So it was, that, when I left the house a half hour later, I was committed. I had been commissioned by the girl I loved--for it had come to that--to clear her lover of her father"s murder, and so give him back to her--not in so many words, but I was to follow up the crime, and the rest followed. And I was morally certain of two things--first, that her lover was not worthy of her, and second, and more to the point, that innocent or guilty, he was indirectly implicated in the crime.
I had promised her also to see Miss Let.i.tia that day if I could, and I turned over the events of the preceding night as I walked toward the station, but I made nothing of them. One thing occurred to me, however.
Bella had told Margery that I had been up all night. Could Bella--? But I dismissed the thought as absurd--Bella, who had scuttled to bed in a panic of fright, would never have dared the lower floor alone, and Bella, given all the courage in the world, could never have moved with the swiftness and light certainty of my midnight prowler. It had not been Bella.
But after all I did not go to Bellwood. I met Hunter on my way to the station, and he turned around and walked with me.
"So you"ve lain down on the case!" I said, when we had gone a few steps without speaking.
He grumbled something unintelligible and probably unrepeatable.
"Of course," I persisted, "being a simple and uncomplicated case of suicide, there was nothing in it anyhow. If it had been a murder, under peculiar circ.u.mstances--"
He stopped and gripped my arm.
"For ten cents," he said gravely, "I would tell the chief and a few others what I think of them. And then I"d go out and get full."
"Not on ten cents!"
"I"m going out of the business," he stormed. "I"m going to drive a garbage wagon: it"s cleaner than this job. Suicide! I never saw a cleaner case of--" He stopped suddenly. "Do you know Burton--of the _Times-Post_?"
"No: I"ve heard of him."
"Well, he"s your man. They"re dead against the ring, and Burton"s been given the case. He"s as sharp as a steel trap. You two get together."
He paused at a corner. "Good-by," he said dejectedly. "I"m off to hunt some boys that have been stealing milk bottles. That"s about my size, these days." He turned around, however, before he had gone many steps and came back.
"Wardrop has been missing since yesterday afternoon," he said. "That is, he thinks he"s missing. We"ve got him all right."
I gave up my Bellwood visit for the time, and taking a car down-town, I went to the _Times-Post_ office. The Monday morning edition was already under way, as far as the staff was concerned, and from the waiting-room I could see three or four men, with their hats on, most of them rattling typewriters. Burton came in in a moment, a red-haired young fellow, with a short thick nose and a muggy skin. He was rather stocky in build, and the pugnacity of his features did not hide the shrewdness of his eyes.
I introduced myself, and at my name his perfunctory manner changed.
"Knox!" he said. "I called you last night over the "phone."
"Can"t we talk in a more private place?" I asked, trying to raise my voice above the confusion of the next room. In reply he took me into a tiny office, containing a desk and two chairs, and separated by an eight-foot part.i.tion from the other room.
"This is the best we have," he explained cheerfully. "Newspapers are agents of publicity, not privacy--if you don"t care what you say."
I liked Burton. There was something genuine about him; after Wardrop"s kid-glove finish, he was a relief.
"Hunter, of the detective bureau, sent me here," I proceeded, "about the Fleming case."
He took out his note-book. "You are the fourth to-day," he said. "Hunter himself, Lightfoot from Plattsburg, and McFeely here in town. Well, Mr.
Knox, are you willing now to put yourself on record that Fleming committed suicide?"
"No," I said firmly. "It is my belief that he was murdered."
"And that the secretary fellow, what"s his name?--Wardrop?--that he killed him?"
"Possibly."
In reply Burton fumbled in his pocket and brought up a pasteboard box, filled with jeweler"s cotton. Underneath was a small object, which he pa.s.sed to me with care.
"I got it from the coroner"s physician, who performed the autopsy," he said casually. "You will notice that it is a thirty-two, and that the revolver they took from Wardrop was a thirty-eight. Question, where"s the other gun?"
I gave him back the bullet, and he rolled it around on the palm of his hand.
"Little thing, isn"t it?" he said. "We think we"re lords of creation, until we see a quarter-inch bichloride tablet, or a bit of lead like this. Look here." He dived into his pocket again and drew out a roll of ordinary brown paper. When he opened it a bit of white chalk fell on the desk.
"Look at that," he said dramatically. "Kill an army with it, and they"d never know what struck them. Cyanide of pota.s.sium--and the druggist that sold it ought to be choked."
"Where did it come from?" I asked curiously. Burton smiled his cheerful smile.
"It"s a beautiful case, all around," he said, as he got his hat. "I haven"t had any Sunday dinner yet, and it"s five o"clock. Oh--the cyanide? Clarkson, the cashier of the bank Fleming ruined, took a bite off that corner right there, this morning."
"Clarkson!" I exclaimed. "How is he?"
"G.o.d only knows," said Burton gravely, from which I took it Clarkson was dead.
CHAPTER XIII
SIZZLING METAL
Burton listened while he ate, and his cheerful comments were welcome enough after the depression of the last few days. I told him, after some hesitation, the whole thing, beginning with the Maitland pearls and ending with my drop down the dumb-waiter. I knew I was absolutely safe in doing so: there is no person to whom I would rather tell a secret than a newspaper man. He will go out of his way to keep it: he will lock it in the depths of his bosom, and keep it until seventy times seven.
Also, you may threaten the rack or offer a larger salary, the seal does not come off his lips until the word is given. If then he makes a scarehead of it, and gets in three columns of s.p.a.ce and as many photographs, it is his just reward.
So--I told Burton everything, and he ate enough beefsteak for two men, and missed not a word I said.
"The money Wardrop had in the grip--that"s easy enough explained," he said. "Fleming used the Borough Bank to deposit state funds in. He must have known it was rotten: he and Clarkson were as thick as thieves.
According to a time-honored custom in our land of the brave and home of the free, a state treasurer who is crooked can, in such a case, draw on such a bank without security, on his personal note, which is usually worth its value by the pound as old paper."
"And Fleming did that?"
"He did. Then things got bad at the Borough Bank. Fleming had had to divide with Schwartz and the Lord only knows who all, but it was Fleming who had to put in the money to avert a crash--the word crash being synonymous with scandal in this case. He sc.r.a.pes together a paltry hundred thousand, which Wardrop gets at the capital, and brings on.
Wardrop is robbed, or says he is: the bank collapses and Clarkson, driven to the wall, kills himself, just after Fleming is murdered. What does that sound like?"
"Like Clarkson!" I exclaimed. "And Clarkson knew Fleming was hiding at the White Cat!"
"Now, then, take the other theory," he said, pushing aside his cup.
"Wardrop goes in to Fleming with a story that he has been robbed: Fleming gets crazy and attacks him. All that is in the morning--Friday.
Now, then--Wardrop goes back there that night. Within twenty minutes after he enters the club he rushes out, and when Hunter follows him, he says he is looking for a doctor, to get cocaine for a gentleman up-stairs. He is white and trembling. They go back together, and find you there, and Fleming dead. Wardrop tells two stories: first he says Fleming committed suicide just before he left. Then he changes it and says he was dead when he arrived there. He produces the weapon with which Fleming is supposed to have killed himself, and which, by the way, Miss Fleming identified yesterday as her father"s. But there are two discrepancies. Wardrop practically admitted that he had taken that revolver from Fleming, not that night, but the morning before, during the quarrel."
"And the other discrepancy?"
"The bullet. n.o.body ever fired a thirty-two bullet out of a thirty-eight caliber revolver--unless he was trying to shoot a double-compound curve. Now, then, who does it look like?"