The Holladay Case: A Tale, Burton Egbert Stevenson [best books to read for women txt] 📗

chapter   page I. A Bolt from the Blue 1 II. In the Grip of Circumstance 15 III. The Coil Tightens 37 IV. I Have an Inspiration 56 V. I Dine with a Fascinating Stranger 70 VI. Godfrey's Panegyric 70 VII. Miss Holladay Becomes Capricious 101 VIII. The Mysterious Maid 114 IX. I Meet Monsieur Martigny 131 X. An Astonishing Disappearance 146 XI. I Unmask My Enemy 165 XII. At the Café Jourdain 183 XIII. En Voyage 197 XIV. I Prove a Bad Sentinel 213 XV. Two Heads are Better than One 229 XVI. I Beard the Lion 247 XVII. Etretat 270 XVIII. The Veil is Lifted 280 XIX. The End of the Story 293

[Pg 1]

THE HOLLADAY CASE CHAPTER I A Bolt from the Blue

The atmosphere of the office that morning was a shade less genial than usual. We had all of us fought our way downtown through such a storm of wind, snow, slush, and sleet as is to be found nowhere save in mid-March New York, and our tempers had suffered accordingly. I had found a cab unobtainable, and there was, of course, the inevitable jam on the Elevated, with the trains many minutes behind the schedule. I was some half-hour late, in consequence, and when I entered the inner office, I was surprised to find Mr. Graham, our senior, already at his desk. He nodded good-morning a little curtly.[Pg 2]

"I wish you'd look over these papers in the Hurd case, Lester," he said, and pushed them toward me.

I took them and sat down; and just then the outer door slammed with a violence extremely unusual.

I had never seen Mr. Royce, our junior, so deeply shaken, so visibly distracted, as he was when he burst in upon us a moment later, a newspaper in his hand. Mr. Graham, startled by the noise of his entrance, wheeled around from his desk and stared at him in astonishment.

"Why, upon my word, John," he began, "you look all done up. What's the matter?"

"Matter enough, sir!" and Mr. Royce spread out the paper on the desk before him. "You haven't seen the morning papers, of course; well, look at that!" and he indicated with a trembling finger the article which occupied the first column of the first page—the place of honor.[Pg 3]

I saw our senior's face change as he read the headlines, and he seemed positively horror-stricken as he ran rapidly through the story which followed.

"Why, this is the most remarkable thing I ever read!" he burst out at last.

"Remarkable!" cried the other. "Why, it's a damnable outrage, sir! The idea that a gentle, cultured girl like Frances Holladay would deliberately murder her own father—strike him down in cold blood—is too monstrous, too absolutely preposterous, too—too——" and he stopped, fairly choked by his emotion.

The words brought me upright in my chair. Frances Holladay accused of—well!—no wonder our junior was upset!

But Mr. Graham was reading through the article again more carefully, and while he nodded sympathetically to show that he fully assented to the other's words, a straight, deep line of perplexity, which I had come to recognize, formed between his eyebrows.[Pg 4]

"Plainly," he said at last, "the whole case hinges on the evidence of this man Rogers—Holladay's confidential clerk—and from what I know of Rogers, I should say that he'd be the last man in the world to make a willful misstatement. He says that Miss Holladay entered her father's office late yesterday afternoon, stayed there ten minutes, and then came out hurriedly. A few minutes later Rogers went into the office and found his employer dead. That's the whole case, but it'll be a hard one to break."

"Well, it must be broken!" retorted the other, pulling himself together with a supreme effort. "Of course, I'll take the case."

"Of course!"

"Miss Holladay probably sent for me last night, but I was out at Babylon, you know, looking up that witness in the Hurd affair. He'll be all right, and his evidence will give us the case. Our answer in the Brown injunction[Pg 5] can wait till to-morrow. That's all, I think."

The chief nodded.

"Yes—I see the inquest is to begin at ten o'clock. You haven't much time."

"No—I'd like to have a good man with me," and he glanced in my direction. "Can you spare me Lester?"

My heart gave a jump. It was just the question I was hoping he would ask.

"Why, yes, of course," answered the chief readily. "In a case like this, certainly. Let me hear from you in the course of the day."

Mr. Royce nodded as he started for the door.

"I will; we'll find some flaw in that fellow's story, depend upon it. Come on, Lester."

I snatched up pen and paper and followed him to the elevator. In a moment we were in the street; there were cabs in plenty now, disgorging their loads and starting back uptown again; we hailed one, and in another[Pg 6] moment were rattling along toward our destination with such speed as the storm permitted. There were many questions surging through my brain to which I should have welcomed an answer. The storm had cut off my paper that morning, and I regretted now that I had not made a more determined effort to get another. A glance at my companion showed me the folly of attempting to secure any information from his, so I contented myself with reviewing what I already knew of the history of the principals.

I knew Hiram W. Holladay, the murdered man, quite well; not only as every New Yorker knew that multi-millionaire as one of the most successful operators in Wall Street, but personally as well, since he had been a client of Graham & Royce for twenty years and more. He was at that time well on toward seventy years of age, I should say, though he carried his years remarkably well; his wife had been long[Pg 7] dead, and he had only one child, his daughter, Frances, who must have been about twenty-five. She had been born abroad, and had spent the first years of her life there with her mother, who had lingered on the Riviera and among the hills of Italy and Switzerland in the hope of regaining a health, which had been failing, so I understood, ever since her daughter's birth. She had come home at last, bringing the black-eyed child with her, and within the year was dead.

Holladay's affections from that moment seemed to grow and center about his daughter, who developed into a tall and beautiful girl—too beautiful, as was soon apparent, for our junior partner's peace of mind. He had met her first in a business way, and afterwards socially, and all of us who had eyes could see how he was eating his heart out at the knowledge that she was far beyond his reach; for it was evident that her father deemed her worthy of a brilliant marriage—as, indeed, she was. I sometimes[Pg 8] thought that she held herself at a like value, for though there was about her a constant crowd of suitors, none of them, seemingly, could win an atom of encouragement. She was waiting, I told myself, waiting; and I had even pictured to myself the grim irony of a situation in which our junior might be called upon to arrange her marriage settlements.

The cab stopped with a jolt, and I looked up to see that we had reached the Criminal Courts building. Mr. Royce sprang out, paid the driver, and ran up the steps to the door, I after him. He turned down the corridor to the right, and entered the room at the end of it, which I recognized as the office of Coroner Goldberg. A considerable crowd had already collected there.

"Has the coroner arrived yet?" my companion asked one of the clerks.

"Yes, sir; he's in his private office."

"Will you take him this card and say that I'd like to see him at once, if possible?"[Pg 9]

The clerk hurried away with the card. He was back again in a moment.

"This way, sir," he called.

We followed him across the room and through a door at the farther side.

"Ah, Mr. Royce, glad to see you," cried the coroner, as we entered. "We tried to find you last night, but learned that you were out of town, and I was just calling up your office again."

"Miss Holladay asked for me, then?"

"Yes, at once. When we found we couldn't get you, we suggested your senior, but she said she'd wait till you returned."

I could see our junior's face crimson with pleasure.

"You didn't think it necessary to confine her, I trust?" he asked.

"Oh, no; she wasn't disturbed. She spent the night at home—under surveillance."

"That was right. Of course, it's simply absurd to suspect her."

Goldberg looked at him curiously.[Pg 10]

"I don't know, Mr. Royce," he said slowly. "If the evidence turns out as I think it will, I shall have to hold her—the district attorney expects it."

Mr. Royce's hands were clutching a chair-back, and they trembled a little at the coroner's words.

"He'll be present at the examination, then?" he asked.

"Yes, we're waiting for him. You see, it's rather an extraordinary case."

"Is it?"

"We think so, anyway!" said the coroner, just a trifle impatiently.

I could see the retort which sprang to our junior's lips, but he choked it back. There was no use offending Goldberg.

"I should like to see Miss Holladay before