The Twenty-Six Clues/Chapter 20

N a bright, balmy afternoon in late November the Planters' Bank of New Orleans was about to close its doors for the day when two men, obviously strangers, entered and approached the paying teller's window. One was tall and lantern jawed and moved with the lithe ease which told of perfect muscular training; the other heavy set but not bulky, with a stubby, reddish mustache on the long upper lip and keen smiling blue eyes.

"You've a director at this bank named Justin Messager. I'd like to know where I can find him, please," announced the heavier of the two strangers.

The languid teller stared.

"Mr. Messager never comes to the bank and rarely to a meeting," he replied coldly. "Is there anything we can do for you?"

"No, it's him I've got to see. Where did you say he lived?"

"I didn't say!" the teller snapped. "Mr. Messager is very feeble and does not permit himself to be annoyed. What is the nature of your business with him?"

"That's his look-out!" The blue eyes narrowed and glinted gray. "We've been sent from New York to see him and if you want to make a secret of his whereabouts, I suppose there's a directory or two in this town! Come along, Denny!"

"Oh, from New York?" The teller's manner underwent a change. "Mr. Messager lives out on St. Charles Avenue; I'll write the address for you. The first vice-president is here, if you would care to see him instead."

The stranger declined, and receiving the proffered slip of paper, he departed, followed by his companion.

"Look here, Mac, you've not told me a word of what we're after!" the latter complained. "Who is this Justin Messager, and what for are we trailing a feeble old man that'll likely have us thrown out for intruding on him?"

"He was a crony of Pierre Chartrand, and Chartrand was the guardian of Evelyn Beaudet as was, Oliver Jarvis' wife," McCarty responded. "Is it beginning to get through your thick head? Chartrand was the only one belonging to her and he's dead, but his most intimate friend is our next best bet."

"Thick I may be," Dennis conceded in some resentment, "but not being a mind-reader, it's not clear to me why a pal of the old man would know a secret that was kept from the girl's own husband. Have it your own way, but when we pick ourselves up after being chucked out, it'll be me that heads the next expedition, and that to a place where you can get one of the fizzes that put this burg on the map. My throat is like a dry-dock after that train."

"If we do get the gate," McCarty promised, "I'll stand treat."

The business section of the city once passed, St. Charles Avenue revealed itself as a thoroughfare of stately homes, and before one of the most imposing of these they alighted and then paused, scanning the house with speculative eyes.

"Look at the shades all down," Dennis commented. "'Twould be just your luck, Mac, if he'd died on you! From what that Willie-boy at the bank said"

"Come on!" McCarty interrupted fitfully. "Now remember we're sent here by Mr. Jarvis, and don't act as if you'd come to lift the silver!"

The aged negro butler who replied to their ring bobbed his woolly white head obsequiously as he took the note which McCarty produced, but seemed dubious as to his master's reception of them. However, he ushered them into a huge, dim drawing-room, where massively carved furniture was arranged stiffly against the wall and the pendants of the antiquated crystal chandelier tinkled to the vibration of the ex-Roundsman's heavy tread.

Dennis seated himself gingerly in the nearest chair and looked about him with professional interest

"'Twould make a grand fire-trap!" he remarked. "With the floors all oily and that gallery around the hall out there to act as a flue, if you'd give it two seconds' start and a lick of wind, 'twould go up like tinder."

"Is it a fire we're here for, or information?" demanded McCarty sarcastically. "Whist, now, somebody's coming."

Slow, shuffling steps sounded upon the stairs, accompanied by the stumping of a heavy cane, and a thin, querulous voice exclaimed:

"Easy, Robert, easy! Ouch!—No, don't drag! There!"

The steps drew nearer and a gaunt, bowed old figure, crowned by a shock of snowy hair, appeared in the doorway leaning upon the old butler's arm.

He peered with curiously bright, searching eyes at his visitors as they rose, but did not speak until the servant had deposited him carefully in a chair and withdrawn.

"Mr. McCarty?" He looked from one to the other of them, and the ex-Roundsman bowed. "In this note which you have brought to me from Mr. Oliver Jarvis, of New York, he requests me to give you any information at my disposal. I presume he means concerning his wife, of whose tragic death we have all heard here, but I am at a loss to understand why he should have sent you to me."

"Well, sir, he thought you, being Mr. Chartrand's friend, would likely know more than anyone else about Mrs. Jarvis," McCarty explained. "This is my assistant, Mr. Riordan. You've heard, of course, that Mrs. Jarvis was murdered; strangled to death in a private museum belonging to an old friend of her husband?"

Mr. Messager nodded.

"A frightful affair! She was a lovely child, a charming young girl; I watched her grow to womanhood under my old friend's care." He checked himself suddenly, and added: "Have they found the assassin?"

"Not yet, sir, but the police are working on it and Mr. Jarvis has hired a celebrated private detective, the greatest in the country, to investigate the crime for him. We're here on a different matter entirely." McCarty paused. "Could you tell me, sir, what you know of Mrs. Jarvis' family?"

"She had none," Mr. Messager responded, his bright old eyes fixed shrewdly on the questioner's face. "Her parents both died before she was six and in her father's will Pierre Chartrand was named her sole guardian and the executor of the estate. But why have you come to me? What sort of information does Mr. Jarvis seek; and why? He knew all that I can tell you of the Beaudet family at the time of the marriage."

"Well, sir, in going over his wife's old letters and private papers, he came upon something which made him anxious for further information," McCarty remarked truthfully enough. "Had neither of her parents any relatives living at all?"

"None. Like herself, her mother was an orphan from childhood, and, her father, Felix Beaudet, lost his parents in a railroad disaster a few months after his marriage, just before Evelyn was born." The querulous voice reiterated. "But Mr. Jarvis knew this!"

"Mr. Chartrand was a bachelor, wasn't he?" McCarty persisted "Can you tell me who the young lady's friends were as she grew up?"

The old gentleman crossed his hands on the top of his gold-headed cane and straightened himself in his chair.

"She was a very quiet, studious girl and cared little for society. After she left the Convent of the Blessed Name, where she was educated, she wished to join the order, but Mr. Chartrand opposed that, and she submitted to his wishes, although she took very little part in the social life about her, shutting herself up with her books and flowers and music When my niece Loretta was married to Peyton Sawtelle, she would not even attend the wedding, although they had been inseparable at the convent."

"She's been married to Mr. Jarvis for five years," McCarty observed. "How long before that did she leave the convent?"

"Let me see. Bless me! It is ten years now; no, eleven next spring. She had always been a frail, delicate child and broke down from over study. I remember that she was ill for a long time." He moved impatiently in his chair. "But what is there in all this that can interest Mr. Jarvis now? What was the nature of the letter or document which he found?"

"That's not for me to say, sir," McCarty replied respectfully but firmly. "You'll hear all about it from Mr. Jarvis as soon as he can pull himself together, I've no doubt. I was just sent here to find out what I could of Mrs. Jarvis prior to her marriage. Did she stay shut away like that from everybody all the four or five years before she met Mr. Jarvis?"

The old man hesitated, still regarding his visitor fixedly. At last he spoke, but slowly, as if choosing each word with care.

"She was not shut away. She merely preferred her quiet home and devoted herself to her guardian. After a year or two she began going about more, and frequently visited my niece at her home on Lake Pontchartrain. Indeed, it was at South Point that she met Mr. Jarvis. But as I told you, I have absolutely no information such as it appears he desires. Except for the unusual and most unfortunate circumstances I should not have discussed the lady at all with you. I know nothing concerning her with which her husband is not already fully acquainted; her life was simple in the extreme, and if he will let me know personally the nature of this document which he has found I will be glad to satisfy him upon it."

"I'll tell him, Mr. Messager." McCarty rose and signaled to the absorbed Dennis with a glance. "Thank you for seeing me, sir. I'm sorry to have bothered you, but Mr. Jarvis could think of no one else who had known his wife so long and so well. You'll hear from him soon, no doubt. Good-day, sir."

"Phew!" whistled Dennis when the house door had closed behind them with a dignified thud. "The drinks are on you, all right, for even though we didn't get thrown out by the scruff of the neck, we was told to make ourselves scarce if ever looks could do it!"

McCarty's lips moved, but no words came and he walked as if in a trance, staring straight ahead of him with eyes that were round with wonder.

"All right! Keep mum if you want to!" Dennis remarked sourly. "It's little you got from the old one that'd make conversation. Whatever that murdered dago was to her or her family you'll get no word of it from the likes of him."

"He told us more than a word, if you'd been listening for it." McCarty found his voice at last. "According to young Jarvis, his wife was twenty-seven. That would make her sixteen or seventeen when she left the convent. Did you get when that was, Denny? Eleven years ago next spring!"

"And what then?" asked Dennis vacantly.

"Oh, nothing! Nothing at all except that 'twas eleven years ago come spring that our friend Hoyos got his, that's all!"

"Mac! And she was sick for a long time afterwards! Over study, the old fellow called it!" Dennis' mind had started to work. "She wanted to take the veil and then when her guardian wouldn't let her do that, she shut herself away from everyone! Sixteen or seventeen is no babe in arms; I wonder if that Hoyos was ever in New Orleans? He seems to have had a taking way with women, but the back of my hand to him for a thorough-going blackguard dead or alive!"

"Don't go getting yourself worked up about it till we know where we're at," McCarty counseled. "We've nothing yet to bank on, remember. If Messager knew anything he'd not tell it, and we've got to have the straight dope on this."

"Where'll you get it?" Dennis demanded. "Chartrand's dead and if there was anything that he didn't tell young Jarvis when he married her, he'd not have breathed it now."

"Who is it, do you think, Denny, that young girls tell their secrets to?"

"How should I know? I've steered clear of them, young or old!" Dennis asserted warmly. "But I do remember home in the old days whenever Molly had a girl friend staying with her they'd be forever whispering and buzzing"

"You've said it! Old Messager said his niece was Evelyn Beaudet's best friend, if you recollect; I'm thinking we'll pay a little call to-morrow on Mrs. Peyton Sawtelle, of South Point."

Accordingly, the following afternoon after a brief journey, by rail, they reached their destination, and discreet inquiries on McCarty's part elicited the fact that the Sawtelles lived some three miles out on the road which bordered the lake. Further inquiries accompanied by a display of Northern prodigality placed at his disposal a small, battered car with a ragged negro driver and as they alternately plunged and crawled along the palm-fringed road Dennis observed:

"And this is November! Will you look at them lawns, as green as the sod in the Old Country? She'd have wanted to come back to it all fast enough in the long, cold winters up North unless there had been some memory she was trying to put behind her."

McCarty nudged him savagely and there was silence thereafter until they turned in between two tall gate-posts and up a broad driveway to a venerable Colonial house whose massive white pillars gleamed like shafts of marble among the trees.

A dusky-hued housemaid admitted them with some suspicion and ushered them into a dainty, chintz-hung sitting-room, where presently there came to them a tall, slender, young woman with gold-bronze hair and soft, brown eyes which gazed at them in gentle inquiry.

"I am Mrs, Sawtelle. You wish to see me?"

"Yes, ma'am. My name's McCarty and this is Dennis Riordan. We've come from New York to have a little talk with you if you'll be so good."

"New York!" she faltered, and her eyes darkened with apprehension. "Oh, I—I remember reading about you in the dispatches! You were both there when"

"When the body of Mrs. Jarvis was discovered?" McCarty supplemented quietly as she hesitated. "We were, ma'am, and it's because of that we're here now."

"Have they found out who did it?" Her voice was a mere whisper, and she clasped her hands convulsively.

"No, ma'am. That is, they've pretty well decided who the guilty party is, but they've not laid hands on him yet." McCarty ignored Dennis' stare and went on earnestly. "Since Mrs. Jarvis' death some papers have come to light among her things which show there was something in her life before ever she'd met and married her husband that she never told, something that she'd have gone to any lengths to keep secret."

Mrs. Sawtelle dropped limply into a chair.

"This—this is not possible!" she stammered. "I knew her well and I cannot believe it! But how did you hear of me? Why have you come?"

"To learn the truth, ma'am. You and she were girls together at the Convent of the Blessed Name. You know why she left so suddenly, and why she was sick for so long and then shut herself up like a nun and wouldn't even go to your wedding, though you were closer to her than a sister"

"Oh, stop! Stop!" She put her hands over her ears as though to shut out the sound of his voice. "I do not know what you are talking about! We were friends, yes, but it was just a girlhood companionship. She left the convent because of illness and was a semi-invalid for a long time. That is why she did not appear at my wedding and why"

She had spoken eagerly, quickly, but beneath McCarty's calm, incredulous gaze she wavered and her voice died away in her throat.

"No, ma'am." His tone was deprecatingly respectful, but there was a note of finality in it "You'll excuse me, but we know better than that. We know you were in her confidence and only you can tell us what happened that spring of nineteen-seven, and who the man was"

"You are mistaken!" She spoke with studied hauteur but her lips were trembling. "I have no knowledge of any secret in Mrs. Jarvis' girlhood such as you intimate. Who sent you to me?"

"Mr. Jarvis himself. The papers that he found mentioned your name," McCarty fabricated boldly. "He asked us to come to you quietly, rather than do anything that would bring you into notoriety, ma'am."

"What are these papers?"

"Well," McCarty hesitated and then plunged, "there's a bit of an old diary"

"A diary!" Mrs. Sawtelle clutched the arms of her chair. "I thought it was destroyed!"

McCarty concealed a start of triumph.

"Only partly, ma'am. There's enough of it left to tell Mr. Jarvis that his wife had lived a lie with him these five years; that she'd hid from him something he'd a right to know. Mrs. Sawtelle, who was the other man and what was he to her?"

She rose to her feet slowly and the brown eyes flashed.

"If I knew, do you think that I would betray her confidence?" she said. "If there were any secret which she did not tell her husband do you think I would speak now? She is dead and whatever she may have had locked in her heart must die with her."

"Not if it helps her murderer to go free." McCarty's tone was suddenly stern.

"Her—murderer!" Mrs. Sawtelle gasped. "You don't mean—it cannot be! She told me he was dead!"

An irrepressible gurgle emanated from Dennis' throaty but McCarty remained seemingly unmoved.

"Dead he may be, but there's another knew her story. Another who has blackmailed her out of thousands in the past year and who finally killed her"

"Oh, God!" the young woman breathed. "What shall I do?"

"Tell us the truth, ma'am, and help us to find him," McCarty urged. "You can do your friend no good now by keeping still and if she could know she would want you to speak. 'Twill be on your soul if her murderer escapes and as for her husband, half the truth is worse for him than the whole of it."

Mrs. Sawtelle paced slowly to the window, where she stood for long gazing out over the rolling lawns to the blue waters of Lake Pontchartrain, while McCarty and Dennis waited in silence. At length she turned and her face, though pale, was composed and resolute.

"You are right. If she came to her death because of the secret which she has guarded, then I must break my promise to her. Mr. Jarvis was not her first husband. She ran away, eloped over the convent wall with a fascinating stranger, after a month of as tempestuous and romantic a wooing as ever a girl had. This was in the autumn of nineteen-six when she was only sixteen.

"The convent is situated on the bank of the Mississippi about fifty miles above New Orleans, and a month before, a beautiful yacht had dropped anchor within sight of our school windows. Sometimes a small boat came ashore and we caught glimpses of a tall, handsome, dark man in white flannels. We made up all sorts of silly, sentimental stories about him and the yacht, which seemed to us like a floating fairyland.

"One afternoon in recreation hour I happened to be in a far corner of the garden when I heard someone laughing softly above me and looked up. Evelyn was sitting on the top of the wall and I heard a man's voice on the other side. That night in bed she told me it was the stranger from the yacht; that he was a Frenchman named Leon Hoguet and that he had the most wonderful eyes she had ever seen.

"It was the beginning and before I knew it she was slipping out every night to meet him, but she never crossed the wall until the night she went away with him for good. I could have stopped it by going to the Mother Superior, but it did not enter my head to betray her, although I blamed myself a million times in the years that followed. I was a year older than she but the romance of it thrilled me and we had both been kept like children, ignorant of the world.

"I shall never forget the night when she whispered to me that he had asked her to marry him. I was frightened and begged her not to run away but she would not listen, and the next night I stole out with her to the wall, kissed her and handed up her little bundle of clothing and heard her drop from the top down into his arms. The next morning the yacht was gone from the river.

"Of course there was a frightful time when she was missed, but I would not admit that I knew anything and her guardian and the Mother Superior both hushed it up for fear of scandal. I heard nothing from her for three long months. Then there came a pitiful little note. She was at home with her guardian in New Orleans; home and heartbroken.

"When I went home for the Easter holidays she was gone again and her guardian told me that she was visiting up the river. He never knew that I had been in her confidence but he had aged ten years in a few months. When the summer vacation came Evelyn had returned but she was desperately ill and for a long time her life was despaired of. She grew slowly better, however, and one day she told me the whole dreadful story.

"Leonidas Hoguet had taken her up the river to an obscure landing where they were married by an itinerant preacher, and at first she had been wildly happy but it only lasted for a very few weeks. He tired of her soon and used to leave her alone on the yacht for days together while he drank and dissipated in river towns. At last he deserted her in a hotel in Memphis and she made her way home.

"Her guardian forgave her and kept her secret, but he searched the country for Leonidas Hoguet. He never found him and when spring came, poor Evelyn forgot her pride and everything else, and ran away a second time, to go to him. How she found him I never knew, for she would tell me little about that time. She could never bring herself to speak of it except to say that he was dead. She had managed to reach him and had been with him when he died.

"I think you know the rest; how she shut herself away from everyone for more then three years. She could not bear to come to my wedding and I quite understood but later I persuaded her to put the past behind her and take up her life again. I had her with me a great deal and it was here that she met Oliver Jarvis, who knew my husband at college.

"He fell in love with her at first sight and I was so happy when I saw that she, too, had begun to care. She wanted to tell him the truth, but her guardian forbade it and she married him without speaking. He took her away and I have never seen her since. At first her letters came regularly, each one telling of her great happiness, but after a time they gradually ceased and with the death of her guardian I realized that she wanted to put me and all her life down here out of her thoughts, like a chapter that is closed."

Mrs. Sawtelle drew a deep sigh and brushed her hand across her eyes.

"There, Mr. McCarty, I have told you everything! If Leonidas Hoguet is dead—and Evelyn would never have married Oliver unless it were true—who could have known her secret? Who could have killed her, and why?"

"I can't tell you that now, ma'am." McCarty's face was very grave but his eyes gleamed with a steely light. "There's a lot of work to be done on the case still and we're dealing with no ordinary criminal. We've got to go slow and take him unawares, but if he's alive a week from to-day I'm thinking he'll be under lock and key and no power on earth can save him from the chair!"

As he and Dennis took their departure, McCarty halted with his foot upon the running board of the ramshackle vehicle.

"Wait here a minute, Denny. I've just thought of something."

He turned and bounded up the porch steps to where Mrs. Sawtelle stood in the doorway, and there ensued a brief, hurried interchange of words. To Dennis it appeared that McCarty was eagerly questioning, the lady replying in evident surprise but affirmatively for her interrogator nodded emphatically and a broad smile lifted his stubby, sandy mustache as he bade her a second farewell.

He was still smiling as they jerked forward and lunged out upon the driveway to the gates.

"What was it hit you at the last minute?" Dennis demanded curiously. "You were a bold lad with your brag that the murderer would be under lock and key in a week!"

The smile vocalized in a chortle, and McCarty responded:

"'Twas no empty brag! The thing that hit me at the last minute is the last proof I needed to put him there; the last little link between that blackmailing devil and the death house! We've got him now, Denny; got him at last!"