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No Clue! A Mystery Story

<h2>XV</h2> <h3>IN ARTHUR SLOANE'S ROOM</h3> Hastings went back to Sloanehurst that evening for another and more forceful attempt to argue Arthur Sloane into frankness. Like Mrs. Brace, he could not get away from the definite conclusion that Lucille's father was silent from fear of telling what he knew. Moreover, he realized that, without a closer connection with Sloane, his own handling of the case was seriously impeded. Lucille was on the front porch, evidently waiting for him, although he had not notified her in advance of his visit. She went hurriedly down the steps and met him on the walk. When he began an apology for having to annoy her so frequently, she cut short his excuses. "Oh, but I'm glad you're here—so glad! We need your help. The sheriff's here." She put her hand on his coat sleeve; he could feel the tremour of it as she pulled, unconsciously, on the cloth. She turned toward the verandah steps. "What's he doing?" he asked, detaining her. "He's in father's room," she said in feverish haste, "asking him all sorts of questions, saying ridiculous things. Really, I'm afraid—for father's health! Can't you go in now?" "Couldn't Judge Wilton manage him? Isn't the judge here?" "No. He came over at dinner time; but he went back to the Randalls'. Father didn't feel up to talking to him." Crown, she explained, had literally forced his way into the bedroom, disregarding her protests and paying no attention to the pretence of physical resistance displayed by Jarvis. "The man seems insane!" she said. "I want you to make him leave father's room—please!" She halted near the library door, leaving the matter in Hastings' hands. Since entering the house he had heard Crown's voice, raised to the key of altercation; and now, when he stepped into Sloane's room, the rush of words continued. The sheriff, unaware of the newcomer, stood near the bed, emphasizing his speech with restless arms and violent motions of his head, as if to galvanize into response the still and prostrate form before him. On the opposite side of the bed stood the sepulchral Jarvis, flashing malign looks at Crown, but chiefly busy, with unshaking hands, preparing a beverage of some sort for the sick man. Sloane lay on his back, eyes closed, face under the full glare of the reading light. His expression indicated both boredom and physical suffering. "—have to make an arrest!" Crown was saying. "You're making me take that action—ain't you? I come in here, considerate as I know how to be, and I ask you for a few facts. Do you give 'em to me? Not by a long shot! You lie there in that bed, and talk about leaping angels, and say I bore you! Well, Mr. Sloane, that won't get you a thing! You're where I said you were: it's either Webster that will be arrested—or yourself! Now, I'm giving you another chance. I'm asking you what you saw; and you can tell me—or take the consequences!" Hastings thought: "He's up that gum stump of his again, and don't know how to quit talking." Sloane made no answer. "Well," thundered Crown. "I'm asking you!" "Moaning martyrs!" Sloane protested in a thin, querulous tone. "Jarvis, the bromide." "All right!" the sheriff delivered his ultimatum. "I'll stick to what I said. Webster may be too sick to talk, but not too sick to have a warrant served on him. He'll be arrested because you won't tell me——" Hastings spoke then. "Gentlemen!" he greeted pleasantly. "Mr. Sloane, good evening. Mr. Sheriff—am I interrupting a private conference?" "Fiery fiends!" wailed Sloane. "Another!" Hastings gave his attention to Crown. He was certain that the man, balked by Sloane's refusal to "talk," would welcome an excuse for leaving the room. "Let me see you a moment, will you?" He put a hand on the sheriff's shoulder, persuading: "It's important, right now." "But I want to know what Mr. Sloane's going to say," Crown blustered. "If he'll tell——" Hastings stopped him with a whisper: "That's exactly what he'll do—soon!" He led the sheriff into the hall. They went into the parlour. "Now," Hastings began, in genial tone; "did you get anything from him?" "Not a dad-blamed thing!" Crown was still blustery. "But he'll talk before I'm through! You can put your little bets down on that!" "All right. You've had your chance at him. Better let me see him." Crown looked his distrust. He was thinking of Mrs. Brace's warning that this man had made a fool of him. "I'm not trying to put anything over on you," the detective assured him. "Fact is, I'm out here for the newspaper men. They've had nothing from him; they've asked me to get his story. I'll give it to you before I see them. What do you say?" Crown still hesitated. "If, after you've heard it," Hastings added, "you want to question him further, you can do it, of course. But this way we take two shots at it." To that, the other finally agreed. Hastings found Sloane smoking a cigarette, his eyes still closed. Jarvis was behind a screen near the door, now and then clinking glass against glass as he worked. The old man took a chair near the bed and waited for Sloane to speak. He waited a long time. Finally, the invalid looked at him from under lowered lids, slyly, like a child peeping. Hastings returned the look with a pleasant smile, his shrewd eyes sparkling over the rims of his spectacles. "Well!" Sloane said at last, in a whiney tone. "What do you want?" "First," Hastings apologized, "I want to say how sorry I am I didn't make myself clearly understood night before last when I told Miss Sloane I'd act as mouthpiece for this household. I didn't mean I could invent a statement for each of you, or for any of you. What I did mean amounts to this: if you, for instance, would tell me what you know—all you know—about this murder, I could relay it to the reporters—and to the sheriff, who's been annoying you so this evening. As——" "Flat-headed fiends!" Sloane cut in, writhing under the light coverlet. "Another harangue!" Hastings kept his temper. "No harangue about it. But it's to come to this, Mr. Sloane: you're handicapping me, and the reporters and the sheriff don't trust you." "Why? Why don't they trust me?" shrilled Sloane, writhing again. "Ill tell you in a very few words: because you refused to testify at the inquest yesterday, giving illness as an excuse. That's one reason. The——" "Howling helions! Wasn't I ill? Didn't I have enough to make me ill?—Jarvis, a little whiskey!" "Dr. Garnet hasn't told them so—the reporters. He won't tell them so. In fact," Hastings said, with less show of cordiality, "from all he said to me, I gather he doesn't think you an ill man—that is, dangerously ill." "And because of that, they say what, these reporters, this sheriff? What?" "They're in ugly mood, Mr. Sloane. They're saying you're trying to protect—somebody—by keeping still about a thing which you should be the first to haul into daylight. That's it—in a nutshell." Sloane had stopped trembling. He sat up in the bed and stared at the detective out of steady, hard eyes. He waved away the whiskey Jarvis held toward him. "And you want what, Mr. Hastings?" he inquired, a curiously effective sarcasm in his voice. "A statement covering every second from the time you waked up Saturday night until you saw the body." "A statement!—Reporters!" He was snarling on that. "What's got into you, anyway? What are you trying to do—make people suspect me of the murder-make 'em suspect Berne?" He threw away the cigarette and shook his fist at Hastings. He gulped twice before he could speak again; he seemed on the point of choking. "In an ugly mood, are they? Well, they can stay in an ugly mood. You, too! And that hydrophobiac sheriff! Quivering and crucified saints! I've had enough of all of you—all of you, understand! Get out of here! Get out!" Although his voice was shrill, there was no sound of weakness in it. The trembling that attacked him was the result of anger, not of nervousness. Hastings rose, astounded by the outbreak. "I'm afraid you don't realize the seriousness of——" "Oh, get out of here!" Sloane interrupted again. "You've imposed on my daughter with your talk of being helpful, and all that rot, but you can't hoodwink me. What the devil do you mean by letting that sheriff come in here and subject me to all this annoyance and shock? You'd save us from unpleasantness!" He spoke more slowly now, as if he cudgelled his brain for the most biting sarcasm, the most unbearable insolence. "Don't realize the seriousness!—Flat-headed fiends!—Are you any nearer the truth now than you were at the start?—Try to understand this, Mr. Hastings: you're discharged, fired! From now on, I'm in charge of what goes on in this house. If there's any trouble to be avoided, I'll attend to it. Get that!—and get out!" Hastings, opening his mouth for angry retort, checked himself. He stood a moment silent, shaken by the effort it cost him to maintain his self-control. "Humph!" Sloane's nasal, twangy exclamation was clearly intended to provoke him further. But, without a word, he turned and left the room. Passing the screen near the door, he heard Jarvis snicker, a discreet echo of Sloane's goading ridicule. On his way back to the parlour, the old man made up his mind to discount Sloane's behaviour. "I've got to take a chance," he counselled himself, "but I know I'm right in doing it. A big responsibility—but I'm right!" Then he submitted this report: "He says nothing new, Crown. Far as I can make out, nothing unusual waked him up that night—except chronic nervousness; he turned on that light to find some medicine; he knew nothing of the murder until Judge Wilton called him." "Humph!" growled Crown. "And you fall for that!" Hastings eyed him sternly. "It's the statement I'm going to give to the reporters." The sheriff was silent, irresolute. Hastings congratulated himself on his earlier deduction: that Crown, unable to frighten Sloane into communicativeness, was thankful for an excuse to withdraw. Hendricks had reported the two-hour conference between Crown and Mrs. Brace late that afternoon. Hastings decided now: "The man's in cahoots with her. His ally! And he won't act until he's had another session with her.—And she won't advise an arrest for a day or two anyway. Her game is to make him play on Sloane's nerves for a while. She advises threats, not arrests—which suits me, to a T!" He fought down a chuckle, thinking of that alliance. Crown corroborated his reasoning. "All right, Hastings," he said doggedly. "I'm not going back to his room. I gave him his chance. He can take the consequences." "What consequences?" "I'd hardly describe 'em to his personal representative, would I? But you can take this from me: they'll come soon enough—and rough enough!" Hastings made no reference to having been dismissed by Sloane. He was glad when Crown changed the subject. "Hastings, you saw the reporters this afternoon—I've been wondering—they asked me—did they ask you whether you suspected the valet—Jarvis?" "Of what?" "Killing her." "No; they didn't ask me." "Funny," said Crown, ill at ease. "They asked me." "So you said," Hastings reminded, looking hard at him. "Well!" Crown blurted it out. "Do you suspect him? Are you working on that line—at all?" Hastings paused. He had no desire to mislead him. And yet, there was no reason for confiding in him—and delay was at present the Hastings plan. "I'll tell you, Crown," he said, finally; "I'll work on any line that can lead to the guilty man.—What do you know?" "Who? Me?" Crown's tone indicated the absurdity of suspecting Jarvis. "Not a thing." But it gave Hastings food for thought. Was Mrs. Brace in communication with Jarvis? And did Crown know that? Was it possible that Crown wanted to find out whether Hastings was having Jarvis shadowed? How much of a fool was the woman making of the sheriff, anyway? Another thing puzzled him: why did Mrs. Brace suspect Arthur Sloane of withholding the true story of what he had seen the night of the murder? Hastings' suspicion, amounting to certainty, came from his knowledge that the man's own daughter thought him deeply involved in the crime. But Mrs. Brace—was she clever enough to make that deduction from the known facts? Or did she have more direct information from Sloanehurst than he had thought possible? He decided not to leave the sheriff entirely subject to her schemes and suggestions. He would give Mr. Crown something along another line—a brake, as it were, on impulsive action. "You talk about arresting Webster right away—or Sloane," he began, suddenly confiding. "You wouldn't want to make a mistake—would you?" Crown rose to that. "Why? What do you know—specially?" "Well, not so much, maybe. But it's worth thinking about. I'll give you the facts—confidentially, of course.—Hub Hill's about a hundred yards from this house, on the road to Washington. When automobiles sink into it hub-deep, they come out with a lot of mud on their wheels—black, loamy mud. Ain't any other mud like that Hub Hill mud anywhere near here. It's just special and peculiar to Hub Hill. That so?" "Yes," agreed Crown, absorbed. "All right. How, then, did Eugene Russell keep black, Hub Hill mud on his shoes that night if he went the four miles on foot to where Otis picked him up?" "Eh?" said Crown, chin fallen. "By the time he'd run four miles, his shoes would have been covered with the red mud of that mile of 'dirt road' or the thin, grey mud of the three miles of pike—wouldn't they? They'd have thrown off that Hub Hill mud pretty quick, wouldn't they?" "Thunder!" marvelled Crown. "That's right! And those shoes were in his room; I saw 'em." He gurgled, far back in his throat. "Say! How did he get from Hub Hill to where Otis picked him up?" "That's what I say," declared Hastings, very bland. "How?" To Lucille, after Crown's departure, the detective declared his intention to "stand by" her, to stay on the case. He repeated his statement of yesterday: he suspected too much, and knew too little, to give it up. He told her of the responsibility he had assumed in giving the sheriff the fictitious Sloane statement. "That is, it's not fictitious, in itself; it's what your father has been saying. But I told Crown, and I'm going to tell the newspaper men, that he says it's all he knows, really. And I hate to do it—because, honestly, Miss Sloane, I don't think it is all. I'm afraid he's deceiving us." She did not contradict that; it was her own opinion. "However," the old man made excuse, "I had to do it—in view of things as they are. And he's got to stick to it, now that I've made it 'official,' so to speak. Do you think he will?" She did not see why not. She would explain to him the importance, the necessity, of that course. "He's so mistaken in what he's doing!" she said. "I don't understand him—really. You know how devoted to me he is. He called me into his room again an hour or two ago and tried to comfort me. He said he had reason to know everything would come out as it should. But he looked so—so uncertain!—Oh, Mr. Hastings, who did kill that woman?" "I think I'll be able to prove who did it—let's see," he spoke with a light cheerfulness, and at the same time with sincerity; "I'll be able to prove it in less than a week after Mrs. Brace takes that money from you." She said nothing to that, and he leaned forward sharply, peering at her face, illegible to him in the darkness of the verandah. "So much depends on that, on you," he added. "You won't fail me—tomorrow?" "I'll do my best," she said, earnestly, struggling against depression. "She must take that money," he declared with great emphasis. "She must!" "And you think she will?" "Miss Sloane, I know she will," he said, a fatherly encouragement in his voice. "I'm seldom mistaken in people; and I know I've judged this woman correctly. Money's her weakness. Love of it has destroyed her already. Offering this bribe to anybody else situated as she is would be ridiculous—but she—she'll take it." Lucille sat a long time on the verandah after Hastings had gone. She was far more depressed than he had suspected; she had to endure so much, she thought—the suspense, which grew heavier as time went by; the notoriety; Berne Webster still in danger of his life; her father's inexplicable pose of indifference toward everything; the suspicions of the newspapers and the public of both her father and Berne; and the waiting, waiting, waiting—for what? A little moan escaped her. What if Mrs. Brace did take the marked money? What would that show? That she was acting with criminal intent, Hastings had said. But he had another and more definite object in urging her to this undertaking; he expected from it a vital development which he had not explained—she was sure. She worried with that idea. Her confidence in Hastings had been without qualification. But what was he doing? Anything? Judge Wilton was forever saying, "Trust Hastings; he's the man for this case." And that was his reputation; people declared that, if anybody could get to the bottom of all this mystery, he could. Yet, two whole days had passed since the murder, and he had just said another week might be required to work out his plan of detection—whatever that plan was. Another week of this! She put her hot palms to her hotter temples, striving for clarity of thought. But she was dazed by her terror—her isolated terror, for some of her thoughts were such that she could share them with nobody—not even Hastings. "If the sheriff makes no arrest within the next few days, I'll be out of the woods," he had told her. "Delay is what I want." There, again, was discouragement, for here was the sheriff threatening to serve a warrant on Berne within the next twenty-four hours! She had heard Crown make the threat, and to her it had seemed absolutely final: unless her father revealed something which Crown wanted, whether her father knew it or not, Berne was to be subjected to this humiliation, this added blow to his chance for recovery! She sprang up, throwing her hands wide and staring blindly at the stars. The woman whom she was to bribe cast a deep shadow on her imagination. Sharing the feeling of many others, she had reached the reluctant conclusion that Mrs. Brace in some way knew more than anybody else about the murder and its motives. It was, she told herself, a horrid feeling, and without reason. But she could not shake it off. To her, Mrs. Brace was a figure of sinister power, an agent of ugliness, waiting to do evil—waiting for what? By a great effort, she steadied her jangled nerves. Hastings was counting on her. And work—even work in the dark—was preferable to this idleness, this everlasting summing-up of frightful possibilities without a ray of hope. She would do her best to make that woman take the money! Tomorrow she would be of real service to Berne Webster—she would atone, in some small measure, for the sorrow she had brought upon him, discarding him because of empty gossip!—Would he continue to love her?—Perhaps, if she had not discarded him, Mildred Brace would not have been murdered. A groan escaped her. She fled into the house, away from her thoughts. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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