Midnight Part 25

"Surely, Mr. Carroll--you don't intend publis.h.i.+ng what he has told you--about his drinking--alone--in Nashville?"

Carroll smiled. "No indeed. In the first place, I am not at all sure that he has told me the truth. In the second place, if I were sure of it--his alibi would be established and I have no desire whatever to injure a man because of a personal weakness."

Lawrence stared at Carroll peculiarly. "You mean that if I can prove the truth of my story, nothing will be made public about my--the affair--in Nashville?"

"Absolutely. Because you have treated me discourteously, Lawrence--I don't consider myself justified in injuring your reputation. I am after the person or persons responsible for the death of Roland Warren. Your intimate weaknesses have no interest to either me or the public."

Lawrence was silent for awhile, and then--"You're d.a.m.ned white, Carroll. The apologies I extended a moment ago--I repeat. And this time I'm sincere."

"And this time they are accepted."

"Meanwhile--you are welcome here whenever you wish to call. Perhaps--by talking to me--you yourself may establish the alibi which I know I have, but cannot prove."

Carroll rose and bowed. "Thank you. And now--I'll go. If you will express my regrets to Miss Rogers--"

Naomi accompanied him to the door. She extended her hand--"You're wrong, Mr. Carroll", she murmured. "Quite wrong!"

"You are sure?"

"I _know_! I really believe his story."

"I hope to--soon. But just now, Mrs. Lawrence--" He saw tears in her fine eyes. "You have nothing to fear from me if he is innocent."

She pressed his hand gratefully, and then closed the door. Carroll, inhaling the bracing air of the winter night, proceeded briskly to the curb. Then, standing with one foot on the running board of his car, he stared peculiarly at the big white house standing starkly in the moonlight--

"I wonder," he mused softly--"I wonder--"

CHAPTER XIV

THE SUIT-CASE AGAIN

Carroll drove direct to his apartments, despite his original intention of dropping by headquarters for a chat with Leverage. He wanted to be alone--to think--

The evening had borne fruit beyond his wildest imaginings. Fact had piled upon fact with bewildering rapidity. As yet he had been unable to sort them in his mind, to catalogue each properly, to test for proper value.

He reached his apartment and found it warm and comfortable. He donned lounging robe and slippers which the thoughtful Freda had left out for him, settled himself in an easy chair, lighted a fire which he kept always ready in the grate and turned out the lights. Then, with his cigar glowing and great clouds of rich smoke filling the air--he sank into a revelry of thinking.

Certain disclosures of the evening stood out with startling clarity.

Chief among them was the inevitable belief that Gerald Lawrence had either killed Roland Warren or else knew who had done so--and how it was done. Yet Carroll tried not to allow his thoughts and personal prejudices to run away with him. He knew that now, of all times, he must keep a tight grip on himself.

Great as was the dislike which he had conceived for Lawrence--an instinctive repugnance which still obtained--he was grimly determined that he would not be swayed by his emotions. Therefore he deliberately reviewed Lawrence's story in the light of its possible truth.

Lawrence claimed that he belonged to that none too rare cla.s.s of prominent citizens who once every so often respond to the call of the wild within them by going to a nearby city where they are not known and giving themselves over to the dubious delights of a spree. Publication of this fact alone would prove sufficient to injure Lawrence socially and in the commercial world. The old case of the Spartan lad--Carroll reflected.

The disgrace lay in being discovered.

Also, it was perfectly plain to Carroll that at the outset of his conversation Lawrence had been smugly satisfied that he was possessed of a perfect alibi. It was only under Carroll's merciless grilling that he had been brought abruptly to realization that he had no alibi whatever.

The same logic applied there, as in Leverage's theory that Barker's arrest would be an excellent strategic move. All Carroll had to do now was to arrest Lawrence for Warren's murder--and the burden of proof would have been s.h.i.+fted from the shoulders of the detective to that of the suspect. It would then devolve upon Lawrence to prove an alibi that Carroll knew perfectly well he could not prove--save by merest accident.

But that was a procedure which Carroll abhorred. Those were police department methods: wholesale arrests in the hope of somewhere in the net trapping the prey. Such a course was at the bottom--and Carroll knew it--of an enormous number of convictions of innocent men. And Carroll had no desire to injure Lawrence provided Lawrence was free of guilt in this particular instance. He didn't like the man--in fact his feelings toward him amounted to a positive aversion. But through it all he tried to be fair-minded--and he could not quite rid himself of the picture of Naomi Lawrence--Carroll was far from impervious to the appeal of a beautiful woman.

So much for the probable truth of Lawrence's story. The reverse side of the picture presented an entirely different set of facts. There was not alone the strange procedure of checking out of the big hotel at four o'clock in the afternoon when he intended catching an early morning train: but there was the information so innocently dropped by the loquacious Evelyn Rogers regarding Naomi's actions on the night of the murder.

According to Evelyn, her sister was an intensely nervous woman: one who stood in fear of being alone at night. And yet this sister had volunteered the suggestion that Evelyn spend the night with Hazel Gresham when her husband was supposed to be out of the city.

Carroll, well versed in applied psychology, knew that in such a combination of facts there lay an important clue. He was well satisfied that Naomi Lawrence had been satisfied that she was not to be alone that night!

Arguing with himself from that premise, the conclusion was inevitable: she knew that her husband would return from Nashville at midnight. She did not wish anyone--even Evelyn, to learn that he had done so. Therefore she got Evelyn out of the house!

The conclusion developed a further train of reasoning--one which Carroll did not at all relish, but which he faced with frank honesty. If he was right in his argument--then Naomi Lawrence had known of the murder before it was committed!

He shrank from the idea, but it would not down. He was not ready to admit its truth--but there was no denying its logic. There was something inexpressibly repugnant in the thought. He infinitely preferred to believe that Naomi hated her husband--was miserable with him--he preferred that to the idea that they were accomplices in the murder of a prominent young man.

Then, too, there were the strange visits of William Barker, former valet to Warren, to the home of the Lawrences. There was no doubt remaining in Carroll's mind that Barker knew a very great deal about Warren's murder.

That being the case it was fairly well established that he was cognizant of the Lawrences' connection with the crime.

Carroll had started off with the idea that someone, in addition to the woman in the taxi-cab, had been instrumental in ending Warren's life.

Here, following a casual line of investigation, he had uncovered the tracks of two men, both of whom he was convinced knew more about it than they had cared to tell.

Both men--Barker and Lawrence--had acted peculiarly under the grilling of the detective. The former had been surly and non-informative, only to leap eagerly upon the first verbal trend which tended to throw suspicion upon a person whom Carroll knew--and whom Carroll knew Barker knew--was innocent. Gerald Lawrence, on the other hand, had been downright antagonistic until he made the startling discovery that his supposed alibi was no alibi at all--at which his att.i.tude changed from open hostility to something closely akin to suppliance.

Then, too, there was the danger of injuring an innocent man because of his inability to prove an alibi. If Lawrence's story was true, it was perfectly natural that even in a condition of intoxication he would maintain his instinct for concealment of a personal weakness. The chances were then that no one had seen him either in Nashville--after the four o'clock train had left, or on the two a.m. train homeward bound.

Matters could not right themselves in Carroll's mind. He knew one thing, however--Evelyn Rogers was a wellspring of vital information. The very fact that she talked inconsequentialities incessantly--and occasionally let drop remarks of vital import--made her the more valuable. He knew that he had not seen the last of the seventeen-year-old girl. And he felt a consuming eagerness to be with her again, for now he had a definite line of investigation to pursue.

He slept soundly that night, and the following morning dropped in on Leverage. The Chief of Police had a little information--with all of which Carroll was already familiar. He told Carroll that Lawrence had been in Nashville and that he had checked out of the Hermitage hotel in time to catch the four o'clock train on the afternoon preceding the murder.

Carroll satisfied Leverage by accepting it as information, made sure that nothing else of importance had developed, requested Leverage to ask the Nashville police to determine whether Lawrence had been seen in Nashville after 4:30 p.m.--if necessary to send one of his own men there--and left headquarters.

He made his way directly to a public telephone booth. He telephoned the Lawrence home and asked for Evelyn Rogers. A maid answered and informed him that Evelyn had left home fifteen minutes previously.

"Any idea where she was going?" questioned Carroll.

The answer came promptly: it mentioned the city's leading department store--"she's gone there to get a beauty treatment," vouchsafed the maid.

Carroll was not a little chagrined. Evelyn Rogers had put him in more hopeless positions in their brief acquaintances.h.i.+p than he had experienced in years. There was his call upon her the previous night with its role of dual entertainer to the young lady with a nineteen-year-old college freshman. And now a vigil outside a beauty parlor.

But he went grimly to work. He located the beauty parlor on the third floor of the giant store, and paced determinedly back and forth before its doors.

A half hour pa.s.sed; an hour--two hours. He concluded that Evelyn must be purchasing her beauty in job lots. When two hours and thirty-five minutes had elapsed Evelyn emerged--and Carroll groaned. With her were three other girls, as chattery, as immature, as Evelyn herself.

She swept down upon him in force--tongue wagging at both ends--

"You naughty, _naughty_ man!" she chided. "You abso_lute_ly deserted me last night. Why, I didn't even know that you had gone--until Sis came in and said you had asked her to extend your respects. Good gracious! I almost _died_!"

"I'm sorry--really," returned Carroll humbly--"But you seemed so interested in that young man--and I had gotten into an absorbing conversation with your sister and brother-in-law. I'm not used to girls, you know."