The Millionth Chance/Chapter 9

HE unconcern of the two Greenham men seemed elaborate to my suspicious eyes. To me it seemed that they took an exceedingly great care lest their shoes should bring snow into the office, leaving the front door open while they used the iron shoe-scraper just outside. Also, they seemed fussier than was natural in hanging up their overcoats on the wall. I was ready to believe that they were exchanging whispers.

However, when finally they turned from the coat-rack and walked over to where we sat, I was forced to admit to myself that their manners were natural enough.

“Little party, eh, Captain?” smiled Minot.

He surveyed the strained faces of us all and in the semi-darkness that had come as the afternoon waned. I could not be sure that his eyebrows were raised. But I could see that his mouth was puckered as if for a silent whistle, if I may use the paradox.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, as no one spoke to him.

Reese then did something whose cleverness is not detracted from by the fact that it gained him nothing. He rose quickly and faced Minot. Above the doctor’s head swung a lamp, fitted with a reflector. Reese had struck a match as he rose and lighting the lamp took but a second. He turned the reflector so that the light flashed directly into the Greenham operative’s eyes. He said one word—

“Murder!”

But beyond a natural amazement there was not, so far, at least, as I could tell the slightest guilty expression upon the face of Minot. As for Ravenell, his bull-dog countenance was immobile.

“Well, even so?” said Minot, after a moment. “Any reason why you should try to blind me? I haven’t killed any one. What is this, a game of puzzles?”

“You’re a guest here? Are you Minot or Ravenell?”

I wondered then that the doctor knew their names, but later I learned that he had glanced at the register before going to the major’s room. He was not a man to over look anything.

“My name is Minot. What’s all this about, anyway? Are you joking or”

“Major Penrose, one of the guests of this hotel, was murdered this afternoon,” said Reese.

“Murdered? My God, that’s awful!” Ravenell stared at the doctor. “Who did it?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” said Reese quietly. “Where have you been this afternoon? And your friend? I am the coroner of this county. This gentleman,” and he indicated Carney, “is the sheriff.”

“Murdered!” Minot looked around at the faces that were strained towards him, but I noticed, or thought I noticed, that his glance slid swiftly past the face of Ruth Gilman. He met the doctor’s eyes again.

“Well, coroner,” he said, “anything I can do to help—but there isn’t anything, I’m afraid. My friend and I have been out since—since when, Ravenell?”

“It was quarter of three when we went out,” said Ravenell. “At least, if that clock is right.”

He pointed to the large clock on the wall behind the hotel desk.

“Huh!” The exclamation came from Captain Perkins. “You say it was quarter of three by that clock?”

“Sure. Why not?” demanded Ravenell.

“Because I was sittin’ at that desk at quarter of three and didn’t see you go out. Neither of you. I saw you go up-stairs some time before that”

“You were pretty busy with something or other, Captain,” interrupted Minot easily, “but I didn’t know you were as engrossed as all that.” He smiled at Dr. Reese. “The Captain was all hunched up over his desk and I guess he didn’t hear us. But we went out at that time.”

He made the statement very emphatically, and I looked for some equally emphatic denial from Captain Perkins. But the old sailor shook his head.

“Them Sunday menoos is mighty hard figgerin’, and I was studyin’ hard, but still”

He did not deny Minot’s words, even uttered the quasi-admission that they were true, but I could see doubt in his eyes. Minot laughed:

“You’re away off, Captain. You didn’t see both of us go up-stairs, either. I went up-stairs, but Ravenell remained down here. I guess you were thinking more of your guests’ stomachs than of your guests themselves, so you didn’t see me come down.”

“Maybe,” said the captain reluctantly.

But Reese changed the subject for the moment.

“And where have you and Mr. Ravenell been since you left here?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you exactly where we’ve been,” said Minot. “We left here and went around that side of the hotel.” He pointed to the right. “We went down the path through the woods to the lake. Then we went for a walk on the ice. I don’t know how far we walked, but—well, it’s five o’clock now, we must have gone a few miles, although we couldn’t walk fast as it was slippery.”

“Slippery? I should think the snow would have afforded good footing,” said Reese.

“We didn’t walk on the snow at all,” was Minot’s reply. “We were afraid that the ice might be rotten underneath, so we stuck to the places where the snow had blown away.”

“I see,” said Reese thoughtfully. He turned to the captain. “I know,” he said, “that both Mr. Minot and Mr. Ravenell will understand that I’m doing only my duty when I ask you this question, Captain. Tell me, is there any way in which these gentlemen could have left the hotel with out coming down these front stairs? Are there any back stairs, I mean?”

The captain shook his head.

“And could they have left the hotel—the second floor—after the shot was fired?”

“Don’t see how they could have,” admitted the captain. “There was some one in the corridor outside the major’s door all the time. A-course, they was all lookin’ in”

“I wasn’t!” spoke up Polly, the waitress. “I was that scared I looked away from the body. I looked down the hall all the time, and nobody went down them stairs. I’m certain of that.”

“Then it seems pretty clear, gentlemen,” said Reese, “that Captain Perkins was too wrapped up in next Sunday’s dinner to notice you. I have no doubt but that you went out at the time you say you did.” He paused, looking thoughtfully from Minot to Ravenell.

Sheriff Carney took command. To my surprise he showed the same smooth courtesy that had distinguished Reese’s manner toward the two Greenham men. He was almost apologetic as he said:

“Of course, if you were out of the hotel, this seems silly, but you’ll understand that I got to do my dooty as I see it. Will you please take off your shoes?”.

“Our shoes? Why, of course,” said Minot.

He sat down in a chair and began unlacing his boots. Ravenell did likewise. I suppose that I am a captious sort of person; I know that while, in the excitement of all that had happened, I had practically forgotten the existence of the two detectives no sooner had they reappeared than I was suspicious of them. Their previous actions had been of the sort to make ms willing to believe that there was little, if anything, that would stop them from encompassing their ends. Would murder? And while up to now their story had been straight and convincing, so much so that I did not understand my own continuing suspicion that they knew something of this crime, their very willingness to give their shoes to Carney seemed of itself suspicious.

I would have expected them to show a greater surprise at his request, a desire for explanation, if they had been entirely innocent. However, even while I held these thoughts, I berated myself for them. There is a vast difference between snatching a muff from a girl and killing a man.

Carney took the shoes. There was no conversation of any sort while he was gone, and the puzzled expression on his face when he returned clearly indicated that the shoes of Ravenell and Minot had done nothing toward the solving the mystery.

“They don’t fit,” he said tersely, giving the footwear to the owners.

“Don’t fit what?” demanded Minot.

Carney explained. Minot whistled softly. He looked at his companion.

“Glad that man didn’t happen to have the same size foot as either of us, eh, Ravenell?”

The latter nodded sourly, then, having laced his shoes, stared dumbly against the hotel wall. Reese nodded to Carney and the two drew aside for a whispered conference. Minot looked at Miss Gilman, now no longer sitting upright, as she had been while Minot answered Reese’s questions, but leaning against the broad bosom of the cook, as if exhausted.

“Miss Gilman,” he said, “I hope that the condolences of a stranger may not seem intrusive. I am deeply sorry”

He stopped abruptly. The girl’s eyes had opened and blazed with horrified anger, even as they had at me not so long ago. He could not endure them and turned away. He spoke to Captain Perkins, asking for details of the tragedy, and for a few moments I paid him no further attention. I was too busy trying to fit together the pieces of the puzzle and see if I could arrive at a solution.

I tried to put myself in the mental condition that I achieve when I write a Weatherbee Jones story, tried to apply some of the logic so characteristic of him to the present case. But, alas, I could not. In the Weatherbee Jones stories I always have a solution first, then create facts to fit that solution. Which explains the difference between writing a mystery story and living one.

My desperate strivings for light were interrupted by the approach of Reese. He spoke to the girl.

“Miss Gilman,” he said gently, “a while ago you stated that your uncle feared attack. You said that Mr. Brant was the person from whom he feared it. Was there any one else?”

“Those two.” She pointed at Minot and Ravenell. “He didn’t fear them—but I did. And he would have feared them had he known.”

She paused suddenly.

“Yes? Had he known what?” prompted Reese.

“I can’t say any more—now,” she replied.

“Won’t you tell me why your uncle feared Brant, and why you feared those other two?”

She shook her head obstinately.

“Do you realize that you are casting suspicion upon three men without giving them a chance to clear themselves?”

“Am I? Let them tell you, then, why I feared them!” she cried.

Reese turned sternly to Minot.

“Have you any explanation to offer?”

For answer Minot fished a card from his pocket and handed it to the coroner. Reese read it and looked keenly at the detective.

“The Greenham Agency, eh? Following Miss Gilman and her uncle? And you, Mr. Ravenell?”

“Ravenell’s with me,” said Minot. “Brant is from the Healy people.”

“And your object in being near Miss Gilman—and her uncle?”

“Oh, let her tell you,” said Minot easily.

Reese turned again to the girl.

“Will you explain?”

Her mouth set stubbornly.

“I will not.”

The coroner looked at me. I rose to my feet.

“If you’ll give me a minute apart, you and Mr. Carney?” I said.

“Certainly,” said Reese.

Minot gasped.

“You aren’t going to— Look here, Brant, just because an old nut killed himself you aren’t losing your nerve, are you? Do you want to queer every chance”

He rose as if to restrain me, but a gun flashed in Carney’s hand.

“If the gentleman wishes to talk, don’t stop him,” he said.

Minot fell back into his chair with a smothered exclamation. As for Ravenell he favored me with a snarl of contempt as I passed him.

“Well?” said Reese, as we got beyond hearing of the others.

“Hear me through, please,” I said.

It was time that I declared myself, and I did so. I did not care to bear the load of suspicion any longer. Moreover, it might be possible for me, unhindered by suspicion, to do something, somehow, for Miss Gil man. I began at the beginning and finished with my arrival at Folly Cove.

“Now,” I said, when I had explained my reasons for assuming a nom de plume, “all you have to do is wire Dr. William Odlin my description and ask if I’m the man he sent down here. Will you do it? It’s bad enough to be suspected by the young lady of being some sort of crook without being further suspected of murder. Wire Dr. Odlin, will you?”

Reese stared at me, the beginning of a grin on his lips.

“So you’re the Weatherbee Jones man, eh? Why, good Lord, Wrenham, I should think it would be a cinch for you to solve this mystery!”

“Old stuff,” I assured him, “old stuff! Every one says that whenever any mystery is discussed in my presence. But I can’t. I wish to Heaven I could!”

“And you don’t know what it is that Miss Gilman or her uncle possessed that has inspired those two sweet-scented scoundrels to follow her?”

“I haven’t the vaguest idea,” I confessed.

“She’s spoken of ‘work’ that he did,” said Reese. “Yet the papers that I found in his room were a mere jumble of mathematical formulas. I can’t make head nor tail of them! Look at this last page he wrote.”

He showed me a page half-covered with what seemed to be algebraical problems. There were two of them, both solved. A third problem had evidently been begun, but the dead man had got no further than the cryptic letters and figures. “Seventeen X pl”

The “u” of the last word, which was evidently meant to be “plus” had been begun but not finished. I do not set down the other problems for they are uninteresting, unintelligible, indeed, and without bearing on the story. In fact, the only reason I set down the last line the dead man ever wrote is because of the fact that it was so convincing an argument to Dr. Reese that the major had not killed himself, and I wish to make it equally clear to my readers.

“No man,” said Reese, “would drop his pen in the middle of a word to pick up his revolver and kill himself. Moreover, the ink is slightly spattered in that ‘u,’ which looks as though the pen were violently prevented from continuing the word. As though the major were shot while actually writing the letter. There is no other meaning to be read into that spatter of ink. The bullet that killed him made him drop his pen, and he didn’t fire that bullet himself.”

“Couldn’t the glass have tipped over accidentally and thus discharged the cocked revolver?” I queried.

“Impossible! I felt the other tumbler. It was set so solidly in its socket that you could almost stand a rifle in it without overturning it. The rifle might fall out, but the socket is so deep that the glass probably would remain where it is. Provided, of course, that you could get a rifle into it.”

“But couldn’t the revolver have tipped out from some slight jar without tipping the glass over, and then couldn’t the recoil of the accidentally discharged revolver, whose bullet struck down the major, have smashed the glass?” I asked.

Reese shook his head.

“It was a tall tumbler. I examined it carefully. The muzzle of the revolver wouldn’t have protruded more than an inch above the edge of the glass, not enough to make it uncertainly balanced. I tested it in the other glass. It was perfectly firm. Nothing short of an earthquake would have accidently [sic] tipped that weapon over and caused its discharge. And there was no earthquake, no jar of any kind. Some one fired that revolver deliberately and then broke the glass to support the theory of accident. That is as certain as that day follows night.

“Now, then, Brant—or Wrenham, rather—I’m convinced you tell the truth. However, this is a rather important matter. I’m going to wire your friend Odlin. If he corroborates your statement, well, I guess no suspicion can attach to you. Meanwhile, I know something about the mental trouble you have. If it’s going to be too much for you to stay here, come along with me.”

But I refused.

“I want to stay here,” I said.

“To be near Miss Gilman, eh?” His shrewd eyes twinkled. “Don’t deny it. No one can possibly blame you, even though the lady—well, she may listen to your explanations later on. Who can tell?”

“You don’t think, then—” I stammered. I began again. “You haven’t any idea, doctor, that she—that she---”

“Killed her uncle?” He shook his head. “I never did have. I merely wanted to find out all that I could. My profession gives me a fairly good knowledge of character, as does yours. She didn’t kill him, but, unless we can prove that some one else did, it’ll be hard for her to avoid suspicion. Until we find out who passed your door”

He stopped abruptly and started for the group by the fireplace.

“There is only one way in which I can compel you people to talk,” he said coldly. “That is by empanelling a coroner’s jury and having it question you. If you refuse to answer then, you will be at least liable for contempt if not to suspicion of having guilty knowledge. Do you care to make any explanation now, Miss Gilman?”

“Not now,” she answered firmly.

“You, Minot? Ravenell?”

“Oh, I guess you’ve nothing on us, Coroner,” said Minot.

Reese turned to the sheriff.

“Carney, keep an eye on the people here. You, too, Captain Perkins. See that these men do not leave the hotel.”

“Brant, of course, has convinced you that he’s lily-white, eh?” sneered Minot.

“Never mind about him. That order goes for him, too, however.” He walked over to the girl. “Try and get some rest, Miss Gilman. Are there any friends you’d like to have me telegraph?”

“Not tonight,” she replied in a barely audible whisper.

Then Reese said something else to her, but I could not hear what it was, although she started violently.

Reese straightened up and spoke to Carney.

“I’ll probably not be able to get a jury together before morning, but I’ll make it as quick as possible. And I’ll see that some one is sent up to help you look after things.”

With no further words he put on his hat and coat and departed.

“May I go up-stairs?” Miss Gilman asked of Carney.

“Certainly,” said he. He looked around. “I guess there’s nobody here foolish enough to try and get away before the coroner’s jury sits. If they do they’re bound to be caught and make things harder for themselves. Captain Perkins, how about supper?”

The landlord roused himself from the lethargy that had overcome him in the past half hour.

“Nelly,” he said, “as soon as you help Miss Gilman up-stairs start rustling some grub.”

“Oh, I’m all right, Captain,” said Miss Gilman. “I can get up-stairs alone.”

She refused the further offer of the cook’s assistance and mounted the stairs, walking strongly. At a harsh command from the captain, the waitress and chambermaid scurried after Nelly toward the kitchen. I looked at Carney.

“Is it permissible to go up-stairs to wash?”

“Since you can only come down by these stairs, it is,” he said.

I climbed the stairs and reached the corridor above. Miss Gilman was just closing her door behind her. I felt a great ache in my heart for her. Alone down here in this country hotel, beset by some mystery which she dared not, for some inexplicable reason, explain, with her uncle dead in the next room—and she did not wish relatives notified, even? Why? Why?

Wonderingly I stepped into the washroom and mechanically attended to my face and hands. Finished, I emerged into the corridor once more. Tony Larue was just lighting a lamp in the hall, half-way down toward the end away from where my room was. He came toward me and descended the stairs.

The light of the lamp gleamed upon the French windows at the far end of the hall, duplicates of those through which I had hurriedly passed this afternoon. A sudden curiosity assailed me. A man, running swiftly, could have reached that window.

I walked to it, my heart beating with excitement. I opened the long, door-like window.

There, on the balcony, were footprints in the snow. Also, the snow was brushed away from the railing of the balcony. Captain Perkins had said that it was impossible for any one to leave the second floor of the hotel save by the front and only stairs. Yet if a man dared jump some fifteen feet-

I leaned over the balcony railing. The sun had set long since, but a white moon and the snow-clad ground gave forth plenty of light. I leaned farther, staring down.

“Well, what’re you doing here?” I started at the voice and the touch on my shoulder. They were the voice and touch of Carney.

“Look,” I told him excitedly, “look! Some one jumped—into that pile of snow.”

He pushed me aside. He did not stare over the railing to the ground beneath, but examined the footprints upon the balcony. He drew an electric flashlight from his pocket and peered closely at the prints.

“I got no ruler with me to measure ’em,” he said slowly, “but I’ll take my oath that the same shoes made ’em as made the ones on the other end of this balcony!”

He straightened up and looked at me. I think the same idea must have occurred to both of us simultaneously. Some one had leaped from this balcony. Down below must lead, in the snow, the trail of this some one to wherever he might be now.