Читать книгу The Millbank Case: A Maine Mystery of To-day - George Dyre Eldridge - Страница 6

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TRAFFORD sat in his room in the hotel at Bangor the next evening and studied the copy of Judge Parlin’s statement.

“Her brilliancy of mind has carried her far,” he said; “has aided her husband politically; and it was this influence that defeated him for the chief justiceship. It’s so easy that I can’t believe the solution. By George! I wonder if the old judge ever wrote that paper? I wish I’d examined the original more critically. If I’d been one of your inspired detectives, such as you find in novels, I’d probably have caught a forgery the first thing!”

None the less, he put himself to the task of untangling the threads of the statement, with a result that set him to deep thinking. Bangor was not the direction from which had come opposition to the judge’s nomination. On the contrary, Judge Parlin had been rather a favourite than otherwise in Bangor, and his cause had received substantial aid. But the statement did not assert that Wing’s mother had remained in Bangor, or that it was there that she aided her husband politically. The most hostile influence that Judge Parlin had encountered was popularly credited to an ex-Governor, Matthewson, an Eastern Maine man, who at present held no office, but without whose countenance few men ventured even to aspire to office.

“If it should prove that Matthewson’s wife is a Bangor woman, ’twould be so easy as to be absurd,” Trafford mused. “The old judge wasn’t silly enough to believe that what he wrote could conceal her identity. Either he meant it should be known to Wing or Mrs. Parlin, or—but what possible object could there be in forging such a paper?”

Suddenly he sat bolt upright and stared at the document in blank amazement. Then, with a low whistle, he folded it into his pocketbook.

“I’ll find Mrs. Matthewson Bangor-born, I’ll bet ten cents to a leather button!” he declared.

Whatever had brought Trafford to this sudden conclusion, it proved absolutely correct, and the details given of her brilliance and her aid to her husband fitted exactly to the character of the woman. This fact naturally raised the question, was it safe to go farther and, if so, how much farther? Mrs. Matthewson at least had been put on her guard by the published statement, and she was not a woman to remain in ignorance of any steps taken in consequence of that statement, or of the man who took them. The family was powerful and not credited with scrupulosity as to means employed to ends. On the other hand, it was manifest that if there was such an episode in her past, her husband was ignorant of it and she would stop at nothing to keep him so. The secret might be dangerous, but it might be valuable as well.

Beyond this, however, was the joy of the chase, which is absent from no man and least of all from the trained detective. There was a problem to solve, and, danger or no danger, it was as impossible for Trafford to refuse to solve it as to refuse to breathe. Whatever use he was or was not to make of it, he would know the truth.

He was not, however, so intent upon this one feature of the case as to neglect Jim Shepard. The second day, he slipped over to Portland and found that young countryman at work and exceedingly homesick in what was, to his narrow experience, a great city. Finding that Trafford knew Millbank, he threw his heart open to him and talked as freely as he would to Oldbeg himself. Trafford let him talk. There was a flood of irrelevant matter, but the detective’s experience was too broad for him to decide in advance what might and what might not be valuable. On the whole, however, it was a dreary waste, until he touched on the night he left Millbank.

“I wasn’t the only feller,” he said; “that nigh missed that train. Jest as ’twas startin’, a feller rushed out from behind Pettingill’s ’tater storehouse and caught the front end of the car. I thought he was goin’ to miss an’ I swung back to see him drop off; but he clung like a good one an’ finally got his foot on the step. I tell you, he was nigh clean tuckered out when he came into the car, fur he was a swell an’ warn’t used to using his arms that-a-way.”

“Queer place for him to come from,” said the other.

“Wall, ye see, if he’d come from Somerset Street way an’ out through ’tween Neil’s store and the post-office, he’d ’a’ come out jest thar; but he’d ’a’ had to know the lay o’ the land to done it. Ef he’d ben a stranger, he couldn’t help missing it an’ not half try.”

“But you say he was a stranger and a swell,” Trafford suggested.

“He was a swell, fast enough. City rig; kid gloves—one on ’em bust, hangin’ on to the rail, and got up in go-to-meetin’ style; but he must ’a’ knowed the way. He’d ben thar before, you bet!”

“You seem to have got a pretty good look at him.”

“Wall, ye see he took the seat two in front o’ me, and every time I woke up—say, them air seats hain’t made to sleep comfortable in, be they—thar he was, till all of a sudden I woke up an’ he warn’t thar.”

“Then you don’t know where he got off,” Trafford said, keeping the disappointment out of his voice.

“No. Ye see, when we pulled out of ’Gusta, he was thar, an’ I didn’t wake up ag’in till we got to Brunswick, an’ he warn’t thar. I meant to see whar he went to, but arter ’Gusta, I guessed he must be from Portland and that’s whar I got left.”

“I suppose you hear from Millbank—from Oldbeg, for instance.”

“Wall,” he said, blushing a fiery red, “Jonathan hain’t no great hand to write: but I du hear sometimes. Say, du you s’pose a body could ’a’ heerd that thar shot from Parlin’s house down onto Canaan Street?”

“I don’t know,” said the detective carelessly, hiding his eagerness. “A still night, it might be; why?”

“’Cause, a letter I got says that thar night she’d jest got to sleep when she woke up sudden, as if she’d heerd so’thing like a shot. She got up, but didn’t hear nothin’ more an’ so went back to bed. But the next mornin’ she guessed ’twas the shot she heerd from Parlin’s.”

“Did she say what time it was?”

“Nope: only she’d ben asleep about half a hour, an’ thet night she didn’t get to bed ’fore twelve o’clock. Fact, I guess she didn’t go till she heerd the train leave.”

“But about this swell,” Trafford interposed. “Would you know him again if you saw him?”

“I guess I would; leastwise ef I could see the top of his head. He took his hat off, an’ thar was the funniest little bald spot, jest the shape of a heart. ’Twas funny, an’ he warn’t more’n thirty years old. Say, when he gets to be fifty, he won’t hev no more hair’n I’ve got on the back o’ my hand.”

The next afternoon, a card was brought to Charles Matthewson, Esq., in his inner office in Augusta, and on the card he read, printed in small square letters:

“ISAAC TRAFFORD.”

“What in thunder does Trafford want of me?” he asked himself. “He can’t possibly know!”

He sat and looked at the card, while the boy waited and finally coughed to remind him he was still there. Matthewson looked up with a puzzled air. Evidently he did not care to see the man whose name was on the card, and as evidently he did not dare refuse him. Finally he said:

“Show him in in five minutes.”

When Trafford entered, in the very act of bowing, he cast a quick glance at the top of Matthewson’s head. There was the odd bald spot, shaped, as Jim Shepard had said, “Jest like a heart.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Trafford?” Matthewson asked, with the air of a busy man.

“I want about ten minutes’ talk with you,” the detective answered, drawing a chair close to the desk.

“Professional?”

“Yes;—my profession.”

The lawyer started. He was provoked with himself for doing so, but it was beyond his control. Trafford was not a man with whom it was comfortable to talk professionally—that is, from the standpoint of his profession.

“Well, be quick about it, then. I’m busy, and it’ll be a favour to cut it as short as you can.”

“You were in Millbank the evening of the tenth.”

“Well, you are short and to the point. Suppose I was?”

“What were you there for?”

“None of your business.”

Trafford chuckled. He was getting on. It was just the answer he expected.

“Now let’s stick right to the point, as you wanted me to. If I have to whip round to get to it again, you mustn’t blame me.”

“Come, Mr. Trafford; you can’t deal with every one the same way. If you want to find out anything from me, you mustn’t go at it as if I was a country bumpkin whom your very name would scare.”

“Bless you, I don’t,” said Trafford. “Now if you were a country bumpkin, as you are pleased to put it, I’d lead up to the matter gently and so have it all out of you before you knew what I was at. Not being a country bumpkin, I come at you fair and square to save your time and mine too. What were you doing in Millbank on the evening of the tenth? You weren’t at any of the hotels. You weren’t seen by any of the men who were likely to see you.”

“So you’ve peddled it all over Millbank that I was there that night, have you?” demanded the other, angrily.

Trafford looked at him with a mixture of amusement and spleen. At last he answered:

“That isn’t the way I do my work. I don’t need to give away what I know to find out what other folks know. There’s nobody in Millbank any the wiser for the enquiries I’ve made.”

“Well, if you know so much and are so cunning, you know that I got there at eight o’clock and left at midnight——”

“Dropping off at the Bridge stop before the train crossed the river, and swinging on to the front end of the second car as the train was pulling out of the station, coming out of the shadow of Pettingill’s potato warehouse to do so, so as not to be seen and recognized,” Trafford continued.

The first part was a shrewd guess, but evidently it hit the mark, for the lawyer wheeled about and faced him before saying:

“The devil! To what am I indebted for such close surveillance?”

“Well,” drawled Trafford, with an irritating air of indifference, that he could at times assume, “perhaps you don’t know that a matter of some importance happened in Millbank that night and has led to our looking up all the strangers that were in town, especially those who did not seem to want to be seen.”

“You refer, of course, to the Wing murder.”

“I refer, of course, to the Wing murder.”

“I regret Mr. Wing’s tragic death,” said the lawyer coldly; “and especially deplore the commission of such a crime. At the same time, I don’t think it as important as Millbank naturally thinks it, and I imagine the State will manage to wag along in spite of the great loss it has sustained.”

It was not so much the words, ill-timed and out-of-taste as they were, as the air with which they were uttered, that constituted their significance. It was as if in the mind that originated them there was a lurking bitterness, that the speaker would willingly conceal, which yet was so intense that it must find vent. There was a cruel hardness in the tone that made the words themselves all but meaningless. Was it possible, Trafford asked himself, that the man was able to read the meaning of Judge Parlin’s story and knew that Wing was his half-brother? He dismissed the question with the asking, satisfied that something of which he was still ignorant was at the foundation of this outbreak. It was to be a question of the comparative shrewdness of the two men, whether he still remained ignorant when the interview closed.

“You certainly don’t suppose that I shot Millbank’s leading citizen, do you?” the lawyer demanded, after a moment’s pause. It was, perhaps, an effort to recover what the lawyer could not fail to see that he had lost.

“On the contrary, I’ve every reason to believe that he was still alive when you left town, and I still further believe that your visit had nothing to do, remotely or directly, with his death.”

What was that odd flash that passed over the other’s face as Trafford said these last words? Seemingly, Trafford was not looking at the other’s face at the moment and it might have escaped him. Still, he would have been interested if he had seen it.

“Thanks: but, in that event, what are you here for?”

“I can’t let my beliefs or disbeliefs interfere with my investigation of facts. Here is something most unusual occurring, almost at the moment of the murder. It don’t make any difference whether I believe it has anything to do with it or not. It’s my business to know, and that’s what I’m here to do.”

“And if I say I’ve nothing to tell you?”

“The coroner’s enquiry will be public, while mine may remain private.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I simply want your assurance that your visit to Millbank had nothing to do, directly or remotely, with Theodore Wing.”

“I can’t see what value such an assurance can have. If I went there to hire somebody to shoot him, I should, of course, not hesitate to give you the assurance—and probably you wouldn’t fail to find out the truth of the matter inside a week.”

“That’s my business,” said Trafford. “If I’m content with your assurance, I don’t see why you should object to my being.”

“Because there’s no certainty you’ll remain content with it. It’s one of those things where you could come back to-morrow with ‘newly discovered testimony’ that would upset the whole agreement.”

“Oh, as for that,” said Trafford, “I propose to agree to nothing. As matters stand, the inquest ’ll go on within a day or two. I know you were in Millbank the night of the murder, and with no assurance from any one that your visit had nothing to do with the murder, I’m compelled, absolutely compelled, to ask the coroner to summons you. On the other hand, if I’m satisfied, there’s no reason for me to tell any one that I know you were there, and nothing to induce the coroner to summons you. At the same time, I don’t agree to anything as to the future. That must depend upon facts, and you know better than I do now whether there are any that would call for you.”

“Humph!” grunted Matthewson; “then it’s this: I assure you what you ask and I’m not to be summoned until you see fit to summon me, and if I don’t, you see fit to summon me at once.”

“That’s about it,” assented Trafford.

Matthewson sat for a few minutes thinking, and Trafford sat watching him. He was tall and slim, with a rather prepossessing face—well-dressed, in fact, a “swell,” as Jim Shepard had said. His face was far from a dull one. His mother had evidently given him something of her personality. Yet, a man less on his guard against impressions than the detective might find something in his face that he did not like,—a look of cunning lurking in the half-closed eyes, a want of feeling in the lines of the mouth. He was a man who would go far to accomplish his ends, but would not be willingly cruel, perhaps because he could not understand that to be cruel which was for his own interest. Yet, what of a fight that involved life and honour? Trafford at least knew that it is only then that the hidden forces come to the surface and the man himself stands complete. Suddenly Matthewson turned, and with a side glance at the waiting detective said:

“I assure you that my visit to Millbank had nothing to do directly or indirectly with Mr. Wing’s death.”

“That’s all I want,” the detective said.

“I gave him credit for being sharper than that,” Matthewson said to himself, as the door closed behind his visitor.

“Now I’ve got to find out,” Trafford noted, “how that visit did concern Wing. I’ll test Matthewson’s conclusion before I accept it.”