The seventh shot A detective story
“I’ll tell you by and by,” said Barrison evasively. He saw that Crane
was really surprised by this, and he was debating with himself just how
far it was politic and wise to go in this direction.
In another few minutes they were at the boarding house where Sybil
lived—a quiet house in the upper Forties, kept by a gentle, gray-haired
woman who seemed of another day and generation, and who called Norman
“my dear boy,” with a soft Southern drawl.
Miss Merivale was better, she said; so much so, in fact, that she had
had her removed into her own parlor at the front of the house, where
she could have more cheerful surroundings and see her friends, the
sweet lady added, smiling, if she felt strong enough. If the gentlemen
would take the trouble to walk upstairs, she was sure they would do
Miss Merivale good. She was better, but not so bright as one could wish.
The boarding-house keeper and Norman Crane ascended first, and shortly
after the former came back to tell Barrison that they were expecting
him, if he would go up.
“I thought,” she added softly, “that they would want to see each other,
and so I had her couch fixed in my place, where I can be in and out, so
to speak. Not that I’d have the time,” she added, gently humorous, “but
it’s the idea, you know! I’m from the So’th, sir, and I have my funny
notions about the proprieties!”
Sybil, on the landlady’s old-fashioned sofa, looked rather pathetically
wan, but she made an effort to greet Jim with some animation and
cordiality. It was plain that she was still very shaken and depressed,
and that her fiancé was much worried about her.
She went at once to the matters that were in all their minds. It was
characteristic of the girl that she did not shrink from approaching
even the subjects responsible for her recent collapse. And she was
very fair to look at, in her soft blue dressing gown lying back among
the faded chintz cushions, with her ash-blond hair in two long braids
upon her shoulders. Kitty Legaye should have seen her now!
“Mr. Barrison,” she said at once, “it is awfully good of you to have
called. Norman and I know that you are here as a friend, and not as an
officer of the law, and we are both grateful. Mr. Barrison, you surely
don’t think I had anything to do with—with that horror the other night?”
“No, I don’t,” said Barrison, speaking as briefly and frankly as she
was speaking herself.
“Well, will you tell me on what grounds they are—are watching me?”
“You are sure they are?” he said, to gain time.
“Sure! Of course, I am sure! Look at that man over there, reading the
paper and occasionally glancing up at the sky to see if it is going to
rain. Isn’t he watching this house?”
Barrison smiled. “Probably he is,” he admitted. He had noticed the man
himself as he came in, but he had not imagined that the girl herself
knew of her situation.
“Well,” she insisted, and a faint spot of feverish color came into
either cheek, “what is it that they expect to find out? What is it? I
know that I was there, on the scene, but—but—surely that man would not
have let me go if he had thought I had—done it!”
Barrison was convinced of her innocence; but he was also convinced
that the wisest course would be to enlighten her as to the points
wherein her position was open to question by the law. He had hesitated
because his connection with the case, while unofficial, more or less
tied his hands; but, after all, the inspector had given him leave to
use his own judgment.
He spoke straightforwardly. “What did you hide in your dress, just
before the last act, the night before last, Miss Merivale?”
She started upright on the couch, and looked at him with wide eyes of
amazement. “How did you know that?” she asked blankly.
“But you didn’t, did you, dear?” struck in Norman Crane, taking her
hand in his. “What could you have put in your dress? It’s absurd, as I
told Mr. Barrison!”
She thought for a moment, and then said quietly: “I put into my dress
something that I wanted to hide, chiefly from you, Norman. I knew that
if you saw it, you would be angry.”
Norman Crane looked as though she had struck him.
“You did hide something, then?” he exclaimed.
“I certainly did, and would again, under the same conditions. Only, I
can’t see how any one knew of the fact. Who was it, Mr. Barrison?”
“Your dresser, the woman Parry.”
“Of course!” She nodded slowly. “She was always a meddlesome old thing!
And I know that she was consumed with curiosity when I got the package
and the note that night.”
“The package and the note!” repeated Norman Crane. “Sybil, you are
crazy! What are you talking about?”
“I know what the note was,” put in Barrison, smiling at her
reassuringly. “At least, I know part of it, and I was daring enough to
make up the rest of it in Lowry’s office last night!”
Sybil looked up at him with a flash of laughter in her eyes, though
poor Crane was still dazed.
“And what did you make of it?” she asked, in a tone that tried for
raillery and only achieved a certain piteous bravado.
“I made of it a sort of love letter, if you can call it so,” said
Barrison gently, “which might have accompanied a present, something
which could be considered in the light of a test—no, that is not the
word, a proof of——”
“A proof,” she broke in passionately, “of my willingness to do
something, and to be something that I could not do and could not be!
And you made that out of it, with only those torn scraps to go by! Oh,
you understand. I see that you do understand!”
She hid her face in her hands and cried. In a moment, however, she put
aside her own emotion, and explained:
“He—Mr. Mortimer—had tried to make love to me many times; you both know
that. Norman was furious with him, and I was always afraid that there
would be trouble between them. Of my part of it—well, it is much harder
to speak. Being men, perhaps you will not understand the sort of power
of fascination that a man can have over a woman, even when she does not
love him. I shall always believe that Alan Mortimer had some hypnotic
power—however, that is not the point. Though I had always repulsed him,
he could not help knowing that he had influence over me; a man always
knows. You see, I don’t try to lie; I tell you the truth, even though
it isn’t a pleasant sort of truth to tell.”
“I know it is most painful to tell,” Barrison said, feeling indeed
profoundly sorry for her, and most respectful of her courage in
speaking as she did. Norman Crane said nothing.
“That night—the first night,” Sybil went on, “Alan Mortimer made it
especially—hard for me. He had chosen an ornament for me, a splendid
jeweled thing, but I had refused it several times. That night, he sent
it to me with a note, and told me that he expected me to wear it that
evening, after the play was over.”
“Have you got it now?” asked Barrison.
She reached out to a small table near by and took it from a hand bag.
“I have never been separated from it,” she said simply. “It is too
valuable, and—until to-day—I did not know just what to do with it.”
In another moment it lay before them—the case “as long as a hand,”
which Mrs. Parry had seen the girl hide in the front of her dress.
In yet another instant the case was open, and the splendid piece of
jewelry that was within flashed in the morning sunshine. It was a
pendant of sapphires and diamonds, and it was the sort of thing that
would be extremely becoming to Sybil Merivale.
Crane suppressed with difficulty a sound of rage as he saw it.
Barrison cut it off quickly by saying: “You told us you did not know
what to do with it until to-day. Why to-day?”
“Because”—Sybil took up a morning paper, looked at a particular place,
and dropped it again—“because to-day I know that Miss Legaye was
engaged to him, and that, therefore, anything that he had, when he
died, belongs to her. I am going to send the pendant to Miss Legaye.”
She closed the case with an air of finality. “Isn’t that what I ought
to do?” she asked, half anxiously, looking from one to the other.
Norman Crane, who had been sitting moodily staring at the floor,
suddenly lifted his head and bent to kiss her hand.
“My darling,” he said honestly and generously, “I don’t understand
everything you’ve been talking about, but I understand that you’re my
dear girl—my fine girl—always. And—and whatever you say—must be right!”
“And you, Mr. Barrison?” she persisted, looking at him wistfully, as
she left her hand in Norman’s.
Jim rose to go, and, standing, smiled down upon her. “I think your
notion is an inspiration!” he declared. “I would give something to see
Miss Legaye when she gets that pendant!”
After which he departed, wondering how he was going to convince Lowry
that the trail to Sybil was, professionally speaking, “cold.”
CHAPTER XXV
NEW DEVELOPMENTS
He telephoned the _Blaze_ office, and caught Teddy Lucas just as he was
starting out on an assignment.
“Oh, it’s you,” said the reporter. “Wanted to tell you something about
your friend Rita which might be useful in your business. I strolled
round last night to the furnished rooming house where she and her
husband hung out, and they never went home at all; just beat it to the
train, I suppose. Their room was just as they’d left it, and full of
junk. There was a shelf full of old photographs, and one of ’em was of
two young girls, sisters I should say; at least, they were both dark.
One’s evidently Rita herself, as she may have looked ten years ago,
and the other, unless I’m very much mistaken, is the lady that the sob
sisters are interviewing this morning!”
“Not Kitty Legaye?”
“That’s the one. Oh, and I poked about the files for you this morning.
The Blankley Daredevils were a riding and shooting show that did small
time in the East until a year ago. Then it bust up, and the company
scattered. Blankley seems to have been a crook, for the reason for the
smash-up was that he was arrested and sent to jail for six months!
Quite a nice, snappy little story—what?”
“Are you going to write it?”
“Not my line. I’ve turned it over to a chap on the news staff!”
“I noticed that you didn’t make much out of last night.”
“My editor cut out most of it; thought I was giving Coyne’s theater too
much advertising. Well, that’s all I had to tell.”
“Where is that photograph?”
“I swiped it. Send it up?”
“Please! And I’m no end obliged.”
“That’s all right.”
Barrison walked out of the booth more astonished than he had ever
been in his life. In all the speculations he had made in his own mind
concerning this twisted and unsatisfactory case, it had never occurred
to him to connect those two women. Kitty Legaye and Marita Blankley!
He recalled the two faces swiftly, and saw that there was a faint
resemblance, though Rita’s was far the harder and more mature. He would
not swear that she was the older, though; little ladies like Kitty
rarely looked their age. Kitty and Rita! The more he thought of it,
the more astounding it seemed. Of course, the first thing to do was to
locate Wrenn. But how? He wondered if Willie Coster could help him.
He got Willie’s address easily enough from the theater, and went to
call. He found him a little wan and puffy-eyed, but quite recovered,
and amazingly cheerful for a man who has only been sober a few hours!
“Wrenn?” he repeated. “How should I know? He’d scarcely be staying on
at Mortimer’s hotel, I suppose?”
Barrison explained that Mortimer’s rooms and effects were in the
custody of the police, and that the old valet would not be allowed near
them in any case.
“I don’t believe that he’s left town,” Willie said, “and I’ll tell you
why. He wasn’t at all well fixed for money. I don’t believe Mortimer