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  “But in that interval several things had happened. While I was debating what to do Sarah’s body had been found, and she had been stabbed. Not only that, but I had been on the spot, or close to it, at the very time the reports said she had been killed.

  “Walter Somers and I made the identification that day together, and Walter drove me home. I let myself into the house through the garden, and I found Amos in the front hall with the sword-stick in his hands. He was trying to get the blade back when I found him.

  “I knew then that he suspected me. Later on I sent him out and examined the stick. There was a little dried blood on the blade, and some bits of grass and earth. That frightened me. I took it to the lavatory downstairs and washed it, and then I hid it. I put it in my liquor closet in the lower hall, and locked it there.

  “But things grew worse. Mary Martin had produced the uniform, and it was evident that Sarah Gittings had written to me, as she had claimed. I was frantic, and that night I made an attempt to see Florence Gunther. She was not at home, but I found her walking on the street, near an Italian fruit stand. But I was horrified to see her go white when she saw me.

  “She refused to speak to me, and when I insisted she said that I had killed Sarah; that she knew it and knew why, and that if I didn’t leave her she would call an officer. On the way home I worked that out. I remembered that on the night when I saw her, while we waited for Sarah, I had idly shown her the mechanism of the sword-stick. I am not surprised that she believed that I had killed Sarah Gittings. It is easy to see why, now. She believed that Sarah Gittings had come to me with that copy of a will which disinherited me, and that to get possession of it I had killed her.

  “I made no more overtures. I was afraid I would drive her to the police.

  “I went home that night a sick man, and took to my bed. Some time during that week, however, I crawled downstairs. It seemed to me that if she told the police and they found the stick hidden, it would damn me. I decided to put it back in the hall, where it had stood before.

  “I unlocked the door, but the stick had disappeared. I do not yet know how it disappeared, or why it was found in the cellar. My personal belief is that my servant Amos was alarmed at the situation in which I found myself, and that he buried it himself.

  “It is also my belief that Amos has been either killed or bribed to leave the city, for fear that he may make this confession and thus help to clear me.

  “In a similar manner, I believe that a ring of oil was planted in my car, so that I might be suspected of having killed Florence Gunther. The police know that this ring was not in the car the day after her murder.

  “During this trial, much has been made of the fact that by a new will made by my brother-in-law, Howard Somers, I lost a bequest originally devised to me. In reply to that I say most solemnly that I never knew that Howard Somers had made a new will until Mr. Alexander Davis told me in New York, following Mr. Somers’ death. Even had I known of it, the murder of these two unfortunate women could certainly not benefit me. The will itself was safe among Mr. Somers’ papers in a New York bank vault and Mr. Waite could testify to its existence and its authenticity.

  “I know nothing whatever of Florence Gunther’s death. When I found that she suspected me of Sarah Gittings’ murder I made no further attempt to see her, and I solemnly swear that I never did see her. Nor did I make any visit to Howard Somers on the night of his death. Whoever saw him that night deliberately used my name to gain access to him. Nor did I receive a check from him for one thousand dollars.

  “As to leaving the country, I had such a thought at one time. My position was unbearable, and I was helpless. I did nothing further about the matter, nor have I attempted to escape.

  “I have not invented this story since my arrest, or preceding it. I have told the absolute truth, under oath. I have never killed any human being. I am innocent of this charge. If I suffer for it I suffer for another man’s crime.”

  Much of this was in the story he told on the stand. I believe that outside of ourselves hardly a soul in that crowded courtroom believed it. And against it was that mass of accumulated testimony, including our own unwilling appearances on the stand.

  It should have helped him that on that very day the body of poor Amos was found floating down the river, but it did not. He had been drowned, poor wretch, and although we have our own suspicions we do not know to this day that he was murdered.

  But I think I can reconstruct that scene; Amos confiding and amiable, flattered at being consulted. On a bridge, maybe, or on the river bank somewhere; and then a sudden thrust of a muscular arm, and the muddy swirling water closing over his head.

  Jim was found guilty after only three hours’ deliberation by the jury. Guilty of murder in the first degree.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  JIM WAS SENTENCED TO the chair on the twenty-fifth of June. One and all the newspapers were gratified by the verdict, and not a few kind words were said of the acumen of the police and the fairness of the trial.

  Godfrey Lowell at once moved for an appeal, but he warned us that lacking fresh developments there was little to be hoped from a new trial, if it was granted.

  We were stunned. Katherine took to her bed, not as a refuge but out of sheer necessity, and Doctor Simonds saw her daily. Judy went about, a thin and pale little ghost of herself, thinking eternally of the mystery, as convinced as ever of Jim’s innocence.

  “He’s protecting somebody,” she said. “He saw that man on the hillside. He was twenty feet from the path, and that precious Dennis pair saw him well enough to know he had on a golf suit and was wiping his hands. And this man he tells about; he almost ran over him. Uncle Jim saw him, and he knows who it was. He knows and he won’t tell. And Wallie knows. Wallie ran away so he wouldn’t have to tell.”

  She looked as though she had not slept for days, and I myself took a sleeping tablet every night and then lay awake until morning. I was alone once more, for Laura had had to go back to her children. She had wept noisily on the way to the train, and had promised to come back as soon as possible.

  Of our small family group then only Katherine, Judy and I remained, for Wallie was missing. That defection of his had angered me almost beyond words. He had known something which might have saved Jim, and he had gone away. Somewhere he was hiding until everything was over.

  And then, on the twenty-eighth of June, the steward called up from Wallie’s club. Wallie had not been seen since the night of Wednesday, the twenty-second, and this was on the following Tuesday.

  “We would like to know where he can be found,” he said. “We have a number of messages for him, and one that seems to be urgent.”

  “Urgent?”

  “Yes. A lady had been telephoning every day. Today she made me go up and look at his room. She seems to think there’s something queer about his absence. She asked me to call you and tell you.”

  “Queer?” I said, with that now familiar tightening around my chest. “What did she think? Did she give any name?”

  “No. A young woman, I imagine. I don’t want to alarm you, but she seemed very nervous. As a matter of fact, she said something about notifying the police.”

  “She gave no reason for that?”

  “No, but I’ve just been up to his room. It doesn’t look to me as though he had meant to be gone for any length of time. His clothes are all there. And his car’s missing. Still, I don’t think you need to be particularly alarmed; he was erratic at times, as you probably know. If this girl hadn’t seemed so excited—”

  “His car is gone?”

  “It’s out of the garage. Yes. Has been since last Wednesday night.”

  It was Tuesday then, and he had been gone for six days. Of course that might merely bear out Judy’s theory that he had simply “beat it,” as she put it, but I myself was not so certain. It was hardly conceivable that he had taken himself off for an indefinite stay without extra clothing, or even a toothbrush.

  The thing worried me. Wh
o was it who had telephoned? Was it Mary Martin, and if so why had she suggested the police? My entire experience with Mary convinced me that she regarded the police with fear, if not with horror. Yet who else? With all his faults Wallie had apparently steered clear of the type of underworld woman who might naturally think of the police.

  In the end I called the club again and got the steward.

  “This young woman who telephoned, Mr. Ellis—did she give any name?”

  “No. She called from a pay station. I thought she was crying, as a matter of fact, but she hung up before I could find out anything.”

  “Why do you say she was young?”

  “Well, her voice was young, if you know what I mean.”

  I was sure then that it was Mary, and the fact that she had been crying convinced me that something was terribly wrong. I left the telephone and went into the library and there I had as bad an attack of palpitation of the heart as I have ever had in my life.

  Joseph found me there and hurried for some bicarbonate, and when I felt a little better I told him the story. It upset him greatly. The hand holding the glass shook until the spoon clattered, and he had to steady himself by a chair.

  “The police, madam? Then this young person thinks he has met with real trouble?”

  “She was crying, Joseph.”

  In the end I called up Dick Carter, and that evening he and Joseph went to Wallie’s room at the club. They examined everything there, but without result, and the story they brought back was ominous, to say the least.

  On that previous Wednesday night Wallie had eaten no dinner. Instead he had gone into the writing room and there had written for a long time, until eight or after. The boy on duty there “thought he was writing a book.” When he finished he had asked for a long manila envelope, put into it what he had written, taken his hat and a light overcoat from the man in the hall and gone out.

  He stood on the outside steps for a moment, and then he came back. He seemed nervous and irritable, and he went into the telephone booth and talked to some one for a considerable time. Then he started out again, and so far as was known he had never come back.

  Dick and Joseph examined his room carefully. Joseph, who occasionally went there to go over his clothing and to put things in order for him, said that he found nothing missing.

  “But you must remember, madam,” he said, “that Mr. Walter has been under a great strain lately, and it is not unusual for him to start out on an evening ride in his car and then to keep on. I have known him to do that a number of times.”

  “For six days, Joseph? And when he was to testify at a murder trial the next day? That’s ridiculous.”

  “That is probably the reason, madam.”

  “Nonsense, Joseph! Nobody believes that Mr. Walter had anything to do with it.”

  From the club they went to the garage. The night man remembered clearly his coming there, and that he must have meant to return, for he had ordered the car washed that night.

  “I’ll be in about eleven,” he had said. “I want it properly washed, too. The last time it looked worse than before you started.”

  He had seemed to be in a bad humor. It was about a quarter after eight when he reached there, and he ordered the car filled with gas and oil. He said he was going into the country, and he stood by watching while this was done. He seemed to “be in a hurry to be off.”

  But after he was in the car something happened of which the mere telling made my hands cold and sent despair into my very soul.

  To quote the man at the garage:

  “He had an overcoat—it’s still here—and at the last moment he threw it out to me. It was a warm night. Then he asked for it again and he took a revolver out of it. He tried to slip it out so I wouldn’t see it. But I saw it all right. He put it in the pocket of the car.”

  To me that night that revolver meant only one thing. Wallie had killed himself. Somewhere he had stopped his car on a lonely road and ended a life which had ceased to be endurable.

  But why? What did he know? What had he done? Was it possible after all that those three alibis of his were wrong? Had he slipped out of my house that night of the eighteenth of April and killed poor Sarah? I went over that night once more, and I was certain that he had not.

  Late as it was by that time, almost midnight, I called up Inspector Harrison. I had evidently wakened him from a sound sleep, but he said he would come as soon as he could, and while I sat there waiting my mind fairly seethed.

  If Wallie was innocent, then what did he know that he would rather die than tell, and for which he would let Jim suffer? And once more I harked back to Judy and that strange suspicion of hers about her father. Were we all wrong, after all? Was Howard being blackmailed, and that will with its ambiguous clause his final price for silence? Was Katherine right and was Margaret living? And were Sarah and Florence Howard’s desperate last attempt to keep that secret under cover?

  Wallie and Jim both silent, the one ready to go to the chair if necessary before he would speak, and the other perhaps dead by his own hand; what did that look like?

  And when the Inspector came I told him all that was in my mind, my fears for Wallie, my suspicions about Howard. He listened attentively, biting hard on the end of a toothpick and silent for some time after I had finished.

  “It’s ingenious,” he said at last. “It’s even possible. Funny thing Miss Judy would think of that, isn’t it, and the rest of us would miss it? Sure he might have recognized this fellow if he was there; especially if he knew him. There’s more to recognition than features. There’s the outline and the clothes and the way a person moves. And here’s a thing that struck me at the trial. If he was inventing that man, why put him in evening clothes? It was plausible enough up to that minute. Then the jury just sat back and yawned. Now, Mr. Somers had white hair, I think, and he wore it fairly long?”

  “Yes.”

  “Queer case, isn’t it?” he said. “Unless Blake invented the evening coat to fit the black fibers on that log. Well, let’s get to this other matter.”

  When he left it was to go to the garage and secure a description of Wallie’s car, and I believe it was almost morning before he got to his bed again. He had started the entire machinery of the city and county on the search by that time, and the only reason he did not extend that search over the country was because he felt certain, as he confessed later, that Wallie was dead by his own hand, and not too far away.

  That was on Tuesday, and on Wednesday morning the papers were filled with his disappearance. “Young Millionaire Missing.” “Police Hunting Walter Somers.”

  And on Thursday afternoon, the last day of June, we had some news.

  Wallie’s car had been found on the Warrenville road, not far from the end of the street car line, and about two miles nearer the city than the Hawkins farm. Some boy scouts, out for a hike, had selected for lunch a gully with a small stream flowing through it, and a half dozen had wandered up this ravine for a half mile or so.

  The car had been driven over the hill, and was upside down and badly demolished. A local deputy constable had notified the police and kept the boys away. They had been anxious to turn it over.

  When Inspector Harrison arrived on the scene with Simmons and four or five others, the ground had not been disturbed. They found no footprints, however, save the smaller and unmistakable ones of the boys, and they were forced to the conclusion either that the car had been empty when it started on its wild journey, or that Wallie had been thrown out somewhere on the hill.

  But they found no Wallie, and nothing further to help them.

  The Inspector, reporting the matter, had his own opinion of it.

  “He deliberately got rid of that car,” he said. “It might have lain there for a year, if those youngsters hadn’t happened on it.”

  There was no sign of the revolver, and although inside it—it was a roadster, with one seat and a rumble—there were certain scratches, and a leather seat cushion torn in one place, these
were probably the result of the terrific impact after it had shot down the hill.

  There was however an unexpected result to the discovery and description of the car in the press. A woman named Wiggins came forward to say that she had seen such a car as she was leaving the street car at the end of the line at something before nine on the evening of Wednesday, June the twenty-second. She fixed the date absolutely, as she had gone to town to see her daughter off on a train, also she remembered the car distinctly, because it had almost run over her.

  And she stated positively that there had been two men in it at the time.

  The Inspector was very sober when he told me that.

  “It looks now,” he said, “as though somebody knew that Walter Somers meant to go on the stand that next day and tell all he knew. And that he was—prevented.”

  “Murdered is what you meant, isn’t it?”

  He cleared his throat.

  “It’s possible. It’s very possible. And I suppose Walter could swim and Amos couldn’t!”

  Which was what he left me with, to make of it what I might.

  Those few days had told terribly on Joseph. The maids reported that he walked the floor at night until they were almost crazy, and for the first time in my service he was forgetful and absent. I was startled one day to have him pour ice water into my soup, and his hands were so uncertain that he broke a piece of my mother’s Lowestoft china, a thing he had not done in all his years of dusting and washing it. On the plea that he knew Wallie’s habits I loaned him my car, and he took his afternoons and joined the search. That he went to the club I know, but I have no other knowledge of his movements save one.

  Dick had taken Judy out to the road above the gully, and they were surprised to find my car there. When they got to the edge they saw Joseph below; he was sitting on a rock, his head on his breast, and when they called to him he jumped and then came toiling up the slope.

  “What on earth are you doing?” Judy demanded.

  He looked down sheepishly at his muddy clothes.

  “I was looking for the revolver. Mr. Walter never killed himself, Miss.”