The Millionth Chance/Chapter 8

HETHER or not the others heard Reese’s words to me I could not tell. But a tense and expectant hush settled down upon the little assemblage as Miss Gilman, still leaning on Nelly’s arm, descended the stairs and crossed the office to where we sat.

Reese rose and with a quiet courtesy that made me open my eyes, first with surprise and then with quick anger, offered his chair to the girl. For in doing so he turned it so the light from the windows must strike her face. His courtesy, coming from a man who had been able to jest in the presence of death was the cause of my surprise.

The shrewdness that made the girl face the light was the cause of my anger. Yet I could not but admire his cleverness the while I hated the motive that brought it into play. For something subtle, indefinable, about his manner seemed to tell me that he suspected the girl.

In the brief moment in which she settled herself in the chair and turned her burning eyes upon the doctor all the strange circumstances of this mystery which had culminated in tragedy passed in review before my mind. Her scornful eyes in the subway, her alarm at seeing me in the Grand Central Station, my suspicion that she had tampered with my suit-case and wallet, her suspicion of me, the incident in the path with Ravenell and Minot; in quick succession, like a movie film, these pictures flashed before my mental vision.

With my eyes half-closed, as if to shut in a picture that was mental, I enacted in my brain the scene which Dr. Reese’s words suggested. I saw the girl tiptoe to the door of her uncle’s room, raise and point the heavy army revolver, fire at the unsuspecting figure writing at the table-desk, throw the weapon upon the floor, wait a half-minute, and then shriek.

Against that scene, so plausible to Reese, I set the face of the girl. I put those utterly frank and courageous and honest eyes of her against the theory hinted at in Reese’s words, and I felt my mouth curling with scorn for the doctor. He was absurd! And yet—Reese had not said that the girl had committed the crime. My own vivid imagination had supplied the name of the slayer. Reese had merely said that it was murder.

More, in those few words he had proved that it was murder. If my own knowledge of the candor of the girl’s soul, that was mirrored in her eyes, was proof enough that she was guiltless, it was not proof that murder had not been done by some one.

I opened my eyes. All that had gone through my mind had taken but a part of a minute. Reese was just clearing his throat preparatory to questioning Miss Gilman. I took in the strange scene.

Miss Gilman sat at one side of the fire place, and I noted, with pleasure at the failure of Reese’s little plot, that the flickering flames from the open fireplace so lightened and darkened her features that it would be next to impossible for the coroner-physician to read anything in her face, despite the light from the windows that she faced.

Next to the girl sat Nelly the cook, and next to her, leaning forward, his hands upon his knees, truculence in the set of his mouth and in his fiery eyes, sat old Captain Perkins, ready, I felt, to defy the law and call a halt to any proceedings that might annoy Miss Gilman.

Next to him sat Tony Larue, flushing and paling in turn. All these were at right angles to the fireplace. Facing the blaze were Polly the chambermaid and Myra the waitress.

Carney the sheriff, Doctor Reese and myself formed the other line of the rectangle running from the fireplace out to the end formed by the two maid-servants. Reese was next to me. He cleared his throat a second time and, thoroughly alert now, with no thoughts save of the present, I noted that his hand that rested on the arm of the chair nearest to me shook with re pressed excitement. But his voice was calm enough.

“Miss Gilman,” he said, “will you kindly tell us the circumstances of your uncle’s death? I mean, what you know of them. And I ought to tell you in advance that you do not need to answer my questions unless you choose. Anything you may say will be used against you.”

A low growl came from the throat of the captain. Tony Larue’s hands clenched about the arms of his chair. Low sounds of astonishment came from the others, save, of course, Sheriff Carney, who had been closeted with the coroner in the major’s room and undoubtedly knew in advance the doctor’s suspicions.

“Used against me?” Miss Gilman’s voice was surprised. “Do you mean to infer that I am under sus”

“There, there!” It was Nelly the cook who interrupted the ugly word. “The doctor’s a good little man, Miss Gilman, and it ain’t his fault that he thinks the way he does. He don’t know any better. He’d think anything of any woman, and small blame to him, him that’s had his experience with a bad one!”

Reese grew white. I learned later that his wife had deserted him for another man which explained Nelly’s vicious thrust. But he made no response to the cook, although that worthy woman glared at him angrily. Reese possessed self-control and kept to the business in hand.

“If you will tell me, Miss Gilman, what you know.”

“Of course I will! And if—if my words can be used ag—against m-me, use them!”

As she began her sentence it seemed doubtful that she could finish it. But, close to the breaking point though she seemed, she was like tempered steel, that gives and gives and does not break. Indeed, as she lifted her eyes and met the doctor’s gaze, her whole body, that had been limp, seemed to stiffen. Anger showed in her countenance now.

The shock of finding her uncle’s dead body and the sudden knowledge that Reese suspected her, or seemed to, which was just as bad, had bent her, body and soul. But anger threw off the weight of shock and suspicion and like a finely tempered blade she sprang back into place. Only her quivering muscles, like the quivering of a sword-blade, showed the strain she had endured.

“I was in my room,” she began quickly, as if to delay speech meant to make it the more painful for her, “and had been there for something more than half an hour when I heard the shot. I was standing up. I had heard the violin being played in the room opposite my uncle’s, and fearing that it might disturb and anger my uncle, I intended asking the player to close his door, or, if it were closed, to please cease playing. My uncle had lost his temper about the playing yesterday, and as he was in the midst of important work I didn’t want him bothered.”

“Your uncle was a mathematician?” queried Reese.

“He might be called that,” she replied.

“He was doing some figuring, calculating, just before his death. I have the paper here. Will you tell me to what his figures relate?”

“I will not,” she responded sharply.

If Reese were taken aback by her curt refusal, he did not show it.

“You were standing in your room?” he queried.

“Yes. I had been changing my dress, and the violin-playing became louder as I was in the midst of the change. I had just finished and was about to start for my door when I heard the—the shot.” Her voice broke, but she recovered herself almost instantly.

“I seemed to know that it came from my uncle’s room. I opened my door and ran to the next door—his. I looked in. I saw him lying there. I screamed.”

“Did you cry out at once?” queried Reese.

“I—don’t know. Not the very second I entered the room, I suppose. I was too overcome.”

“The others put it at half a minute after the shot, anyway,” said Reese thoughtfully. “Tell me, did you do anything in the room?”

At her look of blank surprise he elaborated his question.

“I mean, did you move anything, touch your uncle, do anything that would have in any way disturbed the contents of the room or changed the position of your uncle?”

“I barely got beyond the threshold,” she answered.

“H’m,” he nodded. He was silent a moment. Then: “You said something that would indicate you feared an attempt at suicide on your uncle’s part, Miss Gilman. You said that it was your fault, that you should have taken the revolver from him. What did you mean by that?”

“He had been very nervous recently. When I said that I believed that he had committed suicide.”

Reese gave no sign just then of having read a meaning in her use of the past tense. One line of thought at a time was all he tried to follow.

“When had you last seen your uncle’s revolver? Did he always carry it with him?”

She answered the last question first.

“Always. I saw it when I left his room to go to mine, half an hour before.”

“Where was it then?”

“In the tumbler on his wash-stand.”

“What!” Reese stared at her. “In a tumbler?”

“I was nervous about the weapon,” she said. “I knew that it was cocked all the time. That is, all the time when he was in his room. At other times, it was in his pocket, and, of course, not cocked.”

“He feared attack?”

“He did.”

“From whom?”

“I prefer not to answer that just yet.”

She was entirely in control of herself now and met Reese’s puzzled glance steadily. He did not press her.

“But why was the revolver in the tumbler?” He reverted to the circumstance that had amazed him, and the rest of us, too, judging by my own surprise and the expressions of the others when she had made the statement.

“I have said that I was nervous about the weapon. Although accustomed to firearms all his life, my uncle was very absent-minded. I did not like the idea of his keeping the revolver on his desk. I was afraid that he would forget all about it when engrossed in his work, and might strike it, accidentally exploding it, when reaching for something. For the same reason I objected when he placed it on the bureau in his room. I really feared that he might pick it up in place of a brush and explode it. Or that there, as on the desk, he might strike it accidentally. So he placed it in the tumbler on the wash-stand. He set it butt down, the end of the revolver protruding above the rim of the glass.

“I objected to that, but he lost his temper. He reminded me that he’d been handling weapons before I was born. More over, he assured me that he’d hardly lift the glass to his mouth without noticing what it held. And I hardly thought that he would, absent-minded though he was. Furthermore, I knew that he had not used the wash-stand at all yesterday and did not intend doing so. Had not used it, in fact, since our arrival. He preferred to make his toilet in the bath-room halfway down the corridor, where there was running water. So I said no more about the weapon, only assuring myself that the glass was firmly set in its socket and that there was no danger that any ordinary jar would upset it.”

“Any ordinary jar,” said Reese softly. “Did you notice that the glass was broken, Miss Gilman?”

“When? When he put the revolver in it? It was sound.”

“No, when you entered his room a little while ago.”

She shook her head.

“Was it?”

“Splintered; part of it remaining in the socket, some of it on the edge of the stand and the rest on the floor. Now, then, you spoke of an ordinary jar. What do you mean by that?”

“I meant a jar such as might have been caused by some one in the room above,” she answered. “Or by the moving of a trunk. Anything like that. But I am sure that nothing short of an earthquake would have caused the glass to leap from the socket.”

“And of course there was no such jar as that?” He looked questioningly at her, and then around at the intent faces of the rest of us. But none of us remembered any jar at all.

Reese was silent for fully a minute. The rest of us barely breathed. What was passing in his mind we could not imagine. But that he believed every word she uttered, despite her refusal to answer certain questions, I could not doubt. Her answers rang true; even the bizarre touch about placing the revolver in the tumbler, so utterly unexpected was it, but added to the force of her statement.

Unless it were true, why should she say it? Why should she invent it? Dr. Reese appeared to be a rather clever man; I thought him clever enough to know the truth when he heard it.

“A moment ago,” he said at length, “in referring to your words in your uncle’s room, you stated that when you uttered them you believed that he had committed suicide. Am I wrong in inferring that now you do not believe it?”

“I—I’m not sure,” she said slowly. “I don’t want to believe that Uncle Samuel killed himself. Yet I’m not sure that I didn’t imagine—it might have been the wind.”

“What might have been the wind?” demanded Reese.

“Since finding—my uncle,” said the girl, and now she hesitated as if, I thought, she wanted to be absolutely sure of saying exactly what had happened, “I have been trying to remember everything. Every word of his, every action that might mean something. But the shock—I can’t be sure. I can only tell you that I think I remember hearing some one open the French windows at the end of the corridor near my room and run softly down the hall.”

Reese leaned forward eagerly.

“And when was this?”

She passed her hand before her eyes, as if to brush away clouds of doubt.

“I tell you, I can’t be sure,” she answered. “The shock of uncle’s death has confused me about—other things. About time. But it seems to me that it was while I was standing in the middle of my room, just about to go out and ask that the playing of the violin be stopped.”

“You’re not certain, though?” asked Reese eagerly. “Try and be sure.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I paid little attention to it at the time, as I say, I couldn’t swear that it wasn’t the wind at the window.”

“But the hurrying footsteps! You can be certain of them,” cried Reese.

She shook her head.

“I couldn’t swear. I was thinking—of other things, at the moment. Then the shot—I can’t be sure just how long it was before the shot was fired that I thought I heard some one pass through the French windows.”

“But you just said that it was while you were standing in your room, intending to speak about the violin.”

“I know. But I can’t be certain of that. I only think so.”

Reese leaned back disappointedly in his chair. But Sheriff Carney, up to now silent, though his lean face with the humorous eyes had been fixed intently upon the girl, broke his silence.

“I can easy find out,” he said. “If there was any one outside that window on the balcony, his footprints will be there on the snow. It’ll be up to him to make the time certain.”

He pushed back his chair and rose and then I found my voice. For the last minute, while I wanted to speak, I could not. Something had prevented me, a something that was not fear, but that was more like stupefaction. But as Carney rose I knew that I could not delay speaking any longer. Indeed, and I flushed at the thought, I might have difficulty in having my speech accepted as truth even now. Whereas, if I waited until Carney came downstairs again

Why had I been fool enough to forget to mention my walk along the balcony? Why had I been idiot enough to let the tragedy drive from me a knowledge of the importance that walk would have in the eyes of others? If I’d only confessed it at the start!

“Oh, wait a minute, Sheriff,” I said nervously. “I can explain that noise. I made it. But not at the time Miss Gilman thinks. I passed through those French windows long before the shot was fired.”

Carney stared at me. The others, too, and I felt my flush grow warmer. I was indignant with myself, not only for my carelessness in failing to mention the incident of the locked window sooner, but for the guilty expression which I knew was on my face now.

“You passed through those windows, eh? When and why?” demanded Carney.

“Oh, long before the shot was fired,” I answered. “Fifteen minutes after I went up-stairs. What time did I leave you, Captain?” I asked the landlord.

“About half-past one,” he said.

“Then it was before two that I came into the hall by the long windows,” I told Carney. “And the shot wasn’t fired until three. So you see, Miss Gilman is mistaken about the time she heard the windows open.”

“Maybe,” put in Reese. “And why were you out on the balcony, Mr. Brant?”

I told him, while the others hung on my words. Reese’s sharp eyes bored through me as I spoke, while I could feel that there was not the slightest trace of humor in the eyes of Carney.

Reese kept looking at me for several seconds after I had finished. Then he turned suddenly to Miss Gilman.

“You said that your uncle feared attack. Is this man Brant the man from whom he feared it?”

“One of them,” she said; and her eyes fixed with horror as she met mine. “And—and—I wasn’t certain a moment ago. I’m not certain now, but I’m nearer certainty than I was—that I heard those windows open just before the shot was fired. But I wouldn’t want an innocent man—I’m not sure—so much happened afterward.”

“Don’t you worry, Miss Gilman,” said Carney kindly. “There’s lots of things besides your recollection of the time he went by that’ll go to convict him. If he’s innocent, your not being certain won’t make him guilty.”

He turned upon me.

“I don’t want to act hasty in this matter, Mr. Brant. There’s a lot of things neither the doctor nor myself understand. Miss Gilman could clear things up if she’d tell us why her uncle feared you. But that can wait. The main thing now is: can you prove it was before two o’clock when you was out on the balcony?”

“Oh, go easy,” I said with an air of confidence that I was far from feeling. “You’ve got to have more than this to pin a crime on me. Why don’t you investigate and see if what I’ve told you is at all true? Why don’t you look and see if I told the truth about scraping the snow off my window? And why would I do such a fool thing as to leave tracks in the snow, that would have to be explained, if I planned murder?”

“Murder’s a fool thing, anyway,” said Carney. “Murderers always get caught. They’re foolish to be murderers. Where there’s such big foolishness there’s often smaller foolishness. Still—what’s the number of your room?”

I told him. He handed the doctor a revolver.

“Not that I think he’ll be foolish some more, but just in case he is,” he said.

Reese took the weapon and the sheriff clattered up-stairs. I had plenty of time, while he was gone, to mull over my predicament. Some whimsical fate certainly seemed to be making sport of me. Into false position after false position it had thrust me, until, at last, it had endangered my whole life.

Yet, though I saw black at the thought of being immured in a cell, though I feared that the restraint of handcuffs would render my claustrophobia dangerously acute, I managed, I think, to preserve an outward calm. I tried to be indifferent to the glances of horror that came my way. It was absurd that I should be deemed guilty of murdering Major Penrose.

I comforted myself with the thought that absurdities can not exist forever. In my case they would not exist long. I had only to prove my utter lack of motive.

Another unpleasant thought assailed me. In proving the lack of motive I should have to confess to my assumption of a false name. And this would the longer delay my freedom, by making suspicion more acute temporarily. I cursed the whole business heartily, including the ambition that had made me work so hard, to the detriment of my mental health. I cursed Weatherbee Jones, the medium of my fortune and my slight fame. Then Carney came down-stairs.

He had a look of puzzlement on his face.

“Take off your shoes,” he said to me. “Go on, don’t ask questions.”

I removed them and handed them to him. Without another word he went up-stairs again. This time he was not gone so long. When he returned he handed the shoes to me. He looked at the coroner and shook his head. He turned to Miss Gilman.

“Are you any more certain about the time you heard those windows open?”

“I can’t be certain,” she answered.

“Well, you can be pretty certain that it wasn’t Mr. Brant you heard.”

“Why?”

I think every one present gasped that question, including myself.

“Because there’s the footprints of two people on that balcony. I investigated Brant’s story. He seems to have been telling the truth—about cleaning the snow off his window. And I found his footprints leading from his window to the French windows. But over his footprints I found others that are altogether too large for his shoe to have made.

“Those footprints were made after Mr. Brant’s, because in places they’ve almost wiped out the marks of his shoes. Some body started from the French windows and walked to Major Penrose’s window, looked in, turned around, and went back the way he came. And that somebody did that after Mr. Brant had come through the windows into the corridor. I can’t tell how long afterward, but it was afterward, all right! Now, then, as Mr. Brant’s story is borne out by the facts—his cleaning his window is true enough, for there’s marks where his knife scraped the window-sash—it seems reasonable that he’s telling the truth about the time he walked out there. Anyway, unless the other person who was out on the balcony says that Mr. Brant was with him, we can assume that he wasn’t.

“Now, then, Miss Gilman, if you could only be certain about hearing that person come in from the balcony and go by your door it would help some. We’d find out what person could have been near there”

“But I’m certain,” I cried.

While they stared at me I told them what had been crowded from my recollection thus far by the swift march of events.

“Whoever made those footprints over mine,” I said emphatically, “and ran down the hall afterwards—if the footprints won’t convict him, the time at which he was out side the major’s door, the very moment that the shot was fired, will. And I’ll swear that he passed my door just after the shot was fired.”

“H’m,” said Reese. “Carney, suppose you search the house for a pair of shoes that will fit those prints. The women here, except Miss Gilman, we know were down-stairs when the shot was fired. So was Captain Perkins.”

“That leaves only Tony up-stairs, besides Mr. Brant,” growled the captain. “I hope you ain’t insinuatin’, Doctor”

“Any objection to letting Carney fit Tony’s shoes to the marks?” demanded Reese.

The captain’s rubicund visage grew redder still.

“Why, no,” he muttered. “Tony, take off your shoes.”

The Portuguese bent over to comply, but Miss Gilman’s voice stopped him.

“How absurd! Haven’t I told you that he was playing the violin?”

“So you did,” exclaimed Reese. He looked around, nonplussed. “Isn’t there any one else in the house, then, who could by any possibility have been on that balcony?” he demanded.

Before the captain could reply, the front door opened and Minot and Ravenell entered the hotel.