The Twenty-Six Clues/Chapter 19

cCARTY paid a call upon the chief of police, met his amazed landlady's resentful reminder that she took no transients with the payment of a full week's board, and caught the early afternoon train for New York. During his brief return to Ocean- side Cottage he had caught no further glimpse of Kate Stricker, but concluded that she was planning a getaway v no less precipitous than his own.

The local police would take care of that contingency, however, and as McCarty settled himself in the train a glow of satisfaction pervaded him, despite his defeat of the morning.

Albeit fruitless otherwise, his interview with the ex-stewardess on the pier had in one illuminating flash revealed to him a possible means of breaking down the bars of her reticence. If, at their next meeting, he were in a position to convince her of a certain fact, in addition to a guaranty of her personal immunity, he felt assured that she could be prevailed upon to tell all that she knew.

He had already satisfied himself upon one point. Whatever the letters contained which she had guarded for so long and parted with only through dire necessity, she had had no share in the blackmailing scheme. Her astonishment at learning of the murdered woman's effort to obtain possession of the wallet and her disbelief that it was the cause of the tragedy were too real to be feigned. Granting that premise, the letters themselves could not have been the instrument held over Mrs. Jarvis' head, in fear of which she had submitted to the extortionate demands made upon her. Some other form of exposure must have threatened in connection with her secret; some other evidence must still exist to provide a link between her and the event of ten years before.

The hours passed swiftly and his journey came to an end as he still pondered over the fresh aspect of the problem. The storm which threatened at Atlantic City had preceded him here, and he emerged from the station in a blinding swirl of snow, to engage a taxi and sit with grim, resentful eyes upon its swiftly mounting meter until his own door was reached.

There, huddled under the shelter of the cornice, he found a sodden, blue-nosed messenger boy.

"Is your name McCarty?" the latter mumbled stupidly.

"It is. You've something there for me? Come upstairs, lad, and warm yourself while I see is there an answer wanted."

The boy stumbled after him up the stairs and McCarty built up a roaring fire in the grate before he took from the numbed fingers the envelope which they held out to him.

The superscription was a mere hasty scrawl in an unknown but obviously feminine hand, and he broke the seal. Then, for a long minute he stood staring, while the words danced before his eyes and his stout heart missed a beat.

"Dear Mr. McCarty," he read again, scarcely crediting the evidence of his vision, "Captain Marchal is dead. Please come at once as soon as you receive this. Joan Norwood."

Dead! McCarty checked the flow of wildly futile suppositions which thronged his brain and summarily bundled the messenger out into the storm once more. The street was almost deserted, but finding the taxi in which he had come fortuitously halted near the corner saloon, McCarty haled forth its chauffeur and shamelessly bribed the latter to break all speed records to the Norwood house.

A trembling and awestruck Billings admitted him, who when he turned toward the library where he had heretofore been received, waved him back.

"Not there, sir! That's where he was found! The drawing-room, please, sir."

The butler's usually ruddy face was a pasty gray and there were dark, sinister spots upon his vest.

"What's that? Blood?" asked McCarty sharply.

Billings shuddered.

"Yes, sir. I helped lift him and I've had no time to change."

"Was it murder?"

"Don't ask me, sir! The pistol was by him—there's Mr. Norwood, now."

"McCarty, my dear fellow!" The elderly little man's voice shook and the hand he extended quivered also, as if with a palsy. "You have heard? I tried to get you twice on the wire, but no one answered. Poor Victor! Poor persecuted, overwrought lad!"

"What happened? I heard only that Captain Marchal was dead."

"He has killed himself! That sharp attack of fever must have weakened his defenses, sapped his last remaining ounce of strength with which to fight the acute melancholia that threatened ever since his sight was destroyed and which the man Terhune's unfounded suspicions have brought to a crisis. But come! You shall see for yourself."

He led the way to the library and McCarty followed, but on the threshold both paused. The room was brilliantly lighted and in the unaccustomed glare each significant detail leaped into prominence and photographed itself upon McCarty's mind. That the habitually ordered ensemble of the room had been violently disarranged was evident at a first glance. The huge center table had been slewed around so that it cut off the corner where stood the secretary's desk, and the electrolier and book racks which had adorned it were thrown about the floor. A heavy leather chair, overturned, completed the barrier and the hearth rug was crumpled and awry. Upon the couch before it a quiet figure lay, with a white cloth covering the face, and after a minute Calvin Norwood advanced toward it and lifted the cloth.

"You see?" he murmured.

McCarty nodded without speaking, for despite the long apprenticeship on the force which had hardened him to similar scenes, he felt an unaccustomed lump rising in his throat. The pallid face with the tortured strain and need of self-repression gone was singularly boyish and serene, the vacant eyes softly closed and a faint elusive smile like the ghost of a happy thought hovered about the immobile lips. Upon the breast over the heart a small crimson stain appeared, flecked with grains of powder.

"My poor boy! If only we had not left him all alone!" Norwood replaced the cloth with tender hands and McCarty saw the slow tears of age standing heavily in his fac eyes. "If only we had realized his condition and guarded him from himself!"

A little group of men who had been in earnest consultation in the embrasure of the farthest window turned, and,  with an exclamation one of their number stepped forward.

"Mac! I sent Yost for you not five minutes ago! What do you think of this affair?"

It was plain that Inspector Druet meant to ignore their interview of the previous day and McCarty promptly followed his example.

"Don't know, sir, till I hear the facts." He laid significant stress upon the final word. "I'm not holding by any more. Marchal's dead, but what's been going on here?"

"I haven't got a detailed statement yet, but as far as I can learn everyone was out of the house this afternoon. They came home and found him lying dead on the floor over there in the corner behind the table, with his own French army pistol in his hand, and the room upset as you see it now. I'm waiting for the Chief Medical Examiner, but there's no doubt that he killed himself. The powder marks about the wound alone show that, for death had been almost instantaneous, and no one could have got within ten feet of him the way he had pulled the furniture around."

"Had he?" McCarty asked.

"Don't you see it, man?" retorted the Inspector impatiently. "He was alone in the house and I made sure right off the bat that no one could have broken in."

"Poor Victor's mind became suddenly unhinged and he ran amuck. That is the only possible explanation," Norwood intervened. "He has brooded constantly over the murder and this morning I noticed the change in him; a state of nervous excitability—which gave me great concern. Oh, why was I not warned then? I did beg him to rest, but he seemed utterly unable to compose himself, and wandered about the house in an almost distraught manner most of the morning. He seemed to be more like himself after lunch and I left him here at his typewriter when I went out."

"Where is the typewriter now?" McCarty demanded. "It's gone from his desk."

"Here on the floor." Inspector Druet moved one end of the center table and made room for McCarty to squeeze through the aperture. "He must have sent it crashing off the desk, but it landed right side up as you see, although the ribbon is broken."

"How could he have done that?" speculated McCarty. "'Twould take the sweep of a pile-driver to knock that heavy machine over."

"Oh, he probably staggered against the desk in his frenzy and tilted it so that the typewriter slid off; then the desk righted itself again. You see how all the papers he had been working on are scattered around."

McCarty eyed the litter and nodded slowly.

"And just where was the body found?"

"Here." The Inspector measured off a space upon the rug. "From what I have been able to gather, he was lying with his feet toward the table and his head almost touching the wall paneling. The body should not have been moved until my arrival, but it was placed upon the couch, by Miss Norwood's orders, I believe, even before I was notified."

There was stern reproof in the Inspector's tones and McCarty turned to Calvin Norwood.

"Who discovered the body?"

"My niece and her fiancé," the latter responded. "Poor Joan was inexpressibly shocked and I found her on the verge of collapse when I returned. Here is the pistol with which Victor killed himself. It was lying within reach of his fingers. He kept it in that drawer of his desk which you see open now. It was his own, you know; he brought it from France with him."

McCarty took the weapon which Norwood had picked up from the corner of the table and handed to him. It was a service pistol, of a caliber little larger than those with which he was familiar, and after examining it he looked up to meet the Inspector's quizzical gaze bent upon him.

"How many shots were fired from it?" he asked.

Inspector Druet smiled.

"I wondered if you'd get it," he said. "Two shots were fired, but only one entered the body; the other—the first—must have gone wild. It is possible that he shot at some imaginary enemy and then tinned the weapon on himself."

The arrival of the Chief Medical Examiner put an end for a time to further investigation in that quarter. Calvin Norwood stayed to hear his verdict, but McCarty stepped out into the hall.

Billings was nowhere to be seen, but a low, anxious feminine voice called his name softly from the drawing-room, and he entered to find Miss Norwood pacing back and forth, twisting a wisp of a handkerchief nervously between her fingers while Vivaseur, his face grave with sympathy, sat before the hearth poking the fire in an aimless, meditative fashion.

"You received my note, Mr. McCarty?"

"Yes, ma'am," he responded. "That's what brought me here. I'd been out of town but I found your messenger waiting for me when I got back. 'Tis a very sad business, Miss Norwood."

"It is terrible!" she cried. "Poor, poor Captain Marchal!"

"They do be saying that 'twas you and Mr. Vivaseur that found him?" McCarty suggested.

"Yes." She wrung her hands convulsively. "Oh, I shall never forget it! I Mr. Vivaseur and I came in about half-past five. We had to ring and ring, for I haven't any latch-key; I lost mine while I was away visiting during this last month and when I returned I was too horrified and grieved at Mrs. Jarvis' awful death to think of anything else, so I forgot to have another made. Finally Billing came and admitted us, but he had only just returned to the house himself and hadn't had time to switch on the lights or build up the fires. Eric—Mr. Vivaseur—waited here in the drawing-room while I ran upstairs to remove my out-door things, and Billings brought him a brandy and soda.

"We sat here and chatted for a few minutes and then all at once I remembered Captain Marchal and sent Billings to see if he were lying down, for I feared that he might be ill again. Billings said that he was not in his room, and I crossed the hall to the library in search of him. It was still dark in there, but I pressed the electric switch in the wall and the first thing I saw when the lights sprang up was the big table pushed out of place and the chair overturned.

"I must have cried out, I think, for Mr. Vivaseur came, nd Billings, and then—then we saw him lying there!"

She paused and covered her face with her hands and Vivaseur rose, coming forward solicitously.

"Don't, dear! You can't help the poor chap now, you know, and you will really make yourself ill. I suppose they have told you how we found the body?" He turned to McCarty. "His fingers were' almost touching the pistol as if it had just fallen from his hand. I saw at a glance that it was all over, of course, but Miss Norwood could not believe it and begged us to do something for him. Billings and I got him up on the couch between us, which it appears we should not have done, for your Inspector johnny was in a hat about it when he came. I fancy it is another of your official regulations, but it seemed rather too awful to leave the poor chap lying there like that Miss Norwood wanted to summon a physician but I managed to convince her that it would be useless; then her next thought was for you, and we despatched the messenger."

"Who called up Headquarters?" asked McCarty.

"Billings. Excellent man, that. Keeps his head about him." Vivaseur shrugged. "I don't mind admitting that the thing knocked me a bit, at first. I've seen a lot of the chaps go west in the first two years of the fighting, but this was a different matter. However, Billings took charge, and then Mr. Norwood himself returned."

"Was the cook out, too, this afternoon, and the housemaid?" McCarty rubbed his chin. "How was it, miss, that Captain Marchal came to be left all alone in the house?"

"Cook has gone, bag and baggage; she left this morning," Miss Norwood explained. "It just happens that my own personal maid is away on a vist [sic] to her mother in the country. The housemaid prepared lunch and after she and Billings had cleared it away, I permitted her to go out for the afternoon, supposing that Billings would be here, but my uncle had already sent him on an errand. I went out myself, first to an intelligence office to secure another cook and then to visit old Mrs. Lyle Fremont, who is ill and had sent for me. Mr. Vivaseur called at her house and brought me home."

"'Mrs. Lyle Fremont,'" McCarty repeated. "Wasn't it with her that Mrs. Jarvis was to have dined the night she was killed?"

Joan Norwood nodded.

"Yes. She won't have a telephone, you know, and she never knew why Mrs. Jarvis failed to keep her engagement until she read of the murder in the papers next day."

"Mr. Norwood himself was out all the afternoon?" McCarty chose his words with evident care.

"He was downtown with Oliver Jarvis, at his attorney's, helping him to arrange his affairs and make out a statement of his operations with his wife's money for Inspector Druet," Miss Norwood replied. "He went home with Oliver afterward and stayed until six o'clock."

"And did he come back by way of the little door in the fence?"

"No!" she shuddered. "That door is bolted and barred forever!"

"Oh, I say!" Vivaseur expostulated. "You don't mean to insinuate, my dear fellow "

"I'm insinuating nothing, sir," McCarty said hastily. "I'm just wanting to know where everybody was. Mr. Norwood says that Captain Marchal acted queer this morning. Did you notice it, miss?"

"He was more nervous and excited, and that strained, listening attitude of his, of which we told you yesterday, seemed more accentuated, but somehow I did not dream that it meant anything more serious than perhaps a return of the fever. If only we had realized his mental condition we could have taken steps to prevent this terrible thing! I, for one, shall never forgive myself!"

Vivaseur laid a hand upon her arm and gently forced her into a chair as she broke down and sobbed hysterically, and at that moment Inspector Druet appeared in the doorway.

"The Medical Examiner has gone," he announced. "It is a clear case of suicide and there is nothing more for us to do about it."

McCarty advanced to him and asked in a lowered tone:

"Has the body been removed yet?"

"No, they're waiting for the undertaker now."

"Then, if it's all the same to you, I'd like to go back in there and look around a bit," McCarty remarked. "I wonder what he'd started to work on this afternoon when the fit took him?"

"Go as far as you like!" The Inspector stepped aside to allow him to pass, and then followed him to the library door. "Say, Mac, that girl, Etta Barney, came down to see me this morning, and later on Oliver Jarvis showed up. Their stories are straight enough, too, as far as I've have been able to discover, and they both said that you sent them. It looks as though my theory of the murder was away off and I've got to start all over again."

It was as near an apology as Inspector Druet had ever been called upon to make, and McCarty flushed darkly.

"Oh, well, sir, it's like many another case, that seems a puzzle you'd never get the answer to, and then all of a sudden you'll light on one little clue that'll make the whole thing as plain as day."

"I can't quite see that idea of yours yet, Mac, though there may be something in it, at that. Terhune will be in fine feather now."

"Will he so?" McCarty paused, and the Inspector pointed significantly to the still figure upon the couch.

"Of course. This suicide will be an admission of guilt in his estimation and his theory will be vindicated. Well, I'm going to get a statement from these people as to where they all were this afternoon, to file in my record, and then I'll call it a day. So long, Mac."

"Good-night, sir." He turned as if to go to the dismantled desk in the corner, but as soon as the Inspector's footsteps had died away down the hall, he walked swiftly to the couch and bent over the body. He did not remove the cloth from the face, but devoted his attention to the blood-stained and powder-flecked clothing about the wound and when he straightened after a prolonged scrutiny, it was with a low whistle of surprise.

For several minutes he stood lost in profound meditation, then slowly and cautiously he began a circuit of the room. A glint of steel half-buried in the deep pile of the rug under the center table caught his eye and stooping, he picked up a huge pair of long-bladed, bronze-handled library shears. He examined them minutely and then with a guilty glance toward the door he wrapped his handkerchief about the points and thrust the shears hastily into his hip pocket

To any possible observer his behavior during the next ten minutes would have been highly mystifying. He dropped lumberingly down upon his knees and searched every inch of the rug about the spot where the shears had fallen, then raised himself until his eyes were on a level with the table top and scanned its polished surface aslant beneath the light. What he discerned there evidently gratified him, for he grunted with satisfaction as he pulled an envelope from his pocket and holding its gaping orifice beneath the table edge, carefully ran his finger over the surface. Creasing the envelope together at the top, he returned it to his pocket and rising, continued his search.

"You here still, Mac?" Inspector Druet paused in the doorway some twenty minutes later, to find McCarty beside the opened drawer of the desk, staring with knitted brows at the paper which he held in his hand.

"Yes, sir. Will you have a look at this?"

The object of his scrutiny was apparently a sheet of blank typewriter paper with a signature scrawled half-way down the page and the Inspector regarded it with raised eyebrows. The signature, in a straggling, uncertain hand, was that of Victor Marchal.

"What do you make of it, sir?"

"Nothing." The Inspector yawned. "He was probably practicing how to write his name over again since he became blind and threw the paper back into the drawer. There's nothing to that, Mac."

"All right. But if you don't mind, I'll be taking it along, just to amuse myself with."

McCarty folded the paper and put it in the pocket where the envelope reposed, while the Inspector stared.

"Look here, Mac, what's the idea? You're holding out something!"

"Not facts, sir, only theories," McCarty grinned. "If it's facts you are looking for, there's two shots gone from the pistol and only one entered the body. Find out where the second one went to, and you'll be a busy man, the day!"

To Dennis Riordan where he sat yawning over an evening paper from which the baseball news had been patriotically but lamentably absent, there came a brisk and buoyant McCarty, with the light of purpose in his eyes. Dennis knew that look of old, and he flung aside the paper.

"So you're back!" he exclaimed. "And what is it now?"

"How are your eyes?" McCarty demanded without preamble.

"My eyes? What the" he paused discreetly. "What's eating you, Mac? My eyes are all right."

"They're not!" announced McCarty flatly. "The smoke has got to them again and they're feeling mighty bad this minute. And to-morrow morning they'll be that sore that you'll be getting a matter of a week or ten days off to have them treated."

"I get you!" The sore eyes gleamed with swift comprehension. "Where are we off to? "

"New Orleans," responded McCarty, "to-morrow night on the eight o'clock train."