Читать книгу The Mark of Cain - Wells Carolyn - Страница 6

A bomb dropped from an aeroplane could scarcely have caused greater excitement among the audience. Every eye in the room followed the tall young figure, as Kane Landon strode to the table behind which the coroner sat. That worthy official looked as if he had suddenly been bereft of all intelligence as well as power of speech. In fact, he sat and looked at the man before him, with such an alarmed expression, that one might almost have thought he was the culprit, and the new witness the accusing judge.

But Mr. Berg pulled himself together, and began his perfunctory questions.

“You are Kane Landon?”

“Yes.”

“Related to Mr. Trowbridge?”

“I am the nephew of his wife, who died many years ago.”

“Where do you live?”

“For the last five years I have lived in Denver, Colorado.”

“And you are East on a visit?”

“I came East, hoping to persuade my uncle to finance a mining project in which I am interested.”

“And which he refused to do?”

“Which he refused to do.”

There was something about the young man’s manner which was distinctly irritating to Coroner Berg. It was as if the stranger was laughing at him, and yet no one could show a more serious face than the witness presented. The onlookers held their breath in suspense. Avice stared at young Landon. She remembered him well. Five years ago they had been great friends, when she was fifteen and he twenty. Now, he looked much more than five years older. He was bronzed, and his powerful frame had acquired a strong, well-knit effect that told of outdoor life and much exercise. His face was hard and inscrutable of expression. He was not prepossessing, nor of an inviting demeanor, but rather repelling in aspect. His stern, clear-cut mouth showed a haughty curve and a scornful pride shone in the steely glint of his deep gray eyes. He stood erect, his hands carelessly clasped behind him, and seemed to await further questioning.

Nor did he wait long. The coroner’s tongue once loosed, his queries came direct and rapid.

“Will you give an account of your movements yesterday, Mr. Landon?”

“Certainly. The narrative of my uncle’s office boy is substantially true. I reached New York from the West day before yesterday. I went yesterday morning to see my uncle. I asked him for the money I wanted and he refused it. Then I went away.”

“And afterward?”

“Oh, afterward, I looked about the city a bit, and went back to my hotel for luncheon.”

“And after luncheon?”

Landon’s aplomb seemed suddenly to desert him. “After luncheon,” he began, and paused. He shifted his weight to the other foot; he unclasped his hands and put them in his pockets; he frowned as if in a brown study and finally, his eyes fell on Avice and rested there. The girl was gazing at him with an eager, strained face, and it seemed to arrest his attention to the exclusion of all else.

“Well?” said the coroner, impatiently.

Landon’s fair hair was thick and rather longer than the conventions decreed. He shook back this mane, with a defiant gesture, and said clearly, “After luncheon, I went to walk in Van Cortlandt Park.”

The audience gasped. Was this the honesty of innocence or the bravado of shameless guilt?

Leslie Hoyt looked at Landon curiously. Hoyt was a clever man and quick reader of character, but this young Westerner apparently puzzled him. He seemed to take a liking to him, but reserved decision as to the justification of this attitude. Avice went white and was afraid she was going to faint. To her, the admission sounded like a confession of the crime, and it was too incredible to be believed. And yet, as she remembered Kane, it was like him to tell the truth. In their old play days, he had often told the truth, she remembered, even though to his own disadvantage. And she remembered, too, how he had often escaped with a lighter punishment because he had been frank! Was this his idea? Had he really killed his uncle, and fearing discovery, was he trying to forestall the consequences by admission?

“Mr. Landon,” went on the coroner, “that is a more or less incriminating statement. Are you aware your uncle was murdered in Van Cortlandt Park woods yesterday afternoon?”

“Yes,” was the reply, but in a voice so low as to be almost inaudible.

“At what time were you there?”

“I don’t know, exactly. I returned home before sundown.”

“Why did you go there?”

“Because when with my uncle in the morning he happened to remark there were often good golf games played there, and as it was a beautiful afternoon, and I had nothing especial to do, I went out there.”

“Why did you not go to call on your cousin, Miss Trowbridge?”

Landon glared at the speaker. “You are outside your privileges in asking that question. I decline to answer. My personal affairs in no way concern you. Kindly get to the point. Am I under suspicion of being my uncle’s murderer?”

“Perhaps that is too definite a statement, but it is necessary for us to learn the truth about your implication in the matter.”

“Go on, then, with your questions. But for Heaven’s sake, keep to the point, and don’t bring in personal or family affairs. And incidentally, Miss Trowbridge is not my cousin.”

The words were spoken lightly, almost flippantly, and seemed to some listeners as if meant to divert attention from the business in hand.

“But she is the niece of the late Mr. Trowbridge.”

“Miss Trowbridge is the daughter of Mr. Trowbridge’s brother, who died years ago. I am the nephew of Mr. Trowbridge’s late wife, as I believe I have already stated.”

Nobody liked the young man’s manner. It was careless, indifferent, and inattentive. He stood easily, and was in no way embarrassed, but his bravado, whether real or assumed, was distasteful to those who were earnestly trying to discover the facts of the crime that had been committed. There were many who at once leaped to the conclusion that the Swede’s testimony of the victim’s dying words, proved conclusively that the murderer was of a necessity this young man, whose name was Kane, and who so freely admitted his presence near the scene of the tragedy.

“As you suggest, Mr. Landon,” said the coroner, coldly, “we will keep to the point. When you were in Van Cortlandt Park, yesterday, did you see your uncle, Mr. Trowbridge there?”

“I did not.”

The answer was given in a careless, unconcerned way that exasperated the coroner.

“Can you prove that?” he snapped out.

Landon looked at him in mild amazement, almost amusement. “Certainly not,” he replied; “nor do I need to. The burden of proof rests with you. If you suspect me of having killed my uncle, it is for you to produce proof.”

Coroner Berg looked chagrined. He had never met just this sort of a witness before, and did not know quite how to treat him.

And yet Landon was respectful, serious, and polite. Indeed, one might have found it hard to say what was amiss in his attitude, but none could deny there was something. It was after all, an aloofness, a separateness, that seemed to disconnect this man with the proceedings now going on; and which was so, only because the man himself willed it.

Coroner Berg restlessly and only half-consciously sensed this state of things, and gropingly strove to fasten on some facts.

Nor were these hard to find. The facts were clear and startling enough, and were to a legal mind conclusive. There was, so far as known, no eye-witness to the murder, but murderers do not usually play to an audience.

“We have learned, Mr. Landon,” the coroner said, “that you had an unsatisfactory interview with your uncle; that you did not get from him the money you desired. That, later, he was killed in a locality where you admit you were yourself. That his dying words are reported to be, ‘Kane killed me! willful murder.’ I ask you what you have to say in refutation of the conclusions we naturally draw from these facts?”

There was a hush over the whole room, as the answer to this arraignment was breathlessly awaited.

At last it came. Landon looked the coroner squarely in the eye, and said: “I have this to say. That my uncle’s words, – if, indeed, those were really his words, might as well refer, as you assumed at first, to any one else, as to myself. The name Cain, would, of course, mean in a general way, any one of murderous intent. The fact that my own name chances to be Kane is a mere coincidence, and in no sense a proof of my guilt.”

The speaker grew more emphatic in voice and gesture as he proceeded, and this did not militate in his favor. Rather, his irritation and vehement manner prejudiced many against him. Had he been cool and collected, his declarations would have met better belief, but his agitated tones sounded like the last effort in a lost cause.

With harrowing pertinacity, the coroner quizzed and pumped the witness as to his every move of the day before. Landon was forced to admit that he had quarreled with his uncle, and left him in a fit of temper, and with a threat to get the money elsewhere.

“And did you get it?” queried the coroner at this point.

“I did not.”

“Where did you hope to get it?”

“I refuse to tell you.”

“Mr. Landon, your manner is not in your favor. But that is not an essential point. The charges I have enumerated are as yet unanswered: and, moreover, I am informed by one of my assistants that there is further evidence against you. Sandstrom, come forward.”

The stolid-looking Swede came.

“Look at Mr. Landon,” said Berg; “do you think you saw him in Van Cortlandt Park yesterday?”

“Ay tank Ay did.”

“Near the scene of the murder?”

“Ay tank so.”

“You lie!”

The voice that rang out was that of Fibsy, the irrepressible.

And before the coroner could remonstrate, the boy was up beside the Swede, talking to him in an earnest tone. “Clem Sandstrom,” he said, “you are saying what you have been told to say! Ain’t you?”

“Ay tank so,” returned the imperturbable Swede.

“There!” shouted Fibsy, triumphantly; “now, wait a minute, Mr. Berg,” and by the force of his own insistence Fibsy held the audience, while he pursued his own course. He drew a silver quarter from his pocket and handed it to Sandstrom. “Look at that,” he cried, “look at it good!” He snatched it back. “Did you look at it good?” and he shook his fist in the other’s face.

“Yes, Ay look at it good.”

“All right; now tell me where the plugged hole in it was? Was it under the date, or was it over the eagle?”

The Swede thought deeply.

“Be careful, now! Where was it, old top? Over the eagle?”

“Yes. Ay tank it been over the eagle.”

“You tank so! Don’t you know?”

The heavy face brightened. “Yes, Ay know! Ay know it been over the eagle.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, Ay bane sure.”

“All right, pard. You see, Mr. Coroner,” and Fibsy handed the quarter over to Berg, “they ain’t no hole in it anywhere!”

Nor was there. Berg looked mystified. “What’s it all about?” he said, helplessly.

“Why,” said Fibsy, eagerly, “don’t you see, if that fool Swede don’t know enough to see whether there’s a hole in a piece o’ chink or not, he ain’t no reliable witness in a murder case!”

The boy had scored. So far as the Swede’s alleged recognition of Landon was evidence, it was discarded at once. Coroner Berg looked at the boy in perplexity, not realizing just how the incident of the silver quarter had come about. It was by no means his intention to allow freckle-faced office boys to interfere with his legal proceedings. He had read in a book about mal-observation and the rarity of truly remembered evidence, but he had not understood it clearly and it was only a vague idea to him. So it nettled him to have the principle put to a practical use by an impertinent urchin, who talked objectionable slang.

Judge Hoyt looked at Fibsy with growing interest. That boy had brains, he concluded, and might be more worth-while than his appearance indicated. Avice, too, took note of the bright-eyed chap, and Kane Landon, himself, smiled in open approval.

But Fibsy was in no way elated, or even conscious that he had attracted attention. He had acted on impulse; he had disbelieved the Swede’s evidence, and he had sought to disprove it by a simple experiment, which worked successfully. His assertion that the Swede had been told to say that he recognized Landon, was somewhat a chance shot.

Fibsy reasoned it out, that if Sandstrom had seen Landon in the woods, he would have recognized him sooner at the inquest, or might even have told of him before his appearance. And he knew that the police now suspected Landon, and as they were eager to make an arrest, they had persuaded the Swede that he had seen the man. Sandstrom’s brain was slow and he had little comprehension. Whether guilty or innocent, he had come to the scene at his wife’s orders, and might he not equally well have testified at the orders or hints of the police? At any rate, he had admitted that he had been told to say what he had said, and so he had been disqualified as a witness.

And yet, it all proved nothing, rather it left them with no definite proof of any sort. Fibsy ignored the stupid-looking Swede, and stared at the coroner, until that dignitary became a little embarrassed. Realizing that he had lessened his own importance to a degree, Berg strove to regain lost ground.

“Good work, my boy,” he said, condescendingly, and with an air of dismissing the subject. “But the credibility of a witness’s story must rest with the gentlemen of the jury. I understand all about those theories of psy – psychology, as they call them, but I think they are of little, if any, use in practice.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said Judge Hoyt. “I find them very interesting. Do you always see things clearly, Terence?”

“It isn’t seeing clearly,” said Fibsy, with an earnest face, “it’s seein’ true. Now, f’r instance, Mr. Coroner, is the number for six o’clock, on your watch, a figger or a VI?”

“I cannot allow this child’s play,” and Mr. Berg looked decidedly angry.

“But that’s rather a good one,” said Judge Hoyt. “Come, now, Berg, do you know which it is?”

“Certainly I do,” Berg snapped out. “It’s the Roman letters, VI.”

“Yessir?” said Fibsy, eagerly. “An’ are they right side up, or upside down, as you hold Twelve at the top?”

Berg thought a moment. “As I hold Twelve at the top, they’re upside down, of course. All the numbers have their base toward the centre of the dial.”

“Then the Six on your watch is VI, with the tops of the letters next the rim of the watch?”

“It is,” said Berg, adding sneeringly, “would you like to see it?”

“Yessir,” and Fibsy darted forward.

The coroner snapped his watch open, and after a brief glance, the boy gave a quick little wag of his head, and went back to his seat without a word.

But the man flushed a fiery red, and his pompous air deserted him.

“Were you right, Berg?” asked Judge Hoyt. “Come now, own up?”

“A very natural error,” mumbled the coroner, and then Detective Groot pounced on him, demanding to see his watch.

“Why, there’s no six on it at all!” he cried and then gave an uncontrollable guffaw. “There’s only a round place with the second hand into it!”

“This tomfoolery must be stopped,” began the coroner, but he had to pause in his speech until the ripple of merriment had subsided and the jury had realized afresh the seriousness of their purpose.

“Hold on Berg, that’s a fairly good one on a coroner,” said Judge Hoyt, a little severely. “Have you looked at that watch for years and didn’t know there was no six on it?”

“I s’pose I have. I never thought about it.”

“It does show the unreliability of testimony intended to be truthful,” and Hoyt spoke thoughtfully. “Terence, how did you know Mr. Berg’s watch had a second hand instead of the six numeral?”