The Red Seal, Natalie Sumner Lincoln [books for men to read .TXT] 📗
- Author: Natalie Sumner Lincoln
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Kent sat in dumbfounded silence, regarding the red seal and the envelope. The piece of wax broken off from the seal had caught on his coat sleeve when he had been in the Venetian casket in the library at the McIntyre house. It was proof positive that not only he had been in the casket, but the sealed envelope also. Helen McIntyre had left the envelope in his care. Mrs. Brewster and Colonel McIntyre had both been present when the envelope was stolen from him. Which of them had taken it? Which one had afterwards secreted it in the Venetian casket? And which had brought it back to the safe in his office?
Colonel McIntyre had been in his office within the hour - the question was answered, and Kent’s eyes brightened, then clouded - Barbara had been there as well, and Grimes had stated that before he received a knockout blow in the McIntyre library he heard the swish of skirts!
Kent laid his hand on the envelope. It was time that he found out what it contained; but his finger, inserted under the flap, paused as his eyes fell on the check bearing Mrs. Brewster’s signature. It was the check he had picked up from the floor of the McIntyre limousine that morning and inadvertently carried away with him.
>From her signature his glance wandered to Sylvester’s memorandum pad; it was uncanny the way his eye picked out the letter “B” as he stared at Clymer’s note and its signature. Slowly his hand dropped away from the envelope and he left it lying forgotten on the desk as he picked up piece after piece of blotting paper, glancing intently at each and finally, pulling open a drawer of his desk, he hunted in feverish haste for a hand-mirror.
Some ten minutes later Kent rose, placed the papers he had been examining in the inside pocket of his coat and, using the private entrance from his office into the corridor, he hurried away.
When Helen McIntyre entered the office of Rochester and Kent for the second time that afternoon she found Sylvester transcribing stenographic notes on his typewriter.
“Mr. Kent is expecting you, miss,” he said, holding open the inner office door, and with a courteous word of thanks, Helen passed the clerk and the door closed behind her. Kent rose at her approach and bowed formally.
“Take this chair,” he suggested, and not until she was seated did Helen realize he had placed her where the light fell full upon her. “I asked you to come here,” he began, as she waited for him to speak, “Because I must have your confidence - if I am to aid you. Did you meet, recognize, and talk to Jimmie Turnbull in your house sometime between Monday midnight and his arrest on Tuesday morning?”
She colored hotly, then paled. “My testimony at the inquest,” - she commenced, but he gave her no opportunity to add more.
“Your testimony there does not cover the question,” he explained. “You stated then that you had not recognized Jimmie in the court room. Had you already penetrated his disguise at your house?”
“And if I had?”
“Did you?” Kent was doggedly persistent, and Helen’s fingers closed around her handbag with convulsive force. Why had she not sent Barbara to see Kent in her place?
“Did I what?” she parried.
“Did you recognize and talk with Jimmie Turnbull in your house?”
“I talked with him, yes,” she admitted, and her voice dropped almost to a whisper.
“As Jimmie Turnbull or Smith the burglar?”
“As Jimmie” - she confessed, after a slight pause.
“Then why did you go through the farce of having Jimmie arrested as a burglar?” Kent demanded.
“So that Barbara might win her wager,” promptly. Kent stared at her incredulously.
“Do you mean that, notwithstanding the risk to which you were subjecting him with his weak heart, you kept up the farce simply that Barbara might win an idiotic wager?” Kent asked.
Helen passed one nervous hand over the other; her palms were hot and dry, and two hectic spots had appeared in each white cheek.
“Jimmie was quite well Monday night,” she protested. “He - he - had some heart medicine with him.”
Amyl nitrite?”
“No.”
“Nitroglycerine?”
“I - I think that was it, I am not quite sure,” she spoke with uncertainty, and Kent knew that she lied. His heart sank.
“Did he swallow any medicine in your presence?”
She shook her head vigorously. “No, he did not.”
Kent lowered his voice. “Did you see him take Mrs. Brewster’s aconitine pills off the hall table?”
Helen shifted her gaze to his face and then back to her ever restless hands. “No,” she said. “I did not see him take the pills.”
Kent studied her in a silence which, to her, seemed never-ending.
“I want the true answer to this question,” he announced with meaning emphasis. “Why did Jimmie go in disguise to your house on Monday night?”
Helen blanched. “How should I know,” she muttered evasively. “He - he didn’t come to see me - the admission was barely above a whisper.
“But you know what transpired in your house on Monday night?” demanded Kent eagerly.
His question met with no response, and he repeated it, but still the girl remained silent. Kent gave her a moment’s grace, then drawing out the unaddressed envelope from his pocket he held it toward her. A low cry broke from her, and her expression changed as she caught sight of the broken seal.
“You have opened it!”
“Not yet,” Kent held the envelope just beyond her reach. “I will only give it to you with the understanding that you open the envelope now in my presence and let me see its contents.”
Helen drew back, then impulsively extended her hand.
“I agree,” she said. “Give me the envelope.”
“Stop!” The word rang out, startling Kent as well as Helen, and Mrs. Brewster, whose noiseless entrance a few seconds before had gone unobserved, hurried to them. “The envelope is mine.
No, no,” protested Helen vehemently. “You shall not give the envelope to Margaret - you must not.”
“It is mine,” insisted the widow with equal vehemence.
“Mrs. Brewster.” Kent withheld the envelope from both women. “Will you tell me the contents of this envelope?”
“No,” curtly. “It is not your affair.”
“It is my affair,” retorted Kent with equally shortness of manner. “I insist on an answer to my questions in the limousine this morning. How came your handkerchief in Jimmie’s possession, and why did you go to the police court and, yet keep your presence there a secret?”
“Jimmie must have picked up the handkerchief when in the McIntyre house,” she answered sullenly. “I presume he forgot to provide him self with one in his make-up as burglar. As regards your second question I admit I did go to the police court out of curiosity - I wanted to find out what was going on. You,” with a resentful glance at Helen, “treated me as an outsider, and I was determined to find out for myself how the burglar farce would end.”
“Ah, you term it a farce - is that why you laughed in court?” asked Kent quickly.
Mrs. Brewster changed color. “I feel badly about that,” she stammered. “I meant no disrespect to Jimmie, but I have a nervous inclination to laugh - almost hysteria - when excited and overwrought.”
“I see,” answered Kent slowly. He was distinctly puzzled; Mrs. Brewster’s air of candor disarmed suspicion, but - “You saw and talked with Jimmie Turnbull on Monday night?”
“I did not.” Her denial was firm.
“Then how did you learn of his arrest?” asked Kent swiftly.
“I overheard him conversing -”
“With whom?” Kent demanded eagerly as she paused as if to reconsider her confidences. Helen, one hand on the desk and the other on the arm of her chair, tried to rise, but her strength had deserted her. “With whom?” repeated Kent as the widow remained silent.
“Jimmie was talking with Grimes,” Mrs. Brewster stated slowly. “From what I overheard, he paid Grimes to let him inside the house.”
Kent looked perplexed as he gazed first at the widow and then at Helen, who had sunk back in her chair.
“Mrs. Brewster,” he began after a pause. “Who gave Jimmie your aconitine pills which Grimes left on the hall table?”
“The murderer.”
“Yes, of course.” Kent was watching her closely and he detected the tiny beads of perspiration which were gathering on her upper lip. “And who, in your opinion, was the murderer?”
Mrs. Brewster’s expression changed - she looked hunted, and her eyes fell before Kent’s; abruptly she turned her back on him, to find Colonel McIntyre at her elbow and Barbara just entering the room. Her eyes traveled past the girl until they rested on Philip Rochester and Detective Ferguson hovering behind him. Her face altered.
“I saw Philip Rochester,” pointing dramatically toward him, “crawl out of the reception room window and dart into the street just as O’Ryan came in the front door with Helen.”
Detective Ferguson could not restrain a joyful exclamation. “So that was it!” he cried. “You were at the McIntyre house, and gave the poison to Turnbull there - and not in the court room - four hours before he died. You’ll swing for that crime, my buck, in spite of your glib tongue and slippery ways.”
As he ceased speaking Ferguson’s ever ready handcuffs swung suggestively from his hand, but Helen’s agonized cry checked his approach toward Rochester, who stood stolidly waiting for him.
“Father! You cannot permit this monstrous injustice, Philip shall not suffer for another. No, Barbara,” as her sister strove to quiet her, we must tell the truth.”
“Suppose I tell it for Colonel McIntyre,” Rochester advanced as the door opened and Sylvester ushered in Benjamin Clymer. “You have come in time, Clymer,” his voice deepened, the voice of a man accustomed to present a case and sway a court. “Wait, Sylvester, sit at that table and take down these charges -”
“Charges?” questioned Kent, watching his partner narrowly; he tossed a stenographic pad to Sylvester and made a place for him at his desk. “Go on, Rochester; charges against whom?”
“Charges against the man who, occupying a position of trust, planned to swindle the Metropolis Trust Company through forged notes and checks,” Rochester stated with slow emphasis. “Jimmie Turnbull learned that you, Clymer, were to visit Colonel McIntyre on Monday night, and he went there in disguise to find out if his suspicions were correct. The investigation cost him his life.”
Clymer, who had followed Rochester’s statement, first with bewilderment and then with rising wrath, found his voice.
“You drunken scoundrel!” he roared. “How dare you!”
“Dare!” Rochester laughed recklessly. “Jimmie kept his wits to the last; his mind was clear; he recognized you in the prisoner’s pen and he tried to call you, but his palsied tongue could not say Ben, but stuttered - B - b - b.”
“And what did he wish to tell me?” gasped Clymer, down whose colorless face perspiration trickled.
“Aye, what?” broke in Kent significantly.
“Jimmie may not have gotten the information he wished at your house, Colonel McIntyre, but his presence there on Monday night showed the forger he was in danger, and like the human snake he is, he poisoned without warning. Don’t move - Sylvester!”
With a backward spring Kent caught his clerk as he sped for the door.
“Don’t make any mistake in putting on the
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