The Girl at Central/Chapter 13

T noon the next day—Friday—I was called to Mrs. Galway's phone. It was Mr. George Whitney telling me to come over to the city at once. I wasn't to bother about addresses or finding my way. I'd be met at the Ferry and taken to Mr. Whitney's office in Broad Street—all I was to do was to say nothing to anybody and come.

I did both.

At the Ferry a fine-looking chap came up to me, with his hat in his hand, and asked me if I was Miss Morganthau. For a moment I was uneasy, thinking maybe he was a masher, when he turned to a kind-faced elderly woman beside him and said:

"This is Mrs. Cresset, who's come over on the boat with you and is going to Mr. Whitney's office, too."

Then I knew it was all right and we three got into a taxi. On the way across to Broad Street he told us what we were to do. It was nothing much. All Mr. Whitney wanted of us was that we'd sit in the inner office and listen to some gentleman talking in the next room. If we heard the voice I'd got on the wire and Mrs. Cresset had heard the night of the murder we were to say nothing, but sit perfectly still till we were called.

"If you recognize the voice make no sign or sound. All we ask of you is, if you're not certain of the identification, to say so."

The office was a great big place, rooms opening out of rooms, and a switchboard with a girl at it, dressed very neat and not noticing us as we passed her. Mr. George Whitney met us and took us into a room furnished fine with leather armchairs and books all up the walls and a wide window looking out over the roofs and skyscrapers. There was a door at one side, and this he opened a crack and told Mrs. Cresset to sit down close to it with me opposite. He cautioned us to be quiet and not to move or even whisper till we were called.

We sat there for a while with nothing happening. We could hear voices, and now and then people walking and doors shutting, and once a bell tinkled far off in the distance. Then suddenly I heard someone—Mr. George Whitney, I think—say, "Show him in, the private office," and heavy steps coming up the passage, past our door and into the next room, then old Mr. Whitney's voice, very loud and cheerful.

"Ah, Mr. Cokesbury, this is truly kind of you. I have to apologize for taking up your time, just as you're leaving, too, but we hoped you might help us in some minor points of this curious case."

The voice that answered was Cokesbury's; I knew it well now. At the sound of it Mrs. Cresset gave a start and leaned forward, her ear close to the door.

He was as cordial and hearty as if he was at a pink tea.

"Only too glad to be of service, Mr. Whitney. If I had thought I could be of any help I would have offered before. Fortunately for me—as you probably know—I was held up in my place on the day of the murder. If my car had been in working order I suppose I'd have been quite a prominent figure in the case by now."

He laughed out, a deep, rich sort of laugh, and it made my flesh creep to think he could do it with that girl's death at his door.

The talk went on for a bit, back and forth between them, Mr. Whitney asking him some questions about the roads, the distances, and Miss Hesketh's friends; he answering as calm and fluent as if he'd hardly known her at all.

In the middle of it the clerk who had met us at the Ferry came softly in, and without a word, beckoned us to follow him through a door that led into another room. We rose up as stealthily as burglars and stole across the carpet without making so much as a creak or a rustle. When we were in he shut the door, told us to wait there, and left us. We sat, afraid to speak, staring at each other and wondering what was going to happen next. In a few minutes the door opened and Mr. Whitney came in.

"Well?" he said, turning to me, "are you as sure as you were over the phone?"

"Certain," I answered. "It's the man."

He looked at Mrs. Cresset.

"How about you, Mrs. Cresset? Remember, a mistake in a matter like this is a pretty serious thing."

Mrs. Cresset was as sure as I was.

"I couldn't tell the man from Adam," she said, "but I knew his voice the minute I heard it."

"Very well. Now I want you to come into the private office. Don't be frightened; nothing disagreeable's going to happen. All you have to do is to answer simply and truthfully any questions I may put to you. Come along."

We followed him up the passage to the room where he'd been talking. Sitting in a large chair by the desk was the man I'd seen that day in the woods with Sylvia Hesketh. He didn't look so robust and hearty as he had then; his skin was paler and his forehead lined; but I noticed his large coarse hands with the hair on them—a murderer's hands—they were the same.

When he saw us, walking in solemn behind Mr. Whitney, his face changed. It's hard to explain how it looked, but it was as if the muscles tightened up and the eyes got a fixed startled expression like you see in the eyes of an animal you've come on sudden and scared. He rose to his feet and I saw one of his hands close till the knuckles turned white. Mr. George Whitney, who was standing near by, watched him like a cat watching a mouse.

Old Mr. Whitney spoke up as genial as if he was introducing us at a party.

"These ladies, Mr. Cokesbury, come from Longwood and its vicinity. Miss Morganthau is one of the operators in the Telephone Exchange, and Mrs. Cresset you've met before, I think, one night at Cresset's Farm."

Mrs. Cresset bowed very polite and made as if she was going to shake hands. But Cokesbury didn't meet her half or a quarter way. He turned to the men and—I guess he did it without knowing—looked like lightning from one to the other—a sort of wild glance. They never took their eyes off him, and there was something awful about their stare, for all both of them were behaving so pleasant. Under that stare he got as white as a sheet, but he tried to put up a bluff.

"Cresset," he said, "Cresset? There's some mistake. I never saw her before in my life."

"That's quite true," said Mr. Whitney, "you didn't see her nor she you. If you remember it was very dark. But you spoke to her and she's willing to swear that yours was the voice she heard. Aren't you, Mrs. Cresset?"

"Yes, sir," said Mrs. Cresset, as solid and sure as the Bartholdi statue. "This is the gentleman that asked me the way that night. I'd know his voice among a thousand."

"What night?" said Cokesbury. "I don't know what she's talking about."

It was pitiful to see him trying to keep it up with his face gray and his hands trembling.

Mr. Whitney went on as if he didn't notice anything.

"And Miss Morganthau here is also ready to swear to your voice as the one she overheard on the phone Saturday, November the twentieth, in a conversation with the late Miss Hesketh—a message you've probably seen a good deal about in the papers."

I saw one of those big, hairy hands make a grip at the back of the armchair. I thought he was going to fall and couldn't take my eyes off him till Mr. Whitney turned to me and said in that bland society way:

"Perhaps you'll be so good, Miss Morganthau, as to tell Mr. Cokesbury of your efforts during the past week to get him on the phone."

I told him the whole thing and ended up with the story of how I fooled him about the key. And, honest to God, though I thought I was talking to a murderer, I was sorry for him.

All the life seemed to leave him and he got as haggard as an old man, with his lips shaking and the perspiration in beads on his forehead. When I got through he suddenly gave a sort of groan, dropped back into his chair and put his hands over his face. I was glad it was hidden, and I was glad when Mr. Whitney turned to me and Mrs. Cresset and said quick and commanding:

"That'll do. You can go into the other room. Ring the bell, George."

We huddled out into the passage where we met that spry clerk coming up on the jump. He went into the office and shut the door, and we could hear a murmur of voices, we standing up against the wall not knowing what to do next.

Presently the clerk came out again, rounded us up and sent us into the room down the hall where Mr. Whitney had talked to us. He told us to wait there for a minute, then lit out as if he was in a great hurry. We stood stiff in the middle of the floor, expecting to hear the tramp of policemen and then Cokesbury being dragged off to jail. But it was all very still. I never supposed when you caught a criminal the proceedings would be so natural and dignified.

After a while the clerk came back. He said Mr. Whitney'd sent us his thanks for our kindness in coming—I never saw people waste so many words on politeness—and hoped we'd excuse him from thanking us in person, but he was just now very busy. He warned us not to say a word to anyone of what had transpired, and then a boy coming to the door and saying, "It's here," he told us a taxi was waiting below to take us to the Ferry.

If we couldn't talk to anyone else we could to each other and I guess we did more gabbing going down in the taxi and across in the boat than Mrs. Cresset had done for years. She told me about the night when Cokesbury had come to her house. It was wonderful to see how luck was with him—the way it sometimes is with sinners. Usually at that hour she was round in the kitchen and when he knocked would have opened the door and seen his face in the lamplight. But she'd gone upstairs early as her little daughter had a cold.

To go back over the small things that happened would make you sure some evil power was protecting him. That morning the little girl's cold wasn't bad and she'd gone to school as usual. But at the schoolhouse she heard that the dancing bear—the one I saw in Longwood which had been performing along the pike on its way back to Bloomington—had been at Jaycock's farm and might be round by Cresset's that afternoon. Like all children, she was crazy about the bear, and after school hours she and a chum slipped off and stood around in the damp, waiting. But the bear did not show up and when she came home, crying with disappointment, the cold was heavy on her. Her mother bundled her off to bed and went up early to sit with her. Only for that, Cokesbury would probably have been landed in jail weeks before, the State saved money and two innocent men saved shame and suffering.

"That's the way it is with the Devil's own," I said. "I guess he takes care of them for a while; jollies them along the downward path."

"It looks like that was the case," said Mrs. Cresset, her kind, rosy face very solemn. "But the power of evil gets broke in the end. 'Murder will out'—that's true if anything is. Think of that man feeling so safe and every hour the cords tightening round him."

"And we did it," said I, awful proud. "We found the cords and then pulled on them."

"We did," says she. "I never thought to be the one to put a fellow-creature behind bars, but I have and my conscience tells me I've done right."

My, but we both felt chesty!

The next morning Babbitts phoned me to say he'd be over Sunday evening. The information of "Our Suspect" would be given to the press Sunday morning for the Monday papers and after it was in he'd come across and tell me about it.

Mr. Whitney had arranged for me not to go back to work till Tuesday and though I suppose the rest was good for me, the strain of waiting wore on me something dreadful. I kept wondering how Cokesbury had done it, and how he was going to explain this and account for that. Most of Sunday I lay on the bed trying to read a novel, but a great deal more interested in the hands of the clock than I was in the printed pages.

When it began to darken up for evening I told Mrs. Galway I was expecting a gentleman caller and asked for the loan of the parlor. She's a great one for love affairs and it always discouraged her that I had no regular company. Now she thought I'd got a steady at last and wanted to lend me her cameo pin, and decked up the parlor as if the minister was coming to call, with the hand-painted leather cushion and the punch-work tablecloth.

Long before Babbitts was due I was sitting by the stove, burning bright and clear, with the drop light throwing a glow over the center table. Upstairs I could hear Mrs. Galway tramping round as she went to bed, which was considerate of her as she was something of a night bird. When I heard his knock at the side door, I gave a sort of squeal of excitement and ran to let him in.

"Well?" I said, grabbing his arm, too worked up to say good evening, "has he confessed?"

"Yes," he said, "he has and he's told an uncommon queer story."

"He killed her?"

"That's the queerest part of it," said Babbitts slowly, "he didn't."