The seventh shot A detective story
time when I was afraid that she was getting too fond of him—he had such
a way with women! Wherever he went there was trouble, as you might say.
He helped the show—put new life into it, and he could ride—oh, well, no
one ever rode better than he did. And you know how handsome he was?”
Strangely enough, the old man’s voice choked a bit just there.
“I don’t know why I always felt just the way I did about him,” he went
on quietly. “He was often very rough and careless in his ways, but—but
I was as fond of him as if he’d been my own son—and that, sir, is the
gospel truth.
“Mortimer had a scheme to branch out bigger, and get a sort of
organized company together, with capital, and a circus arena somewhere
with the right sort of scenery and music, and that sort of thing. Mr.
Dukane had seen our show once, and had taken an interest in it—at
least, had taken an interest in the lad—and Mortimer wrote to him for a
loan to back the new plan.”
“Wrote Dukane—for a loan?” repeated Jim, in admiration.
“Yes, he did. I felt just as surprised as you, sir, when he told me
what he had done. And—to this day, I’m not sure whether it was just
plain, pure nerve on his part, or whether he—he—had in mind what the
result might be.”
“Result?”
“Yes.” For the first time the old scapegrace’s utterance was slow and
troubled—hardly audible. He would not meet Barrison’s eyes. What he
said now seemed to be dragged up from the depths of his sinful and
unwilling soul.
“You know—you must know, sir,” he said, in those new and halting
accents, “since you know so much—about the deal with Dukane?”
“I know something,” said Jim, truthfully, but very cautiously—his heart
was beating hard. “I know that there was a deal at all events.”
“It—it doesn’t sound very well—put into words, does it, sir?” Poor old
Wrenn’s tone was tired and appealing. “But there! I said I was going
to make a clean breast of it, and I might as well. Dukane and Mortimer
fixed it up between themselves——”
“Dukane and Mortimer only?” interrupted Barrison, with a sudden
intuition.
Wrenn’s poor, weak, tragic eyes met his piteously, shifted, and fell.
“Dukane and Mortimer and—I—fixed it up, sir,” he confessed humbly. “We
were to double-cross Nick Blankley, and Dukane was to star Mortimer.”
“He must have had a pretty high opinion of him!” exclaimed Jim Barrison
wonderingly, for the great manager, while a shrewd gambler, was no
plunger.
“He knew that he had the makings of a favorite, sir; any one could see
it. Mr. Dukane wanted him the way the owner of a racing stable wants a
fine horse. He knew there was money in him if he was put out right. And
Dukane was the man to do that. Anyway, that was the idea. They—I mean
we—were to get Blankley out of the way, and Dukane would take care of
us afterward.”
“How do you mean get him out of the way?”
“Oh, not kill him, sir!” Wrenn’s tone was virtuously shocked. “You
wouldn’t think that, surely? It was just my way of putting it, as it
were. No; he’d done a number of shady things, Nick Blankley had, and——”
“So had you!” interpolated Jim Barrison, rather cruelly.
“Oh, yes, sir! But we had—if you’ll pardon the expression—got away with
it.”
There it was, the point of view of the born criminal. If you weren’t
found out, it was all right! Jim looked at the wretched creature before
him, and mused on man as God made him.
“Well?” he demanded, somewhat impatiently.
“Mortimer told Dukane something that Blankley had done; it wasn’t very
much—just a fraud.”
“And Dukane lent himself to this!”
“He’s a business man, sir. He suggested it, I believe. At least,
Mortimer said so.”
No wonder the manager did not care to talk about it!
“Anyway,” continued Wrenn, “it was on Mortimer’s testimony that
Blankley went to jail.”
“For six months.”
“You know that, sir? But it was eight months. He got pardon for good
behavior. We”—he stumbled over this—“we hadn’t expected it yet a while.”
“Great Scott!” said Barrison, looking at him. “And you tell all this!
You mean that you double-crossed—betrayed your pal, your partner—got
him out of the way, so that you could be free of him while you got rich
in the new venture?”
“It—it comes to that, sir; I told you it didn’t sound well when you
put in into words. But it’s the truth, and I don’t care any longer who
knows it. I’m tired. And, anyway, I think it’s more Dukane’s fault than
ours.”
Barrison thought so, too, but he said nothing, only waited in silence.
“I came as Mortimer’s valet because there wasn’t much of anything else
that I could do, and I swore I’d stick to him, and—and he liked me, and
wanted me round him. And I did stick to him! I was fond of him, and I
took care of him as well as I knew how. No one could have looked out
for him better—no one, sir!”
“I believe that. It’s queer; but, no matter, I believe it! What were
you to get out of it?”
“When he made his hit, I was to have ten thousand dollars.”
“And what did your daughter—the one married to Blankley, whom you had
sent to jail—what did she say about this pleasant little arrangement?”
Wrenn’s head drooped once more.
“Marita was always hard to manage, sir,” he said, in a faint voice.
“She turned against me—her own father, and——”
“I should think she might!”
“And she turned against Mortimer, and against Mr. Dukane, who offered
her money. She said she would wait for Nick to come out of prison, and
would spend the rest of her life in getting even!”
“Well, I sympathize with her!” said Barrison sincerely. So that was the
meaning of the tragic and haggard lines about her mouth and the weary
look in her eyes.
“Well, Wrenn,” he went on quietly, “I don’t know just how the blame is
to be divided in all this, but I imagine you’ve had almost your share
of suffering. And Mortimer is done for. Dukane will get his eventually.
I shall be sorry personally if your daughter Marita has to pay the
penalty for the death of a rotter like the man who died the other
night. I wish you could tell me something about her visit which would
make her case look a little better.”
Then Wrenn broke down, and, burying his head in his hands, cried like
a child. He might have been a crook, a weakling, neglectful of his
children through all the days of his life, but he was suffering now.
His gaunt old body quivered under the storm of grief that swept him. In
that abasement and sorrow it was even possible for Barrison to forget
the despicable things he had just admitted. He was now merely an old
man, bitterly punished not only for the sins of his youth, but those of
his age.
“That’s what I keep saying,” he panted at last, lifting his swollen
eyes to the younger man’s pitying gaze. “I keep asking myself if there
isn’t something that’ll clear her. Though we’ve been apart so long, and
I was always a bad father to her, and a false friend to her husband, it
will kill me altogether if I find that she is guilty of murder!”
“She wrote those letters—the ones threatening Mortimer?”
“Yes.”
“And she took advantage of the time permitted her by the hours of her
act at Coyne’s to come to the theater that night?”
“Yes, sir. Let me tell you just how it was. She slipped in while
Roberts was out getting the taxi for Kitty.” He spoke his daughter’s
name shyly and with embarrassment. “She came straight into the
dressing room—though why no one saw her I can’t see! She was dressed
just as she had come from the theater, in a khaki skirt and a white
waist. And she pulled a pistol out of her dress as she came in. I knew
the pistol, because it was always a fad of hers, in all her stunts, to
carry guns like that—very small, and very much decorated, and with a
letter that might be either an M or a W, according as you looked at it.
“The moment she and Mortimer saw each other they flew out like two wild
cats. I’d always tried to keep this from happening, because I knew that
they were both past controlling when their blood was up, and they both
had a lot to fight for.”
“Both!” repeated Barrison. “I can’t see that. Your daughter had
something to fight for, because of the wrong done to her husband, and
incidentally to herself. But where was Mortimer’s grievance?”
“Well, sir,” said Wrenn slowly, as though he were seriously trying to
express something rather beyond the intelligence of his hearer, “you
see—maybe it hasn’t struck you, sir, but, if you’ve risked a great deal
on a thing, and find that something is going to interfere with it,
after all, at the last moment, you—well, sir, you are apt to lose your
head over it. Aren’t you?”
Barrison laughed a trifle grimly.
“Crooked logic,” he remarked, “but excellent—for the crooked kind! So
you sympathize with Mortimer in his annoyance at seeing your daughter?”
“I don’t sympathize, sir. In a way, I may say I understand it. But when
she pulled out that gun, I fell into a sweat of fear, sir, for I knew
that she was afraid of nothing, and that if she’d said she’d kill him——”
“Never mind how you felt! Tell me what happened!”
Wrenn wiped his forehead. “She went for Mortimer, and he got to her
first, and caught hold of her arms. He was very strong, but she
struggled like a demon, and every minute I expected one of two things
to happen, the pistol to go off or some one to hear and knock at the
door. After, I suppose, two or three minutes like that, I pulled her
away from him—her waist was torn in the struggle, you remember.”
“I remember.”
“And I managed to get her out of the door, begging her to make a run
for the stage entrance and to get away if possible without being seen.
It was nearly dark then, you see—not the regular dark scene, but all
the lights were being lowered, because there was to be so little light
on the stage.”
There was silence for a moment, then Wrenn went on again: “I’ve
wondered, you know, sir, several times, whether she and Kitty met that
night. I’ve—I’ve been afraid of it, I confess, because I don’t believe
my daughter Kitty would feel much sisterly affection for Rita. She
might even give it away if she had seen her.”
Barrison sat plunged in deep thought for at least two minutes, while
the shaken and troubled old man watched him very anxiously indeed. At
last he spoke, not ungently:
“Wrenn, will you give me your word that you will not leave this place,
this address, until I see you again?”
He supposed that he was rather mad in asking the word of a
self-confessed crook like Wrenn, but he thought he had got to the end
of his tether. At any rate, the old man lifted his head with quite an
influx of pride, as he answered:
“Yes, Mr. Barrison!”
Jim departed, with just one determination in his brain—to pay Kitty
Legaye a second call as fast as a taxi would take him to the Golden
Arms!
CHAPTER XXVII
AN INCRIMINATING LETTER
Kitty looked very pretty and quite pathetic in her smartly simple
mourning. She saw Barrison at once, and received him with a
subdued cordiality that was the perfection of good taste under the
circumstances.
“What is it?” she said, in a low voice. There was no artificiality
about her now; she was disturbed, apprehensive. “I know it’s something.
Please tell me.”
“Yes, there is something,” he said. “It’s about—your sister.”
He could hear her draw in her breath.
“My sister!” she whispered. “Marita! How did you know anything about
her?”
“I don’t think we need go into an account of that,” Jim said steadily.
“As it happens, I do know quite a good deal about her. I know, for
instance, that she was in the theater only a little while before Alan
Mortimer was murdered.”
“You know that!” she exclaimed, in unfeigned surprise. “I thought——”
Then she checked herself, but it was too late; she saw at once what she
had admitted.