 CHAPTER XIII. Sizzling Metal. Burton listened while he ate, and his cheerful comments were welcome enough after the depression of the last few days. I told him after some hesitation the whole thing, beginning with the Maitland pearls and ending with my drop down the dumbwaiter. I knew I was absolutely safe in doing so. There is no person to whom I would rather tell a secret than a newspaper man. He will go out of his way to keep it. He will lock it in the depths of his bosom and keep it until seventy times seven. Also, you may threaten the rack or offer a larger salary. The seal does not come off his lips until the word is given. If then he makes a scarehead of it and gets in three columns of space and as many photographs, it is his just reward. So I told Burton everything, and he ate enough beef steak for two men, and missed not a word I said. The money Warder had in the grip adds easy enough explained, he said. Fleming used the burrow bank to deposit state funds in. He must have known it was rotten. He and Clarkson were as thick as thieves. According to a time honored custom in our land of the brave and home of the free, the state treasurer who is crooked can in such a case draw on such a bank without security on his personal note, which is usually worth its value by the pound as old paper. And Fleming did that. He did. Then things got bad at the burrow bank. Fleming had had to divide with Schwartz, and the Lord only knows who all, but it was Fleming who had to put in the money to avert a crash, the word crash being synonymous with scandal in this case. He scrapes together a paltry hundred thousand, which Warder gets at the capital and brings on. Warder is robbed, or so he says. The bank collapses and Clarkson driven to the wall kills himself just after Fleming is murdered. What does that sound like? Like Clarkson, I exclaimed, and Clarkson knew Fleming was hiding at the White Cat. Now then, take the other theory, he said pushing aside his cup. Warder goes into Fleming with a story that he has been robbed. Fleming gets crazy and attacks him. All that is in the morning, Friday. Now then, Warder goes back there that night. Within 20 minutes after he enters the club, he rushes out, and when Hunter follows him, he says he's looking for a doctor to get cocaine for a gentleman upstairs. He is white and trembling. They go back together and find you there and Fleming dead. Warder tells two stories. First, he says Fleming committed suicide just before he left. Then he changes it and said he was dead when he arrived there. He produces the weapon with which Fleming is supposed to have killed himself, and which, by the way, Miss Fleming identified yesterday as her father's. But there are two discrepancies. Warder practically admitted that he had taken that revolver from Fleming not that night, but the morning before during the quarrel. And the other discrepancy? The bullet. Nobody ever fired a 32 bullet out of a 38 caliber revolver, unless he was trying to shoot a double compound curve. Now then, who does it look like? Like Warder, I confess. Why, Joe, they didn't both do it. And he didn't do it himself for two good reasons. He had no revolver that night, and there were no powder marks. And the 1122 and Miss Maitland's disappearance? He looked at me with his quizzical smile. I'll have to have another steak if I'm to settle that, he said. I can only solve one murder on one steak, but disappearances are my specialty. Perhaps if I have a piece of pie and some cheese. But I got him away at last, and we walked together down the street. Can't quite see the old lady in it, he confessed. She hadn't any grudge against Fleming had she. Wouldn't be likely to forget herself temporarily and kill him. Good Lord, I said. Why, she's 65, and as timid and gentle a little old lady has ever lived. Curls, he asked, turning his bright blue eyes on me. Yes. Wouldn't be likely to elope with a minister or advertise for a husband or anything like that. You would have to know her to understand, I said, resignedly. But she didn't do any of those things, and she didn't run off to join a theatrical troop. Burton, who do you think was in the Fleming house last night? Lightfoot, he said succinctly. He stopped under a street lamp and looked at his watch. I believe I'll run over to the Capitol tonight, he said. While I'm gone, and I'll be back tomorrow night or the next morning, I wish you would do two things. Find Rosie or Greater, whatever her name is, and locate Carter. That's probably not his name, but it will answer for a while. Then get your friend, Hunter, to keep him in sight for a while, till I come back anyhow. I'm beginning to enjoy this. It's more fun than a picture puzzle. We're going to make the police department look like kindergarten playing jack straws. And the second thing I'm to do? Go to Bellwood and find out a few things. It's all well enough to say the old lady was a meek and timid person, but if you want to know her peculiarities, go to her neighbors. When people leave the beaten path, the neighbors always know it before the families. He stopped before a drugstore. I'll have to pack for my little jaunt, he said, and purchased a toothbrush, which proved to be the extent of his preparations. We separated at the station, Burton to take his red hair and his toothbrush to Platsburg, I to take a taxi cab, and armed with a page torn from the classified directory, to inquire at as many of the Twelve Anderson's drugstores as might be necessary to locate Delia's gentleman friend, the clerk, through him Delia, and through Delia the mysterious Carter, who was not really a butler. It occurred to me somewhat tartly that I knew nothing of Delia but her given name. A telephone talk with Marjorie was of little assistance. Delia had been a new maid, and if she had heard her other name, she had forgotten it. I had checked off eight of the Anderson's on my list without result, and the taxi meter showed something over $19 when the driver drew up at the curb. Gentlemen, and the other cab's hailing you, sir, he said over his shoulder. The other cab? The one that's been following us. I opened the door and glanced behind. A duplicate of my cab stood, perhaps, fifty feet behind, and from it a familiar figure was slowly emerging, carrying on a high-pitched argument with the chauffeur. The figure stopped to read the taxi meter, shook his fist at the chauffeur, and approached me muttering audibly. It was Davidson. That liar and thief back there has got me rung up for $19. He said, ignoring my amazement, $19.40. He must have the thing counting the revolutions of all four wheels. He walked around and surveyed my expense account at the driver's elbow. Then he hit the meter a sharp slap, but the figures did not change. $19, he repeated, dazed. $19, and, hmm, look here. He called his driver, who had brought the cab close. It's only $.30 here. Your clock's $.10 fast. But how, I began, you back up to $19.30, he persisted, ignoring me. If you back up to $12, I'll pay it. That's all I got. Then he turned on me irritably. Good heavens, man, he exclaimed. Do you mean to tell me you've been to eight drugstores this Sunday evening and spent $19.30 and haven't got a drink yet? Do you think I'm after a drink, I ask him? Now look here, Davidson. I rather think you know what I'm after. If you don't, it doesn't matter. But since you're coming along anyhow, pay your man off and come with me. I don't like to be followed. He agreed without hesitation. Borrowed $8 for me to augment his 12 and crawled in with me. The next address on the list is the right one, he said, as the man waited for directions. I did the same round yesterday. But not being a plutocrat, I used the streetcars and my legs. And because you're a decent fella and don't have to be chloroformed to have an idea injected, I'm going to tell you something. There were eleven roundsmen, as well as the sergeant, who heard me read the note I found at the Fleming House that night. You may have counted them through the window. Dozen plainclothes men read it before morning. When the news of Mr. Fleming's murder death came out, I thought this fellow Carter might know something, and I trailed Delia through this Mamie Brennan. When I got there, I found Tom Branigan and four other detectives sitting in the parlor and Ms. Delia in a blue-silk waist, making eyes at every mother's son of them. I laughed in spite of my disappointment. Davidson leaned forward and closed the window at the driver's back. Then he squared around and faced me. Understand me, Mr. Knox, he said. Mr. Fleming killed himself. You and I are agreed on that. Even if you aren't just convinced of it, I'm telling you, and better let it drop, sir. Under his quiet manner I felt a threat. It served to rouse me. I'll let it drop when I'm through with it, I asserted, and got out my list of addresses. You'll let it drop because it's too hot to hold, he retorted, with a suspicion of a smile. If you're determined to know about Carter, I can tell you everything that is necessary. The chauffeur stopped his engine with an exasperated jerk and settled down in his seat every line of his back, bristling with irritation. I prefer learning from Carter himself. He leaned back in his seat and produced an apple from the pocket of his coat. You'll have to travel some to do it, son, he said. Carter left for parts unknown last night, taking with him enough money to keep him in comfort for some little time. Until this blows over, I said bitterly, the trip was for the benefit of his health. He has been suffering and is still suffering from a curious lapse of memory. Davidson smiled at me engagingly. He has entirely forgotten everything that occurred from the time he entered Mr. Fleming's employment until that gentleman left home. I doubt he will ever recover. With Carter gone, his retreat covered by the police, supplied with funds from some problematical source, further search for him was worse than useless. In fact, Davidson strongly intimated that it might be dangerous and would be certainly unpleasant. I yielded ungraciously and ordered the cab to take me home. But on the way I cursed my folly for not having followed this obvious clue earlier and I wondered what this thing could be that Carter knew that was at least surmised by various headquarters men and yet was so carefully hidden from the world at large. The party newspapers had come out that day with a signed statement from Mr. Fleming's physician in Plattsburgh that he had been in ill health and inclined to melancholia for some time. The air was thick with rumors of differences with his party. The dust cloud covered everything. Pretty soon it would settle and hide the tracks of those who had hurried to cover under its protection. Davidson left me at a corner downtown. He turned to give me a parting admonition. As an old axiom in the mills round here, never sit down on a piece of metal till you spit on it. If it sizzles, don't sit. He grinned. Your best position just now, young man, is standing with your hands over your head. Confidentially there ain't anything within expectorating distance just now that ain't pretty well head up. He left me with that, and I did not see him again until the night at the White Cat when he helped put me through the transom. Recently, however, I have met him several times. He invariably mentions the eight dollars and his intentions of repaying it. Unfortunately, the desire and the ability have not yet happened to coincide. I took the evening train to Bellwood and got there shortly after eight, in the midst of the Sunday evening calm. And the calm of a place like Bellwood is the peace of death without the hope of resurrection. I walked slowly up the main street, which was lined with residences. The town relegated its few shops to less desirable neighborhoods. My first intention had been to see the Episcopal minister, but the rectory was dark and a burst of organ music from the church near reminded me again of the Sunday evening services. Promiscuous inquiry was not advisable. So far Miss Jane's disappearance was known to very few and Hunter had advised caution. And I wandered up the street and turned at random to the right. A few doors ahead a newish red brick building proclaimed itself the post office and gave the only sign of life in the neighborhood. It occurred to me that here inside was one individual who theoretically at least in a small place always knows the idiosyncrasies of its people. The door was partly open, for the spring night was sultry. The postmaster proved to be a one-armed veteran of the Civil War, and he was sorting rapidly the contents of a mail bag emptied on the counter. No delivery tonight, he said shortly, Sunday delivery two to three. I suppose then I couldn't get a dollar's worth of stamps, I regretted. He looked up over his glasses. But we don't sell stamps on Sunday night, he explained more politely. But if you're in a hurry for them, I am, I lied. And after he got them out, counting them with a wrinkled finger and tearing them off the sheet with a deliberation of age, I opened a general conversation. I suppose you do a good bit of business here, I ask. Seems like a thriving place. Not so bad. Big mail here sometimes. First of the quarter, when bills are coming round, we have a rush. Holidays in the Easter, we got to hire an express wagon. It was when I asked him about his empty sleeve, however, that he had told me that he lost his arm at Chancellorsville, that we became really friendly. When he said he had been a corporal in General Maitland's command, my path was one of ease. The Maitland ladies, I should say I do, he said warmly. I've been fighting with Letitia Maitland as long as I can remember. That woman will scrap with the angel Gabriel at the resurrection if he wakes her up before she's had her sleep out. Miss Jane is not that sore, is she? Miss Jane, well, she's an angel. She is that. She could have been married a dozen times when she was a girl, but Letitia wouldn't have it. I was after her myself 45 years ago. This was the Maitland farm in those days, and my father kept a country store down where the railroad station is now. I suppose from that the Maitland ladies are wealthy. Wealthy? Well, they don't know what they're worth. Not that it matters a mite to Jane, Maitland. She hasn't called her soul her own for so long. I guess the Good Lord won't hold her responsible for it. All of which was entertaining, but it was much like an old-fashioned seesaw. It kept going, but it didn't make much progress. But now at last we took a step ahead. It's a shameful thing, the old man pursued, that a woman as old as Jane should have to get her letters surreptitiously. For more than a year now she's been coming here twice a week for mail, and I've been keeping it for her. Rain shine, Mondays and Thursdays. She's been coming. Siletta, she's been getting too. Did she come last Thursday? I asked over eagerly. The postmaster all at once regarded me with suspicion. Now I don't know whether she did or not, he said coldly, and my further attempts to beguile him into conversation failed. I pocketed my stamps, and by that time his resentment at my curiosity was fading. He followed me to the door and lowered his voice cautiously. Any news of the old lady, he asked? It ain't generally known round here that she's missing, but happy the cook there is relation to my wife. We have no news, I replied. And don't let it get around, will you? He promised gravely. I tell him this is the other day, he said, that there is an old walled-up cellar under the mainland place. Have you looked there? He was disappointed when I said we had, and I was about to go when he called me back. Miss Jane didn't get her letters on Thursday, but on Friday that niece of hers came for it. Two letters. One from the city and one from New York. Thanks, I returned, and went out into the quiet street. I walked past the mainland place, but the windows were dark and the house closed. Haphazard inquiry, being out of the question, I took the ten o'clock train back to the city. I had learned little enough, and that little I was at a loss to know how to use. For why had Marjorie gone after Miss Jane's mail after the little lady was missing? And why did Miss Jane carry on a clandestine correspondence? The family had retired when I got home, except Fred, who called from his study to ask for a rhyme for Mosque. I could not think of one and suggested that he change the word to Temple. At two o'clock he banged on my door in a temper, said he had changed the rhyme to Fit, and now couldn't find a rhyme for Temple. I suggested Dimple, drowsily, where at he kicked the panel of the door and went to bed. End of Chapter 13 Chapter 14 of The Window at the White Cat by Mary Robert's Reinhardt This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, reading by Robert Kuiper. Chapter 14 A Walk in the Park The funeral occurred on Monday. It was an ostentatious affair, with a long list of honorary pallbearers, a picked core of city firemen in uniform ranged around the casket, and enough money wasted in floral pillows and sheaves of wheat tied with purple ribbon to have given all the hungry children in town a square meal. Amid all this state, Marjorie moved, stricken and isolated. She went to the cemetery with Edith, Miss Letitia having sent a message that, having never broken her neck to see the man living, she wasn't going to do it to see him dead. The music was very fine, and the eulogy spoke of this Patriot, who had served his country so long and so well. Following the flag, Fred commented under his breath, as long as there was an appropriation attached to it. And when it was all over, we went back to Fred's, until the Fleming House could be put in order again. It was the best place in the world for Marjorie, for, with the children demanding her attention and applause every minute, she had no time to be blue. Mrs. Butler arrived that day, which made Fred suspicious that Edith's plan to bring her far antedated his consent. But she was there when he got home from the funeral, and after one glimpse at her thin face and hollow eyes, I begged Edith to keep her away from Marjorie, for that day at least. Fortunately, Mrs. Butler was exhausted by her journey, and retired to her room almost immediately. I watched her slender figure go up the stairs, and with her black trailing gown and colorless face, she was an embodiment of all that is lonely and helpless. Fred closed the door behind her and stood looking at Edith and me. I tell you, honey, he declared, that, brought into a cheerful home, is sufficient cause for divorce. Isn't it, Jack? She is ill, Edith maintained valiantly. She is my cousin, too, which gives her some claim on me, and my guest, which gives her more. Lady Love, Fred said solemnly, if you do not give me the key to the cellarette, I shall have a chill, and let me beg this of you. If I ever get tired of this life and shuffle off my mortality in a lumber yard or a political club, and you go around like that, I shall haunt you, I swear it. Shuffle off, I declared to him, I shall see that Edith is cheerful and happy. From somewhere above there came a sudden crash, followed by the announcement made by a scared housemaid, that Mrs. Butler had fainted. Fred sniffed as Edith scurried upstairs. Hipped, he said shortly, for two cents I'd go up and give her a good whiff of ammonia, not the aromatic stuff, but the genuine article. That would make her sit up and take notice. Pond my word, I can't think what possessed Edith. These spineless, soft-spoken, timid women are leeches on one's sympathies. But Mrs. Butler was really ill, and Marjorie insisted on looking after her. It was an odd coincidence the widow of one state treasurer and the orphaned daughter of his successor, both men had died violent deaths, in each case when a boiling under the political lid had threatened to blow it off. The boys were allowed to have their dinner with the family that evening in honor of Mrs. Butler's arrival, and it was a riotous meal. Marjorie got back a little of her color. As I sat across from her and watched her expressions change, from sadness to resignation, and even gradually to amusement at the boys' antics, I wondered just how much she knew, or suspected, that she refused to tell me. I remembered a woman, client of mine, who said that whenever she sat near a railroad track and watched an engine thundering toward her, she tortured herself by picturing a child on the track, and wondering whether under such circumstances she would risk her life to save the child. I felt a good bit that way. I was firmly embarked on the case now, and I tortured myself with one idea. Suppose I should find Wardrobe guilty, and I should find extenuating circumstances. What would I do? Publish the truth, see him hanged or imprisoned, and break Marjorie's heart, or keep back the truth, let her marry him, and try to forget that I had had a hand in the whole wretched business. After all, I decided to try to stop my imaginary train. Prove Wardrobe innocent, I reasoned with myself, get to the bottom of this thing, and then it would be man and man, a fair field and no favor. I suppose my proper attitude, romantically taken, was to consider Marjorie's engagement ring an indissoluble barrier. But this was not romance. I was fighting for my life happiness. And as to the ring, well, I'm of the opinion that if a man really loves a woman and thinks he can make her happy, he will tell her so if she is strung with engagement rings to the ends of her fingers. Dangerous doctrine? Well, this is not propaganda. Tuesday found us all more normal. Mrs. Butler had slept some, and very commendably allowed herself to be teed and toasted in bed. The boys were started to kindergarten again after ten minutes of frenzied cap-hunting. Marjorie went with me along the hall when I started for the office. You have not learned anything? She asked cautiously, glancing back to Edith at the telephone calling the grocer frantically for the Monday morning supply of soap and starch. Not much, I evaded. Nothing definite, anyhow. Marjorie, you're not going back to the Monmouth House again, are you? Not just yet. I don't think I could. I suppose later on it will have to be sold, but not at once. I shall go to Aunt Letitia's first. Very well, I said. Then you're going to take a walk with me this afternoon in the park. I won't take no. You need the exercise, and I need to talk to you. I finished lamely. When she had agreed, I went to the office. It was not much after nine, but to my surprise Burton was already there. He had struck up an acquaintance with Miss Grant, the stenographer, and that usually frigid person had melted under the warmth of his red hair and his smile. She was telling him about her sister's baby having whooping cough when I went in. I wish I had studied law, he threw at me. What shall it profit a man to become a lawyer and lose his own soul, as the psalmist says? Ah, I like this ten-to-four business. When we had gone into the inner office and shut out Miss Grant and the whooping cough, he was serious instantly. Well, he said, sitting on the radiator and dangling his foot. I guess we've got wardrobe for theft, anyhow. Theft, I inquired. Well, larceny, if you prefer legal terms. I found where he sold the pearls, in Platsburg, to a wholesale jeweler named suggestively Cash-Dollar. Then I said conclusively, if he took the pearls and sold them, as sure as I sit here, he took the money out of that Russia leather bag. Burton swung his foot rhythmically against the pipes. I'm not so darn sure of it, he said calmly. If he had any reason, he refused to give it. I told him in my turn of Carter's escape, aided by the police, and he smiled. For a suicide it's caused a lot of excitement, he remarked. Then I told him the little incident of the post office. He was much interested. The old lady's in it somehow, he maintained. She may have been lending Fleming money, for one thing. How do you know it wasn't her hundred thousand that was stolen? I don't think she ever had the uncontrolled disposal of a dollar in her life. Well, there's only one thing to do, Burton said finally, and that is find Miss Jane. If she's alive, she can tell something. I'll stake my fountain pen on that, and it's my dearest possession on earth, next to my mother. If Miss Jane is dead, well, somebody killed her, and it's time it was being found out. It's easy enough to say find her. It's easy enough to find her, he exploded. Making noise about it. Send up rockets. Put a half column ad in every paper in town. Better still, give the story to the reporters, and let them find her for you. I'd do it if I wasn't tied up with this Fleming case. Describe her, how she walked, what she liked to eat, what she wore, in this case, what she didn't wear. Lord, I wish I had that assignment. In 48 hours, she will have been seen in 100 different places, and one of them will be right. It will be a question of selection, that is, if she is alive. In spite of his airy tone I knew he was serious, and I felt he was right. The publicity part of it I left to him, and I sent a special delivery that morning to Bellwood, asking Miss Letitia to say nothing, and to refer reporters to me. I had already been besieged with him, since my connection with the Fleming case, and a few more made no difference. Burton attended to the matter thoroughly. The one o'clock edition of an afternoon paper contained a short and vivid scarlet account of Miss Jane's disappearance. The evening editions were full, and while vague as to the manner of her leaving, were minute as regards her personal appearance and characteristics. To escape the threatened inundation of the morning paper men, I left the office early, and at four o'clock Marjorie and I stepped from a hill-car into the park. She had been wearing a short, crepe-edged veil, but once away from the gaze of the curious she took it off. I was glad to see she had lost the air of detachment she had worn for the last three days. Hold your shoulders well back, I directed, when we had found an isolated path, and take long breaths. Try breathing in while I count ten. She was very tractable, unusually so, I imagined, for her. We swung along together for almost a half hour, hardly talking. I was content merely to be with her, and the sheer joy of the exercise after her enforced confinement kept her silent. When she began to flag a little, I found a bench, and we sat down together. The bench had been lately painted, and although it seemed dry enough, I spread my handkerchief for her to sit on, whereupon she called me Sir Walter, and at the familiar jest we laughed like a pair of children. I had made the stipulation that for this one time her father's death and her other trouble should be taboo, and we adhered to it religiously. A robin in the path was industriously digging out a worm. He had tackled a long one, and it was all he could manage. He took the available end in his beak and hopped back with the expression of one who sets his jaws and determines that this, which should be, is to be. The worm stretched into its pinkish and attenuated line, but it neither broke nor gave. Horrid thing, Margery said. That is a disgraceful, heartless exhibition. The robin is apparent, I reminded her. It is precisely the same as Fred, who twists, jerks, distorts, and attenuates the English language in his magazine work in order to have bread and ice cream and jelly cake for his two blooming youngsters. She had taken off her gloves, and sat with her hands loosely clasped in her lap. I wish someone depended on me, she said pensively. It's a terrible thing to feel that it doesn't matter to anyone, not vitally anyhow, whether one is around or not. To have all my responsibilities taken away at once, and just to drift around like this, ah, it's dreadful. You were going to be good, I reminded her. I didn't promise to be cheerful, she returned. Besides—besides my father, there was only one person in the world who cared about me, and I don't know where she is. Dear Aunt Jane. The sunlight caught the ring on her engagement finger, and she flushed suddenly as she saw me looking at it. We sat there for a while, saying nothing. The long May afternoon was coming to a close. The paths began to fill with long lines of hurrying home-seekers, their day in office or factory at an end. Marjorie got up at last and buttoned her coat. Then, impulsively, she held out her hand to me. You have been more than kind to me, she said hurriedly. You have taken me into your home, and helped me through these dreadful days, and I will never forget it, never. I am not virtuous, I replied, looking down at her. I couldn't help it. You walked into my life when you came to my office. Was it only last week? The evil days are coming, I suppose, but just now nothing matters at all. Save that you are you, and I am I. She dropped her veil quickly, and we went back to the car. The prosaic world wrapped us around again. There was a heavy odor of restaurant coffee in the air. People bumped and jolted past us. To me they were only shadows. The real world was a girl in black and myself. And the girl wore a betrothal ring, which was not mine. End of Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Of the Window at the White Cat by Mary Robert's Reinhardt This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, reading by Robert Kuiper. Chapter 15 Find the Woman Mrs. Butler came down to dinner that night. She was more cheerful than I had yet seen her, and she had changed her mournful garments into something a trifle less depressing. With her masses of fair hair dressed high and her face slightly animated, I realized what I had not done before that she was the wreck of a very beautiful woman. Frail as she was, almost shrinkingly timid in her manner, there were times when she drew up her tall figure in something like its former stateliness. She had beautiful eyebrows, nearly black and perfectly penciled. They were almost incongruous in her colorless face. She was very weak. She used a cane when she walked, and after dinner in the library she was content to sit impassive, detached, propped with pillows, while marjorie read to the boys in their night nursery, and Edith embroidered. Fred had been fussing over a play for some time, and he had gone to read it to some manager or other. Edith was already spending the royalties. We could go a little ways out of town, she was saying, and we could have an automobile. Marjorie says theirs will be sold, and it will certainly be a bargain. Jack, are you laughing at me? Certainly not, I replied gravely. Dream on, Edith. Shall we train the boys as chauffeurs, or shall we buy in the Flemingman also cheap? I am sure, Edith said aggrieved, that it costs more for horse feed this minute for your gray, Jack, than it would for gasoline. But Lady Gray won't eat gasoline, I protested. She doesn't like it. Edith turned her back on me and sowed. Near me Mrs. Butler had languidly taken up the paper. Suddenly she dropped it, and when I stooped to pick it up, I noticed she was trembling. Is it true, she demanded, is Robert Clarkson dead? Yes, I assented. He's been dead since Sunday morning. A suicide. Edith had risen and come over to her, but Mrs. Butler was not fainting. I'm glad, glad, she said. Then she grew weak, and some hysterical, laughing and crying in the same breath. When she had been helped upstairs, for in her weakened state, it had been more of a shock than we realized. Marjorie came down, and we tried to forget the scene we had just gone through. I am glad Fred was not here, Edith confided to me. Ellen is a lovely woman, and as kind as she is mild, but in one of her attacks she is a little bit trying. It was strange to contrast the way in which the two women took their similar bereavements. Marjorie represented the best type of normal American womanhood. Ellen Butler, the neurasthenic. She demanded everything by her very helplessness and timidity. She was a constant drain on Edith's ready sympathy. That night, while I closed the house, Fred did not come in. I advised her to let Mrs. Butler go back to her sanatorium. At 12.30 I was still downstairs. Fred was out, and I waited for him, being curious to know the verdict on the play. The bell rang a few minutes before one, and I went to the door. Someone in the vestibule was tapping the floor impatiently with his foot. When I opened the door I was surprised to find that the late visitor was Wardrop. He came in quietly, and I had a chance to see him well under the whole light. The change three days had made was shocking. His eyes were sunk deep in his head. His reddened lids and twitching mouth told of little sleep, of nerves ready to snap. He was untidy too, and a three days beard hardly improved him. I'm glad it's you, he said by way of greeting. I was afraid you'd have gone to bed. It's the top of the evening yet, I replied for functurally. I led the way into the library. Once inside Wardrop closed the door and looked around him like an animal at bay. I came here, he said nervously looking at the windows. Because I had an idea you'd keep your head, mine's gone. I'm either crazy or on my way there. Sit down, man, I pushed a chair to him. You don't look as if you've been in bed for a couple of nights. He went to each of the windows and examined the closed shutters before he answered me. I have it. You wouldn't go to bed either if you thought you'd never wake up. Nonsense. Well, it's true enough. Knox, there are people following me wherever I go. They eat where I eat. If I doze in my chair, they come into my dreams. He stopped there. Then he laughed a little wildly. He had to sit there. That laugh didn't say anything, but it's true. There's a man across the street now eating an apple under lamp post. Suppose you are under surveillance, I said. It's annoying to have a detective following you around, but it's hardly serious. The police say that Mr. Fleming killed himself. That was your own contention. He leaned forward in his chair and resting his hands on his knees, gazed at me somberly. Suppose I say he didn't kill himself. Slowly. Suppose I say he was murdered. Suppose, good God, suppose I killed him myself. I drew back in stupefaction, but he hurried on. For the last two days I've been wondering if I did it. He hadn't any weapon. I had one. He is. I hated him that day. I had tried to save him and couldn't. Oh my God, Nox. I might have gone off my head and done it and not remember it. There have been cases like that. His condition was pitiable. I looked around for some whiskey, but the best I could do was a little port on the sideboard. When I came back, he was sitting with bent head. His forehead on his palms. I thought it all out, he said painfully. My mother had spells of emotional insanity. Perhaps I went for her without knowing it and killed him. I can see him in the night. When I daren't sleep, toppling over onto that table with a bullet wound in his head, and I'm in the room and I have his revolving my pocket. You give me your word. You have no conscious recollection of hearing a shot fired. My word before heaven, he said fervently, but I tell you, Nox, he had no weapon. No one came out of that room as I went in, and yet he was only swaying forward as if I had shot him one moment and caught him as he fell the next. I was dazed. I don't remember yet what I told the police. The expression of fear in his eyes was terrible to see. A gust of wind shook the shutters and he jumped almost out of his chair. You will have to be careful, I said. There have been cases where men confessed murders they never committed, driven by heaven knows what method of undermining their mental resistance. You expose your imagination to third-degree torture of your own invention, and in two days more, you will be able to add full details to the crime. I knew you'd think me crazy, he put in a little less somberly, but just tried once, sitting in a room by yourself all day and all night with detectives watching you sit there and puzzle over a murder of a man you are suspected of killing. You know you felt like killing him, and you have a revolver and he is shut. Wouldn't you begin to think as I do? Water, I asked, trying to fix his wavering eye with mine. Do you own a .32 caliber revolver? Yes. I was startled beyond any necessity under the circumstances. Many people have .32s. That is, I had, he corrected himself. It was in the leather bag that was stolen at Bellwood. I can relieve your mind of one thing, I said. If your revolver was stolen with a leather bag, you had nothing to do with the murder. Fleming was shot with a .32. He looked first incredulous, then relieved. Now then, I pursued. Suppose Mr. Fleming had an enemy, a relentless one who would stoop to anything to compass his ruin. In his position he would be likely to have enemies. This person let us say knows what you carry in your grip and steals it, taking away the funds that would have helped to keep the lid on Fleming's mismanagement for a time. In the grip is your revolver. Would you know it again? He nodded affirmatively. This person, this enemy, finds the revolver, pockets it, and at the first opportunity, having ruined Fleming, proceeds humanely to put him out of his suffering. Is it far-fetched? There were a dozen hundred people who had been glad to ruin him. His gaze wavered again suddenly. It was evident that I had renewed an old train of thought. For instance, I suggested, but he was on guard again. You forget one thing, Knox, he said, after a moment. There was nobody else who could have shot in the room was empty. Nonsense, I replied. Don't forget the warehouse. The warehouse. There is no doubt in my mind that he was shot from there. He was facing the open window sitting directly under the light writing. A shot fired through a broken pane of one of the warehouse windows would meet every requirement of the case. The empty room. The absence of powder marks. Even the fact that no shot was heard. There was a report, of course, but the noise in the clubhouse and the thunderstorm outside covered it. By George, he exclaimed, the warehouse, of course. I never thought of it. He was relieved, for some reason. It's a question now of how many people knew he was at the club and which of them hated him enough to kill him. Clarkson knew it, Warder said, but he didn't do it. Why? Because it was he who came to the door of the room while the detectives knew and I were inside and called Fleming. I pulled out my pocketbook and took out the scrap of paper which Marjorie had found pinned to the pillow in her father's bedroom. Do you know what that means? I asked, watching Warder's face. That was found in Mr. Fleming's room two days after he left home. A similar scrap was found in Miss Jane Maitland's room when she disappeared. When Fleming was murdered, he was writing a letter. He said, the figures have followed me here. When we know what those figures mean, Warder, we know why he was killed and who did it. He shook his head hopelessly. I do not know, he said, and I believed him. He had got up and taken his hat, but I stopped him inside the door. You can help this thing in two ways, I told him. I'm going to give you something to do. You will have less time to be morbid. Find out, if you can, all about Fleming's private life in the last dozen years, especially the last three. See if there are any women mixed up in it, and try to find out something about this 1122. 1122, he repeated, but I had not missed his change of expression when I said women. Also, I went on. I want you to tell me who was with you the night you tried to break into the house, said Bellwood. He was taken completely by surprise. When he had gathered himself together, his perplexity was overdone. With me, he repeated, I was alone, of course. I mean, the woman at the gate. He lost his composure altogether, then. I put my back against the door and waited for him to get himself in hand. There was a woman, I persisted. And what is more, Warder, at this minute you believe she took your Russia leather bag and left a substitute? He fell into the trap. But she couldn't. He quavered. I thought till my brain's going, I don't see how she could have done it. He became sullen when he saw what he had done, refused any more information, and left almost immediately. Fred came soon after, and in the meantime I had made some notes like this. Chapter 16 of The Window at the White Cat by Mary Roberts Reinhardt This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, reading by Robert Kuiper. Chapter 16 1122 Again Burton's idea of exploiting Miss Jane's disappearance began to bear fruit the next morning. I went to the office early, anxious to get my more pressing business out of the way, to have the afternoon with Burton to inspect the warehouse. At nine o'clock came a call from the morgue. Small woman, well-dressed, gray hair, I repeated. I think I'll go up and see. Where was the body found? In the river at Monica Station, was the reply. There's a scar diagonally across the cheek at the corner of the mouth. A fresh injury? No, no scar. With a breath of relief I said it was not the person we were seeking, and tried to get back down to work again. But Burton's prophecy had been right. Miss Jane had been seen in a hundred different places. One, perhaps, was right. Which one? A reporter from the Eagle had been working on the case all night. He came in for a more detailed description of the missing woman, and he had a theory, to fit which he was quite ready to cut and trim the facts. It's row, he said confidently. You can see his hand in it right through. I was put on the Benson Kidnap, in case you remember. The boy who was kept for three months in a deserted lumber camp in the mountains. Sir, every person in the Benson House swore that youngster was in bed at midnight, when the house was closed for the night. Every door and window bolted in the morning, and the boy gone. When we found Row, after the mother had put on morning, and found the Kid ten pounds heavier than he had been before he was abducted, and strutting around like a turkey-cock, Row told us that he and the boy took in the theater that night, and were there for the first act. Now how did he do it? He offered to take the boy to the show, if he would pretend to go to bed, and then slide down a porch pillar and meet him. The boy didn't want to go home when we found him. There can't be any mistake about the time in this case, I commented. I saw her myself after eleven and said good night. The Eagleman consulted his notebook. Oh yes, he asked. Did she have a diagonal cut across her cheek? No, I said for the second time. My next visitor was a cabin. On the night in question he had taken a small and very nervous old woman to the Omega Ferry. She appeared excited and almost forgot to pay him. She carried a small satchel and wore a black veil. What did she look like, which had gray hair, and she seemed to have a scar on her face that drew the corner of her mouth. At ten o'clock I telephoned Burton. For heaven's sake, I said, if anyone has lost a little old lady in a black dress, wearing a black veil, carrying a satchel, and with a scar diagonally across her cheek from her eye to her mouth, I can tell them all about her and where she is now. That's funny, he said. We're stirring up the pool and bringing up things we didn't expect. The police had been looking for that woman quietly for a week. She's the widow of a coal baron, and her son-in-law's under suspicion of making a way with her. Well, he didn't, I affirmed. She committed suicide from an Omega ferry boat, and she's at the morgue this morning. Bully, he returned. Keep on, you'll get lots of clues, and remember one will be right. It was not until noon, however, that anything concrete developed. In the two hours between, I had interviewed seven more people. I had followed the depressing last hours of the coal baron's widow and jumped with her mentally into the Black River that night. I had learned of a small, ferrish-haired girl who had tried to buy cyanide of potassium at three drugstores on the same street, and of a tall, light woman who had taken a room for three days at a hotel and was apparently demented. At twelve, however, my reward came. Two men walked in almost at the same time. One was a motorman, in his official clothes, with brass buttons and patches around the pockets. The other was a taxi driver. Both had the uncertain gait of men who, by occupation, are unused to anything stationary under them, and each eyed the others suspiciously. The motorman claimed priority by a nose, so I took him first into my private office. His story, shorn of his own opinions at the time and later, was as follows. On the night in question, Thursday of the week before, he took his car out of the barn for the eleven o'clock run. Barney was his conductor. They went from the barn to Hay Street, downtown, and then started out for Winton. The controller blew out, and two or three things went wrong, all told they lost forty minutes. They got to Winton at five minutes after two. Their time there was one twenty-five. The car went to the bat again at Winton, and he and Barney tinkered with it until two forty. They got it in shape to go back to the barn, but that was all. Just as they were ready to start, a passenger got on. A woman, alone. Small woman with a brown veil. She wore a black dress or a suit. He was vague about everything but the color. And he noticed her especially because she was fidgety and excited. Half a block further, a man boarded the car and sat across from the woman. Barney said afterwards that the man tried twice to speak to the woman, but she looked away each time. No, he hadn't heard what he said. The man got out when the car went into the barn, but the woman stayed on. He and Barney got another car and took it out, and the woman went with them. She made a complete round trip this time, going out to Winton and back to the end of the line downtown. It was just daylight when she got off at last, at first and day streets. Asked if he had thought at the time that the veiled woman was young or old, he said he had thought she was probably middle-aged. Very young or very old women would not put in a night riding in a street car. Yes, he had had men who rode around a couple of times at night, mostly to sober up before they went home, but he never saw a woman do it before. I took his name and address and thanked him. The chauffeur came next, and his story was equally pertinent. On the night of the previous Thursday, he had been engaged to take a sick woman from a downtown hotel to a house at Bellwood. The woman's husband was with her, and they went slowly to avoid jolting. It was after twelve when he drove away from the house and started home. At a corner, he did not know the names of the streets, a woman hailed the cab and asked him if he belonged in Bellwood or was going to the city. She had missed the last train. When he told her he was going into town, she promptly engaged him and showed him where to wait for her, a narrow road off the main street. I waited for an hour, he finished, before she came. I dropped asleep or I would have gone without her. I had passed one, she came along and a gentleman with her. He put her in the cab and I took her to the city. When I saw in the paper that a lady had disappeared from Bellwood that night, I knew right off that it was my party. Would you know the man again? I would know his voice, I expect, sir. I could not see much. He wore a slouch hat and had a traveling bag, some kind. What did he say to the woman, I asked. He didn't say much before he closed the door. He said, you have put me in a terrible position or something like that. From the traveling bag and all, I thought perhaps it was an elopement and the lady had decided to throw him down. Was it a young woman or an old one, I asked again. This time the cabbie's tone was assured. Young, he asserted, slim and quick, dressed in black with a black veil, soft voice. She got out at Market Street and I have an idea she took a crosstown car from there. I hardly think it was Miss Maitland, I said. She was past sixty and besides I don't think she went that way. Still it is worth following up. Is that all? He fumbled in his pocket and after a minute brought out a small black pocketbook and held it out to me. It was the small coin purse out of a leather handbag. She dropped this in the cab, sir, he said. I took it home to the Mrs., not knowing what else to do with it. It had no money in it, only that bit of paper. I opened the purse and took out a small white card without engraving. On it was written in a pencil the figures C. 1122. End of Chapter 16 Chapter 17 of The Window at the White Cat by Mary Roberts Reinhart This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, reading by Robert Kuiper. Chapter 17 His Second Wife When the cab man had gone I sat down and tried to think things out. As I have said many times in the course of this narrative I lack imagination. Moreover a long experience of witnesses in court had taught me the unreliability of average observation. The very fact that two men swore to having taken solitary women away from Bellwood that night made me doubt if either one had really seen the missing woman. Of the two stories the taxi cab drivers was the more probable, as far as Miss Jane was concerned. Knowing her childlike nature, her timidity, her shrinking and shame-faced fear of the dark, it was almost incredible that she should walk the three miles to Winton, voluntarily, and from there lose herself in the city. Besides, such an explanation would not fit the blood stains or the fact that she had gone, as far as we could find out, in her night-clothes. Still, she had left the village that night, either by cab or on foot. If the driver had been correct in his time, however, the taxi cab was almost eliminated. He said the woman got into the cab at 1.30. It was between 1.30 and 1.45 when Marjorie heard the footsteps in the attic. I think for the first time it came to me that day that there was at least a possibility that Miss Jane had not been attacked, robbed, or injured. That she had left home voluntarily under stress of great excitement. But if she had, why? The mystery was hardly less for being stripped of its gruesome details. Nothing in my knowledge of the missing woman gave me a clue. I had a vague hope that, if she had gone voluntarily, she would see the newspapers and let us know where she was. To my list of exhibits I added the purse with its enclosure. The secret drawer of my desk now contained, besides the purse, the slip marked 1122 that had been pinned to Fleming's pillow, the similar scrap found over Miss Jane's mantle, the pearl I had found on the floor of the closet, and the cyanide, which as well as the bullet Burton had given me. Add to these the still tender place on my head where Wardrop had almost brained me with a chair and a blue ankle now becoming spotted with yellow where I had fallen down the dumbwaiter and my list of visible reminders of the double mystery grew to eight. I was not proud of the part I had played. So far I had blundered, it seemed to me, at every point where a blunder was possible. I had fallen over folding chairs and down a shaft. I had been a half hour too late to save Alan Fleming. I had been up and awake and Miss Jane had got out of the house under my very nose. Last, and by no means least, I had waited 35 years to find the right woman and when I found her, someone else had won her. I was in the depths that day when Burton came in. He walked into the office jongly and presented Miss Grant with a club sandwich, neatly done up and waxed paper. Then he came into my private room and closed the door behind him. I won't dull care. He exclaimed, taking in my dejected attitude and exhibits on the desk at a glance. Look up and grin, my friend. He had his hands behind him. Don't be a fool, I snapped. I'll not grin unless I feel like it. Grinned, aren't you? he said, and put something on the desk in front of me. It was a Russia leather bag. The leather bag, he pointed proudly. Where did you get it? I exclaimed, incredulous. Burton fumbled with the lock while he explained. It was found in Boston, he said. How do you open this thing anyhow? It was not locked and I got it open in a minute. As I had expected, it was empty. Then, perhaps Wardrup was telling the truth, I exclaimed. By Joe Burton he was robbed by the woman in the cab and he can't tell about her on account of Miss Fleming. She made a haul for certain. I told him, then, of the two women who had left Bellwood on the night of Miss Jane's disappearance and showed him the purse and its enclosure. The sea puzzled him as it had me. It might be anything, he said, as he gave it back, from a book, chapter, and verse in the Bible to a prescription for rheumatism at a drugstore. As to the lady in the cab, I think perhaps you are right, he said, examining the interior of the bag, where Wardrup's name and ink told its story. Of course we have only Wardrup's word that he brought the bag to Bellwood. If we grant that, we can grant the rest that he was robbed, that the thief emptied the bag, and either took it or shipped it to Boston. And how on earth did you get it? It was a coincidence. There have been a shrewd lot of baggage thieves in two or three eastern cities lately, mostly Boston. The method, the police say, was something like this. One of them, the chief of the gang, would get a wagon, dress like an expressman, and go around the depots looking at baggage. He would make a mental note of the numbers, go away and forge a check to match, and secure the pieces he had taken a fancy to. Then he merely drove around the headquarters, and the trunk was rifled. The police got on, raided the place, and found, among others, our Russia leather bag. It was shipped back empty to the address inside, at Bellwood. At Bellwood? Then how? It came while I was lunching with Miss Letitia. He said easily, we're very chummy, thick as thieves. What I want to know is, disregarding my astonishment, where is the hundred thousand? Find the woman. Did you ever hear of Anderson, the nerve specialist? He asked without apparent relevancy. I've been thinking of him, I answered. If we could get wardrobe there on some plausible excuse, it would take Anderson about ten minutes with his instruments and experimental psychology to know everything wardrobe ever forgot. I'll go on one condition, Burton said, preparing to leave. I'll promise to get wardrobe and have him on the spot at two o'clock tomorrow, if you'll promise me one thing. If Anderson fixes me with his eye and I begin to look dotty and tell about my past life, I want you to take me by the flap of my ear and lead me gently home. I promise, I said, and Burton left. The recovery of the bag was only one of the many astonishing things that happened that day and the following night. Hawes, who knew little of what it all meant and disapproved a great deal, ended that afternoon by locking himself blinking furiously in his private office. To Hawes any practice that was not lucrative was bad practice. About four o'clock, when I had shut myself away from the crowd in the outer office and was letting Ms. Grant take their depositions as to when and where they had seen a little old lady probably demented, wandering around the streets, a woman came who refused to be turned away. Young woman, I heard her say, speaking to Ms. Grant. He may have important business, but I guess mine's just a little more so. I interfered then and let her come in. She was a woman of medium height, quietly dressed and fairly handsome. My first impression was favorable. She moved with a certain dignity and she was not laced, crimped, or made up. I am more sophisticated now. The lady who tells me things says that the respectable women nowadays outrush, out crimp, and outlace the unrespectable. However, the illusion was gone the moment she began to speak. Her voice was heavy, throaty, expressionless. She threw it like a weapon. I'm perfectly honest in saying that for a moment the surprise of her voice outweighed the remarkable thing she was saying. I am Mrs. Allen Fleming, she said, with a certain husky defiance. I beg your pardon, I said after a minute. You mean the Allen Fleming who has just died? She nodded. I could see she was unable just then to speak. She had nerved herself to the interview, but it was evident that there was a real grief. She fumbled for a black bordered handkerchief, and her throat worked convulsively. I saw now that she was in mourning. Do you mean, I ask incredulously, that Mr. Fleming married a second time? He married me three years ago in Plattsburg. I came from there last night. I couldn't leave before. Does Miss Fleming know about this second marriage? No. Nobody knew about it. I've had to put up with a great deal, Mr. Knox. It's a hard thing for a woman to know that people are talking about her, and all the time she's married as tight as ring and book can do it. I suppose, I hazarded, if that is the case, you have come about the estate? Estate! Her tone was scornful. I guess I'll take what's coming to me as far as that goes, and it won't be much. No. I've come to ask what they mean by saying Allen Fleming killed himself. Don't you think he did? I know he did not. She said tensely. Not only that. I know who did it. It was Schwartz. Henry Schwartz. Schwartz, but what on earth? You don't know Schwartz. She said grimly. I was married to him for fifteen years. I took him when he had a saloon in the Fifth Ward at Plattsburg. The next year he was Alderman. I didn't expect in those days to see him riding around in an automobile. Not but what he was making money. Henry Schwartz is a money-maker. That's why he's boss of the state now, and you divorced him. He was a brute, she said vindictively. He wanted me to go back to him, and I told him I would rather die. I took a big house and kept bachelor suites for gentlemen. Mr. Fleming lived there, and he married me three years ago. He and Schwartz had to stand together, but they hated each other. Schwartz, I meditated. Do you happen to know if Senator Schwartz was in Plattsburg at the time of Mr. Fleming's death? He was here in Manchester. He had threatened Mr. Fleming's life. He had already tried to kill him the day we were married. He stabbed him twice, but not deep enough. I looked at her in wonder. For this woman, not extraordinarily handsome, two men had fought and one had died, according to her story. I can prove everything I say, she went on rapidly. I have letters from Mr. Fleming telling me what to do in case he was shot down. I have papers, cancelled notes, that would put Schwartz in the penitentiary. That is, she said cunningly. I did have them. Mr. Fleming took them away. Aren't you afraid for yourself? I asked. Yes, I'm afraid. Afraid he'll get me back yet. It would please him to see me crawl back on my knees. But he cannot force you to go back to him. Yes, he can, she shivered, from which I knew she had told me only a part of her story. After all, she had nothing more to tell. Fleming had been shot. Schwartz had been in the city about the borough bank. He had threatened Fleming before, but a political piece had been patched. Schwartz knew the white cat. That was all. Before she left, she told me something I had not known. I know a lot about inside politics, she said, as she got up. I have seen the state divided up with the roast at my table and served around with the dessert. And I can tell you something you don't know about your white cat. A back staircase leads to one of the upstairs room and shuts off with a locked door. It opens below out of side entrance, not supposed to be used, only if you know of it. Henry Butler was found dead at the foot of that staircase. He shot himself, didn't he? The police say so, she replied with her grim smile. There is such a thing as murdering a man by driving him to suicide. She wrote an address on a card and gave it to me. Just a minute, I said, as she was about to go. Have you ever heard Mr. Fleming speak of the Mrs. Maitland? They were his first wife's sisters. No, he never talked of them. But I believe just before he left Plattsburgh, he tried to borrow some money from them and failed. The oldest one telegraphed the refusal. Collect, she said, smiling faintly. There is something else, I said. Did you ever hear of the number 1122? No, well, yes, she said. It is the number of my house. It seemed rather ridiculous when she was gone and I sat down to think it over. It was anti-climax, to say the least. If the mysterious number meant only the address of this very ordinary woman, then it was probable her story of Schwartz was true enough. But I could not reconcile myself to it. Nor could I imagine Schwartz with his great bulk skulking around pinning scraps of paper to pillows. It would have been more like the fearlessness and passion of the man to have shot Fleming down in the State House corridor or on the street and to have trusted in his influence to set him free. For the first time it occurred to me that there was something essentially feminine in the revenge of the figures that had haunted the dead man. I wondered if Mrs. Fleming had told me all or only half the truth. That night, at the most peaceful spot I had ever known, Fred's home, occurred another inexplicable affair, one that left us all with racked nerves and listening fearful ears. End of Chapter 17 Chapter 18 of The Window at the White Cat by Mary Roberts Reinhart This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, reading by Robert Kuiper. Chapter 18 Edith's Cousin That was to be Marjorie's last evening at Fred's. Edith had kept her as long as she could, but the girl felt that her place was with Miss Letitia. Edith was desolate. I don't know what I'm going to do without you. She said that night when we were all together in the library with a wood fire for light and coziness more than heat. Marjorie was sitting before the fire, and while the others talked, she sat mostly silent, looking into the blaze. The main night was cold and rainy, and Fred had been reading us a poem he had just finished, receiving with indifference my comment on it and basking in Edith's rapture. Do you know yourself what it is about, I inquired costically? If it's about anything, it isn't poetry, he replied. Poetry appeals to the ear. It is primarily sensuous. If it is more than that, it ceases to be poetry and becomes verse. Edith yawned. I'm afraid I'm getting old, she said. I'm getting the nap habit after dinner. Fred, run up will you and see if Kate put blankets over the boys? Fred stuffed his poem in his pocket and went resignedly upstairs. Edith yawned again and prepared to retire to the den for forty winks. If Ellen decides to come downstairs, she called back over her shoulder, please come and wake me. She said she felt better and might come down. At the door she turned, behind Marjorie's back, and made me a sweeping and comprehensive signal. She finished it off with a double wink, Edith having never been able to wink with one eye alone, and crossing the hall, closed the door of the den with an obtrusive bang. Marjorie and I were alone. The girl looked at me, smiled a little, and drew a long breath. It's queer about Edith, I said. I never before knew her to get drowned in the water. She was a little wousy after dinner. If she were not beyond suspicion, I would think at a deep-laid scheme, and she and Fred sitting and holding hands in a corner somewhere. But why a scheme? She had folded her hands in her lap, and the eternal ring sparkled malignantly. She might think I wanted to talk to you, I suggested. To me? To you. The fact is, I do. Perhaps I was morbid about the ring. It seemed to me she lifted her hand and looked at it. It's draughty in here. Don't you think so? She asked suddenly, looking back of her. Probably she had not meant it, but I got up and closed the door into the hall. When I came back, I took the chair next to her. And for a moment we said nothing. The log threw out tiny red devil sparks, and the clock chimed eight very slowly. Harry Wardrup was here last night, I said, poking down the log with my heel. Here? Yes. I suppose I was wrong, but I did not say you were here. She turned and looked at me closely, out of the most beautiful eyes I ever saw. I'm not afraid to see him, she said proudly, and he should not be afraid to see me. I want to tell you something before you see him. Last night, before he came, I thought that, well, that at least he knew something the things we want to know. Yes? In justice to him, and because I want to fight fair, I tell you tonight that I don't believe he knows anything about your father's death, and that I believe he was robbed that night at Bellwood. What about the pearls he sold at Platsburg? She asked suddenly. I think when the proper time comes he will tell about that too, Marjorie. I did not notice my use of her name until too late. If she heard, she failed to resent it. After all, if you love him, hardly anything else matters, does it? How do we know but that he was in trouble, and that Aunt Jane herself gave them to him? She looked at me with a little perplexity. You plead his case very well, she said. Did he ask you to speak to me? I won't run a race with a man who is lame, I said quietly. Ethically, I ought to go away and leave you to your dreams, but I'm not going to do it. If you love Wardrobe as a woman ought to love the man she marries, then marry him and I hope you will be happy. If you don't know, let me finish. I have made up my mind to clear him if I can, to bring him to you with a clear slate. Then I know it is audacious, but I'm going to come too, and I'm going to plead for myself then, unless you send me away. She sat with her head bent, her color coming and going nervously. Now she looked up at me with what was the ghost of a smile. It sounds like a threat, she said in a low voice. And you, I wonder if you always get what you want. Then, of course, Fred came in and fell over a hassec looking for matches. Edith opened the door of the den and called him to her irritably, but Fred declined to leave the wood fire and settled down in his ear. Settle down in his easy chair. After a while Edith came over and joined us, but she snubbed Fred the entire evening to his bewilderment. And when conversation lagged during the evening that followed, I tried to remember what I had said and knew I had done very badly. Only one thing cheered me. She had not been angry, and she had understood. Blessed be the woman that understands. We broke up for the night about eleven. Mrs. Butler had come down for a while and even played a little, something from Tchaikovsky, a singing plaintive theme that brought sadness back into Marjorie's face, and made me think for no reason of a wet country road and a plodding back-burden peasant. Fred and I sat in the library for a while after the rest had gone, and I told him a little of what I had learned that afternoon. A second wife, he said, and a primitive type, huh? Well, did she shoot him or did Schwartz? The lady or the democratic tiger? The tiger, I said firmly. The lady, Fred, with equal assurance. Fred closed the house with his usual care. It required the combined efforts of the maids followed up by Fred to lock the windows, it being his confident assertion that in seven years of keeping house he had never failed to find at least one unlocked window. On that night, I remember, he went around with his usual scrupulous care. Then we went up to bed, leaving a small light at the telephone in the lower hall, nothing else. The house was a double one, built around a square hall below, which served the purpose of a general sitting-room. From the front door a short, narrow hall led back to this, with a room on either side, and from it doors led into the rest of the lower floor. At one side the stairs took the ascent easily with two stops for landings, and upstairs the bedrooms opened from a similar, slightly smaller, square hall. The staircase to the third floor went up from somewhere back in the nursery wing. My bedroom was over the library, and Mrs. Butler and Marjorie Fleming had connecting rooms across the hall. Fred and Edith slept in the nursery wing, so they would be near the children. In the square upper hall there was a big reading table, a lamp, and some comfortable chairs. Here, when they were alone, Fred read aloud the evening paper, or his latest short story, and Edith's sewing basket showed how she put in what women miscall their leisure. I did not go to sleep at once. Naturally the rather vital step I had taken in the library insisted on being considered and almost regretted. I tried reading myself to sleep, and when that failed I tried the soothing combination of a cigarette and a book. That worked like a charm. The last thing I remember is of holding the cigarette in a death-grip as I lay with my pillows propped back of me, my head to the light, and a delightful langer creeping over me. I was awakened by the pungent, acrid smell of smoke, and I sat up and blinked my eyes open. The side of the bed was sending up a steady column of gray smoke, and there was a smart crackle of fire under me somewhere. I jumped out of bed and saw the trouble instantly. My cigarette had dropped from my hand, still lighted, and as is the way with cigarettes determined to burn to the end. In doing so it had fired my bed, the rug under the bed, and pretty nearly the man on the bed. It took some sharp work to get it all out without rousing the house. Then I stood among the wreckage and looked ruefully at Edith's pretty room. I could see mentally the spot of water on the library ceiling the next morning, and I could hear Fred's strictures on the heedlessness and indifference to property of bachelors in general and me in particular. Three pictures of water on the bed had made it an impossible couch. I put on a dressing gown and, with a blanket over my arm, I went out to hunt some sort of place to sleep. I decided on the Davenport in the hall just outside, and as quietly as I could I put a screen around it and settled down for the night. I was awakened by the touch of a hand on my face. I started, I think, and the hand was jerked away, I'm not sure. I was still drowsy. I lay very quiet, listening for footsteps, but none came. With the feeling that there was someone behind the screen I jumped up. The hall was dark and quiet. When I found no one, I concluded it had only been a vivid dream, and I sat down on the edge of the Davenport and yawned. I heard Edith moving back in the nursery. She has an uncomfortable habit of wandering around in the night, covering the children, closing windows, and sniffing for fire. I was afraid some of the smoke from my conflagration had reached her suspicious nose, but she did not come into the front hall. I was wide awake by that time, and it was then, I think, that I noticed a heavy Swedish odor in the air. At first I thought one of the children might be ill, and that Edith was dosing him with one of the choice concoctions that she kept in the bathroom medicine closet. When she closed her door, however, and went back to bed, I knew I had been mistaken. The Swedish smell was almost nauseating. For some reason or other, association of certain odors with certain events, I found myself recalling a time when I had a wisdom tooth taken out, and that when I came around I was being sat on by a dentist and his assistant, and the latter had a black eye. Then suddenly I knew the sickly odor was chloroform. I had the light on in a moment, and was wrapping at Marjorie's door. It was locked, and I got no answer. A pale light shone over the transom, but everything was ominously quiet beyond the door. I went to Mrs. Butler's room next. It was unlocked and partly open. One glance at the empty bed and the confusion of the place, and I rushed without ceremony through the connecting door into Marjorie's room. The atmosphere was reeking with chloroform. The girl was in bed, apparently sleeping quietly. One arm was thrown up over her head, and the other lay relaxed on the white cover. A folded towel had been laid across her face, and when I jerked it away I saw she was breathing very slowly, stertoriously, with her eyes partly open and fixed. I threw up all the windows before I roused the family, and as soon as Edith was in the room I telephoned for the doctor. I hardly remember what I did until he came. I know we tried to rouse Marjorie and failed, and I know that Fred went downstairs and said the silver was intact, and the back kitchen door open. Then the doctor came and I was put out in the hall, and for an eternity I walked up and down eight steps one way, eight steps back, unable to think, unable even to hope. Not until the doctor came out to me and said she was better, and would I call a maid to make some strong black coffee, did I come out of my stupor. The chance of doing something, anything, made me determined to make the coffee myself. They still speak of that coffee at Fred's. It was Edith who brought Mrs. Butler to my mind. Fred had maintained that she had fled before the intruders, and was probably in some closet or corner of the upper floor. I was afraid our solicitude was long in coming. It was almost an hour before we organized a searching party to look for her. Fred went upstairs and I took the lower floor. It was I who found her, after all, lying full length on the grass in the little square yard back of the house. She was in a dead faint, and she was a much more difficult patient than Marjorie. We could get no story from either of them that night. The two rooms had been ransacked, but apparently nothing had been stolen. Fred vowed he had locked and bolted the kitchen door, and that it had been opened from within. It was a strange experience that night intrusion into the house without robbery as a motive. If Marjorie knew or suspected the reason for the outrage, she refused to say. As for Mrs. Butler, to mention the occurrence put her into hysteria. It was Fred who put forth the most startling theory of the lot. By George, he said the next morning when we had failed to find tracks in the yard, and Edith had reported every silver spoon in its place. By George it wouldn't surprise me if the lady in the grave clothes did it to herself. There isn't anything a hysterical woman won't do to rouse your interest in her if it begins to flag. How did anyone get in through that kitchen door when it was locked inside and bolted? I tell you she opened it herself. I did not like to force Marjorie's confidence, but I believed that the outrage was directly for the purpose of searching her room, perhaps for papers that had been her father's. Mrs. Butler came around enough by morning to tell a semi-connected story in which she claimed that two men had come in from a veranda roof and tried to chloroform her, that she had pretended to be asleep and had taken the first opportunity while they were in the other room to run downstairs and into the yard. Edith thought it likely enough being a credulous person. As it turned out, Edith's intuition was more reliable than my skepticism. Or Fred's. End of Chapter 18. Chapter 19 Of the Window at the White Cat by Mary Robert's Reinhardt. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, reading by Robert Kuiper. Chapter 19 Back to Bellwood. The inability of Marjorie Fleming to tell who had chloroformed her, and Mrs. Butler's white face and brooding eyes made a very respectable mystery out of the affair. Only Fred, Edith, and I came down to breakfast that morning. Fred's expression was half amused, half puzzled. Edith fluttered uneasily over the coffee machine, her cheeks as red as the bow of ribbon at her throat. I was preoccupied, and like Fred I propped the morning paper in front of me and proceeded to think in its shelter. Did you find anything, Fred? Edith asked. Fred did not reply, so she repeated the question with some emphasis. What? Fred inquired, peering around the corner of the paper. Did you find any clue? Yes, dear. That is, no, nothing to amount to anything. Upon my soul, Jack, if I wrote the editorials of this paper, I'd say something. He subsided into inarticulate growls behind the paper, and everything was quiet. Then I heard a sniffle distinctly. I looked up. Edith was crying, pouring cream into a coffee cup and feeling blindly for the sugar, with her pretty face twisted and her pretty eyes obscured. In a second I was up, had crumpled the newspapers, including Fred's, into a ball, and had lifted him bodily out of his chair. When I am married, I said fiercely, jerking him around Edith and pushing him into a chair-besider. If I ever read the paper at breakfast, when my wife is bursting for conversation, may I have some good and faithful friend who will bring me back to a sense of my duty. I drew a chair to Edith's other side. Now, let's talk, I said. She wiped her eyes shamelessly with her table napkin. There isn't a soul in this house I can talk to. She wailed. All kinds of awful things happening. And we had to send for coffee this morning, Jack. You must have used four pounds last night, and nobody will tell me a thing. There's no use asking Marjorie. She's sick at her stomach from the chloroform, and Ella never talks except about herself, and she's horribly uninteresting. And Fred and you make a barricade out of newspapers and fire yes at me when you mean no. I put the coffee back where I got it, Edith, I protested stoutly. I know we're barbarians, but I'll swear to that. And then I stopped. For I had a sudden recollection of going upstairs with something fat and tinny in my arms, and finding it in my way, and of hastily thrusting it into the boy's boot closet under the nursery stair. Fred had said nothing. He had taken her hand and was patting it gently, the while his eyes sought the headlines on the wad of morning paper. You burned that blue rug, she said to me disconsolently, with a thread of fresh tears. It took me ages to find the right shade of blue. I will buy you that sure-van you wanted, I hasten to assure her. Yes, to take away when you get married. There is a hint of the shrew in all good women. I will buy the sure-van and not get married. Here I regret to say, Edith suddenly laughed. She threw her head back and jeered at me. You! She chalked and pointed one slim finger at me mockingly. You who are so mad about one girl that you love all women for her sake. You who go white instead of red when she comes into the room. You who have let your practice go to the dogs to be near her. And then never speak to her when she's around. But sit with your mouth open like a puppy begging for candy, ready to snap up every word she throws at you and wiggle with joy. I was terrified, honestly, Edith. Do I do that? I gasped. But she did not answer. She only leaned over and kissed Fred. Women like men to be awful fools about them, she said. That's why I'm so crazy about Freddy. He rived. If I tell you something nice, Jack, will you make it a room-size rug? Room-size it is. Then Marjorie's engagement ring was stolen last night, and when I commiserated her she said, Dear me, the lamp's out and the coffee's cold. Remarkable speech under the circumstances, said Fred. Edith rang the bell and seemed to be thinking. Perhaps we'd better make it four small rugs instead of one large one, she said. Not a rug until you have told me what Marjorie said, firmly. Oh, that. Why, she said it didn't really matter about the ring. She had never cared much about it anyway. But that's only a matter of taste, I protested, somewhat disappointed. But Edith got up and patted me on the top of my head. Silly, she said, if the right man came along and gave her a rubber teething ring, she'd be crazy about it for his sake. Edith, Fred said, shocked. But Edith was gone. She took me upstairs before I left for the office to measure for the Sherban. Edith being a person who believes in obtaining a thing, while the desire for it is in its first bloom. Across the hall Fred was talking to Marjorie through the transom. Mustered leaves are mighty helpful, he was saying. I always take them on shipboard, and cheer up, lands in sight. I would have given much for Fred's ease of manner, when, a few minutes later, Edith having decided on four Sherbans and a haul runner, she took me to the door of Marjorie's room. She was lying very still and pale in the center of the white bed, and she tried bravely to smile at us. I hope you are better, I said. Don't let Edith convince you that my coffee has poisoned you. She said she was a little better, and that she didn't know she had had any coffee. That was the extent of the conversation. I, who have a local reputation of a sort before a jury, I could not think of another word to say. I stood there for a minute, uneasily, with Edith poking me with her finger, to go inside the door and speak, and act like an intelligent human being. But I only muttered something about a busy day before me and fled. It was a singular thing, but as I stood in the doorway, I had a vivid mental picture of Edith's description of me, sitting up puppy-like, to beg for a kind word, and wiggling with delight when I got it. If I slunk into my office that morning like a dog scoured to his kennel, Edith was responsible. At the office I found a note from Miss Letitia, and after a glance at it I looked for the first train in my railroad schedule. The note was brief, unlike the similar epistle I had received from Miss Jane the day she disappeared. This one was very formal. Mr. John Knox. Dear sir, kindly oblige me by coming to see me as soon as you get this. Some things have happened. Not that I think they are worth a row of pins, but Hepsiba is an old fool, and she says she did not put the note in the milk bottle. Yours very respectfully, Letitia Ann Maitland. I had an appointment with Burton for the afternoon to take Wardrobe if we could get him on some pretext to Dr. Anderson. That day also I had two cases on the trial list. I got Humphries across the hall to take them over, and evading Hawes' resentful blink I went on my way to Bellwood. It was nine days since Miss Jane had disappeared. On my way out in the train I jotted down the things that had happened in that time. Allen Fleming had died and been buried. The borough bank had failed. Someone had got into the Fleming House and gone through the papers there. Clarkson had killed himself. We had found that Wardrobe had sold the pearls. The leather bag had been returned. Fleming's second wife had appeared, and someone had broken into my own house, and intentionally or not had almost sent Marjorie Fleming over the borderland. It seemed to me that everything pointed in one direction, to a malignity against Fleming that extended itself to the daughter. I thought of what the woman who claimed to be the dead man's second wife had said the day before. If the staircase she had spoken of opened into the room where Fleming was shot, and if Schwartz was in town at the time, then in view of her story that he had already tried once to kill him, the likelihood was that Schwartz was at least implicated. If Wardrobe knew that, why had he not denounced him? Was I to believe that after all the mystery the number 1122 was to resolve itself into the number of a house? Would it be typical of the Schwartz I knew to pin bits of paper to a man's pillow? On the other hand, if he had reason to think that Fleming had papers that would incriminate him, it would be like Schwartz to hire someone to search for them, and he would be equal to having Wardrobe robbed of the money he was taking to Fleming. Granting that Schwartz had killed Fleming. Then who was the woman with Wardrobe the night he was robbed? Why did he take the pearls and sell them? How did the number 1122 come into Aunt Jane's possession? How did the leather bag get to Boston? Who had chloroformed Marjorie? Who had been using the Fleming house while it was closed? Most important of all, now, where was Aunt Jane? The house at Bellwood looked almost cheerful in the May sunshine, as I went up the walk. Nothing ever changed the straight folds of the old-fashioned lace curtains. No dog ever tracked the porch or buried sacrilegious and odorous bones on the level lawn. The birds were nesting in the trees well above the reach of Robert Slatter, but they were decorous, well-behaved birds, whose prim courting never partook of the exuberance of their neighbors, bursting their little throats in an elm above the baby perambulator in the next yard. When Bella had let me in, and I stood once more in the straight hall with the green-repped chairs and the Japanese umbrella stand, involuntarily I listened for the tap of Miss Jane's small feet on the stairs. Instead came Bella's heavy tread, and a request from Miss Letitia that I go upstairs. The old lady was sitting by a window of her bedroom in a chince upholstered chair. She did not appear to be feeble. The only change I noticed was a relaxation in the severe tidiness of her dress. I guessed that Miss Jane's exquisite neatness had been responsible for the white ruchings, the soft caps, and the spotless shoulder shawls which had made lovely their latter years. You've taken your own time about coming, haven't you? Miss Letitia asked sourly. If it hadn't been for that cousin of yours you sent here, Burton, I'd have been driven to sending for a media-miles, and when I send for a media-miles for company I'm in a bad way. I've had a great deal to attend to, I said as loud as I could. I came some days ago to tell you Mr. Fleming was dead. After that we had to bury him and close the house. It's been very sad. Did he leave anything? She interrupted. It isn't sad at all unless he didn't leave anything. He left very little. The house, perhaps, and I regret to have to tell you that a woman came to me yesterday who claims to be a second wife. She took off her glasses, wiped them, and put them on again. Then, she said with a snap, there's one other woman in the world as big a fool as my sister Martha was. I didn't know there were two of them. What do you hear about Jane? The last time I was here, I shouted. You thought she was dead. Have you changed your mind? The last time you were here, she said with dignity. I thought of good many things that were wrong. I thought I had lost some pearls, but I hadn't. What? I exclaimed incredulously. She put her hands on the arms of her chair and leaned forward, shot the words at me viciously. I said I had lost some of the pearls. Well, I haven't. She didn't expect me to believe her any more than she believed it herself, but why on earth she had changed her attitude about the pearls was beyond me. I merely nodded comprehensively. Very well, I said. I'm glad to know it was a mistake. Now, the next thing is to find Miss Jane. We have found her, she said tartly. That's what I sent for you about. Found her? This time I got out of my chair. What on earth do you mean, Miss Leticia? Why, we've been scouring the country for her. She opened a religious monthly on the table beside her and took out a folded paper. I had to control my impatience while she changed her glasses and read it slowly. Happy found it on the back porch under a milk bottle. She prefaced. Then she read it to me. I do not remember the wording, and Miss Leticia refused, both then and later, to let it out of her hands. As a result, unlike the other manuscripts in this case, I have not even a copy. The substance, shorn of its bad spelling and grammar, was this. The writer knew where Miss Jane was, the inference being that he was responsible. She was well and happy, but she had happened to read a newspaper with an account of her disappearance, and it had worried her. The payment of a small sum of $5,000 would send her back as well as the day she left. The amount left in a tin can on the base of the Maitland shaft in the cemetery would bring the missing lady back within 24 hours. On the contrary, if the recipient of the letter notified the police, it would go hard with Miss Jane. What do you think of it? she asked, looking at me over her glasses. If she was full enough to be carried away by a man who spelled cemetery with one M, then she deserves what she's got. And I won't pay $5,000 anyhow. It's entirely too much. It doesn't sound quite genuine to me, I said, reading it over. I should certainly not leave any money until we had tried to find who left this. I'm not so sure but what she'd better stay a while anyhow, Miss Letitia pursued. Now that we know she's living, I ain't so particular when she gets back. She'd been Notionate lately anyhow. I'd begun reading the note again. There's one thing here that makes me doubt the whole story, I said. What's this about her reading the papers? I thought her reading glasses were found in the library. Miss Letitia snatched the paper from me and read it again. Reading the paper, she snipped. You've got more sense than I've been giving you credit for, Knox. Her glasses are here this minute. Without them she can't see to scratch her nose. It was a disappointment to me, although the explanation was simple enough. It was surprising that we had not had more attempts to play on our fears. But the really important thing bearing on Miss Jane's departure was when Hepi came into the room with her apron turned up like a pocket and her dust cap pushed down over her eyes like the slouch hat of a bowery tuff. When she got to the middle of the room she stopped and abruptly dropped the corners of the apron. There rolled out a heterogeneous collection of things, a white muslin garment which proved to be a nightgown, with long sleeves and a high collar, a half-dozen hair curlers, I knew those. Edith had been seen in midnight emergencies with her hair twisted around just such instruments of torture, a shoe-buttner, a railroad map, and one new and unworn black kid glove. Miss Letitia changed her glasses deliberately and took a comprehensive survey of the things on the floor. Where'd you get them? she said, fixing Hepi with an awful eye. I found him stuffed under the blankets in the chest and doors neatic. Hepi shouted at her. If we'd washed the blankets last week as I wanted to, shut up! Miss Letitia said shortly, and Hepi's thin lips closed with a snap. Now then, Knox, what do you make of that? If that's the nightgown she was wearing the night she disappeared, I think it shows one thing very clearly, Miss Maitland. She was not abducted, and she knew perfectly well what she was about. None of her clothes is missing, and that threw us off the track, but look at this new glove. She may have had new things to put on and left the old. The map, well, she was going somewhere with a definite purpose. When we find out what took her away we will find her. She didn't go unexpectedly, that is she was prepared for whatever it was. I don't believe a word of it, the old lady burst out. She didn't have a secret. She was the kind that couldn't keep a secret. She wasn't responsible, I tell ya. She was extravagant. Look at that glove, and she had three pairs half worn in her bureau. Miss Maitland, I ask suddenly, did you ever hear of 1122? 1122 what? Just the number. 1122, I repeated. Does it mean anything to you? Has it any significance? I should say it has, she retorted. In the last ten years, the colored orphan's home has cared for fed clothes and pampered exactly 1122 colored children of every condition of shape and miss shape, brains and no brains. It has no other connection. 1122, twice 11's 22, if that's any help. No, I can't think of anything. I loaned Alan Fleming a thousand dollars once. I guess my mind was failing. It would be about 1122 by this time. Neither of which explanations suffice for the little scrap found in Jane's room. What connection, if any, had it with her flight? Where was she now? What was 1122, and why did Miss Letitia deny that she had lost the pearls when I already knew that nine of the ten had been sold, who had bought them, and approximately how much he had paid? End of chapter 19