The Millionth Chance/Chapter 7

OPENED my door and stepped into the hall. I saw at a glance that all the “help” of Folly Cove Inn, that I had thus far seen, were before the major’s door.

And as I hesitated one second, with that involuntary pause the sense of tragedy sometimes compels, the heavy figure of a woman servant, the only one I had not seen before, the cook as I learned later, painted past me. With a touch of shame at the hesitation that had been borne of sleep and shock, I raced down the hall, reaching the group by the door before her.

Counting myself and the cook who arrived a fraction of a second later, five people craned their necks, endeavoring to see all that there was to see in the plainly furnished room that had been occupied by Major Penrose. The slim, young waitress who answered to the name of Polly, Myra, the heavier chambermaid, Tony Larue, the clouded-brain Portuguese, Nelly the cook, and myself, all jostled in the doorway, the women whimpering, Tony Larue breathing heavily, and myself feeling that sense of constriction, that desire to get away, that claustrophobia brings to its victims. But this was one occasion when very shame was greater than my neurotic fears. I stayed with the others, gazing fascinatedly into the room.

A moment ago I used the words, “the room that had been occupied by Major Penrose.” The room still was occupied by his body, but that first glance had told me that the body was no longer occupied by his spirit. For though I had seen little of death, I recognized it this time.

Sprawled upon the floor, his face looking upward, his feet under the table-desk at which I had seen him writing not so very long ago, one hand at a right angle to his body, the other beneath one hip, he looked grotesquely as though he had been tossed there by some giant hand, to lie inert. But the overturned chair by the desk, its legs but an inch or so from the major’s side, was proof that the only fall that the dead man had sustained was the tumble from his chair. And the reason for that tumble lay on the floor between the table and a wash-stand against the wall for all to see. It was a short-barreled thirty-eight caliber revolver.

Evidently, I thought in that first glance, in his death-throb the major had hurled the weapon from him, so that it lay on the floor on the other side of the table-desk from the body. For the patter of stealthily running feet past my door that I had heard just after the shot was fired was temporarily forgotten in my immediate assumption—the assumption of the others, too—that the major had killed himself.

For Ruth Gilman, white, trembling, stood just inside the door, saying in a monotone:

“Why did he do it? Why did he do it? Why didn’t I take his revolver from him? It’s my fault, it’s my fault; I should have taken it from him.”

Captain Perkins knelt beside the body. He looked up and his eyes met mine.

“Oh, Brant! Keep them nosy critters outa the room. See if you can’t get Miss Gilman to go to her room.”

I touched the girl on the arm, gently. She stared at me, blankly at first, then with frightened recognition. She shrank from me.

“Oh, you—you”

Her voice rose suddenly and broke in a shriek. Instantly the fat and motherly old cook was inside the room, despite the captain’s wishes, and had her arms about the girl.

“There, there, darlin’, you mustn’t give way. You mustn’t give way.”

She patted Miss Gilman’s shoulders with fat fingers. She drew her toward the door.

“You can’t do anythin’ here, darlin’,” she said soothingly. “Come, now, into your room with Nelly.”

For a moment I dreaded an outburst of hysteria from the girl. But, though her rounded figure shook with sobs, the shrieks that I feared did not come. Instead, she burst into heart-rending tears. I knew that they were a safety-valve; at present she would not lose control of herself. Indeed she suffered the motherly cook to lead her from the room.

Captain Perkins wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

“I thought she’d break down,” he muttered. “Thank God—Tony,” he cried sharply, “telephone Dr. Reese at onct! And—and—Sheriff Carney. Get him, too. Quick! The rest of you people git back from that door. Git outa here. I ain’t goin’ to have a single thing disturbed. Git back. Git down-stairs and ’tend to your business. Hear me?”

He was most truculent, and the frightened waitress and chambermaid, weeping, drew back from the door. Once out of the room, away from the sight of that which lay upon the bedroom floor, they gathered their skirts about them and ran swiftly down the hall, to place themselves as far as possible from the presence of death.

“Ain’t this tough on that pore little girl in there?” sighed the captain. He nodded toward Miss Gilman’s room.

“It’s pretty tough on the old man, too,” I said.

I could not lift my eyes from the figure on the floor, with the mark on the temple where the bullet had entered.

“It is,” agreed the captain. “Why the pore old feller should want to do a thing like that”

He shook his head mournfully.

“Let’s wait outside,” he suggested.

I took to the idea with alacrity. We left the room and the captain locked the door behind him.

“Want things should be exactly as we found ’em,” he stated. “It’s a plain enough case, but still—the pore little girl, the pore little girl.”

My heart warmed to the old sailor. Not a whimper from him as to the possible ill-repute the tragedy would give his hotel.

“I better stay right here until the doctor and Carney git here,” he announced. “If you don’t like to stay so close”

But I shook my head, impatient at the suggestion. True, at first glimpse of the tragedy my nerves had tried to rim away with me, but that phase had passed. I was only possessed now with a tremendous sorrow for the old man and his niece. Also I was occupied with the hope that the repugnance the girl had shown toward me was but a symptom of hysteria. For it was possible that the fear of spies had hounded the major into his act. If the girl adopted that theory I would always be repugnant to her, though I convinced her a thousand times that the major’s suspicions of me were unjustified. A selfish trend of thought, and I soon realized it.

The captain got chairs from a vacant room and I got cigars from my room. We sat down a few yards from the locked door behind which lay the major and waited the arrival of the physician and sheriff, whose promised coming Tony Larue announced a few minutes after the captain had sent him to telephone.

“You better go down-stairs and stay with the girls, Tony,” said the captain. “They’re cranky craft and might capsize if there ain’t a firm hand at the helium. Git down-stairs and chirk ’em up a bit.”

The Portuguese did as he was bid. At least, he disappeared down the stairs. A little later Nelly, the fat cook, came out to tell us that Miss Gilman was quieted.

“I found some brandy in a medicine-chest she had and I gave her a drop of that. She’s a brave darlin’ and she’ll be all right soon,” said the cook.

Then she went back to her charge and the captain and I puffed at our cigars. Reminiscences of gory scenes at sea and in sailors’ boarding-houses came to him. He regaled me, during the half-hour it took for Dr. Reese to arrive, with accounts of murders he had witnessed, mutinies he had helped put down. I was not at all ungrateful for the arrival of the physician, even though it cut short a most dramatic account of the time when a Swede bo’sun had run amuck on the bark Sarah Jane Tomkins.

Reese was a short, stout, energetic-looking little man. He was coroner as well as physician, and seemed most capable. He entered the major’s room, took a glance about it with sharp eyes that seemed to comprehend everything, and then knelt over the body.

Shortly he announced that the bullet had pierced the major’s brain and that death had been as nearly instantaneous as could be conceived. Also, he picked up from the floor the bullet that had caused death. It had passed completely through the skull. At least, only the skin at the back of the head had held it, and this had been broken through by the weight of the bullet when Dr. Reese lifted the major’s head during his examination.

Reese looked at the bullet.

“A thirty-eight caliber,” he announced. He picked up the revolver lying on the floor. “Also a thirty-eight,” he said. “One chamber exploded. H’m.”

He looked about the room. Splintered glass on the wash-stand caught his eye. It was a tumbler that had been shattered, and it had formerly fitted into a sort of socket, such as retain glass on ships’ tables. Indeed, the wash-stand, which directly faced the table-desk at which the major had been sitting, at a distance of about fifteen feet, had several of these circular depressions, some large and some small.

These depressions, or rather sockets—they are formed by putting a false top on the stand, in which holes are cut to fit whatever it is intended should go on it—are common to country hotel wash-stands. They are built so that no jogging of the stand will upset water-pitcher, basin or glass.

This particular stand had four sockets: one for the wash-basin, one for the water-pitcher when the basin should be in use, and two for glasses, at either end of the top. One of these last still held a fairly thick tumbler; the other held only the bottom of a tumbler that was split in twain, while parts of the rest of the glass were at the socket’s edge, and some splinters had fallen to the floor. I noticed it in detail because Reese stared at it a moment or two.

Then he turned to Captain Perkins.

“Well, your guest won’t complain about this broken tumbler, will he, Captain?”

Both the captain and myself frowned at this ill-timed levity. I think the captain would have uttered some rebuke but for the arrival of Carney, the sheriff. He was a tall man, lean but jovial of countenance, although the joviality was hinted at by the wrinkles about his eyes and the corners of his mouth, rather than by his manner, which was solemn.

“What’s wrong here?” he demanded. “Your Portygee, Cap’n, was so excited telephonin’ me that I only knew somebody was hurt.” He looked at the major’s body. “Murder or suicide?” he queried softly.

Before the captain could answer, Dr. Reese spoke.

“By virtue of my position as coroner, Captain,” he said, “I’m going to ask you to leave the room. Suppose you round up all the servants and guests of the hotel, will you?”

“Well, sink me, Doc Reese,” snorted the captain, “if that ain’t a fine note! Orderin’ me out of my own hotel! I don’t care a hoot what your position is. I’m skipper of this Inn and nobody else gives me any orders.”

He blew his nose and glared angrily at the physician. But Reese was a tactful man.

“When you come into port, Captain, you turn your ship over to a pilot, don’t you? He’s responsible from then on, isn’t he? Well, you see, Captain, this is a sort of strange port for you, and I’m the pilot and I’m responsible. You wouldn’t make things unpleasant for a pilot, would you?”

Captain Perkins was instantly mollified.

“The craft’s yours, Doc,” he said. “Will you want to bother the young lady what’s his niece?” As he said “His” he nodded toward the body still lying on the floor.

“Every one in the hotel, Captain, please,” said the doctor.

Wonderingly I followed the captain from the room. I waited while he knocked on Miss Gilman’s door. There ensued a whispered colloquy between Nelly and her employer, broken by questions addressed to the girl in the room. Then the captain joined me.

“She’s a brave girl,” he announced as we descended the stairs to the office. “Lots of young women would be about crazy, but she says she’ll be down-stairs in half an hour. Though why Doc Reese wants to bother with any questions, when it’s plain as anything that the old gentleman killed himself, and the gun he did it with is lying on the floor—still, a pilot’s orders is final.”

Ten minutes later Reese and Carney came down-stairs to find all who had seen the major’s body, save only Nelly and Miss Gilman, awaiting them in the hotel office. They sat down in chairs by the blazing logs in the fireplace.

“Now, then,” said Reese briskly, “who found the body?”

“Miss Gilman,” said the captain. “You needn’t look for her,” he continued, as Reese’s quick eyes roved about the office in search of the girl. “She’ll be down soon’s she’s able. Anyway, I guess I can tell you as much as she can.”

“Go ahead,” said Reese. “Begin at the beginning, please.”

HERE ain’t much beginning,” said the captain. “I was sittin’ being the desk, doin’ some calc’latin’ on next Sunday’s menoo. I’d been hearing Tony’s violin for the last ten minutes and I’d made up my mind to go up-stairs and ask him to quit, thinkin’ maybe he’d forgotten about closin’ his door. You see, Major Penrose didn’t have a ear for music and kinda objected to Tony’s playin’. Not that I could see why he shouldn’t been tickled to death at the chance of hearin’ him play, but he was mad about it yesterday, so I thought I’d tip Tony to quiet down a bit.”

“Major Penrose was angry yesterday?” queried Reese interestedly.

“Uh-huh, called it caterwaulin’, he did. Didn’t he, Tony?”

The Portuguese’s eyes, that had been dull, flashed with anger.

“He did,” he cried. “He insulted me!”

“Oh, is that so?” asked Reese. “And what did you say to him?”

“Tony didn’t say nothing at all to him,” said the captain hastily.

“So? Didn’t you, Tony?” queried Reese.

“I said nothing to him,” replied the Portuguese.

“I see,” said Reese apparently contented. Yet I could see that his sharp eyes scrutinized the flushed face of the Portuguese interestedly. “Well, go on, Captain.”

“Well, I shoved my book what I was lookin’ over—it’s got menoos of other years in it—back, and dumb off my chair. As I done so I heard a shot up-stairs. I stood, dumb-like, for maybe half a minute. Couldn’t ’a’ been much longer, and then I heard a cry. It sounded like it must have come from Miss Gilman. Well, I wasn’t dumb no longer.

“I went up them stairs just as fast as I could and ran down the corridor. The door of Major Penrose’s room was open and I looked in. There was he, just as you saw him when you come in, and Miss Gilman was leaning against the wall, just inside the door, staring at him.”

“And did she say anything?”

Captain Perkins shook his head.

“Not then; I guess she was too scared, after that first shriek of hers, to open her mouth. Too scared and horrified-like. I bent over the major to see what was wrong. I see right off that he’s dead. By the time I looked up again, every one in the house was in the doorway. I see Mr. Brant here, and I ask him to take Miss Gilman to her room. But Nelly, that’s my cook, she done it. Then I scatted the two girls down-stairs and sent Tony to telephone for you and Dan Carney. After that Mr. Brant and I stayed outside the major’s door until you come. And that’s all I know about it.”

“Thank you, Captain,” said the doctor. He looked at Tony. “And you?” he asked.

The Portuguese colored. But his eyes met those of Reese fairly.

“I was playing the violin in my room,” he said. “I heard the shot. For a minute, like the captain, I was dumb. I couldn’t understand it. Then I heard Miss Gilman cry out and I got out of my chair. But I had few clothes on. I’d been shaving before I started playing and hadn’t anything on above the waist but a shirt. So I got a jacket first, and then I stepped into the hall. I saw Captain Perkins entering the major’s room. Then, as I crossed the hall, the others came. Later I telephoned to you and to Mr. Carney.”

“Then it took you longer to put on a jacket than it did for Captain Perkins to climb a flight of stairs and run almost the length of the corridor, eh?”

“Maybe I was dumb longer than the captain,” said Tony naively.

“Maybe,” said Reese.

He then questioned the two servants, the chambermaid and the waitress. But neither Polly nor Myra had anything important to tell. They had been in the kitchen, had heard the shot, had heard Miss Gilman’s scream, and had heard Captain Perkins cry as he climbed the stairs.

“I guess I did holler some, I was that excited,” admitted the captain, at this point in the waitress’ narration.

Then the two girls had raced from the kitchen into the office, leaving Nelly the cook, also in the kitchen when the shot and scream sounded, to follow after them. Later, they had gone down-stairs, at the captain’s orders.

Reese turned to me.

“And you, Mr. Brant?”

“I’d been asleep,” I told him. “I had borrowed some papers from Captain Perkins and gone to my room to lie down. I had taken off my outer things and soon fell asleep. I was awakened by the sound of the shot and Miss Gilman’s shriek. The rest is as the captain has told you. I rushed down to the major’s room.”

“Why didn’t you take Miss Gilman to her room as the captain requested?”

“She seemed hysterical—repulsed me,” I said.

“Did she say anything?”

“Merely something like, ‘Oh, you—you,’” I replied. “I took it to mean that she preferred to be let alone. Oh, yes,” I added, “she did say something else. Was saying it as I reached the major’s room.”

“And what was that?” queried Reese.

“As nearly as I can remember,” I replied, “it was something like this: ‘Why did he do it? Why did he do it? Why didn’t I take his revolver from him? It’s my fault, it’s my fault, I should have taken it from him.’”

“H’m. That would indicate that she knew he had a tendency toward self-destruction, wouldn’t it?”

“One can hardly be said to have a tendency that way unless one has made an attempt upon one’s life,” I retorted. “Miss Gilman may have known that the old gentleman was nervous, but I imagine that’s all.”

He raised his eyebrows. But what he might have said I was never to know, for Miss Gilman, supported on the arm of Nelly, the cook, appeared at the top of the stairs. They hesitated a moment there, looking down upon us, and my heart went out in pity to the girl.

Her slim figure, though prettily rounded and sturdy enough, seemed to have become fragile, an impression created, of course, by her leaning against Nelly. Her face was white, and her eyes, even at that distance, seemed to burn. Her hand shook as she laid it on the arm of Nelly. I heard the captain stir uneasily in his chair, and a low growl of protest came from his throat. It stirred me to speech. I leaned over and touched Reese on the arm. He was staring at the girl, too, and turned impatiently, angrily, to me.

“What is it?” he demanded.

“Have a little pity,” I said. “Can’t you see that the tragedy has almost killed her? What’s the sense in making her tell her story? We know what it is. The rest of us have told you enough. Can’t you wait? Surely a clear case of suicide doesn’t necessitate harrowing a girl like that? Wait until tomorrow or the next day. Give her a chance to pull herself together. I suppose you want to know something about her uncle. But all that can wait, can’t it—until she’s stronger? Surely it isn’t important, why he committed suicide so long as you know he did!”

Reese’s eyes were scornful as he looked at me.

“Suicide? My dear man, if he’d killed himself how does it happen that there are no powder marks on his face or head? How does it happen that the revolver was found a good twelve feet from him, when, unless medical science is all wrong, he didn’t even have time for a dying agony before death? When there was no reflex action of his muscles after death came. Suicide? Does it seem reasonable that a suicide would kill himself in the middle of a word that he was writing? Not a sentence—a word!” His scorn was so pronounced that I hesitated to ask him my next question. But I did.

“Then you mean that it is a”

I couldn’t finish it.

“Murder? Of course it is!”