Thicker Than Water

KNOW you look askance at taking divorce cases, but that is not what I want of you, Mr. Kennedy. I am not fighting for myself, my honor, anything but the biggest thing in my life—little Beth Hartley. She is the child of Hamlin Hartley; she is his heir, and I want you to help me prove it. I want none of his money for myself, but I want my little girl to know that her mother did not bring her into the world in dishonor!”

In her fervor Hope Hartley, wife of the banker, Hamlin Hartley, had risen from her chair. It was not the entrancing bit of femininity that appealed to Kennedy. It was her eyes—eyes that would have stirred the world with their pathos. Wistful tears welled in them; then suddenly her mood changed. Determination and self-control were uppermost.

“If I were alone, Mr. Kennedy, I would not fight. If the man I love can do the things to me that Hamlin is doing, what would be the use of fighting—the use of anything? But my little girl must not be cheated of her name. No child of a Broadway butterfly like this Louise Lavender shall take it from her!”

Craig Kennedy gently forced her back in her chair, with a reassuring murmur.

“Louise Lavender,” he repeated, turning to me. “That's that beauty-culturist found dead in her apartment over her shop on Fifty-eighth Street, Monday morning, is it not, Walter?”

“Yes”—I nodded—“that case I was telling you about. Mr. Hartley has made a statement that he was there until two in the morning, went up accompanied by his man Friday, his attorney, Canby, who says he left about midnight. Her maid found her dead in the morning—from an overdose of veronal, some sleeping-drug. It had been placed in a drink. That's what Dr. Leslie says, anyhow. There were signs of violence about. She had been robbed.”

“Robbed? Robbed of what?”

“All her jewelry was gone; all her correspondence was gone; the letters of Hartley were gone.”

Kennedy, at the mention of Leslie's name, had his hand on the telephone, but now he hesitated and looked inquiringly at Hope.

“Yes!” she cried. “I suppose they'll say I started it all when I sued Hamlin for divorce and named Louise Lavender, said she had a child, a little boy, secretly known as 'Hamlin Hartley Lavender,' his child. But Hamlin retaliated with a suit against me, charged me with desertion, a lot of ridiculous things—that the baby, Beth Hartley, is in reality the child of Bert Halliwell, born after I left him, oh, nearly five years ago now.”

“Why Bert Halliwell?” shot out Kennedy.

“Mr. Kennedy, from a little girl I have been interested in the stage. I have known most of the finest men and women in the profession, and when Hamlin and I separated about five years ago, I became an actress. From the stage I went into the movies. I've been rather successful. I've been told by my producer that he is going to star me in his next picture. I met Bert Halliwell when I first went on the stage. He was the star in the play in which I had a minor part. I often acted on his advice; he was always helping everybody. That is his nature. It was he suggested motion pictures. The last one I was in was 'Red Blood and Blue,' that starred him. The only thing that they have is that I know him—and now they tell me the police-have put me on their list of suspects—suspect me of murdering my husband's mistress, I suppose.” She spoke wearily. “It is the inevitable—but somehow, with Hamlin acting up this way, I don't care. But Beth's future—that's different. I'll fight!”

Mother love surged into the face that had only an instant before been listless.

The laboratory door opened and I recognized the heavy features of Abe Warsky, the picture-producer. But none of us was prepared for the slender, boyish Bert Halliwell, his star, who followed him in.

“You here, too?” Hope stammered.

Halliwell was evidently striving for a good line, but Warsky answered for him.

“We sure are! We just naturally gravitate to the best—only”—he laughed—“you landed first. My policy is best stars, best stories, best legal and detective advice.”

Hope Hartley seemed troubled. She turned and laid an appealing hand on Craig's arm.

“Just for the little girl's sake, Mr. Kennedy,” she murmured, “I ask you to give me a part of your time.” She looked a bit tremulously in Halliwell's direction. “Please don't ask for it all, Bert.”

“Don't worry, Hope. I wanted to see you, anyway. We both seem to be in bad. Lord knows why. Are you doing anything this afternoon?”. She shook her head and colored slightly. Halliwell lowered his voice. “You know, Hope, what you asked me to find out—about that boy up at the beauty-shop of Mademoiselle Louise? Well, he is now with her mother, Mrs. Lafferty. She's come down to arrange things about her daughter's funeral and all that, staying with her son, a chauffeur, John Lafferty, on the corner of Lexington Avenue and Sixty-ninth Street. I know her well. When I tell her, I feel quite sure she'll help me. I want to take you round there.”

At first Hope hesitated.

“But, Bert, I can't go. She'd be antagonized. Some other way”

“No, no!” he insisted. “It will be quite all right.”

“Well then—after lunch—same place.”

Warsky turned. Hope was coloring even more deeply. Halliwell was again embarrassed, but said nothing. Hope was gone with a quick good-by to us and a whispered final word to Kennedy.

ARSKY looked chidingly at Halliwell. He turned to Kennedy.

“With Bert dragged into this Hartley divorce, and now this Louise Lavender murder, Kennedy, my picture isn't worth a plugged nickel. You know the state of the public mind. Clear Halliwell—I'll make it worth your while—twenty-five per cent. of the picture if you clear him. There!”

Craig had his hand again on the telephone.

“Mrs. Hartley worked in your picture,” he reflected, looking at Warsky.

“Yes. When we were making 'Red Blood and Blue,' which we're just finishing, she wanted to play in it. It's a story of society life. We thought it was a good idea, would give the picture selling value to let her. “That's one of the pictures Hartley refers to in his complaint,” I put in, digging back into a pile of last week's papers. “Here! He says he was at a lawn-party when, 'passing behind some foliage, I heard the cattish remark of one woman to another. “How the little thing looks like her father, too!” I was in doubt, at first. But I soon found out what the gossip was. It was of my wife, the baby and Bert Halliwell.'"

Halliwell now spoke up.

“That's when my wife, Lucy Lovett—the dancer, you know—began to sit up and take notice. Lucy's a lady of temper—and temperament—and temperature. She consulted her attorneys the moment my name came into the Hartley case. Then came this murder. The newspapers dug up a story of my intimacy with Louise Lavender. Exhibit Two. Then Lucy sued”

“Well, what's your story?” asked Craig, with a smile.

“This Lavender girl and I were what you might call 'mud-pie sweethearts' back home. She came to the city, got into the butterfly life. Her mother wrote me to look Louise up. I did—tried to reform her”

“And, you know,” interrupted Warsky, “the first thing a man does, they say, when he tries to reform a girl. Well—confound it!—that's more gossip.”

Kennedy had remained with one hand on the telephone-receiver, while in the other he had a pencil with which he was absently scrawling the formula for veronal on a pad by the instrument. Now he took off the receiver, called the district-attorney's office and asked for our friend Dr. Leslie, medical adviser.

There was a wait. Halliwell looked about the laboratory. Craig had spectroscopes, microscopes and X-ray machines, each fitted for a special purpose such as examining blood spots, forged documents, counterfeit money, powder-burned clothes and the thousand and one things that are picked up on a criminal trail. Warsky looked about, as if at a motion-picture set.

“I suppose you know that the chemist in recent years has become the most reliable detective in America,” said Craig, waiting. “My chemico-legal warfare on crime has begun to make an impression. There has been very great progress made in the detection of crime during the last six or eight years, particularly through the application of chemistry and photography and the other sciences— Oh, hello, Leslie!”

The conversation was brief.

“Then you'll meet me at her apartment, right away?” concluded Kennedy. “Bring along a copy of that statement his lawyer gave the d. a., too.” He turned to us. “They're saying Hartley has apparently cleared himself by his story to the district attorney. Maybe he has. But, really, I gather that the police haven't eliminated anybody yet.” Halliwell shot a quick glance at Craig and looked away. “Not so much for either side will I play Professor Fixit,” pursued Craig. “This is a bitter divorce suit. But I always think of the child first—the certainly innocent victim. In this case, if she is your child, Halliwell, it is just another unfortunate illegitimate. If she is the daughter of the banker, she is heir to millions”

“But, Kennedy,” Halliwell hastily put in, “it's preposterous”

Craig silenced him.

“I would like to say,” he said, “that the first endeavor of science is to help protect innocence and prevent the miscarriage of justice.”

Outside, Halliwell excused himself, but Warsky insisted on sticking along, and Kennedy did not discourage him.

E MET Leslie in the Fifty-eighth Street apartment. Already we were familiar with the details of the finding of that bruised and drugged form of the beautiful beauty-culturist. Her negro maid had come in the morning to give the usual attentions to the attractive little Broadway butterfly. There she had found her dead, amid the luxuries she loved, stretched across her bed.

The body, of course, had been removed. But the police had kept things much better than they used to do. Craig made a minute, if quick, examination. I found him at last down on his knees before the glass door of a mahogany cabinet.

“Finger-prints?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“That's all been messed up long ago. No.” He was examining an oval smudge on the glass of the cabinet.

“That's where Louise kept her jewel-case, sir,” remarked the officer on guard.

Kennedy nodded.

“What of the drug, Doctor?” he asked Leslie. “Veronal?” Leslie nodded. “You have blood samples I could study?”

“Yes.”

“Send them to me.”

We withdrew to another room, and there Craig looked over the copy of Hartley's affidavit, which Leslie carried. It was an unusually clever statement for his client that Canby had prepared. It appeared to be very frank. Canby said that the alleged purpose of seeing Louise was to “refresh” her mind regarding certain facts relating to the Hartley case. “Of course”—he put the words in Hartley's mouth—“we had to keep her friendly to us.”

The interesting part, not yet given out to the papers, had to do with Hartley's suggestion that there was on foot a plot to blackmail him. Canby told of the janitress of the building having overheard quarreling in the Lavender beauty-shop below, late Saturday night, and a man's voice, in a sarcastic tone, saying, “You are a second-hand girl—slightly shop-worn.”

Canby suggested that there might have been blackmail on the part of her former husband, Tom Kinsella; that to Kinsella Louise, with her wealthy friends, was a gold mine. He also attached a letter which the janitress had got out of the waste-basket, a letter from Kinsella asking for five thousand dollars to square a forfeited bail-bond and keep out of jail. According to the theory, Louise had threatened Kinsella with divorce. Then had followed: “You're a second-hand girl,” and Kinsella had told her she couldn't get the divorce—that he would prove in court what she was.

By now the beauty-shop and the apartment were the G.H.Q. of the newspaper detectives, most of whom I knew. Under pretense of letting them interview Kennedy, I got them together so that he could interview them.

So it was that we got the advantage of their nearly two days of investigation. They had just dug up the story of the spite-marriage of Louise. It seemed she had married Kinsella for spite or in pique, that she really cared for another fellow. At any rate, she had soon left her husband. Tom Kinsella had never got over the fact that Louise had thrown him over. “I will get square with her—some day,” he had said.

Another thing they had dug up was that Kinsella and his crowd on Broadway had been known to have once engaged in a blackmail shake-down of a rich young chap over a “Follies” girl. The crowd had got the name among the flappers as “The Grifters.”

Kennedy shot a covert glance at us. I knew of what he was thinking. Was it to get out of this and the prosecution that would follow that Kinsella had needed five thousand dollars so desperately?

“Louise Lavender must have been a mighty fascinating girl,” observed Kennedy, “with the millionaire, Hartley, on her list, the actor, Halliwell, this white-light sport, Kinsella—enemy husband.”

“That ought to give you something to work on,” supplied Warsky, as we left the newspaper men, “Kinsella, this wise guy, and Hartley, the millionaire philanderer. Either one of them's better than Bert Halliwell to work on, I think.”

Kennedy said nothing in reply to Warsky's bias. Yet I could not help following Warsky's reasoning. Did Kinsella kill the goose that laid the golden eggs in order to get one big egg—the jewels—worth more than five thousand dollars that would keep him out of trouble, perhaps jail?

Craig had evidently no notion of being dogged by Warsky.

“Suppose, with your well-known Broadway connections, Warsky,” he suggested, “you take a hand in this—go after Kinsella.”

“I believe I will. But no matter if it does turn out it's Kinsella, Kennedy, the offer stands—see?”

We parted from Dr. Leslie also, and Kennedy revealed that his program was next to see both of the babies, and, first of all, the Hamlin Hartley Lavender boy.

E FOUND the home of John Lafferty, chauffeur, in one of those walkup apartments—walk up about five flights. Ella Lafferty had changed her name to Louise Lavender. Lafferty might be a better trade-name with a taxi-cab than with a beauty-shop.

Old Mrs. Lafferty was a motherly woman, the kind that is old at sixty, a pious woman, a widow who had struggled on in a small up-state town with a large family and had brought them up to the best of her ability.

Little Hamlin Hartley Lavender, or Lafferty, whatever his name might eventually become, was a sturdy youngster of three or four years, playing about the floor of the flat with a much battered tin taxi that once could have been wound up. It did not run at all, and he was engaged in pushing it across the floor as Kennedy started to ingratiate himself with the still weepy Mrs. Lafferty.

We were soon interrupted by a howl from the youngster. He had tripped on the rug, fallen over the tin taxi, and the jagged little mud-guard had scratched his arm rather severely. I picked him up, unwound a clean handkerchief, cleansed the scratch and bound it up. But the young gentleman would have none of me or my handkerchief. He threw it off, with its drops of blood, and I picked it up, balled it hastily in my pocket.

“Keep that—carefully,” whispered Kennedy, as the motherly Mrs. Lafferty hugged the scared little shaver to her breast and his cries quickly diminished.

We had got no further than that Mrs. Lafferty seemed as much in the dark as to the real parentage on the father's side of the baby as we were—except that, naturally, she would not say so openly—when a noise outside interrupted us.

The door was opened by Mrs. Lafferty. Bert Halliwell entered the room. For the instant he was nonplused at seeing us, then must have recollected that we could have heard his remarks in the laboratory to Hope. But he received a smile of welcome from Mrs. Lafferty that was sufficient to indicate his standing in her heart. He chose to say nothing about our presence.

“Well, Mrs. Lafferty, and how are you feeling to-day?” he asked. “Are you strong enough to meet one of my best friends? I've already taken the liberty of bringing her along. But she is so thoughtful she wouldn't come in until I found out if you would see her.”

“Sure, Bertie! Just bring her along in. I've been tryin' to help this here Mr. Kennedy, but I guess I don't know much about my own Louise, that was christened 'Ella.' Maybe you could help him.”

A moment, and Halliwell had Hope Hartley in the room.

I thought of what a position this was for her. But with wonderful tact she acknowledged the greetings of everybody and proceeded to get acquainted with the little boy.

“Was grandma with baby at his christening?” she asked, smiling up at Mrs. Lafferty.

A cloud passed over the wrinkled face.

“No, I wasn't. I couldn't tell you exactly if he has been christened. It will worry me until I know.”

Halliwell had not introduced Hope as “Mrs. Hartley. He had made that concession to her. He had called her “Miss Livingstone,” her maiden name.

“Probably you will find some record in Louise's papers. They present you with a paper, don't they?” asked Bert.

“But, Bert, I have gone through her papers.” Mrs. Lafferty squeezed the child up to her lovingly.

Already Hope had won him. He was making efforts to get to her and play.

“Whom does he look like?” she inquired.

“His mother. The very image of her, I'll say.” Mrs. Lafferty looked proudly at him.

“It's strange, Mrs. Lafferty,” pursued Halliwell, “but do you know the police are suspecting me of knowing more than I'm telling about the death of Louise? They claim I was one of her lovers. I'm in a devil of a fix. We were always good friends. You know how we used to play together when we were kids.”

The old lady was crying softly.

“Oh, I wish she had married you back home, Bert!” The sadly bent figure was shaken with sobs. “None of this would have happened.”

Hope had the boy. He was sitting on her lap playing with the trinkets in her bag. Halliwell noticed this.

“Could you give me any idea of the boy's father? Have you ever met him?”

“No. I know nothing of him.”

“Have you any idea where your daughter kept her papers?” interposed Craig.

“I heard of a safe down in her beauty-parlor.”

“But the police searched that,” put in Halliwell. “There was nothing in it.”

“Well, now I think of it, Louise once told me she wanted some kind of contraption built in the wall.”

“A wall safe—in the beauty-parlor?” repeated Kennedy. “I'll get Dr. Leslie again; we'll see if there is one.”

HERE were quick steps outside in the hall. A little woman actually ran in past us, seized Bert Halliwell by the arm. Jerking him round, she dropped his arm in disgust. Gazing from her four and a half feet of sauciness up into his six feet of surprise, arms akimbo, she fairly exploded.

“So!”

I recognized Lucy Lovett. She had heard the last remarks out in the hall. Mrs. Lafferty was agape. Hope tried to slip out. The lithe figure bounded between Hope and the door.

“No, you don't! Not until I've had my say. I've caught you two together. I heard you were coming here. Never mind how. I'm going to put this poor old lady wise. Do you know her, Mrs. Lafferty?”

“Miss Livingstone, Bert told me.”

“Years ago. Mrs. Hamlin Hartley now, the unloved wife of that banker. He left her for your daughter, they say. Has she been pumping you?”

Mrs. Lafferty looked askance at Hope and shook her head.

“Well, folks,” interrupted Halliwell, “this little lady is Lucy Lovett, Lucy Halliwell, my wife. Glad you came, Lucy.”

“You brazen sheik of the pictures!” she blazed. “I hate you! You think all the girls fall for you. Well, I'm through!” Hope had started to speak, but Lucy turned on her. “No—no—no, you husband stealer, I don't want to hear you!” She turned to Mrs. Lafferty. “That woman knows about your girl's death. Ask her what she was doing in Louise Lavender's rooms the night before they found her, how she came to drop the script of your picture, Bert. See her get white? The truth hurts—you welsher! You won't steal my husband and get away with it! You murdered Louise because she stole yours. Well, I'll give your life to justice—because you robbed me!”

Hope was leaning against the door, almost ready to faint. Halliwell saw her, took a chair to give her. But Lucy grabbed it from him. She swung it on Bert.

“There!” She turned on Hope. “Lawyer Canby, who is fighting for the rights of Mr. Hartley, told me. The Livingstone money'll never get you out of this!”

Hope straightened, dignity, scorn, breeding challenging hate, jealousy, commonplaceness. She spoke in a quiet tone.

“A murderess? You have heard that—all of you. The same courts you talk about will make you pay for that!”

Lucy was enraged at Hope's superiority. She leaned over and slapped her. Hope was white to the lips, but she kept her dignity. Lucy was wild with hate. She tried to do it again. Suddenly she found herself sprawling on the floor.

“Good-by, Bert.” Hope bowed. “That little trick I learned from my father's Jap valet. It will tame the tiger-woman.”

Craig had opened the door, and we followed Hope Hartley out, leaving Halliwell to settle the dispute with his wife as best he could. On the street Kennedy stopped suddenly, looking at Hope.

“Why didn't you play fair? Why didn't you tell me you were up at Louise's apartment?”

“Because, if you remember, Mr. Kennedy, I didn't come to you about the murder. I asked you to help me prove the legitimacy of Beth. Let others prove other things!”

“But,” urged Craig, “Beth would not want her mother held in a murder. That would hurt her, too. I want to see Beth.”

“Now? She is at home. Come!”

S WE taxied over to the home of wealth and exquisite taste in the new old Turtle Hill district, I thought of what Lucy had spilled—that Hamlin Hartley knew that his wife had been in Louise's apartment some time that night, that he had picked up a script of the picture with her name on it.

Hope Hartley led us to a flagstone-paved sun-room, one end enclosed in glass, looking out on a beautiful garden. Plants and flowers seemed everywhere. Through the glass we could see the child playing outdoors. Beth Hartley was a beautiful child, but unlike her mother. Black curls covered her head with ringlets, and her eyes were a merry blue. Rosy cheeked, she was a picture of health. She-had not seen her mother yet, and seemed to be having some disagreement with her nurse. She stamped her little foot wilfully.

“She has her father's looks and my difficulty to keep cool under fire,” said Hope, with a frown. “Marie is a new nurse.”

Beth stood defiant, rebellious, then suddenly burst into tears. Hope moved closer to the glass door. The child saw her mother and ran toward her. The soft tears turned to wild, healthy sobs as Craig opened the door for the tear-blinded baby.

“Mother! Mother! Oh-h, Marie is naughty!” Beth ran into her mother's arms and Hope consoled her.

“Tell mother, dear.”

“Ma-Marie told me d-daddy wasn't my daddy. I asked her why, and she said he was some other baby's daddy. He is my daddy—my dear, dear daddy”

“Sh, child. Don't think such thoughts. Marie will have to go for putting such nonsense in your little head. Of course he is.” The big brown eyes, full of mother love, looked up at Craig, with tears just hanging on the beautiful lashes. The low, modulated voice murmured sadly, “Gossip breaks more hearts than death, Mr. Kennedy, causes more misery and trouble.” She straightened. “I'll fight the whole world to protect this child!”

In whispered sentences Hope Hartley admitted the whole story. She had been at Louise's apartment. She had gone there to get Hamlin away. She had got in, she asserted vehemently, at about ten o'clock, alone. The telephone-bell had rung and she had answered it, disguising her voice, hoping to learn something. It was Canby calling with the usual precaution for her husband. “Ah—Mrs. Hartley!” He had recognized her voice. She fled.

“There is just one other thing,” added Kennedy. “If you really want to prove that this little girl is his daughter, you will oblige me with a couple of drops of the child's blood—and your own.”

Kennedy was now in a quandary. He wanted to go to the laboratory. Also, he wanted to go to the beauty-parlor again, and we went there first.

Outside, we came upon Bert Halliwell, arguing with the policeman who was refusing him admittance. Kennedy was pleased. A nod to the guard was sufficient and we got in. Immediately Kennedy began a search for the wall safe.

“Well!” We turned, five minutes later, after a fruitless tapping and sounding, to see the slender, dark Hamlin Hartley, and with him the dapper, precise attorney, Canby. “Looking for buried treasured?” asked Hartley in a tone of raillery.

Kennedy said nothing, but went on tapping.

“Treasure?” Halliwell repeated sarcastically. “I imagine she had some. They tell me her motto was: 'Live on your business earnings. Then, when you find some one who will set you up in an apartment of your own, save all he gives you for a nest-egg.'”

Hartley smiled superciliously, elevated his brows and slowly took a long ivory cigarette-holder from between his teeth.

“I believe I have the honor of addressing Mr. Halliwell. There has been something I wanted to ask you. They say that Louise was married, but really she cared for another fellow. Were you the other fellow, to spite whom she married this Kinsella?”

Halliwell reddened. He had a temper which made it easy for a director in a sequence of fight-scenes in a picture. There was nothing here to make him control it. Before we knew it, the star was upon Hartley. There was a genuine exhibition of red blood—and blue. Canby butted in. Noses and eyes suffered, but Canby's nose suffered most before Craig leaped in and undertook the direction of this scene with a grim mutter:

“Can that stuff—all of you!”

Having played the part of peace-maker, Kennedy proceeded to bind up the wounds, but, I thought, with slight attention to the wounded three and great care as to handkerchiefs and towels that cleansed the wounds, preserving all separately.

He sent them all on their way, making sure that they went separately without another encounter; then, having satisfied himself that there was no secret safe in the wall, we left for the laboratory.

HERE, a package, as promised by Dr. Leslie, was waiting, and at once Kennedy unfolded the handkerchiefs and towels he had carried, took my own handkerchief and plunged into some test.

It was just after dinner-time, or what should have been dinner-time, when the telephone-bell rang. Kennedy answered.

“Good! Bring him here.” He turned to me, hanging up, ready for another call. “Abe Warsky took a hand,” he explained. “He seems to have an underground with the cabarets. He has trapped that rat, Kinsella. I am having him brought here. Yes; get me Dr. Leslie, please!”

He turned from a hurried talk with Leslie as to using his own and the authority of the police, and plunged back into his work. Leslie arrived, and a moment later Warsky, chest out, walked in with Kinsella, dapper, flashy, brazen. Kennedy directed Leslie to prick Kinsella's finger under the nail and squeeze out a couple of drops of blood. Kennedy left what he had been doing and began at once to examine that.

Kinsella sulked at the very end of the laboratory. Warsky watched him like a spider with its next meal enmeshing itself in its web. With his fat body bent forward and palms on his knees, he reflected on the thousands tied up in that last picture.

“Look! Look at all the bottles!” A childish treble interrupted the silence. “What's that? Look, mother!”

Hope Hartley, in the doorway, was smiling with an effort.

“Good evening. My daughter's late hours are making her irrepressible. Come to mother, Beth.”

Canby and Hamlin Hartley came in. I saw Hope start and grip the arm of the chair. She kept her composure, but withal I knew she was suffering. Beth seemed to feel it. She lavished so much affection on Hope that it made the group stand out. Hartley looked covertly at his wife, and colored, too. Canby was self-possessed, sure of his client's case.

Again the door opened, and I heard Halliwell's well modulated voice.

“Sorry! Didn't keep you waiting, I trust? Ah—Mrs. Hartley, I think we should have left the detective work to Mr. Kennedy. Happy to see you so well after that unreasonable encounter. I believe it was inspired.” He looked with calm animosity at Hartley.

ENNEDY did not purpose having the beauty-shop episode repeated. He wiped his hands on an acid-stained towel, flung off his smock and cleared his throat.

“I'm not going to keep you long,” he said, “but there's something that I want you to follow me closely in—here, before it comes to court. Although the inheritance, according to definite Mendelian principles, of group-specific substances in human blood has been known for some twenty years, the application of this knowledge to medico-legal questions has not yet been made. I purpose making it.”

Instantly we knew what he was driving at; our attention was directed toward the baby Beth on her mother's lap.

“What is known as 'isoagglutination' is the agglutination of red blood-cells by contact with blood-serum derived from another individual the same species. With regard to the behavior of their serum and red blood-cells, all human beings fall into one of three groups. In the first group, the red cells are not agglutinable by any other human serum, while the serum is found to agglutinate the red cells of all persons not belonging to this first group. In the second group, the red cells are agglutinated by the serums of the first and of the third groups, while the serum agglutinates the cells of the third group only. The third is the obverse of the second. Its red cells are agglutinated by the serums of the first and second groups, and its serum agglutinates only cells of the second group.”

“How is that?” asked Canby.

“Lansteiner, who investigated the subject, concluded,” replied Craig, “that these phenomena were due to the presence of two kinds of specific agglutinin, of which one was present in the serum of the second group, another in the serum of the third group and both in the serum of the first. Then, some years later, a fourth group was recognized. In this group, the cells are agglutinated by the serum of all the other groups, while their serum contains no agglutinin whatever. These groups never change. They are what you might call the 'finger-prints of the blood.'

“As a baby is developed in the embryo,” Kennedy went on, “the specific agglutinability of the red cells, call agglutinogen, appears first and is usually present at birth. The specific agglutinative power of the blood-serum, called agglutinin, which is to characterize the individual through life, may be absent at birth and may not appear for some months.”

“Are these qualities in the blood of everybody?” asked Halliwell.

“In the blood of everybody. Group one is the most numerous. Over forty per cent. of people. And it can never be hybrid. Group two is the next most numerous. Just under forty per cent. It can be hybrid only with regard to its dominant quality. The same is true of group three. About twelve to fifteen per cent. Group four is the rarest. Only two to five per cent. of people.”

“What happens when people marry?” Hartley's voice was a bit shaky.

“I'm coming to that. Unions of men and women from each of these groups give children definitely in groups that can be expected. Union of one and one give only one. Union of one and two and or two and two give only one and two. Union one and three and of three and three give only one and three. I have here reduced the matter to a definite table of instances where a child must be illegitimate, that is, not the child of a supposed father.”

Craig reached into a drawer of the table and drew out a small chart. “This may seem rather negative. But it yields results that are positive enough in this case.”

We studied the chart as it was passed about:

“That is as far as you can go?” asked Canby.

“Yes. But it is far enough here—” Kennedy paused, as with a pencil he indicated group after group. “Hope Hartley belongs to group one. Hamlin Hartley belongs to group two. Bert Halliwell belongs to group one. Hope Hartley, in group one, and Bert Halliwell, also in group one, could have a child only in group one, never in groups two, three or four. Little Beth Hartley is in group two. Therefore Beth Hartley could not be the child of Hope Hartley and Bert Halliwell.”

Hope was leaning forward, wide-eyed. A smile played on Halliwell's face. Kennedy gave no chance for interruption.

“Hamlin Hartley is in group two. Groups one and two produce only one and two. I believe that Beth, in group two, is really the child of Hope and Hamlin Hartley.”

There was a sharp intake of air from Hope. Hamlin stared straight ahead. Kennedy did not pause.

“Louise Lavender was in group one, also,” he pursued. “As we saw, Hamlin Hartley was in group two. There is another man in this case, who is in group three. Louise, in group one, and Hamlin, in group two, could have had only a child in groups one or two. They could not have had a child in three or four. But Louise, in one, and this other man, in three, could have had a child in groups one or three, not in two or four. The little Lavender boy is in group three. He could not have been the son of Hamlin Hartley. But he probably is the son of this other man—this man in group three.”

“Who?” demanded Warsky. “Kinsella?”

“No,” replied Craig. “Kinsella is in group one.”

Warsky's face fell.

“Who, then?”

“Just a moment.” Kennedy turned to Hartley. “It's been my observation, Hartley, that if a man will give a woman half a chance—just half a chance—she'll come through and be fine. I don't mean that he shouldn't give her all. But I do mean that you haven't given that little wife of yours even half a chance. It's your fault—all your fault!”

ABY BETH was looking shyly at Hamlin Hartley. Here was the real man whose picture she kissed every night before she went to sleep. She was standing by Hope’s knee, and her little chubby hands were covering her face. Through her fingers she watched her father. Now and then she would drop this digital screen and smile in Hartley’s direction—a shy smile. She was willing to love this big man who looked at her mother so sadly, timidly—but she must be won.

“Mother dear, the eyes are kinder in him than in that picture of daddy I kiss so much.” She wafted a little kiss, blowing on the palm of her hand.

Hartley laughed nervously. Hope’s face wore the rosy blush of youth.

“Are you thinking good thoughts, now?” asked Beth.

“Why do you ask that, Beth?” inquired Hartley gravely.

“Well, when I’m naughty, mother tells me my eyes are unkind. When I’m thinking good things, she can tell. It makes her sorry to have me think naughty thoughts.” Hope tried to silence the child, but the baby prattle was encouraged by Hamlin. “Mother used to cry when she saw your picture, and she wouldn’t let anybody but me wash off the kiss-marks on the glass.”

Hamlin Hartley stood up.

“Is that so, Hope? Did you really care?”

Hope Hartley lowered her head to conceal the beautiful eyes. She had suffered so. She could not surrender lightly.

“Yes,” she said quietly; “once.”

Hamlin stood fumbling with his hat, first looking at Craig and then at me and finally at his beautiful wife.

“Oh, hang it all, Hope, I feel worse than I ever felt in all my life! I know what I want to say—but I've been all kinds of a fool—a cad. I haven't the nerve even to touch you. I only know my eyes have been opened. I'll punch the jaw of the first gossip-monger who breathes a word against you!”

Kennedy had been busy with some glass plates, without a word passing among us and pressing a different glass plate to each forehead. As Hartley paused awkwardly, Kennedy resumed:

“This new agglutinin test has shown that Beth is not the child of Hope Hartley and Bert Halliwell, could not be—but very likely is the child of Hope Hartley and Hamlin Hartley. The little boy we saw with old Mrs. Lafferty is not really Hamlin Hartley's child. He is the child of the dead beauty-culturist and some one else in group three of the blood-test.

“I have made a quick study of these glass plates on which I have forehead-smears of you all. There was a smudge on the glass door of the cabinet where the jewel-case of Louise Lavender was hidden—also, I believe, where she kept her sleeping-powders. It is the smudge where a forehead has been pressed against the glass, looking in. Did you ever know there is a science of poroscopy, the arrangement of the pores? We can tell, without one failure in a billion, whose forehead that was.” Kennedy regarded the pair standing, with the little girl. “Hope Hartley knew that Canby knew she was there,” he added. “At the same time she feared that Hamlin Hartley might have actually done the murder by accident, to get his letters. Hamlin Hartley knew she had been there. He had picked up her script of the picture-play. Canby had seen it. Fearing Hope might have done it, Hartley therefore would not be so vigilant in catching the criminal as he might have been. That made it look darker for him.

“Canby, knowing that he had always a hold over Hartley and Hope both, chose to throw suspicion on Kinsella. The finding of the script, the telephone recognition had been his opportunity—his opportunity for framing his client—cheating on the side.”

Craig paused, then shot out in sharp staccato:

“The forehead-smear is that of Canby, Canby of group three of the blood-test, probable father of the Lavender baby, before Hamlin Hartley ever knew Louise—Canby, crook attorney, in debt, trying to force Louise Lavender into a blackmailing scheme. He killed her because he feared it would become known that he was blackmailing his principal. Louise, influenced by Bert Halliwell, trying to play the game square, at least in some ways, balked at the plot, threatened, perhaps, to tell of what she was being forced into, expose who was the real father of the baby. So Canby killed her—took the jewels to make it look like robbery—anything but what it was!”

Leslie and I were flanking Canby as Warsky came, big-eyed, to Kennedy.

“The offer stands, Kennedy! This will certainly circus the picture!”

“Did you—really fear for me?” Hope had looked up at Hamlin at last.

“I was so afraid I didn't dare talk. I knew you had been there. Before I could hide it—he knew. What about me? Did you”

“Hamlin, I was—wild!”

ENNEDY pushed me toward the door after Leslie and Canby and the rest.

It was one of those beautiful moments on this old earth that make our poor, futile efforts worth while to carry on.

Beth ran suddenly to her father.

“Come, daddy! Come to mother!”

Hope looked at Hartley. The child had breathed new life into their shattered romance.

“Hope, you helped me propose when I was a boy and you were a girl. Just make it a little easy for me now!”

“I am, Hamlin. I have kept your memory—for Beth. She is my little messenger of help for you. The child adores you, worships you—and so could”

I found myself pushed violently through the door as Craig closed it gently. I looked back as it closed and caught just a glimpse of Hope and Hamlin in each other's arms, and Beth holding her mother's skirt with one chubby hand and her father's trousers with the other. Craig nodded to Warsky.

“That's my best fee!”