Читать книгу The Bartlett Mystery - Tracy Louis, Louis Tracy - Страница 4

A clerk, one of the would-be swains who had met with chilling discouragement after working-hours, was evidently on the lookout for her. An ignoble soul prompted a smirk of triumph now.

“Go straight in,” he said, jerking a thumb. “A cop’s waitin’ for you.”

Winifred did not vouchsafe him even an indignant glance. Holding her head high, she passed through the main office, and made for a door marked “Manager.” She knocked, and was admitted by Mr. Fowle. Grouped around a table she saw one of the members of the firm, the manager, a policeman, and a dapper little man, slight of figure, who held himself very erect. He was dressed in blue serge, and had the ivory-white face and wrinkled skin of an actor. She was conscious at once of the penetration of his glance. His eyes were black and luminous. They seemed to pierce her with an X-ray quality of comprehension.

“This is the girl,” announced Mr. Fowle deferentially.

The little man in the blue suit took the lead forthwith.

“You are Winifred Bartlett?” he said, and by some subtle inter-flow of magnetism Winifred knew instantly that she had nothing to fear from this diminutive stranger.

“Yes,” she replied, looking at him squarely.

“You live in East One Hundred and Twelfth Street?”

“Yes.”

“With a woman described as your aunt, and known as Miss Rachel Craik?”

“Yes.”

Each affirmative marked a musical crescendo. Especially was Winifred surprised by the sceptical description of her only recognized relative.

“Well,” went on Clancy, suppressing a smile at the girl’s naïve astonishment, “don’t be alarmed, but I want you to come with me to Mulberry Street.”

Now, Winifred had just been reading about certain activities in Mulberry Street, and her eyebrows rounded in real amazement.

“Isn’t that the Police Headquarters?” she asked.

Fowle chuckled, whereupon Clancy said pleasantly:

“Yes. One man here seems to know the address quite intimately. But that fact need not set your heart fluttering. The chief of the Detective Bureau wishes to put a few questions. That is all.”

“Questions about what?”

Winifred’s natural dignity came to her aid. She refused to have this grave matter treated as a joke.

“Take my advice, Miss Bartlett, and don’t discuss things further until you have met Mr. Steingall,” said Clancy.

“But I have never even heard of Mr. Steingall,” she protested. “What right have you or he to take me away from my work to a police-station? What wrong have I done to any one?”

“None, I believe.”

“Surely I have a right to some explanation.”

“If you insist I am bound to answer.”

“Then I do insist,” and Winifred’s heightened color and wrathful eyes only enhanced her beauty. Clancy spread his hands in a gesture inherited from a French mother.

“Very well,” he said. “You are required to give evidence concerning the death of Mr. Ronald Tower. Now, I cannot say any more. I have a car outside. You will be detained less than an hour. The same car will bring you back, and I think I can guarantee that your employers will raise no difficulty.”

The head of the firm growled agreement. As a matter of fact the staid respectability of Brown, Son & Brown had sustained a shock by the mere presence of the police. Murder has an ugly aspect. It was often bound up in the firm’s products, but never before had it entered that temple of efficiency in other guise.

Clancy sensed the slow fermentation of the pharisaical mind.

“If I had known what sort of girl this was I would never have brought a policeman,” he muttered into the great man’s ear. “She has no more to do with this affair than you have.”

“It is very annoying – very,” was the peevish reply.

“What is? Assisting the police?”

“Oh, no. Didn’t mean that, of course.”

The detective thought he might do more harm than good by pressing for a definition of the firm’s annoyance. He turned to Winifred.

“Are you ready, Miss Bartlett?” he said. “The only reason the Bureau has for troubling you is the accident of your address.”

Almost before the girl realized the new and astounding conditions which had come into her life she was seated in a closed automobile and speeding swiftly down-town.

She was feminine enough, however, to ply Clancy with questions, and he had to fence with her, as it was all-important that such information as she might be able to give should be imparted when he and Steingall could observe her closely. The Bureau hugged no delusions. Its vast experience of the criminal world rendered misplaced sympathy with erring mortals almost impossible. Young or old, rich or poor, beautiful or ugly, the strange procession which passes in unending review before the police authorities is subjected to impartial yet searching analysis. Few of the guilty ones escape suspicion, no matter how slight the connecting clue or scanty the evidence. On the other hand, Steingall and his trusty aid seldom made a mistake when they decided, as Clancy had already done in Winifred’s case, that real innocence had come under the shadow of crime.

Steingall shared Clancy’s opinion the instant he set eyes on the new witness. He gazed at her with a humorous dismay that was wholly genuine.

“Sit there, Miss Bartlett,” he said, rising to place a chair for her. “Please don’t feel nervous. I am sure you understand that only those who have broken the law need fear it. Now, you haven’t killed anybody, have you?”

Winifred smiled. She liked this big man’s kindly manner. Really, the police were not such terrifying ogres when you came to close quarters with them.

“No, indeed,” she said, little guessing that Clancy had indulged in a Japanese grimace behind her back, thereby informing his chief that “The Yacht Mystery” was still maintaining its claim to figure as one of the most sensational crimes the Bureau had investigated during many a year.

Steingall, wishing to put the girl wholly at ease, affected to consult some notes on his desk, but Winifred was too wrought up to keep silent.

“The gentleman who brought me here told me that I would be required to give evidence concerning the murder of Mr. Ronald Tower,” she said. “Believe me, sir, that unfortunate gentleman’s name was unknown to me before I read it in this morning’s paper. I have no knowledge of the manner of his death other than is contained in the account printed here in this newspaper.”

She proffered the newspaper purchased before lunch, which she still held in her left hand. The impulsive action broadened Steingall’s smile. He was still utterly at a loss to account for this well-mannered girl’s queer environment.

“Why,” he cried, “I quite understand that. Mr. Clancy didn’t tell you we regarded you as a desperate crook, did he?”

Winifred yielded to the chief’s obvious desire to lift their talk out of the rut of formality. She could not help being interested in these two men, so dissimilar in their characteristics, yet each so utterly unlike the somewhat awesome personage she would have sketched if asked to define her idea of a “detective.” Clancy, who had taken a chair at the side of the table, sat on it as though he were an automaton built of steel springs and ready to bounce instantly in any given direction. Steingall’s huge bulk lolled back indolently. He had been smoking when the others entered, and a half-consumed cigar lay on an ash-tray. Winifred thought it would be rather amusing if she, in turn, made things comfortable.

“Please don’t put away your cigar on my account,” she said. “I like the smell of good tobacco.”

“Ha!” cackled Clancy.

“Thank you,” said Steingall, tucking the Havana into a corner of his mouth. The two men exchanged glances, and Winifred smiled. Steingall’s look of tolerant contempt at his assistant was distinctly amusing.

“That little shrimp can’t smoke, Miss Bartlett,” he explained, “so he is an anti-tobacco maniac.”

“You wouldn’t care to take poison, would you?” and Clancy shot the words at Winifred so sharply that she was almost startled.

“No. Of course not,” she agreed.

“Yet that is what that mountain of brawn does during fourteen hours out of the twenty-four. Nicotine is one of the deadliest poisons known to science. Even when absorbed into the tissues in minute doses it corrodes the brain and atrophies the intellect. Did you see how he grinned when you described that vile weed as ‘good tobacco’? Now, you don’t know good, meaning real, tobacco from bad, do you?”

“I know whether or not I like the scent of it,” persisted Winifred. She began to think that officialdom in Mulberry Street affected the methods of the court circles frequented by Alice and the Mad Hatter.

“Don’t mind him,” put in Steingall genially. “He’s a living example of the close alliance between insanity and genius. On the tobacco question he’s simply cracked, and that is all there is to it. Now we’re wasting your time by this chatter. I’ll come to serious business by asking a question which you will not find embarrassing for a good many years yet to come. How old are you?”

“Nineteen last birthday.”

“When were you born?”

“On June 6, 1894.”

“And where?”

Winifred reddened slightly.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“What?”

Steingall seemed to be immensely surprised, and Winifred proceeded forthwith to throw light on this singular admission, which was exactly what he meant her to do.

“That is a very odd statement, but it is quite true,” she said earnestly. “My aunt would never tell me where I was born. I believe it was somewhere in the New England States, but I have only the vaguest grounds for the opinion. What I mean is that aunty occasionally reveals a close familiarity with Boston and Vermont.”

“What is her full name?”

“Rachel Craik.”

“She has never been married?”

Winifred’s sense of humor was keen. She laughed at the idea of “Aunt Rachel” having a husband.

“I don’t think aunty will ever marry anybody now,” she said. “She holds the opposite sex in detestation. No man is ever admitted to our house.”

“It is a small, old-fashioned residence, but very large for the requirements of two women?” continued Steingall. He took no notes, and might have been discussing the weather, now that the first whiff of wonderment as to Winifred’s lack of information about her birth-place had passed.

“Yes. We have several rooms unoccupied.”

“And unfurnished?”

“Say partly furnished.”

“Ever had any boarders?”

“No.”

“No servants, of course?”

“No.”

“And how long have you been employed in Messrs. Brown, Son & Brown’s bookbinding department?”

“About six months.”

“What do you earn?”

“Eight dollars a week.”

“Is that the average amount paid to the other girls?”

“Slightly above the average. I am supposed to be quick and accurate.”

“Well now, Miss Bartlett, you seem to be a very intelligent and well-educated young woman. How comes it that you are employed in such work?”

“It was the best I could find,” she volunteered.

“No doubt. But you must be well aware that few, if any, among the girls in the bookbinding business can be your equal in education, and, may I add, in refinement. Now, if you were a bookkeeper, a cashier or a typist, I could understand it; but it does seem odd to me that you should be engaged in this kind of job.”

“It was my aunt’s wish,” said Winifred simply.

“Ah!”

Steingall dwelt on the monosyllable.

“What reason did she give for such a singular choice?” he went on.

“I confess it has puzzled me,” was the unaffected answer. “Although aunty is severe in her manner she is well educated, and she taught me nearly all I know, except music and singing, for which I took lessons from Signor Pecci ever since I was a tiny mite until about two years ago. Then, I believe, aunty lost a good deal of money, and it became necessary that I should earn something. Signor Pecci offered to get me a position in a theater, but she would not hear of it, nor would she allow me to enter a shop or a restaurant. Really, it was aunty who got me work with Messrs. Brown, Son & Brown.”

“In other words,” said Steingall, “you were deliberately reared to fill a higher social station, and then, for no assignable reason, save a whim, compelled to sink to a much lower level?”

“I do not know. I never disputed aunty’s right to do what she thought best.”

“Well, well, it is odd. Do you ever entertain any visitors?”

“None whatever. We have no acquaintances, and live very quietly.”

“Do you mean to say that your aunt never sees any one but yourself and casual callers, such as tradespeople?”

“So far as I know, that is absolutely the case.”

“Very curious,” commented Steingall. “Does your aunt go out much?”

“She leaves the house occasionally after I have gone to bed at ten o’clock, but that is seldom, and I have no idea where she goes. Every week-day, you know, I am away from home between seven in the morning and half past six at night, excepting Saturday afternoons. If possible, I take a long walk before going to work.”

“Do you go straight home?”

Winifred remembered Mr. Fowle’s query, and smiled again.

“Yes,” she said.

“Now last night, for instance, was your aunt at home when you reached the house?”

“No; she was out. She did not come in until half past nine.”

“Did she go out again last night?”

“I do not know. I was tired. I went to bed rather early.”

Steingall bent over his notes for the first time since Winifred appeared. His lips were pursed, and he seemed to be weighing certain facts gravely.

“I think,” he said at last, “that I need not detain you any longer, Miss Bartlett. By the way, I’ll give you a note to your employers to say that you are in no way connected with the crime we have under investigation. It may, perhaps, save you needless annoyance.”

“Thank you, sir,” said the girl. “But won’t you tell me why you have asked me so many questions about my aunt and her ways?”

Steingall looked at her thoughtfully before he answered: “In the first place, Miss Bartlett, tell me this. I assume Miss Craik is your mother’s sister. When did your mother die?”

Winifred blushed with almost childish discomfiture. “It may seem very stupid to say such a thing,” she admitted, “but I have never known either a father or a mother. My aunt has always refused to discuss our family affairs in any way whatever. I fear her view is that I am somewhat lucky to be alive at all.”

“Few people would be found to agree with her,” said the chief gallantly. “Now I want you to be brave and patient. A very extraordinary crime has been committed, and the police occasionally find clues in the most unexpected quarters. I regret to tell you that Miss Craik is believed to be in some way connected with the mysterious disappearance, if not the death, of Mr. Ronald Tower, and she is being held for further inquiries.”

Winifred’s face blanched. “Do you mean that she will be kept in prison?” she said, with a break in her voice.

“She must be detained for a while, but you need not be so alarmed. Her connection with this outrage may be as harmless as your own, though I can inform you that, without your knowledge, your house last night certainly sheltered two men under grave suspicion, and for whom we are now searching.”

“Two men! In our house!” cried the amazed girl.

“Yes. I tell you this to show you the necessity there is for calmness and reticence on your part. Don’t speak to any one concerning your visit here. Above all else, don’t be afraid. Have you any one with whom you can go to live until Miss Craik is” – he corrected himself – “until matters are cleared up a bit?”

“No,” wailed Winifred, her pent-up feelings breaking through all restraint. “I am quite alone in the world now.”

“Come, come, cheer up!” said Steingall, rising and patting her on the shoulder. “This disagreeable business may only last a day or two. You will not want for anything. If you are in any trouble all you need do is to let me know. Moreover, to save you from being afraid of remaining alone in the house at night, I’ll give special instructions to the police in your precinct to watch the place closely. Now, be a brave girl and make the best of it.”

The house in One Hundred and Twelfth Street would, of course, be an object of special interest to the police for other reasons apart from those suggested by the chief. Nevertheless, his kindness had the desired effect, and Winifred strove to repress her tears.

“Here is your note,” he said, “and I advise you to forget this temporary trouble in your work. Mr. Clancy will accompany you in the car if you wish.”

“Please – I would rather be alone,” she faltered. She was far from Mulberry Street before she remembered that she had said nothing about seeing the boat that morning!