THE WINNING CLUE

Table of Contents
I. Strangled
II. “Something Big in It”
III. The Ruby Ring
IV. Two Trails
V. The Husband’s Story
VI. Morley Is in a Hurry
VII. Miss Fulton Is Hysterical
VIII. The Breath of Scandal
IX. Women’s Nerves
X. Eyes of Accusation
XI. The $1,000 Check
XII. The Man With the Gold Tooth
XIII. Lucy Thomas Talks
XIV. The Pawn Broker Takes the Trail
XV. Braceway Sees a Light
XVI. A Message From Miss Fulton
XVII. Miss Fulton’s Revelation
XVIII. What’s Braceway’s Game?
XIX. At the Anderson National Bank
XX. The Discovery of the Jewels
XXI. Bristow Solves a Problem
XXII. A Confession
XXIII. On the Rack
XXIV. Miss Fulton Writes a Letter
XXV. A Mystifying Telegram
XXVI. Wanted: Vengeance
XXVII. The Revelation
XXVIII. Confession Voluntary
XXIX. The Last Card

Chapter V.
The Husband’s Story

Table of Contents

Mr. Bristow, however, was not allowed to rest half an hour. Instead, he was called upon to consider a phase of the Withers murder more amazing than any of those so far uncovered. Barely ten minutes after his conversation with the clerk of the Brevord, Mattie announced that two gentlemen were waiting to see him, one of them being the chief of police.

When Bristow stepped into the living room, Greenleaf introduced the stranger. He was Mr. Withers—Mr. George S. Withers, husband of the murdered woman. He was of the extreme brunette type, his hair blue-black, his black eyes keen and piercing and always on the move. Bristow got the impression in looking at him that all his features, the aquiline nose, the firm, compressed mouth, the large ears, were remarkably sharp-cut.

The man's excitement was almost beyond his control. He apparently made no attempt to hide the fact that his hands trembled like leaves in the wind and that, every now and then, his legs quivered perceptibly. As soon as he had shaken hands, he sank into a chair.

"Mr. Withers," the chief explained, "caught me at Number Five before I had started down town. I have explained how you are helping me in this—er distressing matter. So we came up here."

"I see," said Bristow, betraying no surprise that Withers had appeared so suddenly.

In fact, he had not thought of the husband previously, except to calculate that, in answer to the telegram Dr. Braley had undoubtedly sent, he could not reach Furmville from Atlanta before far into the night.

"He only heard of the tragedy half an hour ago," Greenleaf added.

"I didn't know you were in town or even expected," Bristow said casually. "I thought you were in Atlanta."

"I—I wasn't expected." Withers hurried his words.

"You mean nobody expected you?"

"That's it, I wasn't expected. But I've been in—in town here since yesterday morning."

"And Mrs. Withers didn't know of it?"

"Nobody knew of it. I didn't want anybody to know of it."

Bristow purposely remained silent, awaiting some explanation. He looked down, studying the pattern of the scratches he made by rubbing his right shoe against the side of the built-up sole, two inches thick, of his left shoe. The shortness of his crippled leg made this heavy sole necessary; and the awkwardness of it worried him. He seemed always conscious of it.

Greenleaf, taking his cue from Bristow, said nothing.

"I came in without notifying anybody," Withers felt himself obliged to continue, "and I registered under an assumed name."

"Where?" the lame man asked swiftly.

"At the Brevord."

"What name—under what name?"

"Waring, Charles B. Waring."

"And you've been in Furmville since yesterday morning? Got here on the eight o'clock train yesterday morning?"

"Yes."

Bristow gave him the benefit of another long pause and studied him more closely. He saw that this bereaved husband was of the high-strung, Southern-gentleman type, hot-tempered, impulsive, one of those apt to believe that "shooting" is the remedy for one's personal ills or injuries. The lines of his mouth betrayed selfishness and peevishness.

The interrogator broke the silence at last:

"Of course, Mr. Withers, there's some good explanation for your secret trip to Furmville?"

"Well—er—yes."

"What is it?"

Withers hesitated.

"I—I don't know that I care to say now—to discuss it yet."

Bristow shot Greenleaf a prompting glance.

"You see, it's this way," the chief acted on the silent suggestion; "I'm in charge of this matter, the capture of the murderer, and Mr. Bristow is helping me. In fact, he's the man in command. His abilities fit him for the work. If the man who killed your wife is caught, it will be through the work of Mr. Bristow. I'm confident of that. Moreover, every minute we lose now may be disastrous to us. Consequently, we want to hear your story. You appreciate our position, I know."

Withers licked his dry lips with the tip of his dry tongue.

"How about the newspapers?" he asked.

"You'll be talking only for our information," cut in Bristow crisply. "We won't give it to the papers. We want to use it for our own benefit."

"Ah, I see. Well, then——"

Withers got up and paced the length of the floor several times in silence while they watched him. He gave the impression of framing up in advance in his mind what he would say. He seemed to want to talk without talking too much—to tell a part of a story, not all.

"I tell you, gentlemen," he said, going back to his chair, his voice trembling, "this is a hard thing to get to. I mean I don't like to say what I must say. But I see there's no way out but this. The truth of the matter is, I came up here to satisfy myself as to what my wife was doing in regard to a certain matter."

"You mean you were suspicious of her—jealous of her?" Bristow interpolated.

"No, not that," returned the husband.

"He's lying!" was the thought of both Greenleaf and Bristow.

"No. Let me make that very clear. I never doubted her in that way."

"Well, how did you doubt her?"

Withers winced.

"I don't mean I doubted her at all. I mean I thought she was being imposed upon financially. In fact, I was sure of it. I'm sure of it now."

"You mean blackmail?" Bristow narrowed down the inquiry.

"Just that. And I'll tell you about it." He rasped his dry lips again. "This sort of thing, this blackmail, had happened to her twice before this. Once it was when she was at Atlantic City for a month with her sister, Miss Maria Fulton.

"That was a year after our marriage. Then, two years later—just about a year ago now—when she was in Washington visiting her father and sister. Both those times things happened as they had begun to happen here, in fact as they've been happening here for the past two months."

"Well," Bristow urged him on, "what happened?"

"She got away with too much money, more money than she could possibly have used for herself in any legitimate way. First, she got her father to give her all she could get out of him. Her second step would be to write to me for all I could spare, making flimsy excuses for her need of it.

"Her third resource was to pawn all her jewels. She pawned them on these first two occasions I've described. I say she pawned them, but I never had definite proof of it. However, I was sure of it. I don't know that she had come to this in Furmville. If she hadn't she would have."

"What were Mrs. Withers' jewels worth?"

"Originally, I should say, they cost about fifteen thousand dollars. She had no difficulty, I suppose, in raising six or seven thousand dollars on them—even more than that."

"They were worth so much as all that?"

"Yes. Her father had given her most of them before his business failure. He failed last fall, I forgot to mention."

"Now," Bristow said persuasively, "about this blackmailing proposition. What was—what is your idea about that?"

Withers produced and lit a cigarette, handling it with quivering fingers.

"Somebody, some man, had a hold of some sort on her. Whenever he needed money, had to have money, he got it from her. That is, he did this whenever he could find her away from home. So far as I know, he never tried to operate in Atlanta."

"What do you think this hold was?"

"Well," Withers began, and paused.

"Your theories are perfectly safe with us," Bristow reassured him.

"I thought, naturally, that it had something to do with her life previous to the time I met her."

"How?"

"I didn't know. That's what worried me." All of a sudden, his hearers got a clear idea of what the man had suffered. It was plainly to be detected in his voice. "It might have been a harmless love affair, a flirtation, with letters involved, letters which she thought would distress me if I ever saw them."

"Nothing more than that?"

"I never thought she had been guilty of anything—well, immoral, heinous."

"You say," Bristow changed the course of questioning, "she pawned her jewels twice. How did she do that? Where did she get the money to redeem them after the first pawning?"

"I don't know. I never could find out."

"You had no six or seven thousand dollars to give her for that purpose, as I understand it?"

"No."

"Where did she get it, then?" Bristow's questions, despite their directness, were free from offense.

"I—I thought," Withers began again and paused. "I thought that, perhaps, her father helped her out, got the jewels out of pawn both times for her."

"Did you ever ask him?"

"Yes; and he denied having done so. But, you see, my theory is borne out. Before, when she pawned them, her father was wealthy; and she was his favourite child. She knew he would help her. But now his money is gone. He's failed. Consequently, she has not pawned them this time. She knew there would be no chance to redeem them."

Bristow leaned forward in his chair.

"Mr. Withers," he asked, "as a matter of fact, did you ever know that your wife had pawned her jewels?"

"Well," he said, as if making an admission, "she would never confess it to me. I assumed it from the fact that on both occasions the jewels were missing for a good while. They were certainly not in her possession. She couldn't produce them when called upon to do so."

"I see. Now, Mr. Withers, what did you do yesterday, all day yesterday, after reaching here?"

"I went to the Brevord and registered under the name of Waring. After I had had breakfast, I went straight to Abrahamson's pawnshop. It's the only pawnshop in town. I told him I was looking for some stolen jewelry and I expected that an attempt might be made to pawn it with him. He agreed to let me wait there, well concealed by the heavy hangings at the back of his shop. I spent the day there except for a few minutes in the afternoon when I went out for a quick lunch."

"Yes? Did you find out anything?"

Once more Withers found it hard to speak.

"Yes"; he said finally. "A man came in and pawned one of my wife's rings. It had a setting of three diamonds. It was worth about seven hundred and fifty dollars, I should say. Abrahamson let him have only a hundred on it."

"Why only a hundred?"

"I had asked him to do that, so as to prove that the man was a thief—you know, willing to take anything offered to him."

"And he did take the hundred?"

"He did."

"What happened after that?"

"I followed him from the shop—for half a block. When he had gone that distance, I lost him. He stepped into a store, and I waited for him to come out. He never did. It was the old dodge. The store extended the width of a block. He made his escape through the other entrance."

Greenleaf was more excited even than Withers.

"This man," the chief put in; "what did he look like?"

"He was of average weight, medium height. He had a gold tooth, the upper left bicuspid gold. His nose was aquiline. He wore a long, dark gray raincoat, and he had a cap with its long visor pulled well over his face. Then, too, he wore a beard, chestnut-brown in colour. That's about the best description I can give you of him. You see, this happened late in the afternoon."

"All right," Bristow kept to the main thread of the story. "Now, about last night. What then?"

Withers threw away his cigarette and sighed.

"I came up here and watched Number Five. I had an idea that this fellow might show up."

"Did he?"

"No."

"Where did you watch from?"

"Most of the time I sat on the steps of Number Four, almost directly across the road from Number Five. You know how it is on this street. Nearly everybody is in the back of the house after dark. The invalids are on the sleeping porches behind the houses. Besides, it was in deep shadow where I was. I was not observed when my—when Mrs. Withers left the house with an escort, a man, early in the evening."

"And you waited until she returned?"

"Yes; I waited."

"Very well." There was for the first time a hint of sharpness in Bristow's voice. "You waited. What did you see?"

For the past few minutes a change had been taking place in the bearing of Withers. It was as if, having recovered slightly from the terrific shock of his wife's death, he was gradually stiffening, gaining the strength necessary to withstand the swift volley of Bristow's questions.

The questioner, sensing this alteration in the other, made his queries all the quicker and more peremptory. He wanted to profit as much as possible from the other's lack of control.

"I saw her return with her escort," Withers answered. "She shook hands with him and went into the house and closed the door. He got into his machine, turned it and went back toward town."

"Was his machine noisy?"

"No."

"Did you try to enter Number Five?"

"No. I wasn't ready to disclose my presence. I wanted more time."

He put his hand to his watch pocket and was surprised to find that no watch was there; he had been making nervous little movements like that throughout the interview; but he kept his keen glance on his questioner.

"Then, tell us this, please," Bristow demanded, the sharpness in his tone pronounced: "have you and your wife been on the best of terms lately? And another thing: have you ever had any lasting, distressing disagreements with her?"

The effect of this upon Withers was entirely surprising. He sprang from his chair, his features suddenly working with rage.

"Dammit!" he exclaimed in a tense, vibrant voice, as his glance rested first on Bristow and then on Greenleaf. "What does all this amount to anyway? Here you are, asking me questions as if you thought I had killed my own wife! What I want is results, not a lot of hot air and bluff!"

He snapped his fingers under Bristow's nose.

"Why, dammit!" he shrilled. "Haven't you any idea yet where to look for the murderer? Are you groping around here helplessly after all this time? Dammit! I want a real detective on this job, and I'm going to get one."

He clapped his felt hat to his head and started toward the door.

"You can bet your last dollar on that! I'm going to get one, and he'll be here tomorrow if telegrams can bring him. I'll have Sam Braceway, the cleverest fellow in this business in the South, here tomorrow! I intend to have punishment for the devil who killed my wife. Punishment!—the worst kind!"

His lips were trembling, and he dashed the back of his hand across his face, as if he feared the formation of tears in his eyes.

"You two boneheads can put that in your pipes and smoke it! I mean business!"

He slammed the door, and was gone, taking the steps to the street in two bounds.

"By cracky!" said Greenleaf. "What do you make of that?"

"Nothing," Bristow answered contemptuously; "nothing except that it may be well for us to find out a whole lot more about Mr. Withers and his peculiarities of temper and temperament."

"I should say so," the chief chimed agreement.

"Of course," Bristow added, "that was the easiest way for him to break off our inquiry. I don't think he was on the level with all that storming and raging. It might have been just a great big bluff—that's all. And yet, that Braceway he talked about is good, a wonder. He's done some wonderful work."

"Here's one point," Greenleaf advanced: "why didn't he ask for help from the police yesterday afternoon when he lost track of that fellow with the gold tooth?"

"Yes," the other returned absent-mindedly; "why didn't he?"

Chapter VI.
Morley Is in a Hurry

Table of Contents

Bristow looked at his watch. It was nearly half-past two o'clock.

"Hear anything about Perry?" he asked.

"Yes," Greenleaf informed him. "My man found him. They've got him down at headquarters. I phoned from Number Five and got this. He'd been drinking. I gather that he's about half-drunk now."

"Good! If he'll talk at all, it will be easier for you to get the truth out of him that way than if he were cold sober. Suppose you see him and Douglas Campbell; and later on this afternoon you and I can talk to Miss Fulton and her father."

"Her father won't be here today. He wired that a little while ago. He'll get here early in the morning."

"Very well. It's of no consequence just now. Come back here for me at four, will you?"

When the chief had gone, Bristow sat down to his delayed dinner. As he ate, he went over the facts so far discovered, and catalogued them:

Perry, the negro—incriminated, probably, by the buttons from his overalls jacket; by the ease with which he could have obtained from Lucy Thomas the kitchen key to No. 5; by the possible motive of robbery; and by the brutal means, choking, employed to inflict death.

Morley—incriminated by his unknown whereabouts during the two hours following his missing the midnight train, and by the discovery of the ring (possibly Mrs. Withers') in his room at the Brevord.

Withers—involved by the probable motive of jealousy and rage, and by his secret trip to Furmville.

Maria Fulton—well, he would see.

"Just now," he concluded in his own mind, "it looks worse for the negro than anybody else. There's one thing certain: the man against whom the most evidence rests by the time they have the inquest tomorrow will be the one held for the action of the grand jury. That's the thing to do—get the one who seems most probably guilty."

He thought of Douglas Campbell and immediately dismissed him as a possibility in the list of probable murderers. The young real estate dealer had been completely exonerated by the statement of the dead woman's husband; that, upon bringing her back to the bungalow, he had at once said good night to her and gone home.

Nor did he puzzle his mind about the unknown individual with the gold tooth, he who had appeared in Abrahamson's pawnshop and a few minutes later miraculously disappeared. If the ring pawned had belonged to Mrs. Withers, why should this man return to No. 5 and murder her? If he had obtained nothing from her beforehand, he might have had a real motive for the crime. But, since he had already got the ring, it seemed folly to assume that he would later kill her.

In spite of his growing belief that the onus of proof must fall upon the negro, Bristow could not keep his thoughts away from young Morley. He, more than any of the other suspects, had told an unsatisfactory story. Besides, he had a bad face.

The latest addition to the Furmville plain-clothes squad remembered how carefully Morley's hands had been manicured. He——

With a quick motion, he went to the telephone and called for Greenleaf.

"Chief, are you still holding Perry?"

"Sure, I'm holding him. I'll continue to hold him for some time, I'm thinking. His story don't suit me. He says——"

"All right. Ill get that from you when I see you this afternoon. In the meantime, I wish you'd have his finger nails carefully cleaned. I want——"

But the request had instantly overwhelmed Greenleaf.

"What!" he yelled. "Clean his finger nails!"

"Yes," Bristow continued smoothly, disregarding the other's evident distaste and surprise. "If I were down there, I'd do it myself. In fact, it would be better for you to do it. Don't leave it to some careless subordinate."

The chief laughed his sarcasm.

"You know," this still with laughter, "we Southerners are none too strong on acting as manicures to these coloured folks."

"It's absolutely necessary," was the insistent answer. "And, when you do clean them, save every bit of dirt thus obtained. Now, will you do it?"

"Why, yes," Greenleaf assented with reluctance. "If you say it's absolutely necessary, I'll do it—I'll do it myself."

"Good. I'll depend on you for it. By the way, can't you have somebody, your man Jenkins or some one as good as he is, go out on a real hunt for the fellow with the gold tooth? You remember Withers' description of him?"

"Yes. I'd thought of that."

"That's good. If he can't spot him at any of the hotels, have him make the rounds of the boarding houses. I think you'd like to get your hands on a customer as slippery as Withers says that man is."

"I'll send Jenkins at once," the chief took his directions in good part.

"Good again. By the way, you'll be up here at four?"

"No; five. Dr. Braley told me we'd have to wait until then; said we'd better. He wants her to get that extra hour's sleep."

Bristow started to say something further, hesitated and then hung up the receiver with a word of assent.

Mattie had come in to clear off the table.

"Go down to Number Six," he told her, "and ask Mrs. Allen if she will be so kind as to come up here at her earliest convenience. Explain to her that it's against the doctor's orders for me to leave this house, and that the excitement of this morning has tired me out."

Mrs. Allen appeared in less than a quarter of an hour. He received her in the living room and introduced himself, apologizing for not having been able to call on her. She understood perfectly, she said.

She was a woman about forty years of age, her face a little thin and worn, a good deal of gray in her dark hair. She had been nursing her husband for two years, and the strain had begun to tell. Nevertheless, he soon saw that she was a woman of refinement, possessed of a keen intelligence.

"I wish," he requested, after he had explained his connection with the murder, "you'd tell me all you know about these sisters. I gathered this morning that you were well acquainted with them."

He had always found it easy to gain the confidence of women. They liked his manners, his air of deference, his manifest interest in everything they said.

"I can't say that I've been intimate with them," Mrs. Allen explained in her soft, pleasing voice; "but Mrs. Withers and I knew each other pretty well. She came over to my house quite frequently, and I was in the habit of running in to see her."

"Don't you know the other, Miss Fulton, equally well?"

"No. You see, she was always in, or on, the bed, and she never seemed to want to talk. Besides, she was different from Mrs. Withers—not so bright and attractive, and not so neighbourly."

"Mrs. Withers was always a laughing, sparkling sort of a person, wasn't she?"

"She gave that impression to some people," Mrs. Allen answered thoughtfully, "but not to me. It was her nature to be free and happy. Most of the time she seemed that way. But there were other times when I could see that she had something weighing on her mind, something depressing her."

"Ah!" Bristow said with deeper interest. "That's just what we want to find out about."

Mrs. Allen sat silent for a moment pursing her lips.

Bristow let her reflect.

"I don't think," she said at last, "Mrs. Withers ever was in fear of anybody or any thing. She wasn't that kind."

"Did she ever tell you anything to make you think that she wasn't happy?"

"I was trying to recall just what it was. Once, I remember, when she was sitting out on the sleeping porch—she sometimes came out there to talk to my husband, who is always in bed—we had been discussing the care with which every woman had to live her life.

"'Women are like politicians,' Mr. Allen said. 'They can't afford to have a dark spot in their past. If they do, somebody will drag it out.'

"At that Mrs. Withers cried out:

"'Oh! how awfully true that is! And how unfair! It never seems to matter with men, but with women it means heaven, or the other thing. I wish I knew——' She broke off with a gasp, and I saw her lip tremble.

"It was funny, but at the time I thought she was referring to her sister, not to herself."

"What made you think that?"

"I don't know. I had no real reason for it. Perhaps it was just because unhappiness seemed so foreign to Mrs. Withers herself."

"Was there anything else?"

"Once, when I ran into Number Five, I found her crying. She was in the living room, all doubled up in a rocking chair, crying silently."

"Did she say why?"

"No; but, while I was trying to soothe her, she said, 'Life's so hard—it's so hard to straighten out a tangle when once you've made it. If one could just go back and do things over again!' When I asked her if I could help her, she said I couldn't. 'Nobody can,' she sobbed out on my shoulder. 'It doesn't concern me alone. I'll have to fight it out the best way I can.'"

Bristow was greatly interested.

"What did you conclude from all that, Mrs. Allen?" he asked.

"My impression was very vague," Mrs. Allen returned frankly. "I don't think it is of much value now. I got, somehow, the idea that there was in her life something which she had to conceal, something which might at any moment be discovered. I thought she was worrying about its effect on her husband. Of course, though, that was just my idea."

"I see. Now, just one other thing: what did you think, what do you think, of Miss Fulton?"

"Oh, merely that she's bad-tempered and impatient, always complaining. She was totally without any appreciation of all that Mrs. Withers did for her. Nobody likes Miss Fulton particularly. I think all of us, as we came to know the two, were amazed that Mrs. Withers could have such a disagreeable sister."

Mrs. Allen's recital, while interesting and valuable as to Mrs. Withers' acknowledgment that she felt compelled to keep secret some part of her life, threw no practical light on the situation.

Bristow was silent, thoughtful, for a few moments.

"I've never seen Miss Fulton, except for the glance I had at her this morning," he said. "Was it possible for anybody to mistake one for the other? I mean this: if a man had known that last night Miss Fulton was up and dressed, could it have been possible for him, in a dim light and under the stress of terrific agitation, to have attacked Mrs. Withers under the impression that he was attacking Miss Fulton?"

"Oh, no!" Mrs. Allen said emphatically, and then added: "Oh, I see what you mean. Well, they were of about the same build, although Mrs. Withers wasn't so thin as Miss Fulton is. Then, their hair is different, Mrs. Withers' black, Miss Fulton's blond. I don't know. I should say it all depended on how dark it was."

When Mrs. Allen had gone, Bristow took from a bookcase one of his scrapbooks and went to work pasting into place the clippings he had been reading that morning when interrupted by the cry of murder.

For nine years he had been studying murder cases and the methods of murderers. People had laughed at his fad, but now he was more pleased with himself as a result of it than ever before. He was still pleasantly aware of the prominence he would enjoy in Furmville because of Greenleaf's having called on him for assistance.

"Every murderer," he had said many times, "makes some mistake, big or little, which will lead to his destruction if the authorities have brains enough to find it."

He thought the rule might apply too widely to this case. In fact, his own trouble now was that too many mistakes had been made, too many clues had been left lying around. In order to determine the guilty person, much chaff would have to be sifted from the wheat of truth.

He was closing his scrapbook when the chief of police arrived a few minutes before five o'clock.

"Henry Morley," Greenleaf announced at once, "is a receiving teller in a bank in Washington—the Anderson National Bank."

"And receiving tellers," put in Bristow quickly, "sometimes need money—need it to make good other money they have 'borrowed' from the bank. How did you find this out?"

"He told me when I met him at Number Five after leaving you this afternoon."

"Was he still there then?"

"Yes. It seems that Miss Fulton refused at first to see him. When she did see him, it was for only a minute or two. He was very much agitated when he came from her room."

"There's another thing," added Bristow. "Morley has two hours of last night to account for. He told us he missed the midnight train and went to the Brevord to spend the night. As a matter of fact, he registered at the Brevord a little after two o'clock this morning."

The chief's jaw dropped.

"How do you know that?"

"I called up the Brevord and got the information from the clerk."

"That settles it, then," Greenleaf said, his jaw set. "That young man will have to remain with us for a while."

"Yes; quite properly."

"I guess it's time for us to move." The chief turned toward the door.

"One moment," said the other. "Somehow, I have the impression that we may get important stuff from Maria Fulton. She may not give it to us directly and willingly, but we may get it all the same. And I was thinking this: you and I have got to keep our heads. We don't want to get rattled with the idea that we're up against an unsolvable mystery.

"As you know, I've lived in New York and Chicago and Cincinnati. For the past eight or nine years I've gotten a lot of fun out of watching and studying these cases. And the thing I've learned above all others is that the best way for a criminal to escape is for the authorities to lose their heads and think they are up against something that's really much bigger than it is.

"You see what I mean? What we want to do is to go ahead with our eyes open, knowing that at any moment we may stumble against the one act that will make everything clear and definite."

"That's good talk, and I'll try to act on it," replied the chief, "but, gee whiz! I'm not used to stuff of this sort. It kinder makes me sick."

They went out to the porch.

"By the way," Bristow asked, "what about the two buttons we found?"

"They belonged to Perry," Greenleaf answered. "There's no getting around that. He had the two middle buttons of his overalls jacket missing. What's more, one of the buttons, the one that had a little piece of the cloth clinging to it, fitted exactly into the hole made in the jacket when the button was pulled out."

"Which button was that?"

"The first one—the one you found in Number Five."

They started down the steps.

"You saw the scratches on Mrs. Withers' hand, didn't you?" said Bristow.

"Yes."

"Well, if Perry did the scratching, we can prove it. Any good laboratory man can tell us whether the stuff that was under his nails contains particles of the human skin, the epidermis. If those particles are found, the case is settled, it seems to me."

"By cracky!" exclaimed Greenleaf, his admiration of his assistant growing. "You've solved the problem—gone to the very bottom of it."

"What did Perry have to say? What was his story?"

"Oh, it amounted to nothing. Said he wasn't near Number Five; said he was drunk last night and thought he was at the house of this Lucy Thomas all the time."

"Then, the proof rests upon what the laboratory analysis of the finger nail stuff shows. When can we get that report?"

Bristow was a little surprised by the embarrassment Greenleaf showed before answering:

"We can get it tomorrow—by wire."

"Why can't we get it tonight—or tomorrow at the latest? The Davis laboratory here can do the work. It does laboratory work for all these doctors here."

"It can't do any work for me," objected Greenleaf stubbornly. "Dr. Davis and I aren't on speaking terms, personally or politically. I'll send the stuff down to a laboratory at Charlotte. It will reach there tomorrow morning if I get it off on the midnight train. We can get the telegraphed report on it late tomorrow or the day after."

"All right; I guess that will do," agreed Bristow.

As they started up the steps to the Fulton bungalow, Morley came out to the porch and charged down toward them. His face was convulsed as if by anger or fear. He did not seem to see the two men. Bristow caught him by the arm and put the query:

"Where are you going, Mr. Morley?"

Morley shook off his hand and answered curtly:

"To Washington. I've barely got time to catch my train."

"Don't hurry," Bristow said with a touch of sarcasm. "You're too good at missing trains anyway. Besides, we want to know what you did between midnight and two-ten this morning, and why you failed to tell us this morning that you didn't register at the Brevord until after two."

Morley's face went white.

"There wasn't anything to that," he explained. "I didn't mean to conceal anything. I didn't go anywhere—anywhere specially."

"Where did you go?" insisted Bristow.

"I took a walk. That was all. I didn't feel like sleeping."

"Did you see anybody while you were walking?"

"Not that I remember. Why?"

"Because, if you did, it might be advisable for you to remember. It may become necessary for you to prove an alibi."

"Oh, that!" the young man said with a nervous laugh.

"Yes. Can't you tell us where you went?"

"I wandered around, up and down the down-town streets. That was all."

"Well, remember," Bristow cautioned him. "If you can produce two or three people who saw you down there, it may help you a whole lot."

"Oh, that's all right, I haven't done anything against the law. The idea's absurd."

"Mr. Bristow's right," Greenleaf put in. "We'll have to know more about how you spent those two hours. Really, we will. If you try to leave town, you'll be arrested. My men have their orders."

Greenleaf had forgotten about the ring found in the young man's hotel room, but Bristow hadn't.

Morley went slowly down Manniston Road. There was a cold moisture upon his forehead.

Chapter VII.
Miss Fulton Is Hysterical

Table of Contents

The chief and his assistant were received by Miss Kelly, the trained nurse. Bristow wasted no time in what he considered to be the crucial search for more evidence. In speaking to her he exercised all his persuasiveness, all the suggestion of power and authority that he could force into his voice and expression. And yet, he gave her, as he had given Mrs. Allen, the impression that he deferred to her and prized her opinions.

"Isn't there something you can tell us?" he asked, holding her glance with his own.

"What do you mean?"

She was a strong, capable-looking woman of twenty-six years or so.

"Like every good citizen," he answered smoothly, "you want exactly what we want, a clearing up of all this muddle. I thought, perhaps, there might be something you'd heard or seen. Isn't there?"

"No; nothing, sir," she returned, true to her professional teaching that a nurse is forbidden to reveal the secrets of the sickroom.

"You'll be called as a witness at the inquest," he hazarded, and was rewarded by a look of uncertainty in her eyes. "Your duty to the law is above everything else," he added.

"I've heard Miss Fulton say only one thing," she admitted reluctantly. "She's said it several times while under the influence of the sedatives she's had."

"What was it?"

"Nothing that made any sense. It was, 'When he—say—I—asleep.' There were long pauses between each of the words. She said it four or five times. But she hasn't said anything since she waked up."

"How long has she been awake?"

"About fifteen minutes. Mr. Morley saw her five minutes ago, but he wasn't in there more than a minute or two."

"Morley's seen her a second time!"

"Yes; but each time she hasn't wanted to talk to him. The truth is, she drove him out of the room."

"You didn't hear what they said?"

Miss Kelly drew herself up indignantly.

"I wasn't in the room," she said coldly. "Of course, I didn't hear."

Bristow apologized for the implication that she had overheard intentionally.

When he and Greenleaf were shown into Miss Fulton's room, he had made up his mind in lightning-like manner that what she had said in her delirium, meant: "When he (her father or the police) asks me about last night, I shall say I was asleep all night." It came to him like an intuition, without his even trying to reason it out; and he decided to act on it.

They found Maria Fulton propped up against pillows in the bed. Although her pupils were still enlarged by the sedatives she had had, she was plainly labouring under the stress of great emotion.

Bristow was pleased by that. It would make it easier to learn what she knew. It is difficult, he reflected, for a person under the partial effects of a drug to lie intelligently or convincingly.

He and Greenleaf, taking the chairs that had been placed near the bed by Miss Kelly, regretted the necessity of their intrusion.

"Oh, it's all right," Miss Fulton said petulantly. "I know it's essential. Dr. Braley told me so."

Bristow studied her intently. He saw that Mrs. Allen had been right. Maria Fulton was a dissatisfied, peevish woman. She had the heavy, slightly pendent lower lip that goes with much pouting. There was the constant trace of a frown between her eyebrows, and in the eyes themselves was the look of complaint and protest which the "martyr-type" woman always shows.

She was of the infantile, spoiled class, he decided, one who, remembering that her childhood tears and fits of temper had always resulted in her getting what she wanted, had brought the habit into her adult years. He noted, too, that her gorgeous ash-blond hair had been carefully "done," piled in high masses above her petulant face.

"There are just a few questions which we thought it imperative to ask you," he said, trying to convey to her his desire to be as considerate as possible. "We shall make them as brief as we can."

Miss Fulton plucked impatiently at the coverlet, but said nothing.

Bristow, acting on his belief that life with this girl must always be more or less stormy, took a chance.

"Now," he said, fixing his keen glance upon her, "about this quarrel you and your sister had yesterday?"

She frowned and waved her right hand in careless dismissal of the subject.

"Oh, that," she said, "didn't amount to anything."

"What was it about?"

"I really don't know. You see, my sister and I didn't get along very well together."

Bristow put out his hand, and Greenleaf handed him the ring that had been found in Morley's room at the Brevord.

"This ring," he said; "whose is it?"

She sat up straight and gasped. Her pallor grew. Even her lips went thoroughly white.

"Where did you get that?" she asked huskily.

"It doesn't matter. Whose is it?"

"It—it was my sister's," she said, almost in a whisper.

"Do you know who gave it to Mr. Morley?"

She stared, speechless, at Bristow.

"Don't you know?" he persisted.

"Yes," she said with obvious effort; "I—I lent it to him."

"When?"

"Yest—last night."

"Why?"

She tried to smile, but her features were moulded more nearly to a grimace.

"Mr. Morley and I—and I—have been engaged," she laboured to explain. "He said he wanted to wear it for a while just because it belonged to me."

"But he knew it didn't belong to you, didn't he?"

"I suppose," she corrected herself, "he meant he wanted to wear it because I had worn it."

"I see," commented Bristow, and added very quickly: "How much of your sister's jewelry is in this house now?"

Miss Fulton stared at him again, and did not answer.

"Can't you tell me?" he urged. "How much?"

She turned her head from him and looked out of the window.

"None of it," she replied finally. "I had Miss Kelly look for it. It's all—gone."

"Why did you have Miss Kelly look for it? What made you suspect that it was gone?"

She turned to him and frowned more deeply, angrily.

"It was, I suppose," she said shortly, "the first and most natural suspicion for any one to have; that, since she had been killed, she had been robbed. It was the only motive of which I could think."

"Yes," he agreed pleasantly, handing the ring back to the chief; "I think you're right there."

He was silent for a full minute while the girl in the bed plucked at the coverlet and eyed first him and then Greenleaf.

"Miss Fulton," he demanded more sharply than he had yet spoken, "did you see or hear anything last night in connection with this tragedy, the death of your sister?"

"No; nothing," she answered, her voice now approaching firmness. It was a firmness, however, that was forced.

"How do you explain that?"

"I went to bed before my sister returned from the dinner dance, and I had taken something Dr. Braley had given me that breaks up the severe coughing attacks to which I am subject and that also puts me to sleep."

"Makes you sleep soundly?"

"Very."

"It was a hypodermic injection, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"And you took it—administered it to yourself?"

"Yes."

"Do you know what it was?"

"Yes; morphine."

"A sixteenth of a grain, wasn't it? That's what is always given to tuberculars to prevent violent spells of coughing, isn't it?"

She hesitated, but finally assented.

"But that's very little to make one sleep so soundly, that one couldn't hear the cries of a woman being murdered and all the noises that must have accompanied the attack upon her. Don't you think so?"

"But, you must remember," she said tartly, "I'm not accustomed to taking morphine. Anyway, that's the way it affected me."

"You heard absolutely nothing and saw nothing until you discovered your sister's body at ten o'clock this morning?"

"That's true. Yes; that's true." She looked out of the window, paying him no more attention.

Bristow, in his turn, was silent. Greenleaf took up the inquiry:

"Several times today, while you were asleep or delirious, you said the words: 'When he—say—I—asleep,' Can you explain that for us, Miss Fulton?"

Her pallor deepened. This time terror flourished in her eyes as she turned sharply toward Greenleaf.

"Who says I said that?" she demanded, husky again.

"Things are heard pretty easily in these bungalows," he said. "One of my men heard it."

"Oh, I understand," she replied, a hint of craftiness creeping into her voice. "No; I can't explain it. One can't often explain one's ravings."

"It merely suggested something that we had thought impossible," Bristow interjected soothingly: "that you might have wanted to deny having heard something which you really did hear; that you were protecting somebody."

"Oh," she said angrily, "that's absurd—utterly."

"Quite," lied Bristow suavely. "That was what I told Chief Greenleaf." Then, with sharp directness, he asked her: "Who do you think killed your sister?"

"I don't know! Oh, I don't know!" she cried shrilly, more than ever suggestive of the spoiled child.

"It must have been some burglar. She was very popular, everybody said. She had no enemies."

"None at all?"

"None that I know of."

"But Mr. Morley didn't like her, did he?"

"No," she said slowly. "He didn't like her, but you couldn't have called him her enemy."

Bristow moved his chair toward her several inches.

"Miss Fulton," he asked, "you and Mr. Morley are engaged to be married, aren't you?"

"No!" she surprised him. "No; we're not!"

He did not tell her that Morley had said they were.

Greenleaf was now clearly conscious of what he had vaguely felt while listening to Bristow's questioning of Withers: the lame man had the faculty of seeming entirely inoffensive in his queries but at the same time putting into his voice an irritating, challenging quality which was bound to work on the feelings of the person to whom he talked. He had begun to have this effect on Miss Fulton.

"I understood," he informed her, "that you were—er—quite fond of each other."

"Not at all! Not at all!" she denied with increasing vehemence. "I'm not engaged to him now. Nothing could induce me to marry him!"

"Mr. Morley declared this morning that you and he were to be married."

She caught herself up quickly, anger evident in her eyes, and at the same time, also, a look of caution. Bristow decided she wanted to tell nothing, to give him no advantage, no actual insight into the clouded situation.

"I see what you mean," she said. "We were engaged, but I finally decided that our marriage was impossible—because of this—my illness."

"And you told him so?"

She thought a long moment before she answered:

"Yes."

"When?"

"Yesterday."

"Then, when did you give him—let him have Mrs. Withers' ring?"

She showed signs of weakening.

"Yesterday," she declared. "No! Last night, I've already told you."

"And why did he want the ring last night when you had broken with him earlier yesterday?"

His subtle irritation of her by his manner and tone had unstrung her at last.

"I don't know," she cried, hysterics in her voice. "Oh, I don't know! Why do you ask me all these foolish little questions?" She tore unconsciously at the counterpane, her fingers writhing against one another. "Please, please don't bother me any more! Leave me! Leave me now, won't you?"

The high, shrill quality of her tone brought Miss Kelly into the room.

"I think," the nurse said, "you gentlemen will have to put off further conversation with Miss Fulton—if you can. The doctor said she was not to be subjected to too much excitement."

They already had risen.

"We've very much obliged to you, Miss Fulton," Bristow said in his pseudo-pleasant way. "It may be useful to us to know about you and Mr. Mor——"

He was interrupted by a cry from the girl. Without the slightest warning, she had lost the last shred of her self-control. She began to beat on the covering of her bed with clenched fists. He could see how her whole body moved and twisted.

Greenleaf, startled by the girl's demeanour, moved further from her. Bristow stood his ground, watching her closely.

She glared at him with the wild look that frequently comes to the hysterical or neurotic woman's eyes. She did not seem to be suffering. She was angry, carried away by her rage, and giving vent to it without any attempt at restraint!

In two or three seconds she had become suggestive of an animal, her nostrils distended, the upper lip drawn back from her teeth. Bristow, going beyond surface indications, estimated her at her true worth: "Too much indulged; overshadowed, perhaps, by some older member of the family; but capable of big things, even charm. She's far from being a nonentity. She may help me yet."

He regarded her calmly, and smiled.

"Don't mention him to me again!" she screamed. "I won't have it! I won't have it, I tell you! I never want to see him again—never! Don't speak the name of Henry Morley in——"

But Miss Kelly had quickly motioned them out and closed the door. Even on the outside, however, they could hear her shrill, whining protest against any mention of Morley.

"Now!" said Greenleaf as they went through the living room. "What do you make of that?"

They left the house and stood on the sidewalk outside.

"Not much," Bristow replied, thinking deeply. "What with Withers throwing a fit, and then this girl having, or shamming, hysterics, it's disappointing. But here's a question: what has Morley done since last evening to make her hate him—at least, to make her look frightened when his name is mentioned to her?"

"What do you think?"

"I should say murder, or something just a little short of murder—wouldn't you?"

Greenleaf looked his bewilderment.

"No," he objected. "I don't believe she'd protect him if she knew he'd killed her sister."

"Not if she knew, perhaps," Bristow pursued ruminatively. "But if she suspected, merely suspected?"

The chief did not answer this. He was clinging now to the theory of Perry's guilt. It seemed to him the easiest one to prove.

"By the way, Mr. Bristow," he suggested, "wouldn't it be a good idea for us to search the yard and garden back of this house?"

"What for?"

"There's always the chance that the murderer, in running away, dropped something, even a part of the plunder. Then, too, remember the buttons."

"Yes; I see what you mean, but it's getting late now. The light's none too good—and I'm tired, chief, tired out. Suppose we let that go until tomorrow—or you do it alone."

"No; I'll wait for you tomorrow. We can do it together."

"Oh," Bristow asked, as if suddenly remembering an important item, "what kind of shoes is Perry wearing?"

"An old pair of high-topped tennis shoes—black canvas."

"Rubber soles?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry," observed Bristow. "That's another complication. Morley wore rubbers last night. Either he or Perry might have made that footprint on the porch."

"How about Withers?" Greenleaf advanced a new idea. "He didn't tell us anything he did after seeing Campbell leave here last night."