Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist Part 44

Next morning Nora Cavanaugh, still very pale, but with a light in her eyes such as had not been there for many days, sat snugly in the corner of a sofa at her home, wrapped about in a beautiful old shawl. Near by sat Bat Scanlon; and standing before them, his hat and stick in his hand as though about to leave, was Ashton-Kirk.

"I'll admit," the big athlete was saying, "when the thing was finally brought down to a woman and Nora was eliminated," with a smiling nod toward her, "I could see n.o.body but Mary Burton. The nurse never occurred to me."

"And yet _you_ seem to have suspected her from the start," said Nora, her eyes wonderingly on the criminologist. "Why was that?"

"It began with the candlestick--the weapon used in the commission of the murder. Candlesticks go in pairs, usually. I found the mate to it on a shelf in the room across the hall from the sitting-room--that in which the nurse sat reading when Tom Burton was admitted to the house. That one of a pair of candlesticks should be in the sitting-room, and one in the room opposite, struck me as being unusual; later, I spoke to the maid of this. She said they both belonged in the room--on the shelf--where I found the second one."

Nora gave a little gasp, and her hand went to her heart.

"It is horrible," she said.

"While on my second visit to Duncan Street, I was at pains to note one of the nurse's shoes; it was of a peculiarly comfortable make--the same as those which made the prints at the rose arbor.

"These two things rather centered my attention upon her; and I began to pry into her record. Burgess, one of my men, went as far as New Orleans, looking her up. A number of things were found against her, a few rather startling. She seemed a woman given to criminal impulses, and just the sort who would perpetrate a thing such as the Stanwick affair."

"And she had a good face," said Nora. "I had specially noticed it. To think," and the girl shivered, "that she should have been a suicide, locked in her room, when the police came!"

"Fuller made a mistake in waiting when she refused to open the door,"

said Ashton-Kirk. "He should have broken it in."

"Her story of how the murder was done would have been interesting," said Scanlon.

"I think I can, with Fenton's statement to help out, supply the main points," said the investigator; "but of course they will lack the personal touch. As I have worked it out, she sat reading, just as she said; and she heard a greater part of what was talked of in the sitting-room between Burton and his daughter, and afterward the son. I have learned why the elder Burton went there that night. It was to call up and confer with a shady dealer in diamonds--just such another as Quigley. I have talked with this man. He said he'd had a call from the Bounder, who told him he had a rich haul to dispose of. The time of this call and the time of the Bounder's presence at No. 620 Duncan Street was the same. But the place where they were to meet was never given to the dealer, for the call terminated abruptly in a confusion of voices, and then a blank silence which told him that the receiver had been hung up.

I explain this by reasoning it out that young Burton, indignant at what was going forward, had torn his father away from the instrument before the conversation had ended."

"But, if this is so, why did the Bounder ever go to No. 620 Duncan Street to carry out a deal for stolen diamonds?" asked Scanlon. "There were many perfectly safe places he could have picked."

"The answer to that probably lies in the nature of the man. He hated his son and daughter; he knew his rascally doings gave them pain, and it may have occurred to him as a delicious piece of humor to do this particular thing before their eyes, depending upon their shame to keep them silent afterward.

"All this talk of diamonds attracted the attention of the listening nurse. She finally stole out of the house, took up the position at the rose arbor and watched what was happening in the sitting-room. While she was doing this, I think young Burton must have gone up-stairs, where he was afterward seen by the maid. From what Fenton has told the police, he was looking in at the sitting-room window when he saw Mary Burton faint.

No one was then in the room but the girl and her father; and as the latter bent over her, Fenton saw the door open and the nurse steal into the room, the bra.s.s candlestick in her hand. The jewels were upon the table where the Bounder had placed them at the moment his daughter fell.

The nurse s.n.a.t.c.hed them up, and as she did so the man turned his head and saw her. He leaped toward her, and she struck him to the floor.

Without a moment's hesitation she lifted the window, and dropped the candlestick within two feet of where Fenton was crouched. Then she left the room.

"The sounds made by these happenings are probably what young Burton was listening to at the head of the stairs when the colored maid saw him.

And my version of what he did after he descended the stairs you have already heard. The brother thought the sister was the criminal, and when the sister came out of her swoon--I heard her admit as much to her brother this morning when he was released from prison--her mind was burdened with the belief that _he_ was guilty. And so both were silent for each other's sake."

"But Mary's prowling about the house with the candle as I saw her that night?" said Scanlon. "What do you make of that?"

"Mary Burton has a good mind--though she lacks self-a.s.sertion. When the jewels were not found upon her father's body, or in the room where he was killed, she realized they had been stolen. But by whom? She knew her brother too well to think he was the thief, and I think from that moment she began to suspect the nurse. Once, as a report of one of my men states, as the nurse left the house secretly and with a veil over her face, Mary was seen at a window, the curtain partly drawn aside, looking after her. I think her going about through the rooms with the candle was an effort to locate the possible hiding place of the diamonds."

Nora gave a deep sigh.

"Poor thing! And to think how very brave she was."

"Well," and Ashton-Kirk showed unmistakable signs of going, "I suppose their troubles from that source, at least, are over."

Nora arose and held out her hand.

"That it is," she said, "is due to you. And I thank you for the peace you have brought to us all."

Ashton-Kirk released the hand after a moment.

"It was one of those things which would probably have unraveled itself,"

said he. "However," with a nod and a smile which showed his flashing white teeth, "you never can tell. So it's just as well, perhaps, that it wasn't permitted to run its course." He paused in the doorway, the trim maid waiting to show him out. "That you are a friend of Scanlon's means a great deal to me," said he. "I'd do a great deal for him, for, you know, he's one of the very best fellows in the world."

And the last thing he saw as he vanished through the doorway was the undoubted blush which colored the face of Scanlon, and the light in the beautiful eyes of Nora Cavanaugh, as she turned to look at him.

The Stories In this Series are:

ASHTON-KIRK, INVESTIGATOR ASHTON-KIRK, SECRET AGENT ASHTON-KIRK, SPECIAL DETECTIVE ASHTON-KIRK, CRIMINOLOGIST