At One-Thirty by Isabel Ostrander (adult books to read .txt) 📕
Gaunt had approached the body, and was passing his fingers lightly and thoroughly over it.
"No doubt about robbery being the motive?" he asked, as he worked.
"Oh, no," the Inspector put in, easily. "No weapon found, window open, tracks before window in the carpet and on the curtains, and Mr. Appleton's jewelry and money gone."
"I understand." Gaunt bent and sniffed the powder-blackened shirt about the wound. "Looks as if Mr. Appleton might have recognized, or thought he recognized, the thief, doesn't it, when he let him get as near as he did to shoot him, without attempting to get on his feet, or make any outcry?"
'"Maybe he did jump to his feet, and fell back again when he was shot?" suggested the Inspector, thoughtfully.
"Hardly, seeing the way he was clutching the arms of the chair. Even death didn't release that vise-like grip. He might have clutched his breast whe
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The footsteps of Miss Ellerslie sounded in the hall, and she entered, closing the door behind her.
“Mr. Gaunt, you did not keep your promise to me,” she said, with a world of reproach in her voice. “Had I known that you meant to torture my little sister as you did, I should never have permitted you to see her. I implored you not to tax her beyond her strength. I warned you that she was light-headed, that too much credence must not be placed upon what she might say.”
“I am very sorry, Miss Ellerslie. I tried to be very gentle, and I was as considerate as the occasion would permit. I merely attempted to recall a certain incident to Mrs. Appleton’s mind—and succeeded.”
“So that was why you wished to touch my hair I I could not imagine—” She broke off abruptly, then added: “If you had told me, Mr. Gaunt, if you had shown me the strand of hair you found entangled in the pendant of the lamp, I could have told you that my sister was in the den yesterday morning.”
“You knew it, then?” The question was shot quickly at her.
“Certainly, since I suggested it,” she replied composedly. “Garret had been complaining that his den was not properly dusted and put in order, and I did not want any further aspersions to be cast upon my sister’s housekeeping ability or inclination by those members of the household who were hostile to her…. But you sent for me, Mr. Gaunt, I believe? I do not want to remain away from my sister any longer than is absolutely necessary. Her condition is quite alarming. She seems to be almost delirious, and I have sent a messenger for the doctor.”
“I am sorry,” Gaunt said once more. “I will not detain you long. You told me, when I talked with you before, if you remember, that this morning, at the time of the discovery of the crime, when Mrs. Finlay Appleton turned from the body of her elder son, and saw the younger standing in the doorway, she spoke to him, and he broke down and wept. What did she say to him?”
“I don’t know,” Barbara Ellerslie’s hesitation was apparent. “I did not hear distinctly, and my whole attention was given to my sister.”
“You heard something, however indistinct. What did it]sound]Iike? A long sentence or short?”
“Oh, very short. Just a-a word, I think—a single word.”
“Was that word ‘Cain,’ Miss Ellerslie?”
“Please don’t ask me, Mr. Gaunt!” The distressed cry was wrung from her. “Remember, my brain was overwrought, distraught! If I fancied that was said, and repeated it, it would look like a deliberate accusation, without a shadow of proof and beyond the bounds of probability, and I—I will not seem to cast such an imputation on anyone. If that is what I imagined I heard, my ears may have misled me. Mrs. Appleton, for all her outward calm when you arrived, must have been as overwrought as I—and more, since it was her son who lay dead before her. One should not be judged by what one says or does in the madness of such a moment. There is little kindliness on my heart toward her and hers, God knows; yet justice is justice!”
“I understand. Miss Ellerslie, and I am answered. Did Mr. Yates Appleton reply, as he broke down, ‘My God! Not that! Not that!’?”
“Really, I cannot tell you. It—it sounded something like that to me; but I cannot commit myself. I paid little or no attention. I cannot, will not, make any statement concerning it! And now, Mr. Gaunt may I return to my sister? She needs me. It is not safe to leave her now in Mammy Lu’s care alone, even for a moment.”
“Yes, Miss Ellerslie. I will not detain you any longer. Thank you for coming down again. I may perhaps call tomorrow, when I hope your sister will be better. Please, assure her that she need not be afraid of me.” Then, as he felt her eyes fixed upon him in sudden, questioning suspicion, he added with a smile: “I am not quite an ogre!”
“I will tell her, Mr. Gaunt,” her voice was reassured, but infinitely sad, as she said, in an afterthought, ‘when she is able to understand. She seems very, very ill. I am in fear for her sifety, her reason. Let me know, of course, if there is anything further that I can do, can tell you. And if any further developments occur, I should like to know of them, for all our sakes. Good-by.”
She left the room, and for a few moments the detective sat buried in thought. How loyally, how valiently, she had lied for the woman upstairs! And yet she might have been sticking to the letter of the truth; her sister might have gone to inspect the den the previous morning. But that she had visited it later, sometime, in fact, during the hours of the night, and that Barbara Ellerslie knew of it, was patent. Young Mrs. Appleton’s terror at his question, and the agonized cry he had overheard from outside her door, were damning proof.
He rose, and rang the bell.
“Ring for my car, please,” he directed, giving the number when the butler appeared. “And tell Mrs. Finlay Appleton that I have finished here for today, and will let her know at once when I have any definite news for her, or require further information. Is Inspector Hanrahan here?”
“No, sir. He went an hour ago. He may be back at any moment, sir. Would you care to. wait?” Dakers’ respect had evidently increased. A detective who could afford to keep a private motor was foreign to his experience, and must be a person of some importance.
Gaunt encountered Inspector Hanrahan, who returned as he was on the point of departure.
“Anything new?” he asked.
“Got him,” was the Inspector’s succinct reply.
“Got him! Who?”
“Louis Lantelme,” Inspector Hanrahan explained. “The valet Mr. Appleton kicked out a month ago—the fellow the housemaid, Katie was stuck on. I’m afraid he’s got a good alibi, though, for last night. He told a pretty straight story, and one that can be easily proved. Got anything yourself, Mr. Gaunt?”
“Not very much. There’s something I want you to do for me, though. Find out for me the hour Mr. Yates Appleton left the Patriarchs’ Club last night.”
“What’s that?” the Inspector asked, in eager surprise.
“Oh, not what you think it is!” smiled Gaunt. “I know where he was all the rest of the night. It’s no question of an alibi. I just want to know the exact time he left the club, and I haven’t time to look it up, myself. The door-man can tell you; and possibly some of the waiters, or cardroom attendants, can corroborate him.”
“All right, Mr. Gaunt; I’ll attend to it.”
“And you might drop around to my rooms tonight, if you find this out in the meantime, and can spare an hour. - I may have a few pointers for you.”
“I will.”
Gaunt’s chauffeur was waiting in the vestibule to pilot him unobtrusively to his machine; but once he was ensconced, and the engine cranked, they remained stationary.
“What’s the matter, Saunders?” the detective asked, through the tube.
“‘Nother car and an undertaker’s wagon blockin’ the way, sir.”
An undertaker’s wagon! The last act of the tragedy of the night was about to be enacted for Garret Appleton, and the curtain rang down upon an anadmirable career. What a misspent life, a waste of golden opportunities, culminating in a hideous end! What Nemesis could have stamped that look of blank fear and horror upon the dying features? What had occurred in that dark hour, before the shot was fired which so relentlessly hurled him into eternity?
When Gaunt alighted at his own door, he said to the chauffeur:
“Saunders, I sha’n’t require the car tonight; but I want you to do a bit of detective work for me— the sort of thing you’ve done before.”
“Yes, sir!” Saunders replied, eagerly.
“Go to the Appleton’s private garage. You can easily find it. It’s just around the corner, I believe, from their house, from which you just brought me. Scrape acquaintance with Mr. Yates Appleton’s chauffeur. If he isn’t there, find out where he lives, or where he may be found, if he’s idle tonight—and I fancy he will be. Take him out, if he’ll go, and treat him, or give him any story you please, but try to get out of him his exact movements last night, and when he took Mr. Appleton from the club, where they went, and all that. Find out, also, if Mr. Yates Appleton by any chance injured his hand while out in the machine last night. Understand?”
“Yes, sir. Guess it will be easy, sir. I’ll try, anyway.”
“Here’s a ten-dollar bill for expenses. If it’s any more, let me know; but get the truth if you can, no matter what it costs.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Jenkins, Gaunt’s man, fell upon him anxiously at the door,
“Glad you’ve come, sir!” he exclaimed. “Miss Barnes has been hoping you’d be back for three hours, or more. Three telegrams and two longdistance calls from Newport. Big jewel robbery at the Fahnestock place! Shall I pack?”
“No, Jenkins. Can’t take it,” Gaunt replied, laconically. ” I’m on a case now, as you very well know.”
“I, sir?” inquired Jenkins, with an air of innocence. “I remember a gentleman called this morning, and you went out with him; but how should I know you were on a case, sir?”
“Because you’ve got an evening paper in your hand at this moment. I can hear it rattle. And it’s the latest edition—probably an extra—not the early-afternoon one we always take anyway; for I can smell fresh ink upon it. You read of the case, and my connection with it, in the afternoon paper, and sent out and got another, later one. You can’t fool me, Jenkins.”
As the detective turned toward the library, Jenkins murmured after the departing figure:
“No, I’m blest if I can! You can see more without eyes than most men can with ‘em!
“MISS BARNES, look back over the newspaper files in the store-room, in the society news of, say, three, four, five, and six years ago, and read me whatever you find relating to the Appleton family, at East Sixtyeighth Street, will you?”
Gaunt was stretched out at ease in his own familiar, favorite chair, pipe in mouth, and Scrapper, the bull-terrier, at his feet. He was thinking over the evidence gathered during the day’s investigation, sifting the wheat from the chaff, and he found it no easy task. He had, in the course of his career, become interested in many baffling cases, but none that presented such complications, such a multiplicity of possible motives and possible culprits. Yates Appleton, at war with his brother over that which was to him the most vital thing in life, money; the wife, maddened by abuse and jealousy; the other girl, who had so plainly betrayed her love for him.
The detective made no mistake in his analysis of the situation that had existed between Doris Carhart and Garret Appleton. Here was no vulgar intrigue. That he had been as much in love with her as she so obviously with him, and that the wife had stood between, was possible, even probable.
But the girl was of a type readily recognized by
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