The Winning Clue Part 22

"Sure! Sure!" Braceway declared. "Keep yourself together. Let me do the worrying. I'll get him if he's above the sod."

"So, you see," Braceway said, in reciting the incident to Bristow, "we're getting a little warm on the scent. This Morley, this wooer of Maria, seems to have his head within stinging range of the hornets, doesn't he?"

"Undoubtedly."

"What do you make of it?" pressed Braceway.

Bristow thought a little while.

"It might be this," he advanced: "Morley is in trouble with his bank, short in his accounts--probably has been for several months. Two months ago, sixty-one days ago, he confided to Miss Fulton that he stood in great danger of arrest, pointed out that he had made a mistake, asked a.s.sistance from her, told her a thousand dollars would arrange things.

"But, instead of paying the thousand into the bank, he went to gambling with it in the hope of trebling or quadrupling it and--lost it. In other words, he's been afraid to tell his financee how much he really owed the bank and then played the thousand to win enough to enable him to square himself."

"Once more," observed the Atlanta man, "you speak in mouthfuls."

"Again and further--of course, all this is on the theory that Morley is a pusillanimous kind of man; but he would have to be just that to be taking money from a woman, any woman, much less the one to whom he is engaged to be married--again and further, when he had lost the thousand and saw ruin just ahead of him again, he ran down here and asked for more money.

"Perhaps, Mrs. Withers, at her sister's tearful request, had previously raised more than a thousand for him, had added to that thousand other money obtained from p.a.w.ning some of her jewelry; and he now insisted that Maria make Mrs. Withers go the limit and p.a.w.n _all_ her jewelry.

"By George!" Bristow concluded. "That may explain the quarrel which Miss Rutgers, the trained nurse in Number Seven, heard the two sisters engaged in the day before the murder. Yes; it might. Evidently, Mrs. Withers refused to be bled further. After that, what? What would you say?"

"It's plain enough," Braceway answered. "There was Morley, crazed by the fear of arrest and conviction for embezzlement. There was Mrs. Withers, still possessing and holding enough jewelry to get him out of trouble, if he had time to convert the jewels into cash and to get back to his bank with the money.

"What was the result of that situation? Evidently, he never intended to catch that midnight train. He did what he had planned to do, came back to Number Five, confronted Mrs. Withers soon after her escort had left her at the door, demanded the jewels, was refused; and then, in a blind rage or a panic, killed her and stole the jewels."

"There's no use blinking the fact," said Bristow in a quiet, calculating way, trying to keep in his mind all the other peculiar circ.u.mstances surrounding this crime. "From the way we've put it, the thing reads as plainly as a primer. Now, what are we to do? Even now, we haven't the proof on him--any real proof."

"Suppose," said Braceway, "we let him leave Furmville, let him go back to Was.h.i.+ngton, with the hope that he does p.a.w.n the stuff he's stolen?"

"And suppose," Bristow added, "we get a detailed description of all the jewelry Mrs. Withers owned, and wire that description to the police of the princ.i.p.al towns between here and Was.h.i.+ngton and between here and Atlanta. We'll make the request, of course, that they watch the p.a.w.nshops and nab anybody who shows up with any of the Withers stuff?"

"That's it! That's it as sure as you're born!" Braceway struck the arm of his chair and catapulted himself into a standing position. "That will get him--provided, of course, he's desperate enough to take the chance of p.a.w.ning any of it."

"One other thing," Bristow supplemented. "You said Withers said something to you this morning about your knowing what his life had been. Just what did he mean?"

Braceway reflected a moment,

"There's no reason for your not knowing it," he confided. "Withers had rather a trying life with his wife. It was a baffling sort of a situation. She was in love with him. I haven't a doubt of that. And he was in love with her.

"She was one of the most fascinating women I ever saw. They used to say in Atlanta that all the women liked her, and that any man who had once shaken hands with her and looked her in the eye was, forever after, her obedient servant.

"But she was never entirely frank with Withers. Naturally, that at first made him regretful, and later it made him jealous. You know his type.

I'm not sure that I have the whole story, but that's the foundation of it, and it led to bitter disagreements and fierce quarrels.

"Some of their acquaintances got on to it, and couldn't understand why a woman like her and a good fellow like Withers couldn't hit it off. Things got worse and worse. I don't believe Withers minded her being up here with her sister. The temporary separation came, probably, as a great relief to both of them."

"I see," Bristow said. "Naturally, when, on top of all that, the money began to fly and the jewels went into p.a.w.n, he came to the end of his rope--determined to put a stop to the thing."

"Probably," said Braceway, looking at his watch. "But how about our little job--getting the description of the jewelry and having Greenleaf wire it out? I'll go down to Number Five and get it from Withers and his father-in-law."

"You don't mind seeing Miss Fulton?" Bristow asked interestedly.

"Oh, no," he answered, embarra.s.sment again in his manner. "But I don't feel like cross-questioning her. You can understand that. You'll have to take on that end, really."

Bristow thought: "He's still in love with her. I was right about her.

There's a lot to her if she can hold a live wire like this." Aloud he said:

"All right. You get the list. In the meantime, I'll telephone Greenleaf to tell Morley he can go to Was.h.i.+ngton tomorrow if he wants to--but not today."

"Why not today?"

"Because there are some things here you and I had better go over, and I think we'd do well to follow Morley, don't you? That is, if we want to get the goods on him without fail."

"Now that I think of it, yes. Perhaps, both of us needn't go, but one will have to."

He went down the steps, saying Withers had by this time arrived at No. 5 and would be waiting there with Mr. Fulton. Both the father and the husband would accompany the body of Mrs. Withers to Atlanta on the four o'clock train that afternoon.

Bristow, having caught Greenleaf by telephone at the inquest, gave him their decision about Morley's departure the next day, and announced that he and Braceway would like him to send out by wire the description of the Withers jewels. To both of these propositions Greenleaf agreed. Bristow returned to his porch.

"So," he thought, "it's got to be Morley or the negro."

And yet, he decided, in spite of the theorizing he and Braceway had indulged in, there was small chance now of fixing the crime definitely on Morley. He had none of the jewelry, apparently. The police had searched his baggage and his room at the hotel, without success. Indubitably, it would be more likely that a jury would convict Perry. All the direct evidence was against the negro.

Bristow did not deceive himself. It would be a great satisfaction and a morsel to his vanity to prove the negro guilty. He foresaw that the papers sooner or later would get hold of the fact that Braceway was after Morley.

And, although they had hinted at mystery and uncertainty this morning, they had printed their stories so as to show that Greenleaf, backed by Bristow, would try to get Perry. The duel between himself and Braceway was on. He remembered he had discounted at the beginning the idea of the negro's guilt, but that had been before the discovery of the fragment of the lavalliere chain.

Now, he was disposed, determined even, to treat everything as if Perry were the guilty man. He would work with that idea always in mind. In the meantime he would go with Braceway as long as the Braceway theories seemed to have any foundation at all. He did not want to run the risk of being shown up as a bungler. He was anxious to be "in on" anything that might happen.

"So," he concluded, "if Perry is finally convicted, I get the credit. If Morley is sent up, I'll get some of the credit for that also. I won't lose either way.

"Now, about Withers? I've got to handle him by myself. If I were a.n.a.lyzing this case from the newspaper accounts of it, I'd say at first blush that either Withers did the thing or Perry did it. That's what the public's saying now.

"But Braceway stands as a fence between Withers and me. He's a friend of Withers and in love with Withers' sister-in-law. And he believes Withers innocent. That's patent. For the present, I can't do anything in that direction. I've got to dig up everything possible on Morley and the negro--and, in spite of the check business, the chances are against the negro."

He called to Mattie whom he heard moving about in the dining room.

"Lucy Thomas," he said, "is out of jail now. I wish you'd go look for her right away. The inquest is over by this time, and she'll be at home by the time you get there. Bring her back here with you. Tell her it's by order of the police, and I only want to talk to her a few minutes."

"Yas, suh," said Mattie.

"I'm not going to hurt her, Mattie," he said. "Be sure to tell her so."

"Yas, suh, Mistuh Bristow; I sho' will tell her. I 'spec' dat po' n.i.g.g.e.r is done had de bre'f skeered outen her already."

His eye was caught by the figures of Braceway and Mr. Fulton leaving No.

5. They turned and started up the walk toward No. 9.