The Almost Perfect Murder, Hulbert Footner [digital e reader .TXT] 📗

you had been

here, and all of them lied.”

 

“Well, bless their hearts!” he said with a twisted smile. “I seem to

get everybody in wrong. It would have been better if I’d never been

born!”

 

“What did your father say to you?” she asked.

 

“He scolded me for having sneaked into the house secretly. Said it was

very infra dig. He was afraid somebody might find me in his study.

He sent me away, and told me if I would come back after things had

cleared up—by that he meant after Cristina had left the country; she

was not named between us—and would come in by the front door, he

would be glad to see me.”

 

“He did not refer to the new will he had made?”

 

“Not a word! He wouldn’t, you see, if he was feeling more kindly

towards me. He would just tear it up afterwards. At any rate, I

thought he had climbed down a good deal, and I went away happy…. At

Buffalo in the middle of the night the telegram was put on the train

that brought me back. And now everything is ruined! My father is

dead, and Theodore has his shoes, I suppose!” His head went down

between his hands again.

 

“Where were you going on the train?” asked Mme. Storey.

 

“Nowhere in particular. Just keeping out of the way until Cristina

sailed.”

 

“How unlucky that there was no witness to the final interview with your

father,” remarked Mme. Storey. It had the sound of a question.

 

He hesitated for the fraction of a second; his eyes bolted painfully;

then he blurted out: “No, there was no witness.”

XII

Soon afterwards we left the dining-room, and sauntered down the great

hall. Following upon the little outburst of emotion that I have

described, we had assumed the ordinary appearances of good form. It is

instinctive. Nothing in my employer’s manner suggested that Henry

Varick had rendered himself an object of suspicion by his disclosures.

She talked of ordinary matters in an ordinary manner. He answered in

kind, of course, but I could see from his uneasy glances that he did

not know what to make of her. He was wondering whether he had to deal

with an agent of the police who was trying to entrap him, or with a

woman of the world who took everything as it came. As a matter of

fact, my employer was both.

 

“The library is at the other end,” he said; “it’s a pleasant room.

Let’s go in there.”

 

It was a most inviting room, but “library” I judged to be a polite

fiction; there were no books visible. Though the spring was well

advanced there was a wood fire burning on the hearth which gave off a

most agreeable warmth. We ranged ourselves before it in luxurious

easy-chairs, and talked like congenial acquaintances, who had nothing

in particular on their minds. This sort of rambling casual

conversation is one of Mme. Storey’s most insidious lines of attack,

and I could see that Henry Varick was growing more and more visibly

uneasy. He must have been under a terrible strain. The only other

light besides the fire was given by a shaded reading-lamp in a corner.

 

I say we talked, but the truth is they talked, while I sat perfectly

silent, feeding my infatuation with the sight of that handsome young

face in the firelight, haggard with passionate emotion. It was most of

all tragic when he smiled in a reckless boy fashion, trying to carry

things off lightly. I was in a rapt state, scarcely mistress of

myself. It only needed a spark to set me off. While we sat there a

footman came in with a note for Mme. Storey. This I judged must come

from Inspector Rumsey via the underground channel they had provided.

She read it with a bland face, tore it into small pieces, and tossed

them on the fire.

 

“From Inspector Rumsey,” she said. “He says he can trace no sales of

aconitina recently.”

 

I guessed that there was more in it than this, and so, apparently did

Henry Varick. He watched the little pieces catch fire one by one with

an expression of baulked curiosity.

 

More conversation followed. Mme. Storey discussed her work on the case

with apparent frankness. Some time afterwards, long enough anyhow for

us not to connect what she said with the arrival of the note, she

brought the talk around to the plan of the second floor. “In order to

be able to figure out what happened, I must have that clear in my

mind,” she said. “I visited most of the rooms today, but I didn’t like

to go into your suite without having you along.”

 

There was but one thing that he could reply to this. “Shall we go up

now?”

 

“If you don’t mind.”

 

It was rather touching to find in that grand house a simple boy’s room.

I judged that it had been changed very little since Henry Varick was

fifteen or sixteen years old. The school pennants were still tacked on

the walls, and that type of picture that adolescent boys like,

depicting flamboyant misses in sports clothes. There were fencing

foils and masks hung up; a set of boxing gloves; a shotgun, a rifle,

and various sporting trophies. There was an armoire full of baseball

bats, hockey sticks, tennis rackets and like impedimenta. Evidently

young Henry had been no effete son of luxury.

 

This was the “study,” which like “library” downstairs was a misnomer.

Two shelves, and those not full, contained all the books. Many of them

I noticed dealt with chemistry and drugs. Mme. Storey pulled out a fat

green volume that was entitled: Pharmacology and Therapeutics and

skimmed through it. “Have you consulted this lately?” she asked.

 

“Not in years,” he said carelessly.

 

She then did something that I had seen her do before; a simple trick

that has an uncanny effectiveness. Holding the book loosely between

her two hands, she let it fall open of itself. She repeated this two

or three times. “Yet I should say that it has been consulted

recently,” she said quietly, “and more than once. See! It opens of

itself on page 425.”

 

We looked over her shoulder, he on one side, I on the other, and there

we saw staring at us from the page a chapter heading: XXI—ACONITINE.

 

It gave me a horrid shock; Henry Varick, too. He stepped back, his

face working spasmodically.

 

“Well,” he said harshly, “does that prove anything?”

 

“No,” said Mme. Storey, closing the book and putting it back.

 

“Anyhow,” he went on, in a loud, strained voice, “I am perfectly

familiar with the action of aconite. I wouldn’t have to consult that

book.” This was an answer that cut both ways. The next object of

interest in the room was a glass fronted curio cabinet that contained

the schoolboy’s collections. One saw the usual things neatly set out

on the shelves; the minerals, the fossils, the arrowheads and pipe

bowls. And on the lower shelves; butterflies, beetles, birds’ eggs and

miscellaneous souvenirs. It was more comprehensive than the usual

youngsters’ gatherings, because this boy had been well supplied with

money. I could picture the handsome, intent stripling arranging his

treasures.

 

“Where is your collection of drugs?” asked Mme. Storey quietly.

 

It came like a blow. He caught his breath, and started to answer, but

she checked him with a sudden, involuntary gesture. “Ah, don’t lie to

me!” she said with real feeling. “It shames you and me both. I am to

blame. I will deceive you no longer. The letter that I got from

Inspector Rumsey said: ‘I have learned that Henry Varick while he was

engaged in the drug business caused a collection to be made of samples

of every drug. The samples were contained in a walnut case which was

sent to his home. Presumably the drug aconitina was included amongst

the rest, but I cannot verify this at the moment. See if you can trace

the case.’”

 

“I wasn’t going to lie to you,” Henry Varick said in his rapid,

strained voice. “I had such a collection, but I destroyed it two years

ago. When the trust busted I was sick of the business. Besides, such

a thing was too dangerous to have lying around.”

 

It was only too clear that he was lying then. It made me feel sick at

heart.

 

“How did you destroy it?” asked Madame Storey.

 

“Burned it up entire in the furnace downstairs.”

 

She said no more, but led the way into the bedroom adjoining, a bare

and sparsely furnished chamber almost like a hospital room. Amidst the

almost oppressive luxury of that house it was like a breath of fresh

air. In one corner stood a narrow white bed.

 

Mme. Storey stood in the doorway looking around her without speaking.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see that the face of the young man

beside me was livid and sweating. I suffered with him. Finally, my

employer said in a deadly quiet voice: “Turn down the mattress, Bella.”

 

A groan was forced from the young man that seemed to come from his very

entrails. “Oh, God! I’m lost!”

 

With trembling arms I obeyed my mistress. Between mattress and springs

there was revealed a flat square walnut box of the sort that artists

use to carry their paints in. Evidently, it had been hastily thrust

there while a better hiding place was sought, or a chance to destroy it.

 

“Have you anything to say?” asked Mme. Storey.

 

He broke into a bitter fleering laughter. “Say? What do you want me

to say? You’ve got a case against me, haven’t you? Better proceed

with it. I guess I’ve reached the point where I’d better keep my mouth

shut without advice of counsel.” This was merely the bravado of one

who was half-crazed.

 

Meanwhile, I had laid the box on the bed, and let the mattress fall

back into place. The box was locked.

 

“Have you the key?” asked Mme. Storey.

 

“What the use?” he cried. “I admit the stuff was there, and it’s gone

now.” Nevertheless, he produced his keys, and sought for the right one.

 

“Have those keys ever been out of your possession?” she asked.

 

“No.”

 

“Was there ever another key?”

 

“No.”

 

I could no longer keep still. I was in a state approaching collapse

myself. “You are convicting yourself!” I cried to him.

 

“Oh, what does it matter?” he said.

 

My mistress gave me a curious glance of pity. I didn’t want pity from

her. In the condition of mind that I was in, she represented the

enemy. “When did you put it under the mattress?” she asked.

 

“This afternoon. I intended to burn it tonight when the house was

quiet.”

 

“Oh, keep still! keep still!” I cried, clasping my hands. Neither paid

any attention to me.

 

“Where was it before that?”

 

“In the curio cabinet.”

 

“Has anybody a key to that cabinet but yourself?”

 

“No.”

 

By this time the box was open. It was lined with red velvet, and was

divided into scores of little grooves holding glass phials full of

drugs, stopped with wax or some such substance. Each phial had its

label neatly pasted around it; and as a further precaution, there was a

number under each groove, and an index pasted into the top of the box.

One groove was empty! Under it was the number 63, and our eyes flew

to the index