The Millionth Chance/Chapter 14

EESE stepped swiftly to the girl’s side. He bent over and talked to her. Though I could not hear his words, I knew that he tried to calm her, and at his success I was meanly jealous. But that state of mind endured only a moment; as he stepped away from her, I was glad to see that she had controlled herself, though I could tell by her drawn features that it was only by a mighty effort.

“Mr. Wrenham to the stand,” said the doctor-coroner.

“Mr. Wrenham,” he said to me when I had taken the witness chair, “tell the jury what you discovered last night.”

Swiftly I told them of the discovery of the balcony tracks and of the following of the trail that had ended in the empty overshoes.

“Sheriff Carney,” called Reese.

Carney corroborated my account.

“Captain Perkins!”

Reese waved our landlord to the witness chair.

“Captain Perkins,” he said, “yesterday you were not absolutely certain that you had seen Ravenell and Minot go out before the murder. Are you certain today?”

“Not certain I saw them go out? I’m dead certain I didn’t see them go out!” corrected Captain Perkins. “But I can’t swear that they didn’t, either. My recollection is that they went up-stairs. I don’t remember seein’ ’em come down again. I don’t want to do an injustice even to a couple of skunks like them, but I can’t swear that they was in the hotel. Don’t see how they could have been—both on ’em. One of them might ’a’ worn them overshoes, but t’other”

“That will do, Captain,” said the doctor.

He faced the jury.

“Gentlemen, you have heard the motive. Miss Gilman has made it perfectly clear why. It is easy to understand that one of these men, hired to rob Major Penrose, might have killed him. He might have been discovered by the major, not have known the major was in the room, and then, in excited fear, have snatched up the major’s weapon and committed the murder. Which one of them it was we can not tell.

“This man Minot admitted yesterday that he had gone up-stairs at about the time the Captains thinks they both went up. He says that he came down the stairs. Per haps he did, but it is possible that he is the person who wore those overshoes. His partner may have gone out-doors as he says. But there is a place below Major Penrose’s windows that shows that somebody stood there a little while. The tracks are covered now, but Sheriff Carney is very certain that they were made by one of these men. His theory is that one of these two men stood below that window ready to break his partner’s fall if his partner should swing from the balcony to the ground, to avoid discovery. That makes the man waiting below partner in the crime, accessory after the fact, if not before, in the crime of murder.

“I admit that owing to Captain Perkins’s imperfect recollection we can not be certain that Minot did not come down-stairs. It is pretty certain that both of them did not go up-stairs, for there are the tracks of only one man in the snow beneath the balcony at the other end of the hotel from the major’s room. And only one man could have escaped them, that way. And as another man could not possibly have come down-stairs after the murder without detection, part of the story of Minot seems true. But I believe that there is evidence here sufficient to detain these men. We have the motive; we know that they committed a murderous assault on Mr. Wrenham last night. I ask you to hold them for the Grand Jury.”

Ravenell leaped to his feet, his face flushed.

“What right you got to do that?” he cried. “Suppose I was standin’ below the major’s window? That don’t prove anything against me. That don’t prove I was in on murder. That don’t prove nothing! You got no right to hold me.”

“Then you were below the window?” asked Reese suavely.

Minot snatched at his companion’s sleeve.

“Sit down, you idiot,” he snarled. “Suppose they do try to hold us on this flimsy evidence? Any decent lawyer will get us out on a writ of habeas corpus in twenty-four hours.”

Ravenell looked uncertainly from Reese to his fellow-operative. Reese laughed.

“Oh, very well, gentlemen. It doesn’t matter to me what the charge is on which you are detained. But be very certain that you will be detained until there has been an opportunity for me to summon detectives from Portland. Your own agency, perhaps. Or perhaps the Healy agency would be better. For I can and will detain you.” He turned to me. “Wrenham, will you swear out a warrant against these men, charging them with assault with intent to kill?”

“I certainly will,” I promised.

Reese smiled at Ravenell.

“Care to admit now that you were below the window and that Minot was on the balcony? Not that it matters much; you just admitted it. But is there anything you’d care to add to that admission? A clean breast might help your case, you know.”

Ravenell’s face was white now. Up to now he had evidently believed that there was nothing to connect either himself or Minot with the murder. Minot, evidently the stronger spirit, as he was more patently the more crafty, had held a mastery over the man that made him sit tight. But with all his burliness, Ravenell was a coward at heart, and his predicament brought out the weakness in his character.

“I’ll tell you,” he began, “I’ll tell you! You got nothin’ on me, and”

The slim Minot leaped to his feet. He seized Ravenell by the shoulder and pulled him backward into his chair. He advanced to the witness chair.

“If anything must be told, let me tell it,” he said with a sneer.

“You realize that anything you say will be used against you?” queried Reese.

Minot sneered again.

“Doctor, I’ve been chasing crooks some little time. I guess I know how to protect my own interests. Used against me? Use it as far as you like.”

He looked venomously around the room, his eyes holding an especially unpleasant gleam when they met mine.

“Where do you want me to begin?” he asked.

“You might start at the beginning,” suggested Reese mildly. “Suppose you tell us why you followed Major Penrose and his niece.”

“I’ll tell you why, but not who employed my firm,” said Minot. “That’s a professional secret and I’m not yet in any such hole that I need to use professional secrets as a ladder. Let it be enough that Miss Gilman has told the truth, and that the employer of my firm wanted the major’s plans. Never mind who he is! Does it make any difference? It’s enough that he wanted them; that he decided that he’d better not use any more of his own secret agents for fear of arousing further suspicion and putting the major on his guard. He came to my firm. He offered half a million dollars for those plans.”

“And a reputable detective agency accepted the commission?”

“Wait a bit,” said Minot coolly. His sang-froid amazed me. Didn’t the man realize the gravity of his position?

“Perhaps,” he said, “if my firm had known that the plans possessed by the major belonged partly to the United States we’d not have accepted the commission. I’m sure we wouldn’t have. But that part of it is all news to me. The Greenhams aren’t traitors. But we didn’t know that. And everything is fair in war. If her uncle could help England—oh, I understand that his honor compelled him, all right—but still, if he could help England, why couldn’t we help one of England’s opponents? Or a private individual, if we wished?

“We were told that a certain man, now dead, had invented certain plans. He had sold those plans to the man that hired us. We were shown the bill of sale. We were told that Major Penrose had got hold of those plans in a dishonorable manner. We were told that Major Penrose was planning to sell them to England. Now, maybe we weren’t as fussy about proofs as we might have been. But here was the situation: Major Penrose was keeping under cover pretty closely. We could tell that at once. If he had an honest proposition why all the precautions and secrecy we soon learned that he was using?

“The fact that he was under an honorable obligation to use every means in his power to deliver those plans to England is news to me. We thought he was after the coin. If he wasn’t, we wondered why he didn’t give the plans to his own country. Frankly, without meaning to hurt Miss Gilman’s feelings, we thought he was a crook. But we couldn’t have him jailed, because our client said that would spoil everything. It would get out that the major was dickering with a foreign power, and the United States would stop all that, and our client wouldn’t be able to do any dickering himself.

“Our job was to get the plans, and the major’s secrecy convinced us that he didn’t have any good title to them himself, and that our client told the truth. That our client might sell them to one of England’s enemies didn’t enter into the case, and wouldn’t have mattered if it had. We were retained to get the plans; we were assured that Major Penrose, being a thief, would not dare appeal to the police. We were offered half a million dollars. We took the case.

“And I hope it isn’t necessary to state that the Greenham Agency knew nothing of what had happened before we took charge. We knew nothing about any one having been killed. If we had we’d not have touched it. All we knew was that we believed our client, that Major Penrose wouldn’t be permitted to deal with England if Germany protested, and that if Penrose put up any squawk Germany would learn the truth and would protest. Silence was necessary all around, and, well, we took the case.”

“The large reward causing you to shut your eyes and not ask too many questions, eh?” demanded Reese sarcastically.

“Oh, well, business is business,” said Minot impudently. “Back to cases! But at that, half a million is quite some money, eh? Well, I was put on to the case in Washington. I followed Major Penrose and his niece to New York. I watched them in New York, but they didn’t let drop a hint where they were going. And when I finally learned they were going to Portland, I missed the train that carried them. That’s where Brant—or Wrenham, as you call him—comes in.

“He happened to wear clothes like mine. My office wired Portland that I’d be on the train the major took, and described me, for fear of accidents. I thought I’d need help. Well, the telegram saying that I was coming went through, but the next telegram was delayed by the storm. So Ravenell, here, thought that Wrenham was myself. He tried to pal in with Wrenham but Wrenham couldn’t See it. But Ravenell merely thought that Wrenham had a swelled head and didn’t want help. At that, Wrenham acted kind of queer, and I ain’t so dead sure that he’s all you think he is. Still, he helped the young lady get the plans away.

“Well, when I got to Portland, I traced Ravenell down here. The station agent remembered that a man answering Ravenell’s description had bought a ticket for Folly Cove, and that two people looking like the major and Miss Gilman had done the same thing. Ravenell hadn’t wired the Portland office where he was, and explained that by saying he didn’t have a chance. Maybe he did; maybe he didn’t. Anyway, the big saphead, after his wanting to squeal just now, and putting me to the trouble of telling this long yarn, will be back driving a truck next week where he belongs. I have an idea that he figured on getting the plans for himself and selling out to some one else—let’s say Japan. Of course, Japan’s allied with England and might not bid against England. But I’m not so sure. Alliances don’t mean much. Anyway, my large friend Ravenell,” and he sneered at his partner, “thought he saw a chance for easy money, I think. He may get it driving a truck, but I doubt it.

“Well, whatever his lone game was, he dropped it when I came down here. I took charge. Miss Gilman has spoken of Wrenham rescuing her from our clutches. She’s spoken of our attempting to steal the plans. You, Dr. Reese, have asked Wrenham to swear out a warrant for assault against us. I’m telling you a straight story, without any frills or excuses. If I continue telling it, will you drop the assault charges?”

Reese, amazement on his face, looked from Minot to me, and then to Miss Gilman. Equally amazed, we both nodded assent.

“If you prefer a murder charge against you,” began Reese hesitatingly, “why, you’re welcome. The assault charge will be dropped if you convince me that you are telling the truth, and the whole truth—and convince the jury.”

“I’ll take a chance,” said Minot airily. “Well, I’ll get down to yesterday. My agency had been hired because our employer feared that his own agents were too well known. He figured that Greenham men wouldn’t be suspected and could turn the trick easily, if it were to be done at all. But I wasn’t so sure of that. Moreover, the major’s secret flight made me think that he’d fooled my employer into thinking the work wasn’t done, and that it really was done. Further, I reasoned that he hadn’t come to this neck of the woods for nothing. He’d either done it as a blind, and managed to get the plans off to England by somebody else, or was intending to pass them here. And while I was talking this over with my fat-witted friend Ravenell, what does she do but come down the path where we were talking!

“Ravenell grabbed at her muff. I tried to stop him, but the look on her face told me that the plans were there. Personally, I’d have preferred to have waited until she gave them to whoever she’d started out to meet and take them from him, or them, but Ravenell’s sudden move, unexpected by me, and about as full of finesse as his head is of brains, made it necessary to play the hand out then and there.

“The way she clung to that muff proved she had the plans, all right. And we’d have had ’em but for Mr. Brant-Wrenham here. I can only say for Mr. Brant-Wrenham that I hope he commits forgery or some other little trick some day, and that I’m assigned to his case.

“He got her away from us, and I knew the game was up. She knew who and what Ravenell and I were, and finesse was in the discard. We had to grab those plans. I knew, of course, that she’d not dare say anything to the authorities here. If she did that we’d have made the authorities hold her uncle and herself until our employer got into touch with the German Embassy. That would have thrown the matter into arbitration. But then, while England would have had to whistle for the plans, so would my employer!”

“Wish she had complained to me,” said Carney. “I’d have told you to chase yourself—after you got through breakin’ rocks for assaulting her. And I’d not have detained her uncle or her, either, and he’d be alive today.”

“Then it’s just as well she didn’t complain—for me, isn’t it?” sneered Minot. “As for her uncle being alive—perhaps Miss Gilman would have something to say about that.”

“What!” cried Reese.

From the throats of the jurymen came growls of anger. Minot waved a hand airily.

“Just wait until I finish,” he said. He stared defiantly around.

“Ravenell and I watched the hotel after Miss Gilman returned. We knew that neither she nor her uncle had left the building. Neither had Wrenham, and we looked out for him, too, not knowing just where he stood with the major and his niece. There was some puzzle about him which isn’t clear yet. Ravenell said that he was on good terms with them coming down here, and afterward they didn’t seem on good terms.

“Anyway, after lunch I decided to look over the situation. I was dead sure the plans were fully completed and that another effort might be made to deliver them to some one. Also, our intentions and purposes were known. If I could get a chance to take them

“Well, I went up-stairs. I thought I’d take a chance on sneaking into the major’s room by way of the balcony. I had told Ravenell to stand below the major’s window so that if I had to make a quick getaway he could break my fall.”

He turned to Carney.

“Nice reasoning, sheriff. If you ever want a job with the Greenhams, refer them to me. I’ll recommend you.”

His impudence was amazing and Carney growled angrily. Minot smiled irritatingly and continued.

“It was raw work, but what else was there to be done? I couldn’t watch the girl or her uncle forever. Sooner or later they might get the chance to slip the plans to whoever was waiting, and I’ve known lots of tricks pulled by sheer nerve. They’d hardly expect me to attempt to rob their rooms while they were in them. They’d be too confident that I’d be afraid to, with help for them so near. But I had to take chances, and when you’re working for a half million, a good slice of which is your commission—well, I decided to look the ground over.

“But there was snow on the balcony. Of course, the major knowing by this time who I was—I supposed Miss Gilman had told him, of course—it may seem funny that I cared about making tracks on the balcony. But I figured it this way: If I got the plans and the major discovered their loss soon—before I had a chance to deliver them any where, to get them out of the hotel—he’d try for an arrest. But he wouldn’t want to say what I’d stolen. Because he’d know that if it got into the papers that I’d stolen his plans, my employer would know that the fat was in the fire; that they could never get the plans, now, so he’d appeal to the State Department to see that England didn’t get them, out of clear spite.

“So, then, the major wouldn’t charge me with having stolen the plans. But he’d charge me with having stolen something else. But he’d have to prove a case on me to get me held and searched; he’d have difficulty in proving that I stole money, or a watch, or anything like that. He’d have sense enough to know that his mere saying that he believed I stole anything like that wouldn’t be sufficient to have me held by the police, because I could get a wire from my office saying that I was O.K. He’d have to have a case on me.

“Therefore, if he could prove that I’d been outside his window, say, he could have me held. My footprints would be a give-away. He could have me held on any ordinary theft charge. The footprints, proof presumptive of attempted robbery, at any rate, would save him from talking, about the plans. While I was locked up as a thief he’d get the plans and deliver them before my protests were heeded.

“But I wasn’t going to be held on any trumped-up charge. I’d be held for taking the plans, if I got them, or for nothing. I knew that the major wouldn’t mention the plans save as a last resort, to prevent them from going to my employer. Of course, he could give duplicates later on to England, but half their value would be lost if my employer sold the same sort of submarine to another country. A gun in your hand isn’t so all-powerful if the other fellow has a gun, too.

“Of course, if the trumped-up charge held, I could mention the plans, but a half-million would be lost to the Greenhams. But what I wanted to do was to have the appearance of innocence so that any sheriff down here would hesitate to arrest me on the major’s say-so. Then, while he hesitated, I’d get rid of the plans somehow. But if my footprints were plain on the balcony—outside the major’s room—well, the sheriff or constable wouldn’t hesitate. And, of course, my plan was to sneak into the major’s room if possible while he was out.

“As I’ve said, it was a long chance, but I had to do something. I couldn’t wait until the major turned over the plans to some British agent. For now that Ravenell had given us dead away by grabbing Miss Gilman’s muff, the plans wouldn’t be so easy to get at again. The major would probably hand them over himself; there’d be gun play if we tried to get them. I wasn’t anxious for anything like that. It was my cue to get them before some one came after them. Of course, if I saw him hand them over to some one that we didn’t dare tackle—say, to several people—we’d follow them until we could get in touch with our employer, and then the State Department would take a hand. But it wasn’t enough, as I’ve explained several times, to prevent England from getting those plans. My employer wanted them for himself!

“Well, in the bathroom I’d noticed a pair of overshoes. I never neglect a trick. That’s why the Greenhams chose me as the man to handle this little affair. And I’d have handled it right, too, if that saphead Ravenell hadn’t gummed the game by snatching the muff from Miss Gilman on the path yesterday morning. But that’s all over. Spilt milk can’t be picked up.

“I went to the washroom to see if those overshoes were still there. I’d noticed them in the morning. They were still there, though not in the same place as in the morning. That looked as though whoever owned them had worn them since I saw them last. And if he went to the trouble of bringing them up to the bathroom it didn’t seem that he intended to put them on again right away. I had time. Anyway, it didn’t matter much; I’m only telling you so you’ll see that I never overlook a bet.”

He smiled conceitedly while we stared at him in amazement. But my amazement was combined with a certain apprehension. Minot was no fool. Mixture of good breeding and coarseness, combination of real brains and low cunning, he was a queer sort. His language wandered from careful expression to common slang, his manner from honest assurance to impudent defiance.

He might have been a fallen gentleman; he might have been a self-educated product of the slums. He was vicious in his instincts; no question of that. And he looked particularly malign now, because of the red bruise on his forehead, a bruise that I had put there.

But he was no fool. I think that the others had begun to grasp that salient fact; to understand that they were not listening to a confession but the prelude to a defense. The look of triumph had faded from Reese’s face. Carney, puzzled, was biting his nails. The countrymen who comprised the jury' listened with blank surprise to him. The horror that had been on Ruth Gilman’s face had disappeared, to be replaced by a wondering incredulity. Only Ravenell, burly, surly, maintained the expression of sullen resentment that was his usual manner, and that he had lapsed from only for a moment when Reese had put the fear of jail into his heart.

“You confess that you wore those overshoes, then?” demanded Dr. Reese.

“Confess it? Why not?” sneered Minot.

“And you realize that this confession will be used against you? You understand that no promise of light punishment has been made you; that I have not the power to make such a promise?”

“Light punishment? You haven’t the power—” Minot leaned forward from the witness chair and stared at the coroner-doctor. “Say, for Heaven’s sake, doctor,” he said, “you don’t imagine I murdered the old boy, do you? Do you think I’d be boob enough to open my mouth without a lawyer handy if I’d done it? You don’t really think I did it? Not now; not after I’ve admitted the overshoe business. You aren’t that thick, are you?”

Reese stared at him.

“Well, then, Minot, if you didn’t do it, who did?”

“Who did? Come off, doctor! I don’t blame you for being a little suspicious of me for a while. But now that I’ve begun to talk—as no guilty man would talk—who did it? Why the only person that could have done it! There!”

And he pointed straight at the face of Ruth Gilman.