"Is Mrs. Bowen coming over?"
"Yes, sir, and here she comes now."
The minister"s wife came hurrying into the room, and stared at the detective.
"You sent for me, Mr. Stone? I don"t know anything--about----"
"Nothing that seems to you important, perhaps. But, please, answer a few simple questions. Did Mrs. Pell wear lace frills at her wrists and throat at dinner that Sunday you were here? I"ve asked Miss Clyde, and she can"t remember."
"Yes, sir, she did. I recollect I had never seen her wearing such full and elaborate ones before."
"Did you notice anything else peculiar about her attire?"
"Only a spot of blood on the instep of her white stocking."
"Did you make any mention of it?"
"No; I thought at the time a mosquito had bitten her. But afterward I heard it remarked at the inquest that her ankles had been tied and cut by cords until they bled a little. I can"t see how that could have happened before dinner."
"That"s just when it did happen. I think, my friends, that I will now tell you what I am positive is the truth of this matter, though it will at first seem to you incredible. Will you let me reconstruct the whole day, as far as I can. Mrs. Pell was on her verandah, when her niece and her servants went to church. Soon after Winston Bannard came. They went into Mrs. Pell"s sitting room, and she willingly gave her nephew a check for a large amount. Bannard went away, leaving behind a half-burned cigarette, but nothing else that we know of. Immediately came Charlie Young. He entered Mrs. Pell"s sitting room, and found her there alone.
The house doors were all open. He demanded the pin, and, he threatened her and finally he used rough treatment. He cut out her pocket in his desperate determination to secure the pin and the receipt, which later he found in the old pocket-book.
"He tied her in a chair, that he might better make undisturbed search, and finally went away, taking with him the cords with which he had bound her, the receipt and such moneys as he had found about the room, and leaving behind his New York paper. Then, left bruised and hurt, Mrs.
Pell, instead of following the procedure of the usual woman, pulled herself together, and, angry and indignant, told no one of her awful experience, but attended the dinner table and entertained her guests as if nothing untoward had occurred. She did not change her gown but she added wrist frills to conceal her bruises, and she doubtless failed to notice the stain on her stocking.
"Then, after dinner, after the guests departed and Miss Clyde had gone to her own room, Mrs. Pell went into her sitting room, to rest and perhaps to plan vengeance on her a.s.sailant. But weak from shock, perhaps ill and dizzied, she stumbled over that long cord that is attached to the table lamp, upset lamp and table, and herself fell and hit her head on the fender. Doubtless she herself pulled open the neck of her gown as she gasped her last. She called out for help, and cried "Thieves!" in a dazed remembrance of the attack that had been made on her by the thief.
She locked the door, of course, when she first entered the room. I"m told that was her invariable custom of a Sunday afternoon. Then, after the poor lady screamed out with her dying breath, the servants came and were forced to break in the door to effect an entrance."
"That"s it, all right, and it all checks up," said Fibsy, solemnly.
"Cause why? Cause there ain"t any other explanation that"ll fit all the circ.u.mstances."
Nor was there. It did all check up. Further evidence was sought and found. Witnesses proved the truth of Bannard"s declarations. Sam identified Young as the man he had seen prowling round in the woods that morning, and everything fitted in like the pieces of a picture puzzle.
There was no way for a murderer to escape from that locked room, because there was no murderer and had been no murder. Young"s was not a murderous a.s.sault, though it was enough to earn him his well-deserved punishment, and the fact that the servants heard the crash of the overset table and lamp proved that it had not happened at the time of Young"s visit.
No one had chanced to enter Mrs. Pell"s sitting-room between the call of Young and the breaking in of the door, so the ransacked desk and the opened safe were not discovered.
What had been taken from the safe they never knew, for Young declared there was nothing in it, and they partially believed him.
But the jewels which were found buried between the graves of Ursula Pell"s parents, Elmer and Emily Pell, were of sufficient value to make it a matter of little moment what was stolen from the safe.
And Winston Bannard was set free and came home in triumph to the smiling girl awaiting him.
Only Fleming Stone knew that Win Bannard had been so evasive and taciturn regarding himself because he feared that if he were freed Iris might be suspected.
He gave Iris the glory of bringing about his release, and though she disclaimed it, she whispered to him, "I said I would win for Win! The only thing that bothered me was that note seemingly in your writing, though disguised."
"I know," said Bannard, "and I knew somebody did that to make it seem like me, but I couldn"t think who the villain could be."
"It was all a mighty close squeak," Fibsy said, thoughtfully. "I believe the keynote was struck when Sam told me he had dropped the "pinny-pin in the colole! If he hadn"t we never would have got anywhere!"
"We wouldn"t have then," said Stone, generously, "if Fibsy hadn"t grubbed in the "colole" for the pinny-pin."
"And found it!" chimed in Bannard. "In recognition of which one Terence Maguire, Esquire, shall receive, shortly, one diamond pin!"
"Aw, shucks!" said Fibsy, greatly embarra.s.sed at the praise heaped upon him; "but," he added, "I"d like it a heap!"
And he did.