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

AS he dressed, Gaunt thought over the interview of the afternoon.

Randolph Force had undoubtedly come to find out, if possible, what real progress the detective had made toward the discovery of the truth, and his manner had unmistakably suggested that he entertained, for some reason known only to himself, a willingness to have the tragedy sink into oblivion, an eagerness that it should remain unsolved, which was significant.

He had, however, unwittingly placed in Gaunt’s possession a few details, which, in a flash of that rarely developed quality of his—that never closing eye of the mind, which so often had served him to far greater purpose than the physical vision of his confreres—had revealed to him a new train of thought, a possibility which, vague as it was, and wholly without substantiation, loomed larger as a probability with each passing moment of reflection.

If there had been rumors in the Street and in clubdom, as Randolph Force had admitted, of Garret Appleton’s possible connection with, and connivance at, the failure of Smith, Hitchcock & Gregory at the time it occurred, was it not likely that those rumors had been revived by the announcement in the papers of the pardon granted to Rupert Hitchcock, and his release? Might those whispers not have been rife in the Patriarchs’, on that Monday evening when Yates had gone there to play? If so, it was not wholly, improbable that he had chanced to overhear them, and, excited no less by the wine he had been drinking, in his semi-drugged condition, than by the thought of the night’s losses, and the maddening problem of how he was to pay them, he had rushed home incontinently, demanded the money from his brother, and, on receiving the usual refusal, rendered more insulting by Garret Appleton’s mood, had taunted his brother with the tale he had just overheard, had even, perhaps, demanded a price for his silence toward his mother and sister-in-law.

In that case, it would be small wonder if Garret, flaming into sudden rage, had uttered some unanswerable insult, which had provoked Yates into striking—might even have aroused murder in his heart.

And then, suddenly, Gaunt paused, and the hands which had been arranging his tie dropped to his side, as a swift ray of light darted through his brain.

In a revealing moment, one phase of the mysterywas made clear to him, and he could have cursed himself for his stupidity of the past week. Why had that hypothesis not occurred to him at once? Had his brain become dulled, rusted, that he had not instantly grasped the significance of the chain of events, or had his ears been deaf to the cry of reason, hearing only the low, vibrating music of a woman’s voice?

He determined not to delay, but to put this new theofy to the test at once, that very night. With no proof to go upon but the evidence of his intuition, he meant to try a supremely daring bluff. If it failed, no more harm would have been done than that one man would consider him a fool incarnate, and, considering the man, he thought he should be able to endure that with equanimity. But something told him that he would not fail.

He dined mechanically, his mind intent upon the coming interview, then ordered his car, and drove around to the aprtments of Yates Appleton. He found him at home, alone, and sulking. With no interests within himself, no resources save the usual round of restaurants and clubs, the enforced seclusion, which conventional mourning thrust upon him, no less than the notoriety, which the tragedy had cast upon the family, bored him almost to extinction, and he was seriously contemplating a greater indulgence in cocaine than he usually allowed himself, and a consequently early and prolonged sleep, when James announced the arrival of the detective.

He sprang to his feet, and greeted his unwelcome guest with a nervous assumption of cordiality, and asked eagerly for news of progress with the investigation.

“I have learned—much, Mr. Appleton,” Gaunt replied, gravely. “But it is to learn more that I am here tonight.”

“! wondered why you hadn’t looked me up before,” Yates Appleton remarked, with studied carelessness. “I’ve been hanging round here all week, as I promised you I would, waiting to hear from you—and beastly stupid it’s been, I can tell you, Mr. Gaunt. I knew you’d let me know if you’d learned anything definite.”

“I have,” the detective assured him, still very gravely, turning and facing him directly, as if he could look into his eyes. “Mr. Appleton, you assured me last week that you had been perfectly frank with me; but I find that you have not.”

“I—don’t understand what you mean, Mr. Gaunt. Of course, I have been frank with youl” The young man uncrossed his knees, and shrank into his chair so suddenly that it rolled backward a few inches on its casters, heavy as it was.

“When did you first hear rumors of your brother’s being on the inside in that Smith, Hitchcock & Gregory failure?” Gaunt shot at him.

“What!” Yates Appleton exclaimed; but his voice died away in his throat.

“When did you first hear of it? At the time of the failure—or in the Patriarchs’ Club, last Monday night?”

The young man. opened his lips; but only a queer, gurgling, strangling sound issued from them.

“When you taunted your brother with it, at midnight in the den—” the detective went on, inexorably. But there was no need for him to complete his sentence. The shot had struck home.

“So Dakers did hear me, after all—the lying hound!” Yates Appleton sprang from his chair. “I wouldn’t have mentioned it to Garret—I guess it was no news to him, anyway; some of the talk must have reached his ears long ago—only, I was desperate for money with which to pay my debts, and, when he refused so insolently to help me, it came over me all at once what a fraud he was, what a damned crook, and I let him have it before I thought.”

“And you had heard of it for the first time, at the club that night?”

“No. Of course not. It had been hinted at on all sides at the time of the crash, and some of the talk had come indirectly to my ears; but I hadn’t paid any attention to it. I never gave it a moment’s thought. When that fellow, Hitchcock, was pardoned, a week or so aeo, the talk all started up again, and I happened to overhear two men discussing it at the club after I’d finished playing on Monday night. I knew my brother better then than I had four years previously, and I realized that—that it might be true. Then, I went to get. my hat and coat, as I told you— wondering how promptly I could take up those chips rd given at the card-table, when I lost…. They were two of the cads I’d been playing with, too, curse them! That made me red, and I rushed home to my brother, determined to get the money from him.”

“And that was when you struck him, when you accused him of being connected with the swindle?”

“N-no—not then.” The young man’s volubility had suddenly dried at its source.

“When?”

“When he—replied to my accusation.”

“What did he say?”

“He—he recalled something I wanted to forget—something I’ve striven for years to live down.”

“What was it?” Then, as the other appeared to hesitate, he added peremptorily: “Come, Mr. Appleton, I must know. This is no time for half-measures.”

“Once, years ago, I was accused—wrongfully, of course; that goes without saying—of cheating at cards, and I didn’t knock the man down because—oh, because he was bigger than I was! That’s all. My brother flung that in my face, and then I—I struck him! You know what happened after that.”

“Yes.” The detective straightened suddenly in his chair. “You went out, and returned home at about three, and your valet assisted you to bed, and then retired himself…. Did you go to sleep, immediately?”

“I suppose so. I don’t remember.” Young Mr. Appleton’s tones had sunk from passion to mere suUenness; but, at the last question, he glanced furtively at the impassive face of his interrogator, as if some unaccustomed telepathic wave had conveyed to his shrinking mind a premonition of what was to come.

“When did you wake? Do you know what time it was?”

“Why, of—of course! At halfpast six, or thereabouts, when Katie screamed—”

“No—no!” Gaunt interrupted, speaking with dangerous quietness. “I mean before that, when you wakened, and could not sleep again—when you dared use no more cocaine, and went downstairs, probably for a drink from the decanter, which you knew was in the den, and found your brother’s body—”

A snarling scream, like that of a trapped animal rent the air, and cut ofF the sound of the detective’s voice, and then the quick, gasping sobs of a man’s hysteria, with a high, thin wail of craven fear running through them, indescribably repulsive to listen to.

Gaunt waited until the outburst had somewhat spent itself, and then, to make assurance doubly sure, he asked sternly:

“What are you going to do with them?”

The sobs gradually grew more faint, and Yates Appleton lay back once more in his chair, broken and exhausted with the storm of emotion, which had swept all thought, all effort, from him, and bared his drug-shattered nerves to the torturing, penetrating, inner gaze of his terrible inquisitor.

“What do you—mean?” he breathed. “Do with—what?”

“The things you took from your brother’s body, to make it appear that a burglary had been committed. You could not hide them here; for they would be found, and your guilt be assumed as a foregone conclusion. You would not have dared to keep them much longer, and you don’t know how to get rid of them. What are you going to do with them?”

“I don’t know—I don’t know!” the young man moaned, his head between his hands. “They’ve been before my eyes day and night, night and day! I didn’t want to take them with me. Their very touch is loathesome to me; but I