appear at all. I sat at my desk and transacted routine business all afternoon, working with feverish energy. Like a man on the verge of a critical illness or a hazardous journey, I cleared up my correspondence, paid bills until I had writer’s cramp from signing checks, read over my will, and paid up my life insurance, made to the benefit of an elderly sister of my mother’s. I no longer dreaded arrest. After that morning in the stat
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CHAPTER XXVII. THE SEA, THE SAND, THE STARS
CHAPTER XXVII. THE SEA, THE SAND, THE STARS
I telephoned as soon as I reached my hotel, and I had not known how much I had hoped from seeing her until I learned that she was out of town. I hung up the receiver, almost dizzy with disappointment, and it was fully five minutes before I thought of calling up again and asking if she was within telephone reach. It seemed she was down on the bay staying with the Samuel Forbeses. Sammy Forbes! It was a name to conjure with just then. In the old days at college I had rather flouted him, but now I
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CHAPTER XXVIII. ALISON’S STORY
CHAPTER XXVIII. ALISON’S STORY
She told her story evenly, with her eyes on the water, only now and then, when I, too, sat looking seaward, I thought she glanced at me furtively. And once, in the middle of it, she stopped altogether. “You don’t realize it, probably,” she protested, “but you look like a—a war god. Your face is horrible.” “I will turn my back, if it will help any,” I said stormily, “but if you expect me to look anything but murderous, why, you don’t know what I am going through with. That’s all.” The story of he
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CHAPTER XXIX. IN THE DINING-ROOM
CHAPTER XXIX. IN THE DINING-ROOM
That was Saturday night, two weeks after the wreck. The previous five days had been full of swift-following events—the woman in the house next door, the picture in the theater of a man about to leap from the doomed train, the dinner at the Dallases’, and Richey’s discovery that Alison was the girl in the case. In quick succession had come our visit to the Carter place, the finding of the rest of the telegram, my seeing Alison there, and the strange interview with Mrs. Conway. The Cresson trip st
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CHAPTER XXX. FINER DETAILS
CHAPTER XXX. FINER DETAILS
At ten minutes before two the following day, Monday, I arrived at my office. I had spent the morning putting my affairs in shape, and in a trip to the stable. The afternoon would see me either a free man or a prisoner for an indefinite length of time, and, in spite of Johnson’s promise to produce Sullivan, I was more prepared for the latter than the former. Blobs was watching for me outside the door, and it was clear that he was in a state of excitement bordering on delirium. He did nothing, how
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CHAPTER XXXI. AND ONLY ONE ARM
CHAPTER XXXI. AND ONLY ONE ARM
Hotchkiss was the first to break the tension. “Mr. Sullivan,” he asked suddenly, “was your sister left-handed?” “Yes.” Hotchkiss put away his note-book and looked around with an air of triumphant vindication. It gave us a chance to smile and look relieved. After all, Mrs. Curtis was dead. It was the happiest solution of the unhappy affair. McKnight brought Sullivan some whisky, and he braced up a little. “I learned through the papers that my wife was in a Baltimore hospital, and yesterday I vent
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