32 Caliber Part 10

My speech was thick, as though my tongue was swollen. Still keeping her gaze fixed on me, she continued: "They call me Helen, and I gather that you are my brother. There is a beautiful girl who comes here every day. She and I seem to be great friends, but I don't know her, I have heard them call her Mary; tell me who she is!"

If I could have run from the room I should have done so. A horror gripped me such as I never felt before. Then I saw two large tears tremble in Helen's eyes, overflow and course down her cheeks and I gathered all the strength that I could muster for the task of trying to awaken a memory that had apparently ceased to function.

"Helen, dearest little sister, I am your brother. The beautiful girl you speak of is Mary Pendleton, one of the best and truest friends you ever had. She was your bridesmaid, don't you remember?"

Helen shook her head weakly.

"I have been married, then?" she asked.

"You were married to James Felderson. Can't you remember him?" I begged.

Again she shook her head. "No. It's all gone." She thought hard a minute, then she asked: "He is dead--my husband?"

"Yes," I muttered, trying to keep the tears back, "he was killed in the same accident--"

"What was he like?" she interrupted.

"Helen, think!" I cried, fighting blindly against the terror that was choking me. "Little sister. You must think--hard. Jim. Don't you remember big handsome Jim?" I s.n.a.t.c.hed my watch from my pocket and opened the back, where I carried a small picture of Jim, taken years before. I had put it there in boyish admiration when I first knew him. I held it up in front of her eyes. "You must remember him, Helen!"

She gazed at the picture with eyes in which there were tears and a little fright, but not a spark of recognition. Fearing that I was over-exciting her, I sat close to her and drew as best I could a mental picture of Jim. I was only half-way through the recital when the door opened and Doctor Forbes came in.

"The ten minutes are up, Mr. Thompson."

I stooped and kissed Helen.

"Promise that you'll come back to-morrow," she whispered.

I promised and hurried from the room. Outside the doctor awaited me questioningly.

"Her memory is completely gone!" I gasped.

The doctor patted me on the shoulder sympathetically.

"We suspected that day before yesterday. I would have told you before, but thought that your questions might start her memory functioning."

I gripped him by both arms. "But, Doctor, can nothing be done? Will she have to--have to begin all over again?"

"I can't say yet. There may be some pressure there still. We'll have to wait until she is much stronger before we can tell."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

WE PLAN THE DEFENSE.

Helen's loss of memory was the last straw. The shock of finding her unable to remember the most familiar things was bad enough from a purely physical standpoint, but when I realized how completely it swept away all my plans for Helen's defense, how it fastened the guilt on her poor shoulders, I felt that our case was hopeless indeed.

I drove to the offices of Simpson and Todd and was lucky enough to find both of them in. Simpson, a slender man with steel-gray hair and eyes, at once ordered a closed session to thrash out the whole affair. He first made me repeat everything I knew about Jim's murder, from the beginning. Several times he interrupted me, to ask a question, but for the most part he sat with his back to me, gazing out of the window, the tips of his fingers to his lips. Half the time I thought he wasn't listening, until a quick question would show his interest. Todd, on the contrary, was the picture of attention. He took notes in shorthand most of the time I was talking. When I had finished, Simpson rose and came over to me.

"Let's examine this thing from the start. You have three people who had a motive for killing Felderson--Zalnitch, Woods and Mrs. Felderson. Let's take Zalnitch first, for I think suspicion falls the slightest on him. You say that Felderson helped to convict Zalnitch in the Yellow Pier case and that he made vague threats against those who had put him in prison, after he was released. Good! There's a motive and a threat. He was seen on the same road that Mr. Felderson traveled, a short time before the murder. All those facts point to Zalnitch's complicity. But--the bullet that killed Felderson was fired from behind and above, according to the coroner's statement. Knowing the average juryman, I should say that we would have to stretch things pretty far to make him believe that a shot fired from one rapidly moving automobile at another rapidly moving automobile would ricochet and kill a man. That's asking a little too much. Also, it is hard to believe that Schreiber, who was driving the car, would risk a smash-up to his own car and possible death for himself and party, in order to try to make Felderson go into the ditch. Then, too, if Zalnitch recognized Felderson's car, why didn't he fire point-blank at Felderson instead of waiting till he got past? No! The case against Zalnitch falls down. We can strike him off the list."

I hated to give him up, but I had to admit Simpson's logic was faultless.

"Now let us take up the case of Woods. Here is a man who threatened Felderson's life unless he gave his wife a divorce, which you say Felderson did not intend to do. There, again, is a motive. Woods knew that Felderson was in possession of certain papers that would ruin him. There is a stronger motive." He turned to me. "By the way, you have those papers, haven't you?"

I hadn't thought of them until that very minute.

"I don't know where they are right now, but I'm pretty sure I can find them."

He nodded.

"Get hold of them by all means! They may be important to us." He lit a cigar and threw himself into a chair.

"Well, let's go on. Woods had all the motive necessary for killing Felderson. He made a definite engagement with Felderson on the night of the murder, to meet him at a certain time and place specified by Woods. That's important. Everything up to that point is as clear as crystal, yet you say you have positive testimony that Woods was at the country-club waiting for Felderson at about the time the murder took place, and Woods claims that he has an absolute alibi. If that is true, it lets him out."

"But I'm not sure he was at the country-club at the time the murder took place," I explained. "I only know he was there just before and just afterward."

"What do you know of his movements that night?" Simpson asked.

"I know he dined there at seven-thirty or thereabouts and that he ordered a drink at eight twenty-five."

"And what time was the murder?"

"Probably about a quarter past eight--the bodies were found at half past, they say," I answered.

Simpson shook his head. "I'm afraid his alibi is good. It's cutting things too fine to think that he could have run six miles and back in less than half an hour and committed a murder in the bargain. It would have taken a speedy automobile. Do you know whether he had an automobile that night?" he queried.

"I think he did. I can find out in a minute," I added, going to the telephone.

I called up the country-club and finally succeeded in getting Jackson on the wire. Jackson thought Mr. Woods did not have an automobile that night, because he had gone to town in Mr. Paisley's car.

"He might have used somebody else's car," Todd suggested.

Simpson shook his head again. "We're getting clear off the track, now."

An idea came to me suddenly and I called Up Pickering at the Benefit Insurance Company.

"This is Thompson speaking, Pickering," I said.

"Yes."

"Do you remember if an automobile pa.s.sed you on the night of the Felderson murder, going toward the country-club?"

"No."

"Do you mean you don't remember?"

"No, I remember perfectly. There was only one automobile pa.s.sed us and that was the black limousine."

"You're sure?" I asked.

"I'm positive, old man. We only saw one car from the time we left Blandesville, until we reached the city."

I put up the receiver and sank back in my chair.

"Well?" Todd flung at me.

"I'm out of luck!" I responded.

Simpson rose. "Let's go on. We have crossed off two of our suspects from the list, let's see--"

"I'd rather not go on," I interrupted, looking out of the window to escape Todd's searching eyes. There was a moment's silence, then Simpson spoke.

"We'll do our best but it will be a hard fight. If Mrs. Felderson could only recall what happened that night and before, we might have a chance, but every woman that has come up for murder during the last few years, has worked that lost memory gag."

"But my sister really has lost her memory!" I exclaimed.

"I know, my dear boy," Simpson soothed. "That is what makes it so difficult. If she were only shamming now, we could--. But with your sister as helpless as a child, the prosecuting attorney will so confuse her, that our case will be lost as soon as she takes the stand."

"Why put her on at all?" I asked.

"Because we have to, if we hope to win our case," he replied. "The one big chance to win your jury comes when your beautiful client testifies."

For a few minutes he was silent, obviously thinking, and thinking hard.

"Of course, our defense will have to be temporary insanity," he declared at last.

"Oh, not that!" I begged.

"It's our only chance," Simpson argued, "and I don't mind saying that it's a pretty poor chance at that. Three years ago it might have been all right, because a conviction only meant a few months at a fas.h.i.+onable sanitarium, and then freedom. But when that Truesdale woman went free, an awful howl went up all over the country and I'm afraid the next woman who is found, 'guilty but insane,' will be sent to a real asylum."

A shudder of horror ran through me. For Helen to be sent to an asylum while her mind was in its weak state might well mean permanent insanity.

"You talk to your sister as often as you can and try to help her recover her lost memory. Of course you'll have the best specialists examine and prescribe for her. In the meantime, we'll investigate both the Woods and Zalnitch cases to see if they are hole-proof."

"You might get those papers on Woods, if you will," Todd reminded me.

I thanked them and left, greatly depressed but ready to fight to the last ditch to save Helen's life. The papers dealing with Woods had not been among Jim's effects when I had looked them over at the office and I was confident they had not been picked up on the night of the murder, for they would have been returned to me. Thinking they had probably been left in one of the pockets of the automobile, and overlooked when the machine was searched, I decided to run out to the Felderson home the first thing in the morning.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

BULLETPROOF.

Jim's car had been moved to his own garage the morning after the accident, and as I had a pa.s.s-key to the place I found it unnecessary to go to the house at all. Wicks and Annie were taking care of the establishment until Helen should come home, or the house be sold.

I opened the door of the garage and shuddered involuntarily as I caught sight of the wrecked Peckwith-Pierce. It had been more badly smashed than I had at first supposed. On the night of the murder I saw that the cha.s.sis was twisted and the axle broken, but I had not noticed what that jolting crash had done to the body of the car. The steering rod was broken and the cus.h.i.+ons were caked with mud. One wheel sagged at a drunken angle like a lop-ear and the wind-s.h.i.+eld was nothing but a mangled frame. One long gash ran the length of the body, as though it had sc.r.a.ped against a rock, and this gash ended in a jagged wound the size of a man's head. In the back were three small splintered holes.

I examined these with particular interest, wondering what could have caused them. Evidently the police had neglected to examine the machine. The sight of what looked like the end of a nail caused me to drop to my knees and to begin digging frantically at the wood with my pen-knife. At the end of five feverish minutes I held the prize in my hand.

It was a misshapen, steel, "32" rifle bullet.

In the floor of the car, near where Jim's feet must have been, I found two more splintered holes, apparently made by the same rifle from which the shots had been fired into the back of the car.

Two thoughts flashed through my mind, exuberant a.s.surance that this latest discovery cleared Helen completely. She couldn't have fired a rifle from the rear seat of the automobile, nor could she have put those bullet holes into the back of the car. In my joy that I had found proof of my sister's innocence, I forgot to speculate on who could have committed the murder. My second thought was really a continuation of the first, that I must bring the coroner and Simpson at once to confirm my discovery.

I carefully locked the door of the garage, as though fearful some one would rob me of my find, or that the automobile might move away of its own volition, then I ran to the house and rang the bell. All the curtains were drawn and I had about decided there was no one at home, when, after what seemed an interminable wait, I heard the sound of footsteps within, and Wicks opened the door.

"Who'd you expect to see, Wicks, a policeman?" I asked.

"No, sir. One of those blarsted reporters, sir."

"Poor old Wicksy," I sympathized. "Well, it'll soon be over now. I want to use the telephone."

I ran down the hall to the table where I knew the telephone to be, and called up Simpson. He promised he would come right up.

The coroner demurred for a moment, pleading important business, but when he heard I had proof that would clear Mrs. Felderson, he, too, promised to be with me in a few minutes.

Wicks, who had been listening, was so excited that he momentarily forgot himself and clutched me by the arm as I put down the receiver.

"Is it true, sir, that you can prove Mrs. Felderson 'ad nothing to do with it?" he gasped.

"Truest thing you know, Wicks!"

"I fear I'm going to act unseemly, sir. I feel like yelling, 'ip, 'ip, sir." Then he noticed he had me by the arm and hastily murmured apology.

"That's all right, Wicksy, old top. Go as far as you like," I cried. "I'm so happy and relieved I could kiss the Kaiser."

"You surely wouldn't do that, sir," Wicks reproved.

"All right, Wicks. I guess it's not being done this year."

The butler turned to leave but stopped at the door to say: "Mr. Woods called about a week ago, sir."

"What did he want?" I demanded.