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No Clue! A Mystery Story

<h2>X</h2> <h3>THE WHISPERED CONFERENCE</h3> Dr. Garnet, reaching Sloanehurst half an hour later, found Webster in complete collapse. He declared that for at least several days the sick man must be kept quiet. He could not be moved to his apartment in Washington, nor could he be subjected to questioning about anything. "That is," he explained, "for three or four days—possibly longer. He's critically ill. But for my knowledge of the terrific shock he's sustained as a result of the murder, I'd be inclined to say he'd broken down after a long, steady nervous strain. "I'll have a nurse out to look after him. Miss Sloane has volunteered, but she has troubles of her own." Judge Wilton took the news to Hastings, who was on the front porch, whittling, waiting to see Lucille before returning to Washington. "I think Garnet's right," Wilton added. "I thought, even before last night, Berne acted as if he'd been worn out. And you handled him rather roughly. That sort of questioning, tantalizing, keeping a man on tenterhooks, knocks the metal out of a high-strung temperament like his. I don't mind telling you it had me pretty well worked up." "I'm sorry it knocked him out," Hastings said. "All I wanted was the facts. He wasn't frank with me." "I came out here to talk about that," Wilton retorted, brusquely. "You're all wrong there, Hastings! The boy's broken all to pieces. He sees clearly, too clearly, the weight of suspicion against him. You've mistaken his panic for hostility toward yourself." The old man was unconvinced, and showed it. "Suspicion doesn't usually knock a man into a cocked hat—unless there's something to base it on," he contended. "All right; I give up," Wilton said, with a short laugh. "All I know is, he came to me before we saw you in the music room, and told me he wanted me to be there, to see that he omitted not even a detail of what he knew." Hastings, looking up from the intricate pattern he was carving, challenged the judge: "Has it occurred to you that, if he's not guilty, he might suspect somebody else in this house, might be trying to shield that person?" In the inconsiderable pause that followed, Wilton's lips, parting for an incredulous smile, showed the top of his tongue against his teeth, as if set for pronunciation of the letter "S." Hastings, in a mental flash, saw him on the point of exclaiming: "Sloane!" But, if that was in his mind, he put it down, elaborating the smile to a laughing protest: "That's going far afield, isn't it?" Hastings smiled in return: "Maybe so, but it's a possibility—and possibilities have to be dealt with." "Which reminds me," the judge said, now all amiability; "don't forget I'm always at your service in this affair. I see now that you might have preferred to question Webster alone, in the music room; but my confidence in his innocence blinded me to the fact that you could regard him as actually guilty. I expected nothing but a friendly conference, not a fierce cross-examination." "It didn't matter at all," Hastings matched Wilton's cordial tone; "and I appreciate your offer, judge. Suppose you tell me anything that occurs to you, anything that will throw light on this case any time; and I'll act as go-between for you with the authorities—if necessary." "You mean——?" "I'd like to do the talking for this family and its friends. I can work better if I can handle things myself. The half of my job is to save the Sloanes from as many wild rumours as I can." Wilton nodded approval. "How about Arthur? You want me to take any questions to him for you?" "No; thanks.—But," Hastings added, "you might make him see the necessity of telling me what he saw last night. If he doesn't come out with it, he'll make it all the harder on Webster." "I don't think he saw anything." "Didn't he? Why'd he refuse to testify before the coroner, then?" Sheriff Crown's car came whirling up the driveway; and Hastings spoke hurriedly: "You know he's not as sick as he makes out. He's got to tell me what he knows, judge! He's holding back something. That's why he wants to make me so mad I'll quit the case. Who's he shielding? That's what people will want to know." Wilton pondered that. "I'll see what I can do," he finally agreed. "According to you, it may appear—people may suspect—that Webster's guilty or shielding somebody else; and Arthur's guilty or shielding Webster!" When Mr. Crown reached the porch, they were discussing Webster's condition, and Hastings, with the aid of the judge's penknife, was tightening a screw in his big barlowesque blade. They were careful to say nothing that might arouse the sheriff's suspicion of their compact—an agreement whereby a private detective, and not the law's representative, was to have the benefit of all the judge's information bearing on the murder. Mr. Crown, however, was dissatisfied. "I'm tied up!" he complained, nursing with forefinger and thumb his knuckle-like chin. "The only place I can get information is at the wrong end—Russell!" "What's the matter with me?" the detective asked amiably. "I'll be glad to help—if you think I can." "What good's that to me?" He wore his best politician's smile, but there was resentment in his voice. "Your job is keeping things quiet—for Sloanehurst. Mr. Sloane's ill, too ill to see me without endangering his life, so his funeral-faced valet tells me. Miss Lucille says, politely enough, she's told all she knows, told it on the stand, and I'm to go to you if I want anything more from her. The judge here knows nothing about the inside relationships of the family and Webster, or of Webster and the Brace girl. And Webster's down and out, thoroughly and conveniently! If all that don't catch your uncle Robert where the hair's short, I'll quit!" "What do you want to know?" Hastings countered. "You've had access to everything, far as I can see." Reply to that was delayed by the appearance of Jarvis, summoning the judge to Arthur Sloane's room. "I want to get at Webster," Crown told Hastings. "And here's why: if Russell didn't kill her, Webster did." "Why, you've weakened!" the old man guyed head bent over his whittling. "You had Russell's goose cooked this morning—roasted to a rich, dark brown!" "Yes; and if I could break down his alibi, I'd still have him cooked!" "You accept the alibi, then?" "Sure, I accept it." "I don't." "Why don't you?" objected Crown. "He didn't have an aeroplane in his hip pocket, did he? That's the only way he could have covered those four miles in fifteen minutes.—Or does his alibi have to fall in order to save Miss Sloane's fiancé?" He slapped his thigh and thrust out his bristly moustache. "You're paid to fasten the thing on Russell," he said, clearly pugnacious. "I don't expect you to help me work against Webster! I'm not that simple!" The old man, with a gesture no more arresting than to point at the sheriff with the piece of wood in his left hand, made the official jaw drop almost to the official chest. "Mr. Crown," he said, "get this, once and for all: a man ain't necessarily a crook because he's once worked for the government. I'm as anxious to find the guilty man now, every time, as when I was in the Department of Justice. And I intend to. From now on, you'll give me credit for that!—Won't you, Mr. Sheriff?" Crown apologized. "I'm worried; that's what. I'm up a gum stump and can't get down." "All right, but don't try to make a ladder out of me! Why don't you look into that alibi?" Crown was irritated again. "What do you stick to that for?" "Because," Hastings declared, "I'm ready to swear-and-cross-my-heart he lied when he said he ran that four miles. I'm ready to swear he was here when the murder was done. When a man's got as good an alibi as he said he had, his adam's-apple don't play 'Yankee Doodle' on his windpipe." "Is that so!" "It is—and here's another thing: when's Mrs. Brace going to break loose?" "Now, you're talking!" agreed Crown, with momentary enthusiasm. "She told me this morning she'd help me show up Webster—she wouldn't have it that Russell killed the girl. Foxy business! Mixed up in it herself, she runs to the rescue of the man she——" The sheriff paused, unable to bring that reasoning to its logical conclusion. "No," he said, dejected; "I can't believe she put him up to murdering her daughter." "That woman," Hastings said, "is capable of anything—anything! We're going to find she's terrible, I tell you, Crown. She's mixed up in the murder somehow—and, if you don't find out how, I will!" "How can we get her?" Crown argued. "She was in her flat when the killing was done. We've searched these grounds, and found nothing to incriminate anybody. All we've got is a strong suspicion against two men. She's out and away." "Not if we watch her. She's promised to make trouble—she'll be lucky if she makes none for herself. Let's keep after her." "I'm on! But," the sheriff reminded, again half-hearted, "that won't get us anything soon. She won't leave her flat before the funeral." "That won't keep her quiet very long," Hastings contended. "She told me the funeral would be at nine o'clock tomorrow morning—from an undertaker's.—Anyway, I've instructed one of my assistants to keep track of her. I'm not counting on her grief absorbing her, even for today." But he saw that Crown was not greatly impressed with the possibility of finding the murderer through Mrs. Brace. The sheriff was engrossed in mental precautions against being misled by "the Sloanehurst detective." He was still in that mood when Miss Sloane sent for Hastings. The detective found her in the music room. She had taken the chair which Judge Wilton had occupied an hour before, and was leaning one elbow on an arm of it, her chin resting in the cup of her hand. Her dress—a filmy lavender so light that it shaded almost to pink, and magically made to bring out the grace of her figure—drew his attention to the slight sag of her shoulders, suggestive of great weariness. But he was captivated anew by her grave loveliness, and by her fortitude. She betrayed her agitation only in the fine tremour in her hands and a certain slowness in her words. On the porch, talking to Judge Wilton, he had wondered, in a moment of irritation, why he continued on the case against so much apparent opposition in the very household which he sought to help. He knew now that neither his sense of duty nor his fee was the deciding influence. He stayed because this girl needed him, because he had seen in her eyes last night the haggard look of an unspeakable suspicion. "You wanted to see me—is there anything special?" she asked him, immediately alert. "Yes; there is, Miss Sloane," he said, careful to put into his voice all the sympathy he felt for her. "Yes?" She was looking at him with steady eyes. "It's this, and I want you to bear in mind that I wouldn't bring it up but for my desire to put an end to your uncertainty: I'm afraid you haven't told me everything you know, everything you saw last night in——" When she would have spoken, he put up a warning hand. "Let me explain, please. Don't commit yourself until you see what I mean. Judge Wilton and Mr. Webster seem to think I'm not needed here. It may be a natural attitude—for them. They're both lawyers, and to lawyers a mere detective doesn't amount to much." "Oh, I'm sure it isn't that," she flashed out, apologizing. "Oh, I don't mind, personally," he said, with a smile for which she felt grateful. "As I say, it's natural for them to think that way, perhaps. Your father, however, is not a lawyer; and, when I went into his room at your request, he took pains to offend me, insult me, several times." That brought a faint flush to her face. "So, that leaves only you to give me facts which I must have—if they exist." He became more urgent. "And you employed me, Miss Sloane; you appealed to me when you were at a loss where to turn. I'm only fair to myself as well as to you when I tell you that your distress, far more than financial considerations, persuaded me to undertake this work without first consulting your father." She leaned toward him, bending from the waist, her eyes slightly widened, so that their effect was to give her a startled air. "You don't mean you'll give it up!" she said, plainly entreating. "You won't give it up!" "Are you quite sure you don't want me to give it up? Judge Wilton has asked me twice, out of politeness, not to give it up. Are you merely being polite?" She smiled, looking tired, and shook her head. "Really, Mr. Hastings, if you were to desert us now, I should be desperate—altogether. Desperate! Just that." "I can't desert you," he said gently. "As I told Mr. Webster, I know too little and I suspect too much to do that." Before she spoke again, she looked at him intently, drawing in her under lip a little against her teeth. "What, Mr. Hastings?" she asked, then. "What do you suspect?" "Let me answer that with a question," he suggested. "Last night, your one idea was that I could protect you and your father, everybody in the house here, by acting as your spokesman. I think you wanted to set me up as a buffer between all of you on the one side and the authorities and the reporters on the other. You wanted things kept down, nothing to get out beyond that which was unavoidable. Wasn't that it?" "Yes; it was," she admitted, not seeing where his question led. "You were afraid, then, that something incriminating might be divulged, weren't you?" "Oh, no!" she denied instantly. "I mean something which might seem incriminating. You trusted the person whom it would seem to incriminate; and you wanted time for the murderer to be found without, in the meantime, having the adverse circumstance made public. Isn't that it, Miss Sloane?" "Yes—practically." "Let's be clear on that. Your fear was that too much questioning of you or the other person might result in a slip-up—might make you or him mention the apparently damaging incident, with disastrous effect. Wasn't that it?" "Yes; that was it." "Now, what was that apparently incriminating incident?" She started. He had brought her so directly to the confession that she saw now the impossibility of withholding what he sought. "It may be," he tried to lighten her responsibility, "the very thing that Webster and the judge have concealed—for I'm sure they're keeping something back. Perhaps, if I knew it, things would be easier. People closely affected by a crime are the last to judge such things accurately." She gave a long breath of relief, looking at him with perplexity nevertheless. "Yes—I know. That was why I came to you—last night—in the beginning." "And it was about them, Webster and Wilton," he drew the conclusion for her, still encouraging her with his smile, regarding her over the rims of his spectacles with a fatherly kindness. She turned from him and looked out of the window. It was the middle of a hot, still day, no breeze stirring, and wonderfully quiet. For the moment, there was no sound, in the house or outside. "Oh!" she cried, her voice a revelation of the extent to which her doubts had oppressed her. "It was like that, out there—quiet, still! If you could only understand!" "My dear child," he said, "rely on me. The sheriff is bound to assert himself, to keep in the front of things; he's that kind of a man. He'll make an arrest any time, or announce that he will. Don't you see the danger?" He leaned forward and took her hand, a move to which she seemed oblivious. "Don't you see I must have facts to go on—if I'm to help you?" At that, she disengaged her hand, and sat very straight, her face again a little turned from him. A twitch, like a shudder cut short, moved her whole body, so that the heel of her slipper rapped smartly on the floor. "I wish," she whispered dully, "I wish I knew what to do!" "Tell me," he urged, as if he spoke to a child. She showed him her face, very white, with sudden shadows under the eyes. "I must, I think; I must tell you," she said, not much louder than the previous whisper. "You were right. I didn't tell the whole story of what I saw. Believe me, I didn't think it mattered. I thought, really, things would right themselves and explanations be unnecessary. But you knew—didn't you?" "Yes. I knew." He realized her ordeal, helping her through it. "What were they doing?" She held her chin high. "It was all true, what I told you in the library, my being waked up by father's moving about, my going to the window, my seeing Berne and the judge facing each other across—her—there at the end of the awful yellow arm of light. But that wasn't all. The moment the light flashed on, the judge threw back his head a little, like a man about to cry out, shout for help. I am sure that was it. "But Berne was too quick for that. Berne put out his hand; his arm shot across her; and his hand closed the judge's mouth. The judge made no noise whatever, but he shook his head from side to side two or three times—I'm not certain how many—while Berne leant over the body and whispered to him. It seemed to me I could almost hear the words, but I didn't. "Then Berne took his hand from the judge's mouth. I think, before that, the judge made a sign, tried to nod his head up and down, to show he would do as Berne said. Then, when they saw she was dead, they both hurried around the corner to the front of the house, and I heard them come in; I heard the judge call to father and run up to your room." She was alarmed then by the amazement and disapproval in his face. "Oh!" she said, and this time she took his hand. "You see! You see! You don't understand! You think Berne killed her!" "I don't know," he said, wondering. "I must think." For the moment, indignation swept him. "Wilton! A judge, a judge!—keeping quiet on a thing like that! I must think." <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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