The Marathon Mystery/Part 4/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
Counsel for the Defence
WHEN I opened the office door, twenty minutes later, I was surprised to find Godfrey just within, in close conference with Mr. Royce.
“Here he is!” he cried. “No, no; don’t take off your coat; don’t even take off your hat! Come along; it’s a mighty close thing now,” and he caught me by the arm.
“It’s all right, Lester,” said our junior, seeing my astonished countenance. “Mr. Godfrey will explain on the way out.”
That was enough; I needed no second bidding, and ran after Godfrey to the elevator. At the curb a cab was waiting, and we jumped into it.
“James Slip,” called Godfrey, and in an instant we were off.
The driver seemed to realise the need of haste, for we bumped over the paving-stones at a prodigious rate, threading the dirty streets of the Italian and Jewish quarters, and finally pulling up with a whirl in the shadow of Brooklyn bridge.
“Come on!” cried Godfrey, and we crossed the ferry-house at a jump, slammed our tickets into the chopper, and sprang aboard the boat just as it was casting loose.
“That was a close shave,” said Godfrey, sinking into the nearest seat and taking off his hat.
I sat down beside him and mopped away the perspiration. I had need of all my breath for a moment, but at last I managed to blurt out a question.
“What’s it all about?”
“Well,” began Godfrey, putting on his hat again and looking at me with a quizzical smile, “in the first place, the eminent and widely known firm of Graham & Royce has been engaged to defend one John Tolbert Drysdale, now under arrest charged with murder and robbery. You are on your way to Babylon, Long Island, to look over the ground, have a talk with your client, and get the case ready.”
“So!” I nodded; “yes, I read of the case in last night’s papers. But Mr. Drysdale has never, I think, been a client of ours; how did he happen to choose us?”
“He didn’t; I chose you. I wanted him to have the best in the market.”
“Thanks,” I said, colouring a little. “But how did the office come to take the case? We’re always rather shy of criminal cases, you know.”
“Yes, I know you are. But I chinned your junior a bit.”
“That explains it!” I said, laughing. “Of course we’ll do our best for him.”
“You’ll acquit him,” said Godfrey, with conviction. “I was at Boston yesterday, or I’d have gone down to Babylon at once and taken you with me.”
“Then I shouldn’t have got to say goodbye to Cecily.”
“To whom?”
“To Cecily—Tremaine’s sweetheart, you know. He shipped her back to Martinique this morning.”
“Oh, did he?” and my companion’s eyes narrowed suddenly. “Why was that?”
I related briefly the incidents of the preceding evening and of the morning.
“Godfrey,” I added impulsively, “if you knew Tremaine personally, I think you’d realise what a poor case we’ve got against him. Why, it’s no case at all! Theorising’s all very well, but what a jury wants is evidence—plain, straight-out, direct evidence, and we haven’t enough of that to build a cobweb. I thought I’d found some yesterday afternoon, but it was all the effect of self-induced hypnosis,” and I told him of my visit to Sing-Sing.
He listened with intent face.
“I’m not so sure it was hypnosis,” he said, when I had finished. “At least, I’ll have a look at those photographs myself before I accept that theory. In fact, I rather think it’s Tremaine who has hypnotised you, not I.”
“I don’t believe he’s guilty,” I repeated.
“Then who is?”
“Cecily!” I said bluntly. “I believe she’s the one who killed Thompson, anyway.”
“Where’s your evidence?”
“I haven’t any,” I said helplessly; “only a kind of intuition.”
“Well, I’ve the same kind of intuition it was Tremaine.”
“But we haven’t any evidence against him, either; not a shred of real, direct, convincing evidence.”
“Perhaps not,” he agreed; “but we’re going to get it--enough to convict him and some to spare.”
“Convict him of what?”
“Of two murders and one robbery.”
“Then you believe he’s implicated in this Edgemere affair?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“But there isn’t a shred of evidence against him,” I protested again, coming back to my old objection; really Godfrey was allowing his prejudices to carry him too far.
“Not a shred, apparently,” he assented readily.
“Well, then, how”
“Here’s the landing,” he interrupted. “We can talk it over on the train.”
We left the boat and hastened across to the station. The train was waiting the word to start, and was in motion a moment after we stepped aboard. There were not many passengers, for the morning travel is toward the city, not from it; and we had no difficulty in finding a seat where we could talk without fear of being overheard.
“Now,” began Godfrey, “as you say, there isn’t a shred of evidence, apparently, against Tremaine. How about your client?”
“Against Drysdale,” I answered, “the evidence seems to be unusually complete.”
“You might have used a stronger phrase. It’s not only complete, it’s consummately perfect. Not a link is missing. He was on the spot; his revolver is found near by with blood on it; a button from his coat is in the dead man’s hand; when he returns to the house, he is visibly disturbed; at the moment of his arrest, he was preparing to escape; he refuses to explain where he was at the time the crime was committed; he’s involved in steel speculation and presumably needs ready money.”
“Well?”
“Well,” said Godfrey earnestly, “that very perfection is its greatest weakness. It’s too perfect. Any one of those things might have happened; perhaps any two of them; but that they should all have happened outrages the law of probabilities. That every link of the chain is complete means that it has been artificially produced, like a stage storm, where the lightning flashes at just the right instant. The fellow who arranged it wanted to be too sure—he overleaped himself.”
“That may all be true,” I said slowly, after a moment, “but it would be worse than folly to use that argument with a jury. To say that a man isn’t guilty because the evidence against him appears to be conclusive”
“We’re not going to use it to a jury; we’re using it between ourselves, in the effort to find a working hypothesis. And here’s another argument which would carry no weight with a jury, yet which with me, personally, is conclusive: I know Jack Drysdale; I’ve known him for a long time; and I know that it’s utterly impossible that he should have committed such a crime. He’s not a very original fellow; not at all a genius; he’s never done anything, perhaps, which either of us would think really worth doing; but he’s kind, and honest, and gentle, and honourable. I repeat that a crime like this is as far beyond his horizon as it is beyond yours—farther, I’m sure, than it is beyond mine; and yet, I don’t believe you’d think me guilty, no matter what the evidence against me seemed to be.”
“I shouldn’t,” I said; “but if Drysdale isn’t guilty, who is?”
“If Drysdale isn’t, there’s only one other person who can be—that’s Tremaine. As I’m sure Drysdale’s not guilty, I’m correspondingly sure that Tremaine is.”
“But then,” I objected, “you’ve just said that there’s no evidence against him.”
“I said apparently there wasn’t.”
“And Delroy says he didn’t leave the house.”
“Delroy must be mistaken—must be, mind you! And while there isn’t any direct evidence, there’s some pretty good indirect. We know that Tremaine is a criminal and, therefore, capable of this crime; we suspect that he needs money, and the necklace would place him out of need for a long time to come; we know that he was within reach of the spot where the murder was committed, if he could get away from Delroy for an hour or so. In other words, we have a motive and the physical possibility of guilt. I may add that I think we shall find he had some reason to injure Drysdale—I’m sure we shall, in fact.”
“But the button—the pistol—Drysdale’s unexplained absence?”
“Those points can only be cleared up by. a personal investigation of the premises. That’s why we’re going to Edgemere.”
“Godfrey,” I said, “there seems to me to be one great objection to your theory that Tremaine killed Thompson. If Miss Croydon saw him do it, would she consent to associate with him? Wouldn’t her very knowledge of his crime give her a greater hold on him than he has on her sister?”
He paused to turn this over.
“Yes,” he admitted at last; “it would; but a woman might not think of that.”
“A desperate woman would think of everything,” I said; “and if your theory is right, both she and her sister must be very desperate.”
He nodded without answering, and sat staring before him, his brows knitted in perplexity.
There was one conclusive objection I might have urged, had I known of it—but I was not yet possessed of the story of the house-party. If Tremaine was the husband of Mrs. Delroy, how could he propose marriage to her sister? That was a rock, as yet unseen by us, which loomed ahead—which we could not avoid—upon which our theory must inevitably be dashed to pieces.
The train flashed past two or three big hotels, then the brakes were applied.
“Here’s Babylon,” said Godfrey, rousing himself from the profound revery into which my question had thrown him. “We’ll look in upon the prisoner, first, and cheer him up a bit.”
The jail was only a short distance from the station, and a five minutes’ walk brought us to it.
“We’re here in behalf of Mr. Drysdale,” Godfrey explained to the jailer, “This is Mr. Lester, of Graham & Royce, of New York, who have been retained to defend him. I suppose we may see him?”
“I’ll take in your cards,” he said, after looking us over. “If Mr. Drysdale wants to see you, it’s all right, but you’ll be the first ones.”
He disappeared into an inner room; we heard the rattling of keys and the clanging of an iron door. He was back again in a moment.
“Step this way, gentlemen,” he said.
Drysdale was sitting on the bunk in his little cell. He came forward with hand outstretched as soon as he saw Godfrey.
“This is mighty kind of you, Jim,” he said.
“I’ll have to lock you in, gentlemen,” broke in the jailer. “How soon must I come fer you?”
“Say twenty minutes,” answered Godfrey, looking at his watch. Then he turned back to us as the jailer’s steps died away down the corridor. “Jack,” he said, “this is Mr. Lester, of Graham & Royce, who’ve been retained to look after your case.”
“My case? Who retained them?”
“I did. I scarcely supposed you were going to let yourself be convicted without lifting a finger.”
Drysdale smiled bitterly.
“They won’t convict me. Just the same, I’m glad to see you, Mr. Lester,” and he held out his hand. “I shall, of course, need some legal advice.”
“I’m glad you admit that much!” retorted Godfrey, with sarcasm. “I understand that you haven’t condescended as yet to prove an alibi?”
“No,” answered the prisoner quietly. “The fact is, I can’t prove an alibi.”
“You can’t?” and Godfrey’s face paled a little.
“No; when I left the house that night, I went down to the pier and had a little talk with Graham; then I—I wandered around the grounds until the storm came up, when I went back to the house and up to my room. Nobody saw me; I spoke to nobody after I left Graham, until I returned to the house. There’s only my own word for it. What was the use of telling the police a story like that?”
“No use at all,” agreed Godfrey hastily. “I’m glad you didn’t tell it. But what on earth possessed you to behave in such a crazy fashion?”
“That,” answered Drysdale, still more quietly, “is one question which I must absolutely refuse to answer.”