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Million-Dollar Suitcase

[Pg 137] <h2>CHAPTER XII</h2> <h3>A MURDER</h3> 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.[Pg 138] 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[Pg 139] 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." [Pg 140]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[Pg 141] 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[Pg 142] 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[Pg 143] 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[Pg 144] 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[Pg 145] 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."[Pg 146] "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." <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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