Unseen Hands/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
"I WISH IT HAD BEEN YOU
"ODELL put the letter back into his pocket and striding across the room unlocked the door and flung it wide. He was only just in time; for he could hear hurried footsteps bounding up the stairs, and in another moment Gene's head appeared above the landing.
Its owner peered suspiciously first toward his desk and then at the grate; but nothing seemed amiss, and the police sergeant was standing before him with his hand outstretched authoritatively.
Silently Gene surrendered the keys.
"Thanks." The detective made no move toward the other room. "Mr. Chalmers, how long have you known Farley Drew?"
The question came so abruptly that Gene shot the inquirer a startled glance, which then strayed once more uncontrollably to the desk, while a deep flush came again into his cheeks.
"What has Mr. Drew to do with the matter you have under investigation?"
"That does not reply to my question, Mr. Chalmers." From taking part in many far more strenuous examinations Odell well knew the value of the repetition of a name.
Gene flung himself into a chair; and for a moment there was silence while he puffed at his pipe. At length he looked up and met the detective's gaze.
"See here, Sergeant, I told you downstairs that you could count on me, and I want this d—n mystery cleared up as much as the rest do; more, since my own life was attempted last night! But I don't like to discuss my private affairs, and I won't have my friends dragged in. Unless you have been prying into my letters while I was out of the room, I suppose our attorney must have been unearthing the family skeletons and black sheep and all that sort of thing for your benefit. However, I've no reason for concealing my friendship for Mr. Drew. I met him about four years ago."
"Where?"
Gene had recovered his nonchalance and waved lazily toward a chair.
"I foresee that this interview is apt to be a protracted one." He knocked the ashes from his pipe into the hearth. "I met him at a private gambling club over Morey's, which I understand your enterprising organization has since closed up."
"With or through whom did you meet him, Mr. Chalmers?"
"I was with several friends of mine whose names I cannot recall at the moment and was presented to Mr. Drew by an acquaintance named Stone."
"Philip Stone the embezzler?" Odell's smooth, calm, level tones remained the same; but Gene stirred in his chair.
"I did not know he had attained such prominence as to be known as 'the' anything," he protested with a shrug. "I believe he did get in some sort of trouble later with a trust company or bank or something, but as I told you he was a mere acquaintance; I had been introduced to him in a restaurant only a night or two before."
"You were then about twenty, I think, Mr. Chalmers?"
"I was. I must ask you again what all this has to do with your investigation." Gene's eyes began to glow sullenly. "May I suggest that you are wasting valuable time?"
"Mr. Chalmers, that is my affair. To return to your friend Farley Drew; when did you first bring him to your home and introduce him to your sisters?"
A touch of sternness had crept into the detective's tone; and the glow in the eyes of the young man changed to a furtive glint.
"I say, you leave my sisters out of this!" He half rose from his chair. "I'll tell you anything you want to know about myself, but I won't discuss them with you."
"That does not answer my question, Mr. Chalmers; and I doubt if your solicitude is as much for your sisters as for yourself." Odell eyed the squirming young man narrowly. "I represent the law, and there will be a lot more of our men here presently. It won't get you anywhere to try to oppose me."
"I have no reason for opposing you, Sergeant," Gene responded hastily. "It sort of gets my goat, though, to be hammered at like this when, by Jove, I'm the injured party. I introduced Farley Drew to my people about a year ago."
"And did you present him to your brother at the same time?"
"To Julian? Yes." He tried to reply with the old sangfroid; but his chin trembled, and he put up his hand to mask it.
"Your brother then became one of his associates?"
"One of his friends," Gene remarked stiffly.
"Did that in any way affect your friendship with Drew, Mr. Chalmers?"
"Of course not; why should it? Julian and I traveled as a rule in different crowds, but we had many mutual friends, and—and Mr. Drew was one of them."
"And did you and your brother get on well together, Mr. Chalmers? You will have to pardon this question, but others will answer it if you refuse." Odell paused and repeated: "How did you and your brother get on together?"
"About as well as any brothers do, I fancy." Gene's gaze wandered to the littered top of his dressing-table, but as if conscious of the detective's eyes upon him he quickly averted it. "We had a healthy old row now and then, but—but we always patched it up. I'd rather not talk about it now, if you don't mind. Sergeant. It's only a week, you know—"
Odell rose.
"Of course. We will go down now and move your father to his room."
"But"—Gene rose also and stared in surprise at the detective—"I thought you wanted to go through Julian's room."
"That will keep." Odell smiled slightly. "Come."
Gene hesitated; but the other so obviously waited for him that he had no choice, and together they descended to the library.
When the injured man had been ensconced in bed and made as comfortable as possible Titheredge announced that he must go to his office. Gene had taken the first opportunity to retire once more to his room; and the detective went down alone to the hall, where he came upon Miss Meade in the drawing-room doorway.
"You are feeling better?" he asked courteously. "I am sorry that my presence here startled you so this morning."
"I am glad that you are here," she replied. "I have been waiting until you had finished with my brother-in-law, for I want to talk to you; that is, if you can spare the time just now."
She added the last few words in a deprecating manner, which he realized must be an habitual one with her, as if all her life she had been kept in the background, set aside. She seemed not a looker-on but a mere shadow of those of stronger personality about her.
"I have been anxious for this opportunity myself, Miss Meade," he assured her. "I want to know a great many things which only you can tell me, if you feel strong enough. It will be painful to you, I am afraid, for I must touch on your double sorrow of the last month, but my only motive is to discover the truth."
"Come in and be seated, please." She led the way into the drawing-room and motioned toward a chair. "Tell me first of all, Sergeant Odell, is it true that attempts were actually made upon the lives of my nephew and my brother-in-law? I—I saw where the stairs had been deliberately cut through, of course, and yet I cannot seem to realize it. It is the total absence of motive which makes it all seem like some frightful dream."
"Nevertheless it is stern reality, Miss Meade."
Her face quivered, and she bowed her head for a moment.
"You spoke of touching upon my grief. Does that mean that you think my sister and her oldest son—that they could have been killed? Their deaths were so plainly the result of what worldly people call accident that I believed our trial was the Lord's will, and was endeavoring to resign myself to it, although no one will ever know what my sister was to me. Is there a possibility that their deaths were the result of some evil human design?"
"That is what I must determine." Odell drew his chair closer. "When did Mrs. Lorne run the needle into her finger?"
"A little over five weeks ago, some time during the first part of August."
"Did it occur here in this house? Was anyone present at the time?"
"Yes, I was." Miss Meade shuddered. "If I had only known what it was to bring about! But she thought nothing of it at the time and wouldn't even trouble to use the witch hazel which I brought from my bathroom. Christine was always a—a rather dominant person and disliked advice."
Her voice trailed off vaguely, and Odell gently urged her on.
Will you tell me about it, please, every detail you remember?"
"I will try, Sergeant Odell; but you must forgive me if I give you rather a—a rambling account. I am not accustomed to telling things; I usually listen."
While she paused it came to Odell that her last sentence epitomized what her years must have brought her. He was not given to sentimentalizing over old maids, but he found himself all at once tremendously interested in this middle-aged spinster, colorless and negative as she was.
"In the first place you must understand that we were utterly unlike, my sister and I. Perhaps that was why we were so devoted to each other. I cannot describe her, but she was beautiful, brilliant, self-assertive; while I have always been as you see me now." Her voice trembled at first but steadied as she went on. "She loved youth and could not endure the thought of coming age. That is why we have all stayed in town this summer; she was taking a special beauty treatment which required some weeks for its completion. I was the only one who knew this. We told the rest of the family that it was ill-health and she must remain in the city for electrical treatments. You can see how close we were to each other, Sergeant Odell. There is a little dressing-room off her bedroom—I will show it to you presently—which she had furnished as a sort of boudoir; and we sat there for hours together, I mending and she embroidering. Christine was always fond of bright colors."
Miss Meade's voice died away in retrospection, but she recovered herself and continued:
"Her embroidery-basket was never taken out of that room, and on the morning when—when it happened we had been chatting and working for about an hour when suddenly she uttered a sharp exclamation and dropped the embroidery-frame in her lap. I supposed she had merely become impatient, and I did not even look up until she spoke. 'Oh, I've stuck my finger!' I can almost hear her say it now! As I told you, I got the witch hazel for her; but she wouldn't use it, and the incident passed. The next day her finger was painful and inflamed; but she would not hear of a doctor until three days later, when her whole hand and arm commenced to swell.
"There—there isn't very much more to tell," Her voice faltered and then went on: "The day after the doctor was called in he sent for a specialist; then another, and a third, but it was no use; she was dead in ten days."
"Who attended her, Miss Meade?" Odell spoke quickly.
"Our family physician, Doctor Adams, who came to Richard this morning. He called in Doctor Kelland and Doctor Day and finally Doctor McCutchen. Then there were the two nurses, of course, Miss Risby and Miss Brown; but I scarcely left her bedside for an hour until the end."
"Miss Meade, who has access to the boudoir?"
"Why, all the household. Richard and the children were in and out constantly, and Jane every day to dust. And of course Gerda."
"Who is Gerda?"
"The lady's maid. She served both my sister and Cissie, the younger Christine."
"And not Miss Nan nor you?"
Miss Meade looked down.
"I always dress so simply that I have no need of a maid, and Nan is too independent to be annoyed with one. Would you—would you care to interview Gerda later?"
"I would, Miss Meade; but I want to know now what you can tell me of the second death, that of your nephew."
"It was—horrible!" She closed her eyes for a moment. "Richard can tell you more about that than I can when he is better, for he and Gene were the first to see him after Peters came rushing down. I—I only caught one glimpse before they took me away; and the girls weren't allowed to go in at all."
"How did it occur?" the detective asked patiently. "Please try to tell me all you know of it. Was your nephew in good health and spirits—aside from his natural grief for his mother, I mean?"
For the first time Miss Meade hesitated.
"Well, no," she admitted at length. "He adored my sister, of course; and he felt her death deeply. He had been in a nervous, excitable condition for months; and the shock of losing her increased his nervousness. He started violently at the sound of an unexpected voice or the abrupt closing of a door; and he had been losing weight rapidly. I—I think he had had some trouble over money matters with his stepfather, but Mr. Lorne must tell you about that; I really try to keep out of family affairs as much as possible.
"Last Wednesday—a week ago yesterday—he did not come down for breakfast, nor ring for any to be brought up to him. Cissie had hers in bed, I remember; and Randall—my youngest nephew, who is an invalid—was not well enough to come down; but Mr. Lorne, Nan, and myself were in the dining-room. I was pouring the coffee when Gene appeared; and his stepfather asked him if Julian were up. He said that he didn't think so, he had not heard him moving about. Mr. Lorne was annoyed, because Julian had an appointment to go downtown with him that morning, and finally he sent Peters up to call him."
Miss Meade paused; and Odell, who had watched her closely throughout her narration, marveled. Her thin hands were clasped tightly in her lap; but her voice was steady and quietly modulated, and her high-bred face as expressionless as a mask. What unknown reservoirs of strength and self-control lay behind that meek exterior! And this was the woman whom he had thought a spineless, colorless personality!
"We continued our meal as Peters went upstairs, when after quite an interval—it must have been five minutes at least—we heard a most dreadful cry, which brought us all to our feet. It was Peters and he came scrambling and stumbling downstairs screaming out with every breath in that frightful hoarse way. When he reached the dining-room door here he clung to it as if to keep from falling, and his face was the color of gray blotting-paper. 'For God's sake, go up, sir!' he said to Mr. Lorne. 'For God's sake, go up!'
"That was all they could get out of him, and Richard rushed upstairs with Gene after him. Nan ran over to Peters and commenced to shake him, but he would only groan; and I passed them and hurried upstairs myself. When I reached Julian's room Gene was lying face downward across the bed rolling from side to side and crying terribly, and Richard was standing in the doorway leading to the bathroom staring down at something which lay at his feet.
"I went to him, and there lay our poor Julian! I simply cannot tell you, Sergeant Odell! It seemed as if a wave of blood had engulfed him and then ebbed. It was a—a shambles! I covered my face with my hands and tottered back; and then Richard came to himself and led me away. And they tell me it was such a tiny wound in his throat, just a fractional slip of the razor. The least unexpected noise might have been the innocent cause. Oh, he should not have attempted to shave himself while he was so nervous!"
Her hands fluttered for a moment and then gripped the arms of her chair; and the detective saw her face twitch once and settle again into its masklike fixity.
"What noise could there have been?" Odell asked. "Was anyone else on the third floor at that time?"
"No. Nan has the front room directly opposite, but she is the earliest riser of us all; the other two are guest-chambers and were unoccupied. There are always noises about an old house like this, though. Poor Julian might have heard the banging of an outside shutter from the rear, or one of the doors might have closed; there was quite a high wind that morning as I recall it, and all the windows were open. There can be no other way to account for it, Sergeant Odell. No one could have gotten into the house; and who—who would have wanted his life?"
"Who wanted to take his brother's last night, Miss Meade, or his stepfather's this morning?" Odell suggested quietly.
"That is what is torturing me," she exclaimed. "The sheer purposelessness of such an act. The boys have been a—a little wild, I am afraid; but they have done no harm, and no one could bear such terrible enmity against either of them. And Richard, Mr. Lorne, who could want to harm him? That is why it all seems like some hideous nightmare; that, and the sheer impossibility of anyone breaking into the house or—or knowing that someone of the family was going to sit beneath the portrait."
She broke off as a light but determined step came along the hall from the direction of the servants' staircase. Odell, too, glanced curiously out through the open drawing-room door just as a tiny, fairy-like figure with masses of golden hair beneath a small black hat walked quickly past and toward the entrance door.
"Cissie!" Miss Meade rose and slipped out into the hall. "Cissie, where are you going?"
"Away! Anywhere!" A girlish treble as clear and cold as a mountain brook fell upon the detective's ears. "I told you all last night that I was going, and then we really didn't know anything, we only felt it. If you think I'm going to stay in this house a minute longer—"
"But, but my dear—"
"Oh, you needn't worry, Aunt Effie. I sha'n't go to any of our friends and tell them of the terrible things that are going on in the sacred Meade house. I wouldn't disgrace any of them by being on their hands when the notoriety starts; and I'm not going to stay here to be murdered either. I don't know about poor mamma and Jule, but I do know about father and what so nearly happened to Gene, and I don't intend to be the next one. You've had your way in spite of everything, but I won't live another day in the same house with a—"
To the listening detective it seemed that the clear voice was snuffed out like a flame; and then there came, low but startlingly distinct, in Miss Meade's usually colorless tones:
"Silence, Christine! I wish to heaven that it had been you!"