The Winning Clue Part 16

"Then I'll see you in the morning?"

"Yes; any time. I'll get up early. But, if you get anything out of Withers tonight, telephone me--or if your man Jenkins reports on his search for the fellow with the gold tooth."

"O. K.," agreed the chief, and swung off down the hill.

Bristow, whom he had left absorbed in thought, turned after a few minutes and went back to the door of No. 5. Miss Kelly answered his ring.

"I'm sorry to disturb you," he said, his smile a compliment, "but there's something I'm very anxious for you to do for me. Will you clean Miss Fulton's finger nails as soon as you can? And I want you to keep everything you get as a result of that process."

"Do her nails!" The nurse was amazed.

"Yes; please. I'll explain later. And another thing: don't cut the cuticle. Don't bother with that at all. Just get what's under the nails.

You'd better use merely an orange stick, I think. Will you do that for me carefully--very carefully? It's of the greatest importance."

Miss Kelly finally said she would.

He went back to his own porch and sat a long time watching the last, fading rays of the sunset.

But he was not thinking about the landscape.

"This man Withers," he was reflecting, "and his getting this detective, Braceway. Let me think. I mustn't look at these things in the light of my theories only. Too much theorizing is confusing.

"I want to get the angle of the ordinary man in the street. How would it look to him? Why, this way: either Withers is on the level and wants to do everything possible to have the murderer caught--or he's smart enough to employ Braceway in the knowledge that neither Braceway nor anybody else can get anything from him that he doesn't want to tell--I wonder."

CHAPTER VIII

THE BREATH OF SCANDAL

A telegraph messenger laboured up to the hill on his bicycle and climbed the steps to the porch of No. 5, displaying in his hand several telegrams. Two other boys had preceded him within the last hour. Friends of the Fulton family, having read of the tragedy in afternoon papers throughout the country, were wiring their messages of sympathy.

This was no little local, isolated affair, Bristow reflected. The prominence of the victim in Was.h.i.+ngton and in the South, together with the mystery surrounding the crime, made it a matter of national interest.

If he could bring the thing to a successful issue, the capture and punishment of the right man, there would be fame in it for him. The thought stimulated him.

A few minutes later Withers came up Manniston Road and went into No. 5.

Soon after that Miss Kelly brought Bristow a little paper packet.

"I'm not sure I ought to do this," she said, "but, as long as the authorities have ordered it, I guess I'm safe. This is what I get as a result of 'doing' Miss Fulton's nails."

He thanked her and rea.s.sured her.

Mattie appeared at the door to tell him his supper was ready. Before he sat down at the table, he telephoned Greenleaf.

"There's something else I want you to send to Charlotte with the Perry package."

"Same sort of thing?" inquired the chief.

"Yes--Miss Fulton's."

"Wow!" barked Greenleaf over the wire. "I never thought of that."

"That's all right, I nearly forgot it myself. How will you send for it?"

The chief thought a moment.

"I'll come after it myself," he said. "I'll be up there as soon as I see Withers. I want to talk to you about the inquest. It will be held at eleven o'clock tomorrow morning."

"Come ahead," Bristow invited. "You'll have to be up here in this neighbourhood anyway if you want to see Withers. He came up to Number Five just a few minutes ago. You can catch him there."

After supper he went back to the front porch in time to see in the dusk the white uniform and cap of a trained nurse as she came down the hill.

He surmised that she was one of the six nurses who lived in No. 7, the house between his and that of the murdered woman. These nurses were employed throughout the day at the big sanitarium located just over the brow of the hill at the end of Manniston Road.

Perhaps, she could tell him what he wanted to know.

"I beg your pardon," he called to her persuasively, "but may I trouble you to come up here for a moment?"

She obeyed the summons with slow, hesitant steps.

He pushed forward a chair for her and bowed.

"Unfortunately," he apologized, "I don't know your name."

She enlightened him: "Rutgers; Miss Emily Rutgers." In his turn, he told her briefly of his connection with the murder.

"I was wondering," he began, "whether you had ever heard anything unusual from Number Five."

Miss Rutgers, who was blond and too fat, had a heavy, peculiarly hoa.r.s.e voice. She wanted to be certain that he had authority to "question people" about the case. He made that clear to her.

"Well, yes," she finally said. "Mrs. Withers and Miss Fulton quarreled a good deal. We girls had remarked on it. And yesterday they had an awful row. I heard some of it because it was in the middle of the day, and I had run down here from the sanitarium to fix up the laundry we'd forgotten early in the morning."

"What did you hear?"

"It was something about money. I didn't really try to listen, but I couldn't help hearing some of it, they talked so loud."

"Yes?"

"I got the idea that Miss Fulton wanted to borrow some money from Mrs.

Withers for a purpose that Mrs. Withers didn't approve of. 'Well,' I heard Mrs. Withers say after Miss Fulton had almost screamed about it, 'you can't have any more. I haven't got it. That's all there is to that.

I can't let you have it when I haven't got it!'

"Miss Fulton said something--I think it was about Mr. Withers or about asking him for the money.

"'You'd better not do that,' Mrs. Withers warned her. 'I tried that once, and he flew into a perfect rage. He was so worked up that he looked like a crazy man, like a man who would do anything. He looked as if he might kill me, choke me to death, anything!'"

"Did Miss Fulton answer that?"