At One-Thirty by Isabel Ostrander (adult books to read .txt) đź“•
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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“When I got here, after leaving Mother at the Blenheim, I found my friend from whom I had arranged to take over this apartment, waiting to condole with me about the tragedy, and to hand me the keys. I knew there was a safe—built on the wall, over there just behind you—and I n^ade my friend give me the combination before he left. After he had gone, I got my man, James, out of the room on some pretext, and, opening the safe, I put the packet in there. And what to do with it, I don’t know.”
“Mr. Appleton, didn’t it occur to you to wonder who actually did kill your brother?”
“Not until afterward. I know it seems strange; but my brain felt numb, and all I thought of was my own safety. When the burglary subterfuge was so quickly discovered, and the fact that Garret was killed with his own revolver, I felt that I was lost, and I fought, struggled, only for my life. Later in the day, when things quieted down a bit, I began to think of my brother, and how he came to his death. Mr. Gaunt, it is an utter, absolute mystery to me—believe me or not, as you please. I cannot think, cannot imagine, who could have done this thing! There doesn’t seem to be a shadow of motive. I can think of nothing else, and it is driving me mad, mad! For God’s sake, if you know, if you suspect, tell me! I cannot endure it much longer!”
“You must be patient, Mr. Appleton. Think of your brother’s wife, of your mother! They are enduring this suspense, too; and they are only women.”
“But they are not carrying around with them the secret that I am—the secret of that awful hour early in the morning! Mr. Gaunt, you must help me—you must! What shall I do with that packet in the safe—with the things I took from my brother’s body? If I turn them over to the police, they will arrest me—I know that. How can I dispose of them?”
“If I were you, Mr. Appleton, I should wait until the murderer is apprehended. Then, when his guilt is proved, you can go to your mother and your brother’s wife, and tell them the truth. They will believe you then, of course. If, on the other hand, this mystery is never solved,” a curious hard note had swept into the detective’s voice with the last words, “I should advise you still to go to those two women, and tell them everything, just as you have told me. They will, they must, believe you in time. At any rate, for the sake of the family name, they will not denounce you. Give them your brother’s valuables, and allow them to make what disposition of them they will.”
“They will never believe me—never! Something else must be done with them. I wish they were at the bottom of the sea.”
The Inspector’s words returned to Gaunt’s mind with a new significance, and he returned, quietly.
“Then why not place them there, yourself, Mr. Appleton? Go on some short coast trip, and, when you are well out of sight of land, and there is no one to see you, drop the package, properly weighted, overboard. This advice is contrary to justice, as the police interpret it, I know; but I firmly believe you to be innocent of the death of your brother, and there is no use in running your neck into a noose.”
“Ah, thank you, Mr. Gaunt! That is just what I will do. I should never have thought of it,” the other man cried, brokenly. “Thank God, you don’t believe me guilty!”
“The police are all at sea. They have not, so far as I know, a single clue; and they would seize upon anyone, on the slenderest thread of evidence. It behooves you to be extremely careful.”
“I know; I shall try to be. You—you’re not going, Mr. Gaunt?” he added, wistfully, as the detective rose. He was as glad of this presence, now that he had unburdened himself, as he had previously been in fear of it.
“I must. It is late, and I have work to do tomorrow. Try a sleeping-powder, some coal-tar product, tonight, instead of that cocaine, and see if you can get a little real rest, or you’ll be a wreck. Remember, you may yet need all your nerve and strength.”
“I will, sir,” Yates Appleton replied, with the respectful promptitude of a school-boy addressing the master. “Good-night, and thank you—thank you!”
DAMON GAUNT would not have been human if he could have helped congratulating himself the next morning on the result of the previous evening’s work. Both the shots had told, and, although they had been the result more of intuition, of a subtle guess, than pure reasoning, they had proved to be true to the mark’ Then, quite suddenly his mood changed, and he felt disgusted with himself, for his vanity.
“I’m getting to be as bad as Hanrahan,” he thought; “gloating over the little I’ve done, when the work isn’t half-finished. I’ve only succeeded as yet in cleaning up a few minor details. The great question remains unanswered, the real truth unproved!”
He had scarcely finished his breakfast, when Jenkins announced that a lady was waiting in the library to see him. She had refused to give her name, but said that her business was most important. Would Mr. Gaunt please see her at once, if possible?
As the detective opened the door of the library — that room heretofore sacred to the odor of tobacco only—a heavy Oriental scent was wafted unmistakably to his nostrils, and he smiled comprehendingly. The perfume of the Taj Mahal! Could Doris Carhart’s presence in his rooms mean further revelations? He had felt that she had not been entirely frank with him at their last interview; but he thought he had read understandingly between the lines. What did her visit portend?
He entered, and, hearing a slight rustle, turned in the direction from which it came, holding out his hand, the smile still upon his lips.
“Good-morning, Miss Carhart,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“Mr. Gaunt!” she exclaimed. “How did you know it was I? I gave no name—”
“How did I know you had been in the den at the Appleton’s last Monday evening?” he returned. “You undervalue the penetrating power of the scent you use.”
“Ah, that is it, of course!” She sighed in relief. Then, seating herself in the chair he pushed toward her, she went on: “I know you will think it very strange—my coming here like this, I mean—but I simply had to see you, Mr. Gaunt! Ever since you called on me last week, I’ve been thinking things over, and the more I thought, the more I worried. I couldn’t sleep at all last night, and at dawn I determined to come to you, and tell you all the truth. For I did not tell you everything, last week, Mr. Gaunt—I could not!”
“I knew that you were not entirely frank with me,” remarked the detective.
“You knew it? Yet you did not go to my father, as you had threatened!” she countered.
“Because I thought I knew what you were keeping back, and understood the reason why,” he replied, quietly.
“I only kept silent because—because it was all past and gone, and there seemed no reason for divulging to anyone that which had been said to me in the most sacred confidence. As long as no one else had known, I determined that no one ever should. It was a disgraceful, ignoble thing; but it came to nothing in the end, and I felt that it should be allowed to die with the man who had conceived it. But, after you had gone, I remembered something, and I wondered if, after all, I had been the only one to hear what he had said.”
“You have come here to be frank with me, Miss Carhart? Then, suppose you tell me the whole story.” Gaunt drew his chair up closer to hers, and in his voice were the kind, fatherly accents that had drawn from reluctant feminine Ups many a more heinous confession than the one trembling on hers.
“It was all true, as I told you, Mr. Gaunt, that I had been flirting with Garret Appleton, to punish him for marrying, someone else. I could not help detesting the woman who had taken the place that was to have been mine, and, when I saw that she suffered, I—I was glad! ” She paused for a moment, then went on in a low voice: “But, now, I am sorry—oh, so sorry! I would go to her, if I dared, and explain, beg her to forgive me, for the sorrow I brought her. But she would not listen to me—it is too late, now! You know, I—I had cared greatly for Garret Appleton. I had loved him ever since I was a little girl, and, when, after our foolish quarrel, he married Natalie Ellerslie, it almost broke my heart. I never let him see it, though, and I thought my love for him was a thing of the past. I only wanted to make him— to make them both—suflFer, as I had suffered!”
Again she paused, as if she found her task increasingly difficult to perform; but he said nothing, and she resolutely forced herself to continue.
“I did not know, did not realize, that I had carried things too far with Garret, until that night in the den. As I have told you, he did not seem to be quite—quite himself, and my fast-approaching departure for Europe must have maddened him. While I sat there on the divan, with the curios he had brought me there to see spread out beside me, he suddenly began to speak, in a different tone from any that I had ever heard from him—a queer, thickened, hurried voice, as if he was himself ashamed of the words he was uttering.”
As she stopped again, as if unable to go on. Gaunt leaned forward, and asked in a gentle, but insistent, voice:
“What did he say to you. Miss Carhart? Please tell me every word that you can remember.”
“I can’t remember the words. His voice sounded in my ears as if it came from a great distance, and I seemed to be under a stifling cloud of horror and loathing. I only remember the meaning of the thing he proposed doing. It was an infamous thing, Mr. Gaunt! It is a hideous, black thought, which should be buried with him; but you want to know all the truth, and you shall! He told me that he was going to arrange a divorce, that he might marry me! He said his wife would never consent to free him, especially—especially now— and that the only thing left for him to do was to divorce her, on fabricated proof. He was going to desert her, and the little child that would be theirs, and blacken her name falsely, disgracing her forever in the eyes of the world—and for me! He thought that I would step into her place, that I would be his wife over the ashes of her reputation, her honor!
“I sat there, turning over and over in my hands the foolish, exquisitively carved bits of ivory, trying to force myself to realize that I heard aright, that he was actually proposing this monstrous thing! At length, when he had finished, I swept the ivories from my knee,
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