 20. Association of Ideas. I ate a light lunch at Bellwood alone, with Bella to look after me in the dining room. She was very solicitous, and when she brought my tea I thought she wanted to say something. She stood awkwardly near the door and watched me. You needn't wait, Bella," I said. I beg your pardon, sir, but I wanted to ask you. Is Miss Fleming well?" Well, she was not very well this morning, but I don't think it is serious, Bella," I replied. She turned to go, but I fancied she hesitated. Oh, Bella, I called as she was going out. I want to ask you something. The night at the Fleming House, when you and I watched the house, did you hear some person running along the hall outside your door? About two o'clock, I think. She looked at me stolidly. No, sir, I slept all night. That's strange. And you didn't hear me when I fell down the dumb-waiter shaft? Holy saints! she ejaculated. Was that where you fell? She stopped herself abruptly. You heard that? I asked gently. And yet you slept all night, Bella. There's a hitch somewhere. You didn't sleep that night at all. You told Miss Fleming I had been up all night. How did you know that? If I didn't know that you couldn't possibly get around as fast as the person in the house that night, I would say you had been in Mr. Fleming's desk, looking for, well, let us say, postage stamps. May I have another cup of coffee? She turned a sickly yellow white and gathered up my cup and saucer with trembling hands. When the coffee finally came back, it was brought grumblingly by old Heppy. He says she turned her ankle. She sniffed. Turned it on a lathe like a table leg, I should say, from the shape of it. Before I left the dining room, I put another line in my new book. What does Bella know? I got back to the city somewhat late for my appointment with Burton. I found wardrobe waiting for me at the office. And if I had been astonished at the change in him two nights before, I was shocked now. He seemed to have shrunk in his clothes. His eyeballs were bloodshot from drinking, and his fair hair had dropped neglected over his forehead. He was sitting in his familiar attitude, his elbows on his knees, his chin on his palms. He looked at me with dull eyes when I went in. I did not see Burton at first. He was sitting on my desk, holding a flat can in his hand, and digging out with a wooden toothpick one sardine after another and bolting them whole. You're good health, he said, poison one in the air, where it threatened oily tears over the carpet. As an appetite quencher and a thirst producer, give me the festive sardine. How lovely it would be if we could eat him without smelling him. Don't you do anything but eat? Wardrobe asked without enthusiasm. Burton eyed him reproachfully. Is that what I get for doing without lunch in order to prove to you that you are not crazy? He appealed to me. He says he's crazy. Lost his think works. Now, I ask you, Knox, when I go to the trouble to find out for him that he's got as many convolutions as anybody and that they've only got a little convoluted, is it fair, I ask you, for him to reproach me about my food? I didn't know you knew each other, I put in, while Burton took another sardine. He says we do. Wardrobe said, wearily. Says he used to knock me around at college. Burton winked at me solemnly. He doesn't remember me, but he will, he said. It's his nerves that are gone, and we'll have him restrung with new wires like an old piano in a week. Wardrobe had that after-day-bought suspicion of all men, but I think he grasped at me as a dependability. He wants me to go to a doctor, he said. I'm not sick, it's only—he was trying to light a cigarette, but the match dropped from his shaking fingers. Better see one, Wardrobe, I urged, and I felt mean enough about doing it. You need something to brace you up. Burton gave him a very small drink, for he could hardly stand, and we went down in the elevator. My contempt for the victim between us was as great as my contempt for myself. That Wardrobe was in a bad position there could be no doubt. There might be more men than Fleming, who had known about the money in the leather bag, and who thought he had taken it and probably killed Fleming to hide the theft. It seemed incredible that an innocent man would collapse as he had done, and yet, at this minute I can name a dozen men who, under the club of public disapproval, have fallen into peresis, insanity, and the grave. We are all indifferent to our fellow men until they are against us. One knew the specialist very well. In fact, there seemed to be few people he did not know, and considering the way he got hold of Miss Letitia and Wardrobe it was not surprising. He had evidently arranged for the doctor, for the waiting room was empty and we were after hours. The doctor was a large man, his size emphasized by the clothes he wore, very light in color, and unprofessional in cut. He was sandy-haired, inclined to be bald, and with shrewd, light blue eyes behind his glasses. Not particularly impressive except as to size, on first acquaintance. A good fellow, with a brisk voice and an amazingly light tread. He began by sending Wardrobe into a sort of examining room in the rear of the suite somewhere to take off his coat and collar. When he had gone the doctor looked at a slip of paper in his hand. I think I've got it all for Mr. Burton, he said. Of course, Mr. Knox, this is a little out of my line. A nerve specialist has as much business with psychotherapy as a piano tuner has with musical technique. But the idea is Munsterberg's, and I've had some good results. I'll give him a short physical examination and when I ring the bell, one of you may come in. Are you a newspaper man, Mr. Knox? An attorney, I said briefly. Pressman, lawyer, doctor, Burton broke in. We all fattened on the other fellow's troubles, don't we? We don't fatten very much, I corrected. We live. The doctor blinked behind his glasses. I never saw a lawyer yet who would admit he was making money, he said. Look at the way a doctor grinds for a pittance. He's just as capable as the lawyer. He works a damn side harder and he makes a tenth the income. A man will pay his lawyer $10,000 for keeping him out of jail for six months, and he'll kick like a steer if his doctor charges him a hundred to keep him out of hell for life. Which of you will come in? I'm afraid two would distract him. I guess it is Knox, but in, Burton conceded, but I get it later, doctor. You promised. The physical examination was very brief. When I was called in, Wardrop was standing at the window, looking down into the street below, and the doctor was writing at his desk. Behind Wardrop's back he gave me the slip he had written. Test is for association of ideas. Watch length of time between word I give and his reply. I often get hold of facts forgotten by the patient. A wait before the answering word is given shows an attempt at concealment. Now, Mr. Wardrop, he said, will you sit here, please? He drew a chair to the center table for Wardrop and another just across for himself. I sat back into one side of the patient where I could see Wardrop's haggard profile and every movement of the specialist. On the table was an electric instrument like a small clock, and the doctor's first action was to attach to it two wires with small black rubber mouthpieces. Now, Mr. Wardrop, he said, we will go on with the test. Your other condition is fair, as far as I told you. I think you can dismiss your idea of insanity without a second thought. But there is something more than brain and body to be considered. In other words, you have been through a storm and some of your nerve wires are down. Put the mouthpiece between your lips, please. See, I do the same with mine. Can I give you a word? Speak as quickly as possible the association it brings to your mind. For instance, if I say noise, your first association might be street, band, drum, almost anything associated with the word, as quickly as possible, please. The first few words went simply enough. Wardrop's replies came almost instantly. To light, he replied lamp. Touch brought the response hand. Eat brought Burton. And both the doctor and I smiled. Wardrop was intensely serious. Then taxicab said the doctor, and after almost imperceptible pause, road came the association. All at once I began to see the possibilities. Desk, pen, pipe, smoke, head. After a perceptible pause the answer came uncertainly, hair. But the association of ideas would not be denied. For an answer to the next word, which was ice, he gave blood. Simply following up the previous word head. I found myself ripping the arms of my chair. The dial on the doctor's clock-like instrument was measuring the interval. I could see that now. The doctor took a record of every word and its response. Wardrop's eyes were shifting nervously. Hot. Cold. White. Black. Whiskey. Glass. All in less than a second. Pearls. A little hesitation, then box. Taxicab again. Night. Silly. Wise. Shot. After a pause. Revolver. Night. Dark. Blood. Head. Water. Drink. Traveling bag. He brought out the word train after an evident struggle. But in answer to the next word, lost, instead of the obvious found, he said woman. He had not had sufficient mental ability to get away from the association with bag, the woman belonged there. Murder brought dead, but shot following immediately after brought staircase. I think Wardrop was on his guard by this time, but the conscious effort to hide truths that might be damaging made the intervals longer from that time on. Already I felt sure that Alan Fleming's widow had been right. He had been shot from the locked back staircase. But by whom? Blow brought chair. Gone. Bag came in a flash. In quick succession, without pause came the words bank, note, door, bolt, money, letters, without any apparent connection. Wardrop was going to the bad. When to the next word, staircase again, he said scar. His demoralization was almost complete. As for me, the scene in Wardrop's mind was already in mind. Schwartz, with the scar across his ugly forehead and the bolted door to the staircase open. On again with a test. Flower, after perhaps two seconds from the preceding shock, brought bread, trees, leaves, night, dark, gate. He stopped here so long I thought he was not going to answer at all. Presently with an effort he said, wood. But as before the association idea came out in the next word for electric light he gave letters. Attic, brought trunks at once. Closet, after perhaps a second and a half came dust. Showing what closet was in his mind and immediately after to match he gave pen. A long list of words followed which told nothing to my mind, although the doctor's eyes were snapping with excitement. Then traveling bag again and instead of his previous association woman, this time he gave yellow. But to the next word house he gave guest. It came to me that in his mental process I was the guest. The substitute bag was in his mind as being in my possession. Quick as a flash the doctor followed up. Guest and Wardrop fell. Letters, he said. To a great many words as I said before I could attach no significance. Here and there I got a ray. Elderly brought black. Warehouse, yard for no apparent reason. 1122 C was the answer given without a second's hesitation. 1122 C. He gave no evidence of having noticed any peculiarity in what he said. I doubt if he realized his answer. To me he gave the impression of repeating something he had apparently forgotten, as if a number and its association had been subconscious and brought to the surface by the psychologist. As if for instance someone prompted A, B and the corollary C came without summoning. The psychologist took the small mouthpiece from his lips and motion Wardrop to do the same. The test was over. I don't call that bad condition, Mr. Wardrop, the doctor said. You are nervous and you need a little more care in your habits. You want to exercise regularly and you will have to cut out everything in the way of stimulants for a while. Oh yes, a couple of drinks a day at first, then one a day and then none. And you're to stop worrying when trouble comes around and stares at you. Don't ask it to have a drink. Take it out in the air and kill it. Oxygen is as fatal to anxiety as it is to tuberculosis. How would Bellwood do, I ask, or should it be the country? Bellwood, of course, doctor responded heartily, ten miles a day, four cigarettes and three meals, which is more than you have been taken, Mr. Wardrop, by two. I put him on the train for Bellwood myself, and late that afternoon the three of us, the doctor, Burton and myself, met in my office and went over the doctor's record. When the answer comes in four-fifths of a second, he said before we began, it is hardly worth comment. There is no time in such an interval for any mental reservation. Only those words that showed noticeable hesitation need be considered. We worked until almost seven. At the end of that time the doctor leaned back in his chair and thrust his hands deep in his trouser pockets. I got the story from Burton, he said, after a deep breath. I had no conclusion formed, and of course I am not a detective. Things looked black for Mr. Wardrop in view of the money loss, the quarrel with Fleming that morning at the White Cat, the circumstances of his leaving the club and hunting for a doctor outside instead of raising the alarm. Still, no two men ever act alike in an emergency. Psychology is as exact a science as mathematics. It gets information from the source, and a man cannot lie in four-fifths of a second. Head, you notice, brought hair in a second and three-quarters, and the next word, ice, brought the blood that he had held back before. That doesn't show anything. He tried to avoid what was horrible to him. But I gave him a traveling bag after a pause he responded with train. The next word, lost, showed what was in his mind. Instead of found, he said, woman. Now then, I believe he was either robbed by a woman or thinks he was. After all, we can only get what he believes himself. Many letters, another slip. Shot, staircase. Where are the stairs at the White Cat? I learned yesterday of a back staircase that leads into one of the upper rooms. I said, it opens on the side entrance and is used in emergency. The doctor smiled confidently. We looked there for our criminal, he said. Nothing hides from the chronoscope. Now then, staircase scar. Isn't that significant? The association is clear. A scar that is vivid enough, disfiguring enough to be the first thing that enters his mind. Schwartz, Burton said with awe. Doctor, what on earth does 1122 C mean? I think that is up to you, gentlemen. The C belongs there without doubt. Briefly, looking over these slips, I make it something like this. Wardrip thinks a woman took his traveling bag. Three times he gave the word letters in response to gate, guest, and money. Did he have a guest at the time all this happened at Bellwood? I was a guest in the house at the time. Did you offer him money for letters? No. Did he give you any letters to keep for him? He gave me the bag that was substituted for his. Locked? Yes. By Job, I wonder if there's anything in it. I have reason to know that he came into my room that night at least once after I went to sleep. I think it is very likely, he said, Riley. One thing we have not touched on, and I believe Mr. Wardrip knows nothing of it. That is the disappearance of the old lady. There's a psychological study for you. My conclusion? Well, I should say that Mr. Wardrip is not guilty of the murder. He knows, or thinks he knows, who is. He has a theory of his own about someone with the scar. It may only be a theory. He does not necessarily know, but he hopes. He is in a state of abject fear. Also, he is hiding something concerning money. And from the word money in that connection, I believe he either sold or bought some damaging papers. He is not a criminal, but he is what is almost worse. The Dr. Rosen picked up his hat. He is a weakling, he said, on the doorway. Burton looked at his watch. By George, he said, seven twenty, and I've had nothing since lunch but a box of sardines. I am off to chase the festive mutton chop. Oh, by the way, Knox, where is that lock bag? In my office safe. I'll drop around in the morning and assist you to compound a felony, he said, easily. But as it happened, he did not. CHAPTER XXI A proscenium box. I was very late for dinner. Fred and Edith were getting ready for a concert, and the two semi-invalids were playing pinocchio in Fred's den. Neither one looked much the worse for her previous night's experience. Mrs. Butler was always pale, and Marjorie had been so since her father's death. The game was over when I went into the den. As usual, Mrs. Butler left the room almost immediately and went to the piano across the hall. I had grown to accept her avoidance of me without question. Fred said it was because my overwhelming vitality oppressed her. Personally, I think it was because the neurosthenic type of woman is repulsive to me. No doubt Mrs. Butler deserved sympathy, but her open demand for it found me cold and unresponsive. I told Marjorie briefly of my visit to Bellwood that morning, and she was as puzzled as I about the things Heppy had found in the chest. She was relieved, too. I am just as sure now that she is living as I was a week ago that she was dead, she said, leaning back in her big chair. But what terrible thing took her away? Unless—unless what? She has loaned my father a great deal of money, Marjorie said, with heightened color. She had not dared to tell Aunt Letitia, and the money was to be returned before she found it out. Then things went wrong with the borough bank, and the money did not come back. If you know Aunt Jane, and how afraid she is of Aunt Letitia, you will understand how terrible it was for her. I have wondered if she would go to Plattsburg and try to find my father there. The Eagleman is working on that theory now, I replied. Marjorie, if there was a letter C added to 1122, would you know what it meant? She shook her head in the negative. Will you answer two more questions, I asked. Yes, if I can. Do you know why you were chloroformed last night, and who did it? I think I know who did it, but I don't understand. I have been trying all day to think it out. I'm afraid to go to sleep tonight. You need not be, I assured her. If necessary, we will have the city police in a ring around the house. If you know and don't tell, Marjorie, you are running a risk, and more than that, you're protecting a person who ought to be in jail. I'm not sure, she persisted. Don't ask me about it, please. What does Mrs. Butler say? Just what she said this morning, and she says valuable papers were taken from under her pillow. She was very ill, hysterical, all afternoon. The gloom and smoldering fire of the Sonata Appassionata came to us from across the hall. I leaned over and took Marjorie's small hand between my two big ones. Why don't you tell me, I urged, or you needn't tell me, I know what you think. But there isn't any motive that I can see, and why would she chloroform you? I don't know, Marjorie shuttered. Sometimes I wonder, do you think she is altogether sane? The music ended with a crash of a minor chord. Fred and Edith came down the stairs, and the next moment we were all together, and the chance for a quiet conversation was gone. At the door Fred turned and came back. Watch the house, he said, and by the way, I guess, he lowered his voice, the lady's story was probably straight. I looked around again this afternoon, and there are fresh scratches on the porch roof under her window. It looks queer, doesn't it? It was a relief to know that, after all, Mrs. Butler was an enemy and a dangerous person to nobody but herself. She retired to her room almost as soon as Fred and Edith had gone. I was wondering whether or not to tell Marjorie about the experiment that afternoon, debating how to ask her what letter she had got from the Postmaster at Bellwood addressed to Miss Jane, and what she knew of Bella. At the same time, bear with me, O masculine reader, the gentle reader will, for she cares a great deal more for the love story than for all the crime and mystery put together. Bear with me, I say, if I hold back the account of the terrible events that came that night to tell how beautiful Marjorie looked as the lamp-light fell on her brown hair and pure profile, and how the impulse came over me to kiss her as she sat there and how I didn't, after all. Poor gentle reader, and only stooped over and kissed the pink palm of her hand. She didn't mind it, speaking as nearly as possible from an impersonal standpoint, I doubt if she was even surprised. You see, the ring was gone, and it had only been an engagement ring anyhow, and everybody knows how binding they are. And then an angel with a burning sword came and scoured me out of my Eden, and the angel was Burton, and the sword was a dripping umbrella. I hate to take you out, he said. The bottoms dropped out of the sky, but I want you to make a little experiment with me. He caught sight of Marjorie through the portiers, and the imp of mischief in him prompted his next speech. She said, she must see you! He said, varied distinctly, and leered at me. Don't be an ass, I said angrily. I don't know that I care to go out tonight. He changed his manner then. Let's go and take a look at the staircase you fellas have been talking about. He said, I don't believe there is a staircase there, except the main one. I have hounded every politician in the city into and out of that joint, and I have never heard of it. I felt some hesitation about leaving the house and Marjorie after the events of the previous night, but Marjorie had caught enough of the conversation to be anxious to have me to go, and when I went in to consult her she laughed at my fears. Lightning never strikes twice in the same place, she said bravely. I will ask Katie to come down with me if I am nervous, and I shall wait up for the family. I went without enthusiasm. Marjorie's departure had been delayed for a day only, and I had counted on the evening with her. In fact, I had sent the concert tickets to Edith with an I single to that idea. But Burton's plan was right. It was in view of what we knew to go over the ground at the White Cat again, and Saturday night with the place full of men, it would be a good time to look around, unnoticed. I don't hang much to this staircase idea, Burton said, and I have a good reason for it. I think we will find it is the warehouse yet. You can depend on it, Burton. I maintained that the staircase is the place to look. If you had seen Wardrop's face today and his agony of mind when he knew he had associated staircase with shot, you would think just as I do. A man like Schwartz, who knew the ropes, could go quietly up the stairs, unbolt the door into the room, shoot Fleming, and get out. Wardrop suspect Schwartz, and he's afraid of him. If he opened the door just in time to see Schwartz, we will say, backing out the door and going down the stairs, or to see the door closing and suspect who had just gone. We would have the whole situation as I see it, including the two motives of deadly hate and jealousy. Suppose the stairs opened into the back of the room. He was sitting facing the window. Do you think Schwartz would go in, walk around the table and shoot him from in front? Poo! Fudge! He had a neck, I retorted. I suppose he might have turned his head to look around. We had been walking through the rain. The white cat, as far off as the pole socially, was only a half dozen blocks actually from the best residence portion of the city. At the corner of the warehouse, Burton stopped and looked up at it. I always get mad when I look at this building, he said. My great grandfather had a truck garden on this exact spot seventy years ago, and the old idiot sold out for three hundred dollars in a pair of mules. How do you get in? What are you going in for? I asked. I was wondering if I had a grudge. I have, for that matter, against the mayor, and I wanted to shoot him. How would I go about it? I think I should find a point of vantage, like an overlooking window in an empty building like this, and I would wait for a muggy night, also like this, when the windows were up and the lights going. I could pot him with a thirty-eight and a dozen yards with my eyes crossed. We had stopped near the arched gate where I had stood and waited for Hunter a week before. Suddenly Burton darted away from me and tried the gate. It opened easily and I heard him splashing through a puddle in the gloomy yard. Come in, he called softly. The water is fine. The gate swung to behind me, and I could not see six inches from my nose. Burton caught my elbow and steered me by touching the fence toward the building. If it isn't a lot too tight, he was saying, we can get in perhaps through a window and get upstairs. From there we ought to be able to see down into the club. What the devil's at? It was a rat, I think, and it scampered away among the loose boards in a frenzy of excitement. Burton struck a match, it burned faintly in the dampness, and in a moment went out, having shown us only the approximate direction of the heavy arched double doors. A second match showed us a bar and a rusty padlock. There was no entrance to be gained in that way. The windows were of the eight-pane variety and in better repair than the ones on the upper floors. By good luck we found one unlocked and not entirely closed. It shrieked hideously as we pried it up, but an opportune clap of thunder covered the sound. By this time I was ready for anything that came. I was wet to my knees, muddy, disreputable. While Burton held the window, I crawled into the warehouse and turned to perform the same service for him. At first I couldn't see him outside. Then I heard his voice, a whisper from beyond the sill. Huck! He said, cop! I dropped below the window and above the rain I could hear the squash of the watchman's boots in the mud. He flashed a nightlamp in at the window next to ours, but he was not very near, and the open window escaped his notice. I felt all the nervous dread of a real malifactor, and when I heard the gate close behind him and saw Burton put a leg over the sill, I was almost as relieved as I would have been had somebody's family plate tied up in a table cloth been reposing at my feet. Burton had an instinct for getting around in the dark. I lighted another match as soon as he had closed the window, and we made out our general direction towards where the stairs ought to be. When the match went out we felt our way in the dark. I had only one box of wax matches, and Burton had dropped his in a puddle. We got to the second floor finally and without any worse mishap than Burton banging his arm against a wheel of some sort. Unlike the first floor, the second was subdivided into rooms. It took a dozen precious matches to find our way to the side of the building overlooking the club, and another dozen to find the window we wanted. When we were there at last, Burton leaned his elbows on the sill and looked down and across. Could anything be better? He said, there's our theater, and we've got a proscenium box. That room over there stands out like a spotlight. He was right. Not more than 15 feet away and perhaps a foot lower than our window was the window of the room where Fleming had been shot. It was empty, as far as we could see. The table, neat enough now, was where it had been before, directly under the light. Anyone who sat there would be an illuminated target from our window. Not only that, but an arm could be steadied on the sill, allowing for an almost perfect aim. Now where's your staircase, Burton jeered? The club was evidently full of men as he had prophesied. Above the rattle of the rain came the thump-thump of the piano and a half-dozen male voices. The shutters below were closed. We could see nothing. I think it was then that Burton had his inspiration. I'll bet you a $5 bill, he said, that if I fire off my revolver here, now not one of those fellows down there would pay the slightest attention. I'll take that bet, I return. I'll wager that every time anybody drops a poker since Fleming was shot, the entire club turns out to investigate. In reply, Burton got out his revolver and examined it by holding it against the light from across the way. I'll tell you what I'll do, he said. Everybody down there knows me. I'll drop in for a bottle of beer and you fire a shot into the floor here, or into somebody across if you happen to see anyone you don't care for. I suggest that you stay and fire the shot because if you went, my friend, and nobody heard it, you would accuse me of shooting from the back of the building somewhere. He gave me the revolver and left me with a final injunction. Wait for ten minutes, he said. It will take five for me to get out of here and five more to get into the clubhouse. Perhaps you better make it fifteen. Chapter 22 of The Window at the White Cat by Mary Roberts Reinhardt This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Reading by Robert Kuiper. Chapter 22 In the room over the way He went away into the darkness and I sat down on an empty box by the window and waited. Had anyone asked me at that minute how near we were to the solution of our double mystery, I would have said we had made no progress, saved by eliminating wardrobe. Not for one instant did I dream that I was within less than half an hour of a revelation that changed my whole conception of the crime. I timed the interval by using one of my precious matches to see my watch when he left. I sat there for what seemed ten minutes, listening to the rush of the rain and the creaking of a door behind me in the darkness somewhere that swung back and forth rustily in the draught from the broken windows. The gloom was infinitely depressing. Away from Burton's enthusiasm, his scheme lacked point. His argument that the night duplicated the weather conditions of that other night a week ago seemed less worthy of consideration. Besides, I have a horror of making myself ridiculous, and I had an idea that it would be hard to explain my position alone in the warehouse firing a revolver into the floor if my own argument was right and the club should rouse to a search. I looked again at my watch. Only six minutes. Eight minutes. Nine minutes. Everyone who has counted the passing of seconds knows how they drag. With my eyes on the room across and my finger on the trigger, I waited as best I could. At ten minutes I was conscious there was someone in the room over the way. And then he came into view from the side somewhere and went to the table. He had his back to me and I could only see that he was a large man with massive shoulders and dark hair. It was difficult to make out what he was doing. After a half minute, however, he stepped to one side and I saw that he had lighted a candle and was systematically reading and then burning certain papers, throwing the charred fragments on the table. With the same glance that told me that, I knew the man. It was Schwartz. I was so engrossed in watching him that when he turned and came directly to the windows, I stood perfectly still, staring at him. With a light at his back I felt certain I had been discovered, but I was wrong. He shook the newspaper which had held the fragments out of the window, lighted a cigarette and flung the match out also, and turned back into the room. As a second thought he went back and jerked at the cord of the window shade but it refused to move. He was not alone, for from the window he turned and addressed someone in the room behind. You sure you got them all, he said. The other occupant of the room came within range of vision. It was Davidson. All there were, Mr. Schwartz, he replied. We were nearly finished before the woman made a bolt. He was fumbling in his pockets. I think I expected him to produce an apple and a penknife, but he held out a small object on the palm of his hand. I would rather have done it alone, Mr. Schwartz, he said. I found this ring in Brig's pocket this morning. It belongs to the girl. Schwartz swore and picked up the ring. He held it to the light. Then he made an angry motion to throw it out of the window. But his German cupidity got the better of him. He slid it into his vest pocket instead. Your damn poor stuff, Davidson, he said with a snarl. If she hasn't got them then Wardrobe has. They'll bungle this job and they'll be held to pay. Tell McFeely I want to see him. Davidson left, for I heard the door close. Schwartz took the ring out and held it to the light. I looked at my watch. The time was almost up. A fresh burst of noise came from below. I leaned out cautiously and looked down at the lower windows. They were still closed and shuttered. When I raised my eyes again to the level of the room across I was amazed to see a second figure in the room. A woman at that. Schwartz had not seen her. He stood with his back to her, looking at the ring in his hand. The woman had thrown her veil back but I could see nothing of her face as she stood. She looked small besides Schwartz's towering height and she wore black. She must have said something just then, very quietly, for Schwartz suddenly lifted his head and wheeled on her. I had a clear view of him and if ever guilt, rage, and white-lipped fear showed on a man's face it showed on his. He replied a half dozen words in a low tone and made a motion to offer a chair, but she paid no attention. I have no idea how long a time they talked. The fresh outburst of noise below made it impossible to hear what they said and there was always the maddening fact that I could not see her face. I thought of Mrs. Fleming, but this woman seemed younger and more slender. Schwartz was arguing, I imagine, but she stood immobile, scornful, watching him. She seemed to have made a request and the man's evasions moved her no-wit. It may have been only two or three minutes but it seemed longer. Schwartz had given up the argument, whatever it was, and by pointing out the window I suppose he was telling her he had thrown what she wanted out there. Even then she did not turn towards me. I could not see even her profile. What happened next was so unexpected that it remains little more than a picture in my mind. The man threw out his hands as if to show he could not or would not accede to her request. He was flushed with rage and even at that distance the ugly scar on his forehead stood out like a welt. The next moment I saw the woman raise her right hand with something in it. I yelled to Schwartz to warn him, but he had already seen the revolver. As he struck her hand aside the explosion came. I saw her stagger, clutch at a chair and fall backwards beyond my range of vision. Then the light went out and I was staring at a black brick wall. I turned and ran frantically toward the stairs. Luckily I found them easily. I fell rather than ran down to the floor below. Then I made a wrong turning and lost some time. My last match set me right and I got into the yard somehow and to the street. It was raining harder than ever and the thunder was incessant. I ran around the corner of the street and found the gate to the white cat without trouble. The inner gate was unlocked as Burton had said he would leave it and from the steps of the club I could hear laughter and the refrain of a popular song. The door opened just as I reached the top step and I half tumbled inside. Burton was there in the kitchen with two other men whom I did not recognize, each one holding a stein of beer. Burton had two and he held one out to me as I stood trying to get my breath. You win, he said. Although I'm a hard-working journalist and need the money, I won't lie. This is Osborne of the Star and McTeague of the Eagle, Mr. Knox. They heard the shot in there and if I hadn't told the story there would have been panic. What's the matter with you? I shut the door into the grill room and faced the three men. For God's sake, Burton, I panted. Let's get upstairs quietly. I didn't fire any shot. There's a woman dead up there. With characteristic poise the three reporters took the situation quietly. We filed through the grill room as casually as we could. With the door closed, however, we threw caution aside. I led the way up the stairs to the room where I had found Fleming's body and where I expected to find another. On the landing at the top of the stairs I came face to face with Davidson, the detective, and behind him Judge McFeely. Davidson was trying to open the door of the room where Fleming had been shot with a skeleton key, but it was bolted inside. There was only one thing to do. I climbed on the shoulders of one of the men, a tall fellow whose face to this day I don't remember, and by careful maneuvering in the assistance of Davidson's long arms I got through the transom and dropped into the room. I hardly know what I expected. I was in total darkness. I know that when I got the door open at last, when the cheerful light from the hall streamed in and I had not felt Schwartz's heavy hand at my throat, I drew a long breath of relief. Burton found the electric light switch and turned it on, and then I could hardly believe my senses. The room was empty. One of the men laughed a little. Stung, he said lightly, what sort of story have you and your friend framed up, Burton? But I stopped at that minute and picked up a small nickel-plated revolver from the floor. I held it out on my palm, and the others eyed it respectfully. Burton, after all, was the quickest-witted of the lot. He threw open one of the two doors in the room, revealing a shallow closet, with the papered walls and a row of hooks. The other door stuck tight. One of the men pointed to the floor. A bit of black cloth had wedged it from the other side. Our combined efforts got it open at last, and we crowded in the doorway, looking down a flight of stairs. Huddled just below us, her head at our feet was the body of the missing woman. My God! said Burton Horsley. Who is it? CHAPTER XXIII A BOX OF CROWN DERBY We got her into the room and on the couch before I knew her. Her fair hair had fallen loose over her face and one long, thin hand clutched still at the bosom of her gown. It was Ellen Butler. She was living, but not much more. We gathered around and stood looking down at her in helpless pity. A current of cold night air came up the staircase from an open door below and set the hanging light to swaying, throwing our shadows in a sort of ghastly dance over her quiet face. I was too much shocked to be surprised. Burton had picked up her hat and put it beside her. She's got about an hour, I should say, said one of the newspaper men. See if Gray is around, will you, Jim? He's mostly here Saturday night. Is it Miss Maitland? Burton asked in a strangely subdued voice. It is Henry Butler's widow, I returned. And the three men were reporters again at once. Gray was there and came immediately. Whatever surprise he may have felt at seeing a woman there and dying he made no comment. He said she might live six hours, but the end was certain. We got a hospital ambulance and with the clang of its bell as it turned the corner and hurried away the white cat drops out of this story so far as action is concerned. Three detectives and as many reporters hunted Schwartz all of that night and the next day to get his story, but he remained in hiding. He had a start of over an hour from the time he switched off the light and escaped down the built-in staircase. Even in her agony Ellen Butler's hate had carried her through the doorway after him to collapse on the stairs. I got home just as the cab with Fred and Edith stopped at the door. I did not let them get out and a half dozen words without comment or explanation and they were driving madly to the hospital. Katie let me in and I gave her some money to stay up and watch the place while we were away. Then, not finding a cab, I took a car and rode to the hospital. The building was appallingly quiet. The elevator cage, without a light, crept spectrally up and down my footsteps on the tiled floor echoed and re-echoed above my head. A night watchman and felt shoes admitted me and took me upstairs. There was another long wait while the surgeon finished his examination and a nurse with a basin of water and some towels came out of the room and another one with dressings went in. And then the surgeon came out in a white coat with the sleeves rolled above his elbows and said I might go in. The cover was drawn up to the injured woman's chin where it was folded neatly back. Her face was bloodless and her fair hair had been gathered up in a shaggy knot. She was breathing slowly but regularly and her expression was relaxed, more restful than I had ever seen it. As I stood at the foot of the bed and looked down at her, I knew that as surely as death was coming it would be welcome. Edith had been calm before, but when she saw me she lost herself control. She put her head on my shoulder and sobbed out the shock and the horror of the thing. As for Fred, his imaginative temperament made him particularly sensitive to suffering in others. As he sat there beside the bed, I knew by his face that he was repeating and repenting every unkind word he'd said about Ellen Butler. She was conscious, we realized that after a time. Once she asked for water without opening her eyes and Fred slipped a bit of ice between her white lips. Later in the night she looked up for an instant at me. He struck my hand, she said with difficulty, and closed her eyes again. During the long night hours I told the story as I knew it, in an undertone, and there was a new kindliness in Fred's face as he looked at her. She was still living by morning and was rallying a little from the shock. I got Fred to take Edith home and I took her place by the bed. Someone brought me coffee about eight, and at nine o'clock I was asked to leave the room while four surgeons held a consultation there. The decision to operate was made shortly after. There's only a chance, a gray-haired surgeon told me in brisk, short-clipped words. The bullet went down and has penetrated the abdomen. Sometimes, taken early enough, we can repair the damage to a certain extent, and nature does the rest. The family is willing, I suppose. I knew of no family but Edith, and over the telephone she said with something of her natural tone to do what the surgeons considered best. I hoped to get some sort of statement before the injured woman was taken to the operating room, but she lay in a stupor and I had to give up the idea. It was two days before I got her deposition, and in that time I had learned many things. On Monday I took Marjorie to Bellwood. She had received the news about Mrs. Butler more calmly than I had expected. I do not think she is quite sane, poor woman, she said with a shudder. She had had a great deal of trouble. But how strange! A murder and an attempt at murder in that little club in a week. She did not connect the two, and I let the thing rest at that. Once on the train she turned to me suddenly after she had been plunged in thought for several minutes. Don't you think, she asked, that she had a sort of homicidal mania and that she tried to kill me with chloroform? I hardly think so, I returned evasively. I am inclined to think someone actually got in over the porch roof. I am afraid, she said, pressing her gloved hands tight together. Wherever I go something happens that I cannot understand. I never willfully hurt anyone, and yet these terrible things follow me. I am afraid to go back to Bellwood, with Aunt Jane still gone and you in the city. A lot of help I have been to you, I retorted bitterly. When you think of a single instance where I have been able to save you trouble or anxiety, why, I allowed you to be chloroformed within an inch of eternity before I found you. But you did find me, she cheered me, and just to know that you were doing all you can. My poor best, I supplemented. It is very comforting to have a friend one can rely on, she finished. And the little bit of kindness went to my head. If she had not got a cinder in her eye at that psychological moment, I am afraid I would figuratively have trampled wardrobe underfoot right there. As it was, I got the cinder, after a great deal of looking into one beautiful eye, which is not as satisfactory by half as looking into two. And then we were at Bellwood. We found Miss Letitia in the lower hall and happy on her knees with a hatchet. Between them sat a packing box and they were having a spirited discussion as to how it should be opened. Here, give it to me, Miss Letitia demanded, as we stopped in the doorway. You got stove links there for two days if you don't chop them into splinters. With the hatchet poised in midair she saw us, but she let it descend with considerable accuracy nevertheless, and our greeting was made between thumps. Come in, thump, like as not it's a mistake, bang. But the expressage was prepaid. If it's mineral water, crash! Something broke inside. If it's mineral water, I said, you better let me open it. Mineral water is meant for internal use and not for haul closets. I got the hatchet from her gradually. I knew a case once where a bottle of hair tonic was spilled on a rag carpet, and in a year they had it dyed with spots over it and called it a tiger skin. She watched me suspiciously while I straightened the nails she had bent and lifted the boards. In the matter of curiosity Miss Letitia was truly feminine. Great handfuls of excelsior she dragged out herself and heaped on Heppy's blue apron stretched out on the floor. The article that had smashed under the vigor of Miss Letitia's seventy years lay on the top. It had been a teapot of some very beautiful wear. I have called just now from my study to ask what sort of wear it was, and the lady who sets me right says it was Crown Derby. Then there were rows of cups and saucers and heterogeneous articles in the same material that the women folk seemed to understand. At the last, when the excitement seemed over, we found a toast rack in the lower corner of the box, and the ooze and oz had to be done all over again. Not until Miss Letitia had arranged it all on the dining-room table and Marjorie had taken off her wraps and admired from all four corners did Miss Letitia begin to ask where they had come from, and by that time Heppy had the crate in the woodbox and the excelsior was a black and smoking mass at the kitchen end of the grounds. There was not the slightest clue to the sender, but while Miss Letitia raided Heppy loudly in the kitchen and Bella swept the hall, Marjorie voiced the same idea that had occurred to me. If Aunt Jane were all right, she said tremulously, it would be just the sort of thing she loves to do. I had intended to go back to the city at once, but Miss Letitia's box had put her in an almost cheerful humor, and she insisted that I go with her to Miss Jane's room and see how it was prepared for its owner's return. I'm not pretending to know what took Jane Maitland away from this house in the middle of the night, she said. She was a good bit of a fool, Jane was. She never grew up. But if I know Jane Maitland, she will come back and be buried with her people, if it's only to put Mary's husband out at the end of the lot. And another thing, Knox, she went on as I saw her old hands were shaking. I told you the last time you were here that I hadn't been robbed of any of the pearls after all. Half of those pearls were Jane's, and she had a perfect right to take 49 of them if she wanted. She told me she was going to take some, and it slipped my mind. I believe it was the first lie she had ever told in her hard, conscientious old life. Was she right? I wondered. Had Miss Jane taken the pearls? And if she had, why? Wardrop had been taking a long walk. He got back about five. And as Miss Letitia was in the middle of a diatribe against white undergarments for colored children, Marjorie and he had a half hour alone together. I had known, of course, that it must come. But under the circumstances with my whole future existence at stake, I was vague as to whether it was colored undergarments for white orphans or the other way around. When I got away at last, I found Bella waiting for me in the hall. Her eyes were red with crying, and she had a crumpled newspaper in her hand. She broke down when she tried to speak. But I got the newspaper from her, and she pointed with one work-hardened finger to a column on the first page. It was the announcement of Mrs. Butler's tragic accident and the mystery that surrounded it. There was no mention of Schwartz. Is she there yet? Bella choked out at last. Not yet, but there is very little hope. Amid fresh tears and shakings of her heavy shoulders, as she sat in her favorite place on the stairs, Bella told me briefly that she had lived with Mrs. Butler since she was sixteen, and had only left when the husband's suicide had broken up the home. I could get nothing else out of her, but gradually Bella's share in the mystery was coming to light. Slowly, too, it was a new business for me. I was forming a theory of my own. It was a strange one, but it seemed to fit the facts as I knew them. With the story Wardrobe told that afternoon came my first glimmer of light. He was looking better than he had when I saw him before, but the news of Mrs. Butler's approaching death and the manner of her injury affected him strangely. He had seen the paper, like Bella, and he turned on me almost fiercely when I entered the library. Marjorie was in her old position at the window, looking out, and I knew the despondent droop of her shoulders. Is she conscious? Wardrobe asked eagerly, indicating the article in the paper. No, not now. At least it is not likely. He looked relieved at that, but only for a moment. Then he began to pace the room nervously, evidently debating some move. His next action showed the development of a resolution, for he pushed forward two chairs for Marjorie and myself. Sit down, both of you, he directed. I got a lot to say, and I want you both to listen. When Marjorie's heard the whole story, she'll probably despise me for the rest of her life. I can't help it. I got to tell all I know, and it isn't so much after all. You didn't fool me yesterday, Knox. I knew what that doctor is after, but he couldn't make me tell who killed Mr. Fleming because, before God, I didn't know. Chapter 24 of The Window at the White Cat by Mary Roberts Reinhardt. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Reading by Robert Kuiper. Chapter 24. Wardrobe's story. I have to go back to the night Miss Jane disappeared, and that's another thing that has driven me desperate. Will you tell me why I should be suspected of having a hand in that when she had been a mother to me? If she is dead, she can't exonerate me. If she is living, and we find her, she will tell you what I tell you that I know nothing of the whole terrible business. I'm quite certain of that, Wardrobe, I interposed. Besides, I think I have got to the bottom of that mystery. Marjorie looked at me quickly, but I shook my head. It was too early to tell my suspicions. The things that looked black against me were bad enough, but they had nothing to do with Miss Jane. I will have to go back to before the night she went away, back to the time Mr. Butler was the state treasurer, and your father, Marjorie, was his cashier. Butler was not a business man. He let too much responsibility lie with his subordinates. And then, according to the story, he couldn't do much anyhow against Schwartz. The cashier was entirely under machine control, and Butler was neglectful. You remember Knox the Crash, when three banks rotten to the core went under, and it was found a large amount of state money had gone to. It was Fleming who did it. I am sorry, Marjorie, but this is no time to mince words. It was Fleming who deposited the money in the wrecked banks, knowing what would happen. When the crash came, Butler's sureties to save themselves confiscated every dollar he had in the world. Butler went to the penitentiary for six months on some minor count, and when he got out, after writing to Fleming and Schwartz protesting his innocence and asking for enough out of the fortune they had robbed him of to support his wife, he killed himself. At the white cat. Marjorie was very pale, but quiet. She sat with her fingers locked in her lap, and her eyes on Wardrope. It was a bad bedness, Wardrope went on wearily. Fleming moved into Butler's place as treasurer, and took Blackfoot as his cashier. That kept the lid on. Once or twice, when there was an unexpected call for funds, the treasury was almost empty, and Schwartz carried things over himself. I went to Plattsburg as Mr. Fleming's private secretary when he became treasurer, and from the first I knew things were even worse than in the average state government. Schwartz and Fleming had to hold together. They hated each other, and the feeling was troubled when Fleming married Schwartz's divorced wife. Marjorie looked at me with startled, incredulous eyes. What she must have seen confirmed Wardrope's words, and she leaned back in her chair limp and unnerved, but she heard and comprehended every word Wardrope was saying. The woman was a very ordinary person, but it seemed Schwartz cared for her, and he tried to stab Mr. Fleming shortly after her marriage. About a year ago Mr. Fleming said another attempt had been made on his life with poison. He was very much alarmed, and I noticed a change in him from that time on. Things were not going well at the treasury. Schwartz and his crowd were making demands that were hard to supply, and behind all that Fleming was afraid to go out alone at night. He employed a man to protect him, a man named Carter, who had been a bartender in Plattsburg. When things began to happen here in Manchester, he took Carter to the home as a butler. Then the borough bank got shaky. If it went down there would be an ugly scandal, and Fleming would go too. His notes for half a million were there without security, and he dared not show the canceled notes he had with Schwartz's endorsement. I'm not very proud of the rest of the story, Marjorie. He stopped his nervous pacing and stood looking down at her. I was engaged to marry a girl who was everything on earth to me, and I was private secretary to the state treasurer with the princely salary of such a position. Mr. Fleming came back here when the borough bank threatened failure and tried to get money enough to tide over the trouble. A half million would have done it, but he couldn't get it. He was in Butler's position exactly only he was guilty, and Butler was innocent. He raised a little money here, and I went to Plattsburg with securities and letters. It didn't necessary to go over the things I suffered there. I brought back one hundred and ten thousand dollars in a package in my Russia leather bag, and I had something else. He wavered for the first time in his recital. He went on more rapidly, and without looking at either of us. I carried, not end of a lease, a bundle of letters, five in all, which had been written by Henry Butler to Mr. Fleming. Letters that showed what a duped Butler had been that he had been negligent but not criminal, accusing Fleming of having ruined him and demanding certain notes that would have proved it. If Butler could have produced the letters at the time of his trial, things would have been different. Were you going to sell the letters, Marjorie demanded, with quick scorn? I intended to, but I didn't. It was a little bit too dirty after all. I met Mrs. Butler for the second time in my life at the gate down there, as I came up from the train the night I got here from Plattsburg. She had offered to buy the letters, and I had brought them to sell to her. And then, at the last minute, I lied. I said I couldn't get them. That they were locked in the Monmouth Avenue house. I put her in a taxi cab that she had waiting, and she went back to town. I felt like a cad. She wanted to clear her husband's memory, and I, well, Mr. Fleming was your father, Marjorie, and I couldn't hurt you like that. Do you think Mrs. Butler took your leather bag? I asked. I do not think so. It seemed to be the only explanation, but I did not let it out of my hand one moment while we were talking. My hand was cramped from holding it when she gave up in despair at last and went back to the city. What did you do with the letters she wanted? I kept them with me that night, and the next morning hid them in the secret closet. That was when I dropped my fountain pen. And the pearls, Marjorie asked suddenly, when did you get them, Harry? To my surprise, his face did not change. He appeared to be thinking. Two days before I left, he said, we were using every method to get money, and your father said to sacrifice them if necessary. My father, he wheeled on both of us, did you think I stole them? He demanded, and I confessed that I was ashamed to say I had thought precisely that. Your father gave me nine unmounted purdles to sell. He reiterated, I got about a thousand dollars for him, eleven hundred and something, I believe. Marjorie looked at me. I think she was fairly stunned to learn that her father had married again, that he had been the keystone in an arch of villainy, that with him gone was now about to fall, and to associate him with so small and mean a thing as the theft of a handful of pearls, she was fairly stunned. Then I said to bring Wardrup back to his story. You found you had been robbed of the money, and you went in to tell Mr. Fleming. You had some words, didn't you? He thought what you all thought, Wardrup said bitterly. He accused me of stealing the money. I felt worse than a thief. He was desperate, and I took his revolver from him. Marjorie put her hands over her eyes. It was a terrible strain on her, but when I suggested that she wait for the rest of the story, she refused vehemently. I came back here to Bellwood, and the first thing I learned was about Miss Jane. When I saw the blood-print on the stair rail, I thought she was murdered, and I had more than I could stand. I took the letters out of the secret closet before I could show it to you and Hunter, and later I put them in the leather bag I gave you and locked it. You have it, haven't you, Knox? I nodded. As for that night at the club, I told the truth then, but not all the truth. I suppose I am a coward, but I was afraid to. If you knew Schwartz, you would understand. With the memory of his huge figure and the heavy undershot face that I had seen the night before, I could understand very well knowing Wardrum. I went to that room at the White Cat that night because I was afraid not to go. Fleming might kill himself or someone else. I went up the stairs slowly, and I heard no shot. At the door I hesitated, then opened it quietly. The door into the built-in staircase was just closing. It must have taken me only an instant to realize what had happened. Fleming was swaying forward as I caught him and jumped to the staircase and looked down, but I was too late. The door below had closed. I knew in another minute who had been there and escaped. It was raining, you remember, and Schwartz had forgotten to take his umbrella with his name on the handle, Schwartz. Now you understand why I was being followed, he demanded. I had been under surveillance every minute since that night. There's probably someone hanging around the gate now. Anyhow, I was frantic. I saw how it looked for me, and if I brought Schwartz into it, I would have been knifed in 48 hours. I hardly remember what I did. I know I ran for a doctor, and I took the umbrella with me and left it in the vestibule of the first house I saw with a doctor's son. I rang the bell like a crazy man, and then Hunter came along and said to go back. Dr. Gray was at the club. That is all I know. I'm not proud of it, Marjorie, but it might have been worse, and it's the truth. It clears up something, but not all. It doesn't tell where Aunt Jane is or who has the 100,000, but it does show who killed your father, and if you know what is good for you, Knox, you will let it go with that. You can't fight the police in the court single-handed. Look how the whole thing has dropped and the most cold blooded kind of murder turned into suicide. Suicide without a weapon. Bye. I'm not so sure about Schwartz, I said thoughtfully. We haven't yet learned about 1122 C. End of Chapter 24 Chapter 25. Measure for measure. Miss Jane Maitland had been missing for ten days. In that time not one word had come from her. The reporter from the Eagle had located her in a dozen places and was growing thin and haggard following little old ladies along the street and being sent about his business tartly when he tried to make inquiries. Some things puzzled me more than ever in the light of Wardrobe's story. For the third time I asked myself why Miss Letitia denied the loss of the pearls. There was nothing in what we had learned either to tell why Miss Jane had gone away to ascribe a motive. How she had gone, in view of Wardrobe's story of the cab, was clear. She had gone by streetcar. Walking the three miles to Wynton alone at two o'clock in the morning, although she had never stirred around the house at night without a candle and was privately known to sleep with a light when Miss Letitia went to bed first and could not see it through the transom. The theory I had formed seemed absurd at first. But as I thought it over, its probabilities grew on me. I took dinner at Bellwood and started for town almost immediately after. Marjorie had gone to Miss Letitia's room and Wardrobe was pacing up and down the veranda, smoking. He looked ejected and anxious and he welcomed my suggestion that he walked down to the station with me. As we went, a man emerged from the trees across and came slowly after us. Say, I'm only nominally a free agent, he said morosely. They'll poison me yet, I know too much. We said little on the way to the train. Just before it came thundering along, however, he spoke again. I'm going away, Knox. Isn't anything in this political game for me and the law is too long? I have a chum in Mexico and he wants me to go down there. Permanently? Yes. There's nothing to hold me here now. I turned and faced him in the glare of the station lights. What do you mean? I demanded. I mean that there isn't any longer a reason why one part of the earth is better than another. Mexico or Alaska is all the same to me. He turned on his heel and left me. I watched him swing up the path with his head down. I saw the shadowy figure of the other man fall into line behind him. Then I caught the platform of the last car as it passed. And that short ride into town was a triumphal procession with the wheels beating time and singing, it's all the same, the same, to me, to me. I called Burton by telephone and was lucky enough to find him at the office. He said he had just got in and as usual he wanted something to eat. We arranged to meet at a little Chinese restaurant where at that hour, nine o'clock, we would be almost alone. Later on, after the theater, I knew the place would be full of people and conversation impossible. Burton knew the place well as he did every restaurant in the city. Hello, Mike! He said to the unctuous Chinaman who admitted us and Mike smiled a slant-eyed welcome. The room was empty. It was an unpretentious affair with lace curtains at the windows and small, very clean tables. At one corner a cable and slide communicated through a hole in the ceiling with the floor above and through the aperture Burton's order for chicken and rice and the inevitable tea was barked. Burton listened attentively to Wardrobe's story as I repeated it. So Schwartz did it after all, he said regretfully when I finished. It's a tame ending. It had all the elements of the unusual and it resolves itself into an ordinary, everyday, man-to-man feud. I'm disappointed. We can't touch Schwartz. I thought the Times Post was hot after him. Schwartz bought the Times Post three o'clock this afternoon, Burton said with repressed rage. I'm called off. Tomorrow we run a photograph of Schwartzwald, his place at Plattsburg, and the next day we eulogize the administration. Yet I'm going down the river on an excursion boat to write up the pig-killing contest at the Union Butcher's Picnic. How is Mrs. Butler, I asked, as his raid subsided to mere rumbling in his throat? Delirious, shortly. She's going to croak. Wardrobe's going to Mexico. Schwartz will be next governor. And Miss Maitland's body will be found in a cistern. Whole thing is petered out. What's he used to find in the murderer if he's coated with asbestos and lined with money? Mike, I want some more tea to drown my troubles. We called up the hospital about 1030 and learned that Mrs. Butler was sinking. Fred was there, and without much hope of getting anything, we went over. I took Burton in as a nephew of the dying woman, and I was glad I had done it. She was quite conscious, but very weak. She told the story to Fred and myself, and in a corner Burton took it down shorthand. We got her to sign it about daylight sometime, and she died very quietly shortly after Edith arrived at eight. To give her story as she gave it would be impossible. The ramblings of a sick mind, the terrible pathos of it all, is impossible to repeat. She lay there, her long thin body practically dead, fighting the death rattle in her throat. There were pauses when for five minutes she would lie in a stupor, only to rouse and go forward from the very word where she had stopped. She began with her married life, and to understand the beauty of it is to understand the things that came after. She was perfectly, ideally, illogically happy. Then one day Henry Butler accepted the nomination for State Treasurer, and with that things changed. During his term in office he altered greatly. His wife could only guess that things were wrong, for he refused to talk. The crash came, after all, with terrible suddenness. There had been an all-night conference at the Butler home, and Mr. Butler, in a frenzy at finding himself a dupe, had called the Butler from bed and forcibly ejected Fleming and Schwartz from the house. Ellen Butler had been horrified, sickened by what she regarded as the vulgarity of the occurrence. But her loyalty to her husband never wavered. Butler was one honest man against a complete organization of unscrupulous ones. His disgrace, imprisonment, and suicide at the White Cat had followed in rapid succession. With his death, all that was worthwhile in his wife died. Her health was destroyed. She became one of the wretched army of neuroesthetics, with only one idea to retaliate, to pay back in measure full and running over her wretched life, her dead husband, her grief, and her shame. She laid her plans with a caution and absolute recklessness of a diseased mentality. Normally a shrinking, nervous woman, she became cold, passionless, deliberate in her revenge. To disgrace Schwartz and Fleming was her original intention, but she could not get the papers. She resorted to hounding Fleming, meaning to drive him to suicide, and she chose a method that had more nearly driven him to madness. Wherever he turned he found the figures 1122c, sometimes just the number without the letter. It had been Henry Butler's cell number during his imprisonment, and if they were graven on his wife's soul they burned themselves in lines of fire on Fleming's brain. For over a year she pursued this course, sometimes through the mail, and other times in the most unexpected places, wherever she could bribe a messenger to carry the paper. Sane? No, hardly sane. But inevitable is fate. The time came when other things went badly with Fleming, as I had already heard from Warder. He fled to the White Cat, and for a week Ellen Butler hunted him vainly. She had decided to kill him, and on the night Marjorie Fleming had found the paper on the pillow she had been in the house. She was not the only intruder in the house that night. Someone, presumably Fleming himself, had been there before her. She found a lady's desk broken open and a small drawer empty. Evidently Fleming, unable to draw a check while in hiding, had needed ready money. As to the jewels that had been disturbed in Marjorie's bootwire, I could only surmise the impulse that after prompting him to take them had failed at the sight of his dead wife's jewels. Surprised by the girl's appearance, she had crept to the upper floor and concealed herself in an empty bedroom. It had been almost dawn before she got out. No doubt this was the room belonging to the butler, Carter, which Marjorie had reported as locked that night. She took a key from the door of a side entrance and locked the door behind her when she left. Within a couple of nights she had learned that Wardrup was coming home from Plattsburgh, and she met him at Bellwood. We already knew the nature of that meeting. She drove back to town half-maddened by her failure to secure the letters that would have cleared her husband's memory, but the wiser by one thing. Wardrup had inadvertently told her where Fleming was hiding. The next night she went to the white cat and tried to get in. She knew from her husband of the secret staircase, for many a political meeting of the deepest significance had been possible by its use. But the door was locked and she had no key. Above her the warehouse raised its empty height, and it was not long before she decided to see what she could learn from its upper windows. She went in at the gate and felt her way through the rain to the windows. At that moment the gate opened suddenly and a man muttered something in the darkness. The shock was terrible. I had no idea that night of what my innocent stumbling into the warehouse yard had meant to a half-crazed woman just beyond my range of vision. After a little she got her courage again and she pried up an unlocked window. The rest of her progress must have been much as ours had been a few nights later. She found a window that commanded the club and with three possibilities that she would choose and would see the wrong room she won the fourth. The room lay directly before her, distinct in every outline with Fleming seated at the table facing her and sorting some papers. She rested her revolver on the sill and took absolutely deliberate aim. Her hands were cold and she even rubbed them together to make them steady. Then she fired and a crash of thunder at the very instant covered the sound. Fleming sat for a moment before he swayed forward. On that instant she realized that there was someone else in the room. A man who took an uncertain step or two forward into view threw up his hands and disappeared as silently as he had come. It was Schwartz. Then she saw the door into the hall open. She saw Wardrobe come slowly in and close it, watched his sickening realization of what had occurred. Then a sudden panic seized her. Arms seemed to stretch out from the darkness behind her to draw her into it. She tried to get away, to run, even to scream. Then she fainted. It was gray dawn when she recovered her senses and got back to the hotel room she had taken under an assumed name. By night she was quieter. She read the news of Fleming's death in the papers and she gloated over it. But there was more to be done. She was only beginning. She meant to ruin Schwartz, to kill his credit, to fell him with the club of public disfavor. Wardrobe had told her that her husband's letters were with other papers at the Monmouth Avenue house where he could not get them. Fleming's body was taken home that day, Saturday, but she had gone too far to stop. She wanted the papers before Lightfoot could get at them and destroy the incriminating ones. That night she got into the Fleming house, using the key she had taken. She ransacked the library, finding not the letters that Wardrobe had said were there, but others, equally and more incriminating, cancelled notes, private accounts that would have ruined Schwartz forever. It was then that I saw the light and went downstairs. My unlucky stumble gave her warning enough to turn out the light. For the rest, the chase through the back hall, the dining room, and the pantry had culminated in her escape up the back stairs while I had fallen down the dumbwaiter shaft. She had run into Bella on the upper floor, Bella who had almost fainted, and who knew her and kept her until morning, petting her and soothing her, and finally getting her into a troubled sleep. That day she realized that she was being followed. When Edith's invitation came she accepted it at once, for the sake of losing herself and her papers, until she was ready to use them. It had disconcerted her to find Marjorie there, but she managed to get along. For several days everything had gone well, she was getting stronger again, ready for the second act of the play, prepared to blackmail Schwartz and then expose him. She would have killed him later, probably. She wanted her measure full and running over, and so she would disgrace him first. Then Schwartz must have learned of the loss of the papers from the Fleming House, and guessed the rest. She felt sure he had known from the first who had killed Fleming. However that might be. He had had her room entered, Marjorie chloroformed in the connecting room, and her papers were taken from under her pillow while she was pretending anesthesia. She had followed the two men through the house and out the kitchen door, where she had fainted on the grass. The next night, when she had retired early, leaving Marjorie and me downstairs, it had been an excuse to slip out of the house. How she found that Schwartz was at the White Cat. How she got through the side entrance we never knew. He had burned the papers before she got there, and when she tried to kill him, he had struck her hand aside. When we were out in the cheerful light of day again, Burton turned his shrewd blue eyes on me. "'Off a story, innit?' he said. "'Those are primitive emotions, if you like. "'Do you know, Knox, there's only one explanation we haven't worked on for the rest of this mystery. I believe in my soul you carried off the old lady and the Russia leather bag yourself.'" CHAPTER XXVI At noon that day I telephoned to Marjorie. Come up, I said, and bring the keys to the Monmouth Avenue house. Some things to tell you, and some things to ask you. I met her at the station with Lady Gray in the trap. My plans for that afternoon were comprehensive. They included what I hoped to be the solution of the Aunt Jane mystery. Also they included a little drive through the park and a—well, I shall tell about that, all I am going to tell, at the proper time. To play propriety, Edith met us at the house. It was still closed, and even in the short time that had elapsed it smelled close and musty. At the door into the drawing-room I stopped them. Now this is going to be a sort of game, I explained. It's a sort of button-button who's got the button, without the button. We are looking for a drawer, receptacle or closet, which shall contain, bunched together and without regard to whether they should be there or not, a small revolver, two military brushes and a clothes brush, two or three soft bosomed shirts, perhaps a half dozen collars and a suit of underwear, also a small, flat package about eight inches long and three wide. What on earth are you talking about? Edith asked. I am not talking. I am theorizing, I explained. I have a theory, and according to it the things should be there. If they are not, it is my misfortune, not my fault. I think Marjorie caught my idea at once, and as Edith was ready for anything, we commenced the search. Edith took the top floor, being accustomed, she said, to finding unexpected things in the servant's quarters. Marjorie took the lower floor, and for certain reasons, I took the second. For ten minutes there was no result. At the end of that time I had finished two rooms and commenced on the blue boudoir. And here, on the top shelf of a three-cornered empire cupboard, with glass doors and spindle legs, I found what I was looking for. Every article was there. I stuffed a small package into my pocket and called the two girls. The lost is found, I stated calmly, when we were all together in the library. When did you lose something, Edith demanded? Do you mean to say, Jack Knox, that you have brought us here to help you find a suit of gaudy pajamas and a pair of military brushes? I brought you here to find Aunt Jane, I said soberly, taking a letter and the flat package out of my pocket. You see, my theory worked out. Here is Aunt Jane, and there is the money from the Russia leather bag. I laid the packet in Marjorie's lap, and without ceremony opened the letter. It began. My dearest niece, I am writing to you because I cannot think what to say to Sister Letitia. I am running away. I am running away. My dear, it scares me even to write it all alone in this empty house. I have had a cup of tea out of one of your lovely cups and a nap on your pretty couch, and just as soon as it is dark I am going to take the train for Boston. When you get this I will be on the ocean, the ocean, my dear, that I have read about and dreamed about and never seen. I am going to realize a dream of forty years, more than twice as long as you have lived. Your dear mother saw the continent before she died, but the things I have wanted have always been denied me. I have been one of those that have eyes to see and see not. So I have run away. I am going to London and Paris and even to Italy if the money your father gave me for the pearls will hold out. For a year now I have been getting steamship circulars, and I have taken a little French through a correspondent school. That is why I always made you sing French songs, dearie. I wanted to learn the accent. I think I should do very well if I could only sing my French instead of speaking it. I am afraid that Sister Letitia discovered that I had taken some of the pearls, but half of them were mine, from our mother. And although I had wanted a pearl ring all my life, I have never had one. I am going to buy me a hat instead of a bonnet, and clothes, and pretty things underneath, and a switch. Marjorie, I have wanted a switch for thirty years. I suppose Letitia will never want me back. Perhaps I shall not want to come. I tried to write to her when I was leaving. But I had cut my hand in the attic, where I had hidden away my clothes and hid bled on the paper. I have been worried since for fear your Aunt Letitia would find the paper in the basket and be alarmed at the stains. I wanted to leave things in order. Please tell Letitia. But I was so nervous and in such a hurry. I walked three miles to Winton and took a street car. I just made up my mind I was going to do it. I am sixty-five, and it is time I have a chance to do the things I like. I came in on the car and came directly here. I got in with a second key on your key ring. Did you miss it? And I did the strangest thing at Bellwood. I got down the stairs very quietly and out onto the porch. I set down my empty traveling bag. I was going to buy everything new in the city to close the door behind me. Then I was sure I heard someone at the side of the house, and I picked it up and ran down the path in the dark. You can imagine my surprise when I opened the bag this morning. To find I had picked up Harry's. I am emptying it and taking it with me, for he has mine. If you find this right away, please don't tell Sister Letitia for a day or two. You know how firm your Aunt Letitia is. I shall send her a present from Boston to pacify her, and perhaps when I come back in three or four months she will be over the worst. I am not quite comfortable about your father, Marjorie. He is not like himself. The last time I saw him he gave me a little piece of paper with a number on it, and he said they followed him everywhere and were driving him crazy. Try to have him see a doctor. And I left a bottle of complexion cream in the little closet over my mantle where I had hidden my hat and shoes that I wore. Please destroy it before your Aunt Letitia sees it. Good-bye, my dear niece. I suppose I am growing frivolous in my old age, but I am going to have silk linings in my clothes before I die. Your loving Aunt Jane. When Marjorie stopped reading there was an amazed silence. Then we all three burst into relieved, uncontrolled mirth. The dear little old lady, with her new independence and her sixty-five year old, romantic, starved heart. Then we opened the packet, which was a sadder business for it had represented Alan Fleming's last clutch at his waning public credit. Edith ran to the telephone with the news for Fred, and for the first time that day Marjorie and I were alone. She was standing with one hand on the library table. In the other she held Aunt Jane's letter half-tremulous, holy tender. I put my hand over hers on the table. Marjorie, I said, she did not stir. Marjorie, I want my answer, dear. I love you. Love you. It isn't possible to tell you how much. There isn't enough time in all existence to tell you. You are mine, Marjorie, mine. You can't get away from that. She turned very slowly and looked at me with her level eyes. Yours. She replied softly. And I took her in my arms. Edith was still at the telephone. I don't know, she was saying, just wait until I see. As she came toward the door, Marjorie squirmed, but I held her tight. In the doorway Edith stopped and stared. Then she went swiftly back to the telephone. Yes, dear, she said sweetly, they are—this minute—the end of the window at the white cat by Mary Robert's Reinhardt. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Robert Kuiper, Fairfax, Virginia, January and February 2010.