Читать книгу MYSTERY & CRIME COLLECTION - Hay James - Страница 16

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Mr. Fulton's arms trembled as he put his hands on the arms of a chair and seated himself with the deliberateness of his years. In his face the lines were still deep, and once or twice his mouth twisted as if with actual pain, but there was in his eyes the flame of an indomitable will. He was by no means a crushed and weak old man. Neither the terrific blow of his daughter's death nor the reverses he had suffered in his business affairs had broken him.

"What I have to say," he began, looking first at Braceway and then at Bristow, "is not a pleasant story, but it has to be told."

His low-pitched, modulated voice was clear and without a tremor. His glance at the two men gave them the impression that he paid them a certain tribute.

"Both of you," he continued, "are gentlemen. Mr. Braceway, you're a personal friend of my son-in-law. Mr. Bristow, I know you will respect my confidence, in so far as it can be respected."

They both bowed assent. At the same moment the telephone rang. Bristow excused himself and answered it. The chief of police was on the wire.

"It's all over!" his voice sounded jubilantly. "It's all over, and I want you to congratulate me, congratulate me and yourself. It was quick work."

"What do you mean?" queried Bristow.

"The inquest is over. The coroner's jury found that Mrs. Withers came to her death at the hands of Perry Carpenter."

"And you're satisfied?"

"Sure, I'm satisfied! We've found the guilty man, and he's under lock and key. What more do I want? I'll tell you what, I'll be up to have dinner with you in a little while. I invite myself," this with a chuckle. "You and I will have a little celebration dinner. It is a go?"

"By all means. I'll be delighted to have you, and I want to hear all about the inquest."

Bristow went back to the porch.

"That," he told them, "was a message from the chief of police. He says the coroner's jury has held the negro, Perry Carpenter, for the crime."

Mr. Fulton moved forward in his chair, his hands clutching the arms of it tightly.

"I'll never believe it, never!" he declared, evidently indignant. "Nothing will ever persuade me that Enid, Mrs. Withers, met her death at the hands of an ordinary negro burglar."

"What makes you so positive of that?" Bristow asked curiously.

"Because of what has happened in the past," Fulton replied with emphasis. "I was about to tell you. This man none of you have been able to find, this man with the gold tooth, has been in Enid's life for a good many years. I don't understand why you haven't found him; I really don't."

"We haven't had two whole days to work on this case yet," Bristow reminded him politely. "Many developments may arise."

"I hope so; I hope so," he said sharply. "That man must be found."

"One moment," Braceway put in with characteristic quickness; "how do you know he's been in your daughter's life, Mr. Fulton?"

"That goes back to the beginning of my story." He looked out across the trees and roofs of the town toward the mountains.

"Enid was always my favourite daughter. I suppose it's a mistake to distinguish between one's children, to favour one beyond the other. But she was just that—my favourite daughter—always. She had a dash, a spirit, a joyous soul. Years ago I saw that she would develop into a fascinating womanhood.

"Nothing disturbed me until she was nineteen. Then she fell in love. It was while she was spending a summer at Hot Springs, Virginia. The trouble was not in her falling in love. It was that she never told me the name of the man she loved." He leaned back again and sighed. "She never did tell me. I never knew.

"I never knew, because, when she was twenty, she came to me with the unexpected announcement that she was going to marry George Withers. I was surprised. She was not the kind to change in her likes and dislikes. And I knew Withers was not the man she had originally loved. Nevertheless, I asked her no questions, and she was married to Withers when she was barely twenty-one.

"A year later, approximately four years ago, she and my other daughter, Maria, spent six weeks at Atlantic City in the early spring. It was there that she got into trouble. I could detect it in her letters. Some tremendous sorrow or difficulty had overtaken her, and she was fighting it alone.

"Her husband was not with her. I wrote to Maria asking her to investigate quietly, to report to me whether there was anything I could do.

"Maria's report was unsatisfactory. She knew Enid was distressed and was giving away or risking in some manner large amounts of money—even pawning her jewelry, jewelry which I had given her and which she prized above everything else. The whole thing was a mystery, Maria wrote. The very next mail I received a letter from Enid asking me to lend her two thousand dollars.

"She made no pretence of explaining why she wanted it. She didn't have to explain. I was a rich man at that time, comparatively speaking, and she knew I would give her the money.

"I mailed her a check for two thousand, but on the train which carried the check I sent a private detective—not to make any arrests, you understand, not to raise any row or start any scandal. I merely wanted to find out what or who troubled her. Women, you know, particularly good women, are prone to fall into the hands of unscrupulous people.

"Four days later the detective reported to me, but it was of no special value. He couldn't tell me where the two thousand had gone. If Enid had paid it to a man or a woman, the fellow had missed seeing the transaction. With the description of the jewels I had given him, however, he made a round of the pawnshops in Atlantic City and learned that all of them had been pawned—for a total of seven thousand."

"Pawned by whom—herself?" asked Bristow.

"No. They were pawned in different shops by a man with a gold tooth and a thick, chestnut-brown beard."

"No wonder you doubt the negro's guilt!" exclaimed Braceway.

"Excuse me," put in Bristow quickly, "but did you ever mention this to Mr. Withers?"

"Certainly, not," Fulton answered. "I never told it to a living soul. And as my inquiries had netted me practically nothing, I was obliged to let the matter drop. It was bad enough for me to have interfered with her, my daughter and a married woman, in the hope of helping her. Most assuredly, I could not have distressed her, degraded her, by telling her a detective had been investigating her."

"And that was the end of it?" asked Braceway.

"Not quite. She went back to Atlanta. Withers wanted to know where her jewels were. She wrote to me in an agony of fear and sorrow, asking me to redeem the jewels. I did it. I went to Atlantic City myself. She had sent me the tickets. It cost me seven thousand dollars."

"That was four years ago?" Braceway continued the inquiry.

"Yes."

"Did Miss Maria Fulton at that time know Henry Morley?"

"No; I think not. I think Morley's been a friend of hers for about three years."

The three were silent, each busy with the same thought: that Morley was being blamed for a series of acts at this time which duplicated what had happened four years ago when he was unknown to the Fulton family, with this distinction, that this last time murder had been added to the blackmail or whatever it was. And the theory of his guilt was weakened.

"Mr. Withers has told me," Bristow said, "that there was a repetition of the pawning of the jewels in Washington about a year ago."

"That's true," confirmed Fulton. "But on that occasion I knew nothing of what had happened until Enid came to me, again with the request that I redeem the jewelry. Her husband had arrived in Washington unexpectedly, precipitating the crisis. I gave her the money. The sum this time was eight thousand dollars."

"And that ended it, Mr. Fulton?"

The old man looked out again toward the mountains as if he sought to gain some of their serenity.

"No. That time I asked her what troubled her. I explained that I would blame her for nothing, that I only wanted to help her, to give her comfort. But she wouldn't tell me anything. She declared that nobody could help her and that, anyway, there would never be a repetition of the extortion.

"She wept bitterly—I can hear her weeping now—and she begged me to believe that she had been guilty of nothing—nothing criminal or immoral. I told her I could never believe that of her.

"'It doesn't affect me alone. I'll have to fight it out the best way I can,' was all the explanation she could bring herself to give me. The one fact she revealed was that the man concerned in the Atlantic City affair had also been responsible for her trouble in Washington."

Bristow, absorbed in every word of the story, recollected at once that Mrs. Allen had received the same explanation when she had tried to comfort Mrs. Withers.

"By George!" said Braceway, his voice a little husky. "She was game all right—game to the finish."

"I think," said Fulton, relaxing suddenly so that his whole form seemed to sag and grow weak, "that's all I wanted to tell you. It's all I can tell—all I know. I wanted to show you that this man with the gold tooth and the brown beard is no myth, as you seem to believe.

"Make no mistake about him, gentlemen. He has ability, ability which he uses only for unworthy ends." The old man sucked in his lips and bit on them. "He's elusive, slippery, working always in the dark.

"He's low, base. He wouldn't stop at murder. And I'm certain he was the principal figure in my daughter's death. Nothing—no power on earth—nobody can ever make me believe that Enid was murdered by the negro. It doesn't fit in with what has gone before."

"If there's any way to find this man, we'll do it," Bristow assured him.

Braceway sprang to his feet.

"You can bet your last dollar on that, Mr. Fulton," he said heartily, "If he's to be found, we'll get him."

The old man got to his feet. The recital of his story had weakened him. His legs were a little unsteady. Braceway took him by the arm, and they started down the steps.

"Will I see you again this afternoon?" Bristow called to the Atlanta detective.

"I rather think so," Braceway threw back over his shoulder. "As soon as I've had lunch I want to talk to Abrahamson. Chief Greenleaf seems to have neglected him."

Bristow hesitated a moment, then limped down the steps.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Fulton," he said, overtaking the two, "but is there nothing more, no hint, no probable clue, you can give us about this mysterious man?"

"Absolutely nothing," Fulton answered wearily. "I've told you all I know."

"You gave him—rather, you gave your daughter for him a total of seventeen thousand dollars, counting the loan of two thousand and the cost of redeeming the jewels both times. I beg your pardon for seeming insistent, but is it possible that you passed over that much money without even asking why she had been obliged to use it? Not many people would credit such a thing."

Fulton smiled, and for a moment his grief seemed lightened by the hint of happy memories.

"Ah, you didn't know my daughter, sir," he said. "She was irresistible, not to be denied—one of the ardent flames of life. If she had asked me, I would have given her treble that amount—anything, anything, sir."

Bristow thought of what had been said of her in Atlanta: that all women liked her and that any man who had shaken hands with her was her unquestioning servant. Surely such a woman would have been irresistible in her requests to her father.

He ventured another line of inquiry:

"When you arrived at Number Five this morning, I was in the living room, and I saw the meeting between you and Miss Maria Fulton. I came away as soon as I could, but I couldn't help noting your expression as you greeted her. It seemed to me that there was accusation in it."

"There was," the old man assented. "Enid had written me that Maria had been pressing her for money, too much money. Naturally, when I heard of the—the tragedy, I coupled it with the old, old thing that had always been a burden on Enid—money. And this time I blamed Maria. Of course, however, that was a mistake."

"I see," said Bristow.

He returned to his porch and sat down. He went over all that the father of the dead woman had told him. So far as he could see, it had only served the purpose of strengthening the case against Morley. Let it be discovered that Maria had known Morley at the time of the Atlantic City affair, and the case would be fixed, irrefutable. And Braceway would win out.

Of course, there was still one chance. There was the bare possibility that Morley had gone to No. 5 to murder Enid if he did not get more money from her, and that he had been frustrated by the fact that the negro Perry had forestalled him and done the murder first. Having advanced it, Bristow did not care to abandon the theory that Perry was the guilty man.

An automobile whirled up Manniston Road and stopped in front of No. 9. His physician, Dr. Mowbray, sprang from the car and up the steps.

"Good morning, doctor!" the patient called out cheerily.

"Hello!" answered Mowbray crustily. "But what's the big idea in your trying to do a Sherlock Holmes in this murder case?"

The doctor was overbearing and opinionated. He had many patients, who were in the habit of knotowing to him and obeying his instructions implicitly. It was something which he required.

"Sit down," invited Bristow. "I'm not doing any Sherlock Holmes stuff, but I thought I ought to help out if I could."

"Well, you can't!" snapped Mowbray, with quick, nervous gestures. "You'll be in your grave before you know it. You can't stand this." He shot out his hand and produced his watch with the celerity of a sleight-of-hand performer. "Let me feel your pulse."

Bristow surrendered his wrist to the professional fingers.

"Just what I thought—twenty beats too fast. And your respiration's a crime. Have you had any rest at all, today or yesterday?"

"Not much, doctor."

Mowbray glowered at him.

"Well, you'll have to have it! You ought to be in bed this minute. If you don't carry out my instructions, I'll drop the case. You know that."

"I'm sorry, doctor, but I can't spend my time in bed now," Bristow said as persuasively as he could.

"I'd like to know why! Why? Why?"

"I'm going to Washington tomorrow, although that's a secret. I merely confide it to you in a professional way, and——"

"Going to Washington! Man, you're mad—mad! You'll have a hemorrhage or something, and die—die, I tell you!"

"Nevertheless," Bristow insisted, "I must go."

"About this murder?"

"Yes."

"Very well!" snorted Mowbray, rising like a jumping-jack. "Go—go to the North Pole if you wish. I'm through! I can't treat a man who defies my orders and advice. Good morning, sir."

Bristow gave him no answer, and he ran down the steps and threw himself into his car.

"Mistuh Bristow, Lucy's done come," said Mattie, at the living room door.

Bristow started to leave his chair, but changed his mind.

"Tell her to wait a few minutes," he said.

He began to think and to determine just what he wanted to find out from Lucy, what she would say and what he wanted her to say. It would not do to question her before he felt sure of what she knew and what she must confess. He rocked gently in his chair, going over several times the evidence he desired. His face was hard-set, almost like marble, as he stared at the mountains. He was thinking harder at that moment than he had done at any time since the murder.

He had it now. She had given Perry the key to the Withers kitchen—or, better still, Perry had taken it from her—and she remembered every detail of it, his departure from her house and his return with the key. That was what she had to confess. Inevitably, he argued, that would be her story, or else she would have no story at all.

He thought of Braceway. He made now no secret of the fact that a struggle between himself and the Atlanta man was on—not openly, but thoroughly understood by both of them—a fight for supremacy, a contest in which he sought to convict Perry while Braceway worked for the conviction of Morley.

Braceway had the added incentive of wanting to run down the man who had destroyed his friend's home life; and Braceway believed that Morley and Morley's money entanglements had, in some way, caused the tragedy.

Well, he, Bristow, would see about that! He knew he had the best of the argument so far—and he looked forward to a double pleasure: the applause that would come to him as the result of Perry's conviction, and his own personal gratification at besting Braceway at his own game.

He went into the unused bedroom and told Mattie to send Lucy Thomas to him there. While he waited, he closed the two windows.