No Clue Part 11

"Then, he'd returned to his room, after the murder, and gone out again?"

"That's it--right."

"Anybody in the house hear him come in, or go out?"

"Not a soul.--And I don't know where he is now."

Hastings, leaving the telephone, found Mrs. Brace carefully brus.h.i.+ng into a newspaper the litter made by his whittling. Her performance of that trivial task, the calm thoroughness with which she went about it, or the littleness of it, when compared with her complete indifference to the tragedy which should have overwhelmed her--something, he could not tell exactly what, made her more repugnant to him than ever.

He spoke impulsively:

"Did you want--didn't you feel some impulse, some desire, to go out there when you heard of this murder?"

She paused in her brus.h.i.+ng, looking up to him without lifting herself from hands and knees.

"Why should I have wanted to do any such thing?" she replied. "Mildred's not out there. What's out there is--nothing."

"Do you know about the arrangements for the removal of the body?"

"The sheriff told me," she replied, cold, impersonal. "It will be brought to an undertaking establishment as soon as the coroner's jury has viewed it."

"Yes--at ten o'clock this morning."

She made no comment on that. He had brought up the disagreeable topic--one which would have been heart-breaking to any other mother he had ever known--in the hope of arousing some real feeling in her. And he had failed. Her self-control was impregnable. There was about her an atmosphere that was, in a sense, terrifying, something out of all nature.

She brushed up the remaining chips and shavings while he got his hat. He was deliberating: was there nothing more she could tell him? What could he hope to get from her except that which she wanted to tell? He was sure that she had spoken, in reply to each of his questions, according to a prearranged plan, a well designed scheme to bring into high relief anything that might incriminate Berne Webster.

And he was by no means in a mood to persuade himself of Webster's guilt.

He knew the value of first impressions; and he did not propose to let her clog his thoughts with far-fetched deductions against the young lawyer.

She got to her feet with cat-like agility, and, to his astonishment, burst into violent speech:

"You're standing there trying to think up things to help Berne Webster!

Like the sheriff! Now, I'll tell you what I told him: Webster's guilty.

I know it! He killed my daughter. He's a liar and a coward--a traitor!

He killed her!"

There was no doubt of her emotion now. She stood in a strange att.i.tude, leaning a little toward him in the upper part of her body, as if all her strength were consciously directed into her shoulders and neck. She seemed larger in her arms and shoulders; they, with her head and face, were, he thought, the most vivid part of her--an effect which she produced deliberately, to impress him.

Her whole body was not tremulous, but, rather, vibrant, a taut mechanism played on by the rage that possessed her. Her eyebrows, high on her forehead, reminded him of things that crawled. Her eyes, brilliant like clear ice with suns.h.i.+ne on it, were darting, furtive, always in motion.

She did not look him squarely in the eye, but her eyes selected and bored into every part of his face; her glance played on his countenance.

He could easily have imagined that it burned him physically in many places.

"All this talk about Gene Russell's being guilty is stuff, bos.h.!.+" she continued. "Gene wouldn't hurt anybody. He couldn't! Wait until you see him!" Her lips curled momentarily to their thickened, wet sneer.

"There's nothing to him--nothing! Mildred hated him; he bored her to death. Even I laughed at him. And this sheriff talks about the boy's having killed her!"

Suddenly, she partially controlled her fury. He saw her eyes contract to the gleam of a new idea. She was silent a moment, while her vibrant, tense body swayed in front of him almost imperceptibly.

When she spoke again, it was in her flat, constrained tone. He was impressed anew with her capacity for making her feeling subordinate to her intelligence.

"She's a dangerous woman," he thought again.

"You're working for Webster?"

Her inquiry came after so slight a pause, and it was put to him in a manner so different from the unrestraint of her denunciation of Webster, that he felt as he would have done if he had been dealing with two women.

"I've told you already," he said, "my only interest is in finding the real murderer. In that sense, I'm working for Webster--if he's innocent."

"But he didn't hire you?"

"No."

Seeing that he told the truth, she indulged herself in rage again. It was just that, Hastings thought; she took an actual, keen pleasure in giving vent to the anger that was in her. Relieved of the necessity of censoring her words and thoughts closely, she could say what she wanted to say.

"He's guilty, and I'll prove it!" she defied the detective's disbelief.

"I'll help to prove it. Guilty? I tell you he is--guilty as h.e.l.l!"

He made an abrupt departure, her shrill hatred ringing in his ears when he reached the street. He found it hard, too, to get her out of his eyes, even now--she had impressed herself so shockingly upon him. The picture of her floated in front of him, above the s.h.i.+mmering pavement, as if he still confronted her in all her unloveliness, the smooth, white face like a travesty on youth, the swift, darting eyes, the hard, straight lines of the lean figure, the cold deliberation of manner and movement.

"She's incapable of grief!" he thought. "Terrible! She's terrible!"

Lally drove him to his apartment on Fifteenth street, where the largest of three rooms served him as a combination library and office. There he kept his records, in a huge, old-fas.h.i.+oned safe; and there, also, he held his conferences, from time to time, with police chiefs and detectives from all parts of the country when they sought his help in their pursuit of criminals.

The walls were lined with books from floor to ceiling. A large table in the centre of the room was stacked high with newspapers and magazines.

Dusty papers and books were piled, too, on several chairs set against the bookcases, and on the floor in one corner was a pyramid of doc.u.ments.

"This place is like me," he explained to visitors; "it's loosely dressed."

He sat down at the table and wrote instructions for one of his two a.s.sistants, his best man, Hendricks. Russell's room must be searched and Russell interviewed--work for which Hastings felt that he himself could not spare the time. He gave Hendricks a second task: investigation of the financial standing of two people: Berne Webster and Mrs. Catherine Brace.

He noted, with his customary kindness, in his memorandum to Hendricks:

"Sunday's a bad day for this sort of work, but do the best you can.

Report tomorrow morning."

That arranged, he set out for Sloanehurst, to keep his promise to Lucille--he would be there for the inquest.

On the way he reviewed matters:

"Somehow, I got the idea that the Brace woman _knew_ Russell hadn't killed her daughter. Funny, that is. How could she have known that? How can she know it now?

"She's got the pivotal fact in this case. I felt it. I'm willing to bet she persuaded her daughter to pursue Webster. And things have gone 'bust'--didn't come out as she thought they would. What was she after, money? That's exactly it! Exactly! Her daughter could hold up Webster, and Webster could hold up the Sloanes after his marriage."

He whistled softly.

"If she can prove that Webster should have married her daughter, that he's in need of anything like sixty-five thousand dollars--where does he get off? He gets off safely if the Brace woman ever sees fit to tell--what? I couldn't guess if my whittling hand depended on it." He grimaced his repugnance.