This is what my wife terms the mystery of the fire-tongs.
I had left the Wells house as soon as I had made the discovery in the night nursery. I carried the candle and the fire-tongs downstairs. I was, apparently, calm but watchful. I would have said that I had never been more calm in my life. I knew quite well that I had the fire-tongs in my hand. Just when I ceased to be cognizant of them was probably when, on entering the library, I found that my overcoat had disappeared, and that my stiff hat, badly broken, lay on the floor. However, as I say, I was still extraordinarily composed. I picked up my hat, and moving to the rear door, went out and closed it. When I reached the street, however, I had only gone a few yards when I discovered that I was still carrying the lighted candle, and that a man, pa.s.sing by, had stopped and was staring after me.
My composure is shown by the fact that I dropped the candle down the next sewer opening, but the fact remains that I carried the fire-tongs home. I do not recall doing so. In fact, I knew nothing of the matter until morning. On the way to my house I was elaborating a story to the effect that my overcoat had been stolen from a restaurant where I and my client had dined. The hat offered more serious difficulties. I fancied that, by kissing my wife good-by at the breakfast table, I might be able to get out without her following me to the front door, which is her custom.
But, as a matter of fact, I need not have concerned myself about the hat. When I descended to breakfast the next morning I found her surveying the umbrella-stand in the hall. The fire-tongs were standing there, gleaming, among my sticks and umbrellas.
I lied. I lied shamelessly. She is a nervous woman, and, as we have no children, her att.i.tude toward me is one of watchful waiting. Through long years she has expected me to commit some indiscretion--innocent, of course, such as going out without my overcoat on a cool day--and she intends to be on hand for every emergency. I dared not confess, therefore, that on the previous evening I had burglariously entered a closed house, had there surprised another intruder at work, had fallen and b.u.mped my head severely, and had, finally, had my overcoat taken.
"Horace," she said coldly, "where did you get those fire-tongs?"
"Fire-tongs?" I repeated. "Why, that"s so. They are fire-tongs."
"Where did you get them?"
"My dear," I expostulated, "I get them?"
"What I would like to ask," she said, with an icy calmness that I have learned to dread, "is whether you carried them home over your head, under the impression that you had your umbrella."
"Certainly not," I said with dignity. "I a.s.sure you, my dear--"
"I am not a curious woman," she put in incisively, "but when my husband spends an evening out, and returns minus his overcoat, with his hat mashed, a lump the size of an egg over his ear, and puts a pair of fire-tongs in the umbrella stand under the impression that it is an umbrella, I have a right to ask at least if he intends to continue his life of debauchery."
I made a mistake then. I should have told her. Instead, I took my broken hat and jammed it on my head with a force that made the lump she had noticed jump like a toothache, and went out.
When, at noon and luncheon, I tried to tell her the truth, she listened to the end: Then: "I should think you could have done better than that,"
she said. "You have had all morning to think it out."
However, if things were in a state of armed neutrality at home, I had a certain compensation for them when I told my story to Sperry that afternoon.
"You see how it is," I finished. "You can stay out of this, or come in, Sperry, but I cannot stop now. He was murdered beyond a doubt, and there is an intelligent effort being made to eliminate every particle of evidence."
He nodded.
"It looks like it. And this man who was there last night--"
"Why a man?"
"He took your overcoat, instead of his own, didn"t he? It may have been--it"s curious, isn"t it, that we"ve had no suggestion of Ellingham in all the rest of the material."
Like the other members of the Neighborhood Club, he had a copy of the proceedings at the two seances, and now he brought them out and fell to studying them.
"She was right about the bullet in the ceiling," he reflected. "I suppose you didn"t look for the box of sh.e.l.ls for the revolver?"
"I meant to, but it slipped my mind."
He shuffled the loose pages of the record. "Cane--washed away by the water--a knee that is hurt--the curtain would have been safer --Hawkins--the drawing-room furniture is all over the house. That last, Horace, isn"t pertinent. It refers clearly to the room we were in. Of course, the point is, how much of the rest is also extraneous matter?"
He re-read one of the sheets. "Of course that belongs, about Hawkins.
And probably this: "It will be terrible if the letters are found." They were in the pocketbook, presumably."
He folded up the papers and replaced them in a drawer.
"We"d better go back to the house," he said. "Whoever took your overcoat by mistake probably left one. The difficulty is, of course, that he probably discovered his error and went back again last night. Confound it, man, if you had thought of that at the time, we would have something to go on today."
"If I had thought of a number of things I"d have stayed out of the place altogether," I retorted tartly. "I wish you could help me about the fire-tongs, Sperry. I don"t seem able to think of any explanation that Mrs. Johnson would be willing to accept."
"Tell her the truth."
"I don"t think you understand," I explained. "She simply wouldn"t believe it. And if she did I should have to agree to drop the investigation. As a matter of fact, Sperry, I had resorted to subterfuge in order to remain out last evening, and I am bitterly regretting my mendacity."
But Sperry has, I am afraid, rather loose ideas.
"Every man," he said, "would rather tell the truth, but every woman makes it necessary to lie to her. Forget the fire-tongs, Horace, and forget Mrs. Johnson to-night. He may not have dared to go back in day-light for his overcoat."
"Very well," I agreed.
But it was not very well, and I knew it. I felt that, in a way, my whole domestic happiness was at stake. My wife is a difficult person to argue with, and as tenacious of an opinion once formed as are all very amiable people. However, unfortunately for our investigation, but luckily for me, under the circ.u.mstances, Sperry was called to another city that afternoon and did not return for two days.
It was, it will be recalled, on the Thursday night following the second sitting that I had gone alone to the Wells house, and my interview with Sperry was on Friday. It was on Friday afternoon that I received a telephone message from Mrs. Dane.
It was actually from her secretary, the Clara who had recorded the seances. It was Mrs. Dane"s misfortune to be almost entirely dependent on the various young women who, one after the other, were employed to look after her. I say "one after the other" advisedly. It had long been a matter of good-natured jesting in the Neighborhood Club that Mrs. Dane conducted a matrimonial bureau, as one young woman after another was married from her house. It was her kindly habit, on such occasions, to give the bride a wedding, and only a month before it had been my privilege to give away in holy wedlock Miss Clara"s predecessor.
"Mrs. Dane would like you to stop in and have a cup of tea with her this afternoon, Mr. Johnson," said the secretary.
"At what time?"
"At four o"clock."
I hesitated. I felt that my wife was waiting at home for further explanation of the coal-tongs, and that the sooner we had it out the better. But, on the other hand, Mrs. Dane"s invitations, by reason of her infirmity, took on something of the nature of commands.
"Please say that I will be there at four," I replied.
I bought a new hat that afternoon, and told the clerk to destroy the old one. Then I went to Mrs. Dane"s.
She was in the drawing-room, now restored to its usual clutter of furniture and ornaments. I made my way around two tables, stepped over a ha.s.sock and under the leaves of an artificial palm, and shook her hand.
She was plainly excited. Never have I known a woman who, confined to a wheel-chair, lived so hard. She did not allow life to pa.s.s her windows, if I may put it that way. She called it in, and set it moving about her chair, herself the nucleus around which were enacted all sorts of small neighborhood dramas and romances. Her secretaries did not marry. She married them.
It is curious to look back and remember how Herbert and Sperry and myself had ignored this quality in her, in the Wells case. She was not to be ignored, as I discovered that afternoon.
"Sit down," she said. "You look half sick, Horace."
Nothing escapes her eyes, so I was careful to place myself with the lump on my head turned away from her. But I fancy she saw it, for her eyes twinkled.
"Horace! Horace!" she said. "How I have detested you all week!"
"I? You detested me?"