American Sherlocks by Nick Rennison (reading like a writer .TXT) 📕

‘I hope you enjoyed Jamaica?’ I ventured.

‘Did you read the evening papers on the way over?’ she returned as easily as though I had not spoken.

‘One,’ I answered shortly. Madelyn’s habit of ignoring my queries grated most uncomfortably at times.

‘Then you know what has been published concerning the case?’

I nodded. ‘I imagine that you can add considerable.’

‘As a matter of fact, I know less than the reporters!’ Madelyn threw open the door of her room. ‘You have interviewed Senator Duffield on several occasions, have you not, Nora?’

‘You might say on several delicate occasions if you cared to!’

‘You can tell me then whether the Senator is in the habit of polishing his glasses when he is in a nervous mood?’

A rather superior smile flashed over my face. ‘I assure you that Senator Duffield never wears glasses on any occasion!’

Something like a chuckle came from Madelyn.

‘Perhaps you can do as well on another question. You will observe in these newspapers four different photographs of the murdered secretary. Naturally, they bear many points of similarity – they were all taken in the last three years – but they contain one feature in common which puzzles me. Does it impress you in the same way?’

I glanced at the group of photographs doubtfully. Three of them were obviously newspaper ‘snap-shots,’ taken of the secretary while in the company of Senator Duffield. The fourth was a reproduction showing a conventional cabinet photograph. They showed a clean-shaven, well-built young man of thirty or thereabouts; tall, and I should say inclined to athletics. I turned from the newspapers to Madelyn with a shrug.

‘I am afraid I don’t quite follow you,’ I admitted ruefully. ‘There is nothing at all out of the ordinary in any of them that I can catch.’

Madelyn carefully clipped the pictures and placed them under the front cover of her black morocco note-book. As she did so, a clock chimed the hour of one. We both pushed back our chairs.

As we stepped into the taxicab, Madelyn tapped my arm. ‘I wonder if Raymond Rennick polished his glasses when he was nervous?’ she asked musingly.

III

Boston, from the viewpoint of the South Station at half past seven in the morning, suggests to me a rheumatic individual climbing stiffly out of bed. Boston distinctly resents anything happening before noon. I’ll wager that nearly every important event that she has contributed to history occurred after lunch-time!

If Madelyn Mack had expected to have to find her way to the Duffield home without a guide, she was pleasantly disappointed. No less a person than the Senator himself was waiting for us at the train-gate – a somewhat dishevelled Senator, it must be confessed, with the stubble of a day-old beard showing eloquently how his peace of mind and the routine of his habits had been shattered. As he shook hands with us he made an obvious attempt to recover something of his ease of manner.

‘I trust that you had a pleasant night’s rest,’ he ventured, as he led the way across the station to his automobile.

‘Much pleasanter than you had, I fear,’ replied Madelyn.

The Senator sighed. ‘As a matter of fact, I found sleep hopeless; I spent most of the night with my cigar. The suggestion of meeting your train came as a really welcome relief.’

As we stepped into the waiting motor, a leather-lunged newsboy thrust a bundle of heavy-typed papers into our faces. The Senator whirled with a curt dismissal on his tongue when Madelyn thrust a coin toward the lad and swept a handful of flapping papers into her lap.

‘There is absolutely nothing new in the case, Miss Mack, I assure you,’ the Senator said impatiently. ‘The reporters have pestered me like so many leeches. The sight of a headline makes me shiver.’

Madelyn bent over her papers without comment. As I settled into the seat by her side, however, and the machine whirled around the corner, I saw that she was not even making a pretence of reading. I watched her with a frown as she turned the pages. There was no question of her interest, but it was not the type that held her attention. I doubted if she was perusing a line of the closely-set columns. It was not until she reached the last paper that I solved the mystery. It was the illustrations that she was studying!

When she finished the heap of papers, she began slowly and even more thoughtfully to go through them again. Now I saw that she was pondering the various photographs of Senator Duffield’s family that the newspapers had published. I turned away from her bent form and tapping finger, but there was a magnetism in her abstraction that forced my eyes back to her in spite of myself. As my gaze returned to her, she thrust her gloved hand into the recesses of her bag and drew out her black morocco notebook. From its pages she selected the four newspaper pictures of the murdered secretary that she had offered me the night before. With a twinkle of satisfaction she grouped them about a large, black-bordered picture which stared up at her from the printed page in her lap.

Our ride to the Duffield gate was not a long one. In fact I was so absorbed by my furtive study of Madelyn Mack that I was startled when the chauffeur slackened his speed, and I realized from a straightening of the Senator’s bent shoulders that we were nearing our destination.

At the edge of the driveway, a quietly dressed man in a grey suit, who was strolling carelessly back and forth from the gate to the house, eyed us curiously as we passed, and touched his hat to the Senator. I knew at once he was a detective. (Trust a newspaper woman to ‘spot’ a plain-clothes man, even if he has left his police uniform at home!) Madelyn did not look up and the Senator made