Читать книгу The Mystery Of The Second Shot - Rufus Gillmore - Страница 5

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“Father, oh, father, why did you?—how could you? Oh, father, father!” the girl wailed.

In the horror and amazement of his discovery, Ashley had utterly forgotten her existence. He turned from the set dead face on the landing to the distorted living one on the staircase.

She had collapsed against the banister a few steps below him—a huddle of shaking nerves—as though she dared not come nearer the body. The hand which clung to the rail was as white as her face, the other clutched a large green cloth bag—the kind that lawyers carry. Even in that moment of horror, Ashley noted the curious contrast of this business-like bag with the smartness of her chic summer frock, observed the tight hold she kept upon it, realized that it must have been in her hand all the time.

“Oh, father! father!” she moaned. “He—he has killed himself. Oh, I tried—” her voice broke. After a time, she controlled it. “I tried so hard to reach him in time. Is—is he—?” her voice refused to go on.

Ashley bent over and raised one of Newhall’s arms. There was no perceptible pulse; the hand lay limply in his. He placed the back of his bare wrist close to the man’s lips; no breath fanned it. He turned back toward the girl and solemnly nodded his head.

By a quick leap he managed to catch her as her hand loosened from the rail. He supported her until her body ceased to tremble and her hysterical sobbing quieted. Then she drew away from him.

“What—what am I to do?” she begged.

Ashley led her gently down the stairs and turned on a light. “I am sorry, but I’m afraid you can’t leave yet. The police may want to ask some questions.” He stopped before a chair in the lower hall. “Perhaps you had better sit down here and rest while I telephone for them.”

“The police?” She seemed startled.

“They will have to be notified. Perhaps I could telephone for some of your friends first.”

“There is no one but—” she stopped and bit her under lip; “there is no one I could send for at this hour. I have been abroad and have been home only a few days. I can’t think of anyone,” she explained. She sat down. For an instant, she seemed oblivious of everything. But he had hardly reached the telephone in the back of the hall before she called, “Tell them that my father has committed suicide.”

At the time, this request made little impression on the reporter, but he observed with some surprise the eager tone in which it was uttered.

After an irritating clash with a stupid telephone operator, Ashley secured and notified Police Headquarters. He was on the point of telephoning to his own paper, when it occurred to him that it would be wiser to take advantage of the time before the police came to make a fuller investigation. As he hurried back along the hall, Miss Newhall sprang to her feet.

“You aren’t going to leave me,” she protested tremulously.

“Only to put things back as they were, before the police come,” he explained.

“Oh!” She sank back in the chair. “I won’t mind —if you don’t leave the house. I’m not afraid,” she declared in a voice which shook so that it belied her statement, “only—only I need someone near to tell me what to do when the police come.”

He reassured her and hastened up the stairs.

The body lay upon the upper landing where the front stairway turned at a right angle towards the upper hallway, four steps above. The wound was on the left side, near the heart. Ashley turned on the light in the upper hall and returned to make a more thorough examination. Near the right hand lay a Colt automatic. One shot had been fired from it. After a long search, he found the shell, lying upon one of the lower stairs. He groped about the rest of the stairs and landing without coming upon anything else. Apparently it was a simple case of suicide.

He turned the body back on its left side, as he had found it. As he did so a dark object which it had covered came to sight. He picked it up. It was a chauffeur’s cap. The name of the maker had been torn from it, but the size-tag—7 3/8—remained. With a quickly stifled cry of surprise, he turned the body over again. There were no powder marks upon the clothes.

Puzzled, Ashley again examined the cap. Newhall was a man whom he had often observed motoring about downtown, but never wearing such a cheap cap as this. Whose cap, then, could it be? Replacing the body in its first position, he stepped gingerly over it, up the stairs and into the hall above. A hasty examination showed him nothing of interest there. He passed on to a room opening directly opposite the top of the staircase. The door stood wide open. He peered into it. It was a narrow room, hardly more than a closet, lighted by a single incandescent lamp; it was furnished with a sewing machine, two low tables and a pair of cane-seat chairs. Manifestly, it was a sewing-room. He was about to enter to search it further when, suddenly, he stopped and bent an attentive ear towards the staircase.

The sound of a woman’s voice—lowered for secrecy —came up to him. “Please, oh, please, get me Back Bay 43210,” it pleaded. Now that he gave it attention, he realized that he had heard, subconsciously, these same sounds several times before. Whom could Miss Newhall be calling up with such an attempt at secrecy? He dropped his search, switched off the hall light and hastened quietly downstairs. But his footsteps on the bare hall below no sooner warned her of his approach than she hastily hung up the receiver. She turned toward him; her face flushed.

“I was trying to get a friend of mine, but she was not at home,” she explained, returning to her seat.

A slight emphasis on the “she” made an unpleasant impression upon Ashley.

“I came down to call up a number myself,” he said in excuse. “Are you quite through?” Her assent obliged him to call up The Eagle. It was time that he notified his paper of his discovery. But the receiver was hardly adjusted to his ear, when he was stopped.

“Sorry, madam, Back Bay 43210 doesn’t answer,” the telephone operator informed him.

He gave no evidence of what he had learned, asked for his own number. But he was not to get the news to his paper so easily. He was interrupted by a patrol wagon rolling up to the door. A squad of police scrambled out and entered the house.

At their head and front came Sergeant Smith, big and surly from much ordering about of men. He carried a lantern, which he held up rudely before the girl’s face. “Who are you?” he demanded brusquely.

“I am Miss Newhall,” she replied, pulling back. “It is my father—upstairs.”

“Oh!” Sergeant Smith was surprised, if not softened. “Well, you sit down here,” he ordered. “We’ll take charge of things here.”

At that moment his swinging lantern disclosed Ashley at the telephone. “What are you doing there?” he yelled. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Ashley, of—”

“Hang up that telephone and see that you keep away from it,” he interrupted. Then he turned to his men.

“Bill,” he roared, “you take the door and see that no one comes in or goes out without my orders. Come on now, the rest of you, get a move on, light up and search the house.”