Murder in the Gilded Cage
Breese deliberately lied to implicate the actor, which is what I have
maintained all along.”
But here the white-whiskered office boy returned with Mr. Brennon.
Although it was almost unbearably hot, the old lawyer affected a
high-wing collar and a rather shiny but undeniably substantial morning
coat. He was well over seventy, with silver mustachios and his faded
blue eyes smiled feebly at us. He met us with a quavering flow of
welcome--he hailed from somewhere in Tennessee--and he seemed to take
it as his own short-sightedness that we had come a half-hour too soon.
Certainly the old man and his establishment were not easily reconciled
with Mrs. Breese, who had been as modern as this morning’s newspaper
put out upon the streets the night before.
He asked us into his private office, mustier, if possible, than his
ante-room. He moved feebly but with the dignity of an old soldier.
After reassuring himself that we were comfortable, he retired into the
folds of his own armchair and waited for the detective to begin inquiry.
“I shall be very glad to tell you what I can,” he said, after Smith had
made known his mission. “Of course, you understand I cannot divulge
the contents of the will until the proper time. But I dare say you
won’t press me on that. I expect to read it in half an hour. Now--” he
cleared his throat, and one gnarled hand played with a yellow ivory
pen-holder--“you ask me the circumstances that led Mrs. Breese to make
this will. I can tell you only what I know.
“Some time ago--to be exact, shortly after that very unfortunate
divorce action--” he shook his head mournfully--“an unhappy lady, Mrs.
Breese. Dreadful tragedy.” He looked off and then seemed to collect
his thoughts. “But, as I was saying, shortly after her divorce trial,
Mrs. Breese consulted Henry O’Brien in New York. Mrs. Breese asked
Mr. O’Brien to write her will. Unfortunately, just as Mr. O’Brien set
to work, Mrs. Breese said she must leave for Havana. So Mr. O’Brien
very kindly suggested that I attend to the will when she got here. I
received a letter from him to that effect.
“I waited for Mrs. Breese to come here, but she didn’t. So I took it
upon myself to call on her, and she received me, and we had a very
interesting talk. I made out the will. I really had very little to do
with it. I was unfamiliar with Mrs. Breese or her family, and I merely
took down what she dictated and had my clerks sign as witnesses.” He
paused. “I think that’s all I know, gentlemen, and I’m sure I’ll be
delighted if it can be of any help to you.”
“Then we are to understand,” inquired Smith, “that Mrs. Breese was not
particularly anxious to make out a will? That she only did so because
you suggested it?”
“I had my instructions from Mr. O’Brien,” the lawyer explained.
Smith nodded. “That’s a very important point,” he explained. “If Mrs.
Breese made out a will a week ago under someone’s influence--someone
connected with her establishment--we would want to know that. It might
be a very important factor.”
“As far as I know, gentlemen,” the lawyer said, “Mrs. Breese made her
will under no undue influence. No one was with her when I called first,
or when she signed the document here in my office in the presence of my
clerks.”
The white-whiskered office boy (I later learned that he had been his
employer’s bugler in the war) announced Gordon Rice’s arrival. Mr.
Brennon instructed that the promoter be shown in at once.
Rice greeted us briskly. He seemed to regard the forthcoming ceremony
as an event of no particular importance and he fumed at the tardiness
of the others.
“Main thing I’m interested in,” he confided, “is to find out if Mrs.
Breese made any special request for the funeral. It’s going to be a
sad business, that. And it’s up to me to take care of it. The children
aren’t up to it, and Mr. Breese is just about all in. I want to get him
off to the States as fast as possible.”
The Russian looked up significantly at Smith, but the detective made no
comment.
Then the aged office boy ushered the actor in. For the occasion, Mr.
Thomas had donned conservative blue flannels, black shoes, a pale
blue shirt, and a black four-in-hand. He wove his mourning into the
ensemble. His expression was slightly defiant as he looked at us.
No one spoke after the actor entered. Mr. Brennon began turning over
long sheets of paper, and examining them through his thick glasses. The
Russian mopped his red face, for the room was stifling hot.
It was fully ten minutes before the elder Breese was announced. He
was accompanied by the Countess and his son. Mr. Breese seemed to
have recovered somewhat from his agitation. Something of his habitual
hardness had returned to his expression and he was quite curt with us.
The Countess was dressed in black, and because she had been annoyed by
persistent news photographers, her white, haggard face was swathed in
a heavy veil. Her brown eyes seemed unnaturally large and bright.
Her brother, who followed her in, took his place carefully away from
the rest of us. He, too, showed signs of the emotional shock he had
undergone, and he smoked many cigarettes while we waited for the lawyer
to begin. I noticed that he looked at the actor but once and then with
obvious hatred.
There was a stiff restrained silence for a moment.
The old lawyer had spread the will before him. “It is my duty,” he
quavered, “to read you the last will and testament of the late Dora
Huntington Breese.”
He paused and brought the document closer to his thick glasses. Then
he plunged into the usual formula of Mrs. Breese’s soundness of mind
at the time the will was composed. The first few paragraphs disposed
of several bequests to favorite servants. Five thousand dollars was
given the Association for the Reform of Marriage--of which I had never
heard--and sums in proportion to the Speyer Home for Animals, the
Society for Psychical Research, the Juilliard Foundation and the Girl
Scouts of America. Surely, a strange coupling of movements!
The lawyer read on tremulously. I took notes of the will, and I found
my pencil making comments upon what I had heard. Thus I wrote: “_To
my daughter, the Countess Giering-Trelovitch, I leave the income
of a trust fund ... three hundred thousand dollars for life ...
on condition that the said trust fund revert to the estate should
she resume relationship in any way, shape, manner or form, with her
divorced husband, the Count Giering-Trelovitch._”
I saw Smith look at the Russian. I know that in my note-book I wrote:
“Indirect motive for the Count! Mrs. Breese hated him, and the
antagonism was undoubtedly mutual!”
“_To Guy Thomas, I bequeath the income of seventy-five thousand dollars
in trust as an expression of my gratitude for his loyal friendship and
companionship. Should Mr. Thomas remarry, this trust fund will revert
to the estate._”
The actor looked up, puzzled, and disappointed, I think. I find in my
note-book: “Breese lied about the will. Score one for the Russian!”
Then, as I looked at my notes of the Thomas portion of the estate my
eye caught the word “remarry.” I wrote: “Investigate. Mr. Thomas is a
bachelor. Did Mrs. Breese propose marrying him when she made out the
will? Evidently.”
The actor’s exact status after he arrived in Havana had never been
plain to me. Mrs. Breese first announced her engagement to him on board
the yacht. After her son’s attempt at suicide, she had apparently
recanted. Then she had changed her mind once more. And yet, if Thomas’
own story were true, she accepted without protest his plan to marry a
New York chorus girl, and even proposed financing the venture.
“_To my first husband, Henry Breese, I leave no reproaches but an
earnest entreaty not to subject another woman to the suffering he has
caused me._”
I saw the old man wince, and the Countess turn toward him, as if to
comfort him.
Henry Breese, Jr., received the residuary estate. As executor, Mrs.
Breese named her “_loyal friend, Gordon Rice, and I implore my children
to show him the same obedience and respect that they would give their
own father were he worthy of it_.”
Another blow at the elder Breese! Seemingly the antagonism, at least,
on Mrs. Breese’s side, was even more deep-rooted than I had suspected.
Then followed the strangest portion of this strange document:
“_Three days after my death, when it is established that life cannot
possibly return to my body, I desire that my body be burned and
cremated. The ashes are to be placed in a suitable urn and brought
on board the yacht Mary Rose, no matter where it may be docked, at
my death. At the hour of midnight my ashes are to be scattered into
the sea. There are to be no prayers, no music and no flowers. The
ceremonial is to be carried out exactly as I have instructed. I have
never been free in my stay upon earth, and in the life hereafter I
want nothing more than to ride the seven seas, my soul as free as the
winds._”
CHAPTER XV
WEATHER PREDICTION
Smith and I looked at each other incredulously. But later I reasoned
that the melodramatic exit Mrs. Breese had elected was entirely in
keeping. Even in death Mrs. Breese wanted to make news of herself. I
could picture her dictating her lurid wishes to the old lawyer and
relishing his amazement. I am convinced that she regarded the will as
essentially meaningless. She probably thought she would change it a
half-dozen times before she was done playing with the prospect of death.
Then the lawyer was done. No one spoke. I realized the Countess had
risen, and her brother. They left the room without a word. The elder
Breese whispered something to Rice, who nodded, and then joined his
children.
“When,” the actor cleared his throat and addressed the lawyer with
grave dignity, “when do you plan to file this will in the Surrogate’s
court?”
“Immediately,” replied the lawyer.
“No hurry, is there?” demanded Smith sharply. But the actor did not
deign to reply. He took up his gloves and stick and stalked out of the
room.
We emerged into the dingy corridor once more. Neither Smith nor
the Russian made any comment upon the ceremony that had just been
concluded. Once out of the building, we clambered aboard a lumbering
street car. A native motorman who smoked loathsomely heavy cigarettes
sent our car clanging through the narrow street. Heavily rouged and
bejewelled matrons sat side by side, with grimy day laborers about us
preempting the shady side.
Every so often a bullet-headed negro boy would run through the car
crying the virtues of his bags of hot peanuts. Our route took us past
several cemeteries and the motorman would lift his cap to a passing
cortège, flick his cigarette and then clang forward more noisily than
ever.
“You see,” shouted the Russian in my ear above the clamor of the car,
“other mortals may be dismissed as easily as all this, with the lifting
of the cap, but Mrs. Breese wanted more out of death! What a fool! But
I look forward to her funeral! I shall enjoy it!” He laughed heartily.
“I have always enjoyed funerals. They are such a commentary on the
unimportance of life!”
Smith looked at him nastily, for the Russian was shocking his staid
sensibilities.
All unconscious of this, Perutkin continued for all to hear:
“For my own funeral, I require nothing but a hole in the ground, and
flowers. Many flowers. I wish to smell sweet in death. Not that that
is possible. Quite the contrary. But at least civilized man can give
superficial beauty even to decay. And he should do so. I am all in
favor of civilization. The more the better.”
The rest of his somewhat disconnected philosophy on funerals was lost
in the business of leaping out of the street car, for the motorman
never waited the convenience of his passengers, and we almost rode past