At One-Thirty, Isabel Ostrander [ebook reader with highlight function .TXT] 📗

SUNDAY morning was a quiet one for Gaunt. He slept late, after his fatiguing exertions of the previous day, and lingered luxuriouslyover his after-breakfast smoke. In order to leave no stone unturned, he had perforce followed the clue originally unearthed by Inspector Hanrahan, until he had proved conclusively that it had no connection with the case under investigation; but this had been merely routine work. He must wait patiently until young Mrs. Appleton was able to grant him an interview.

For some days, a faint idea had impressed itself insistently on his subconscious mind, bom partly of a flash of his rarely developed intuition, and partly from a curious pause in a conversation, which had taken place there in his own library. It seemed the wildest of assumptions, the most improbable that he had ever allowed himself to entertain, and yet there was damning evidence in his possession, of either one of two facts, and they appeared, on profound reflection, to be equally incredible.

Miss Barnes, unless he urgently needed her�� did not come to him on Sundays, ai^i he $at in the library, wistfully fingering the pile of voluminous newspapers until Jenkins, who was hovering anxiously about him—always uneasy when ‘ the master was inactive—suggested reading them to him. The man seated himself at a respectful distance, and patiently and laboriously droned out the headlines until Gaunt could endure it no longer, and put an end to it by remarking that he had forgotten a telephone message of importance.

Lifting the receiver from its hook, he called the Appleton house, and, as before, asked for Miss Ellerslie. Her low, sweet voice, vibrating over the wire, thrilled him, as it had ever done, to the very core of his being; but, for the first time, it carried an inexplicable pang to his heart, and the memory of Randolph Force, and their single interview, rose in his mind.

Barbara Ellerslie^s voice had lost the note of trembling anxiety, and held a rising gladness and joy, which swept his senses like music, as she told him of her sister^s returning strength.

“It seems wonderful, Mr. Gaunt!” she was saying. “My sister is already better than we had dared hope, and all danger to her, of any’ sort, is over. The doctor is amazed at her strength and recuperative powers, no less than. I am. But there seems to be something preying on her mind— something more than the death of her husband, I mean. She is eager to see you, and the doctor thinks, in view of her improved condition, that it would be better to allow her to do so, and set her mind at rest. If she is as well tomorrow as she seems today, she will be able to see you. Can you come in the afternoon?”

Tomorrow! Tomorrow, then, would [see the end of the problem that was wrestling from him all peace of mind, and driving from his thoughts every other consideration. That little Mrs. Appleton held in her slender fingers the key to the mystery, was a conviction which had been growing in his mind since the day of the murder, when, after his last interview with her, he had heard, from without the closed door of her room, the half-hysterical, half-delirious, wholly despairing cry, “Barbara! He knows! He knows!”

That he had not taxed Miss Ellerslie, herself, with his knowledge of that cry, and wrung from her the truth as to at what hour during the previous night Natalie Appleton had been in the room where her husband sat, Hving or dead, was a self-reproach, which he strove to excuse on the plea that other and more obvious clues clamored for investigation. But he now made no further attempt to deceive himself. He had spared her because he had shrunk instinctively from causing her more pain. from adding to the burden of her sorrow and anxiety for her sister by any act of his.

He could not comprehend his own attitude, nor give it a name. Heretofore, on every case that had fallen into his hands, he had invariably been without emotion or personal feeling of any kind, a mere machine. He had pursued the truth relentlessly to its ultimate conclusion, without a consciousness of pity or mercy, ^ and had been unmoved by countless scenes of heartrending grief and tragedy. But the strange, potent charms of this woman—nay, more, the inherent beauty of her soul, which his unerring intuition had bared to him at their first meeting—had rendered him helpless before it. He was no longer an automaton, an instrument of justice. Something deep within him had unfolded, and diffused through all his being a warmth that awakened him into sentient, vibrant life.

But the first awe of this strange, new emotion, which was all weakness, yet all strength, had at length been superseded by the inflexible sense of duty that had dominated him throughout all his shadowed Hfe. If Barbara Ellerslie must suffer, so had countless other women suffered before her. He must steel himself against her tears, her pleading; against the sound of that low, exquisite voice raised in heart-sickening agony, imploring him to desist, to shirk his duty, and besmirch his honor, for the first time in his career; against that dangerous, maddening appeal to every sensation, every impulse, every leaping desire of his heart! Come what might, the murderer of Garret Appleton must be brought to justice!

Early in the afternoon, Inspector Hanrahan appeared, true to his promise. He shook hands with the detective, in an abashed way which ill accorded with his self-assurance of the past few days, and betrayed the result of his fruitless errand of the morning, before he spoke.

“Well, Mr. Gaunt, you were right. That trail’s ended. Hitchcock left the Crabtree cottage at halfpast seven, Monday night, reached New York a little after nine, picked up a few old friends of his, who’d stuck to him, it seems, through everything, and took them out to his son’s little house in Hempstead. They all sat up most of the night together—not drinking, or carousing, or celebrating, or anything like that; just talking over old times, and planning to give him a lift over the hard places of the future. Sort of a reunion, it was. Three of them are prominent, absolutely reputable business men, and I’ve seen them all. They swear Hitchcock was in their company from halfpast nine on the night of the murder, until six the next morning, when they all went to bed. Now, Appleton was alive for four hours after they claim they met Hitchcock, and it’s morally certain he couldn’t have committed the murder after six in the morning. So, that lets him out.”

“And now, what?” asked Gaunt, quietly. ^

“Do you know what I think?” the Inspector remarked, very seriously. “I’ve never admitted this in a case before, even when it’s been finally dropped from the police record, but—I shouldn’t be surprised if this murder was never solved! It’s happened before, you know; but there’s never been another case like this in the annals of the department; one with so many clues at the start, and all of them leading to nothing!”

“So we are just back where we started,” the detective observed.

“Yes,” Inspector Hanrahan assented, ruefully. “Arid it’ll be a week tomorrow since the murder…. Say, how about it being a case of suicide, and one of the family, coming on the body by chance, fixed up that little burglary stunt to save the family name from the disgrace, and all that? It’ll be a good frameup for me to send in to headquarters, anyway, if the truth don’t come to light. If only we could find out that one of the family had changed the scenery like that, it’d be plain sailing!”

“It’s not too late yet, you know,” remarked Gaunt. “Think of those weeks we worked on the Delamater murders.”

“I know; but there we had somethin’ to go on—or, rather, you did. Here we haven’t a thing.”

Jenkins’ familiar cough was heard just outside, and then his knock sounded upon the door.

“Come in!” called the detective.

“Gentleman to see you, sir.”

Gaunt took the card from the tray, and said:

“Ask him to wait just a few minutes.”

Inspector Hanrahan comprehended the implied hint, and rose.

“Well, I’ll be getting on,” he remarked; and then, eying the card, which the detective held suspiciously averted, he added: “If you learn anything more about this business, you’ll let me know? I’m up a tree, and every minute of time counts, now.”

“You’ll hear from me if anything turns up,” Gaunt reassured him.

After Inspector Hanrahan had taken his leave, the detective summoned Jenkins again.

“What name is on this card?” he asked, quickly.

“Mr.—Ran—Randolph—Force,” read Jenkins, finding difficulty in deciphering the English script.

Randolph Force! Had he come of his own volition, or because of the importunities of another? At any rate, he would be anxious, nervous, almost distraught, yet concealing his perturbation as well as he could, beneath that iron reserve of his. Yet, he would betray himself. The detective had learned by experience in many previous cases, that nervousness first manifested itself in the mouth, the dryness of the throat, the thickness of the tongue. Randolph Force would seek to relieve that nervousness. It would induce thirst, and, if a glass of water were handy—

“Ask him to come up, now, and don’t interrupt us for anything, unless I ring the bell.”

“Very good, sir.”

“But, first, Jenkins, bring me a glass, a thin, tall glass of water, with one piece of ice in it, about the size—oh, of an egg, say, and put it on the corner of the centertable, near the right arm of that big leather chair…. That will do. Now, bring him up.”

The detective had not anticipated this call, and yet, gaging the man’s character as he had instinctively done at their first interview, he felt that it was not wholly inconsistent with his conception.

He heard their steps approaching, and Jenkins tapped softly, then opened the door.

“How do you do, Mr. Force?” Gaunt said. “I am glad you have come.”

They shook hands cordially, and the door closed behind Jenkins’ retreating figure. Randolph Force started mechanically toward the chair by the fireplace; but the detective stopped