In the Onyx Lobby Part 18

"Well, well, let's get at it, and see where we stand. What do you know?"

"Only the message on the paper left by your uncle, and such testimony as we could gather from the employees downstairs. Now, we want to interview you."

"And I want to be interviewed. Go ahead."

"Interview all of us," put in Eliza Gurney, who with Miss Prall had sat silent during the men's colloquy, but was quite ready to talk.

"One at a time," and Gibbs took up the conversation. "Mr Bates, where were you last evening?"

"That," said Richard, "I decline to state, on the grounds that it has no bearing on the question of my uncle's death. If you ask me where I was at the time of the tragedy, or shortly before, I will tell you. But last evening or yesterday afternoon or morning are not pertinent."

"You refuse to state where you spent last evening?"

"I do."

"Not a good thing for you to do," Gibbs shook his head, "but let it pa.s.s for the moment. Where were you at two o'clock this morning?"

"In bed and asleep."

"You can prove this?"

"By me!" spoke up Let.i.tia Prall. "I heard him come in about twelve and go to his room."

"H'm. Proof to a degree. How do you know he didn't leave the apartment later?"

"Because I didn't hear him do so."

"Where is his room, and where is your own?"

After being shown the respective bedrooms, Gibbs remarked that in his opinion Bates could easily have left his room without Miss Prall's knowledge, if she were asleep at the time.

"Unless you are unusually acute of hearing, are you?"

Now this was a sensitive point with the spinster. Her hearing was not what it had once been, but she never acknowledged it. She greatly resented the busy finger of time as it touched her here and there, and often pretended she heard when she did not. Both her nephew and her companion good-naturedly humored her in this little foible, and at Gibbs' question they looked up, uncertainly.

"Of course I am!" was Miss Prall's indignant reply to the detective's question. "I hear perfectly."

"Are you sure?" said Gibbs, mildly; "for I have noticed several times when you have seemed not to hear a side remark."

"Inattention, then," snapped Let.i.tia. "I am a thoughtful person, and I often take little notice of others' chatter."

"But you are sure you could have heard your nephew if he had gone out of his place last night after----"

"But I didn't go out!" declared Bates. "You're absurd to imply that I did, unless you have some reason on which to base your accusation!"

"We have to locate you before we can go further, Mr Bates," insisted Gibbs, who had a.s.sumed leadership, while Corson sat, with folded arms, taking in anything he found to notice.

And Corson, though lacking in initiative, was a close observer, and he saw a lot that would have escaped his notice had he been obliged to carry on the inquiry.

"Let's try it," Corson said, suddenly. "Go into your room, please, Miss Prall, and shut the door, and see if you can hear me go out."

"Of course I can!" and with a determined air, Miss Prall went into her room and closed the door quite audibly.

Lifting his finger with a gesture of admonition, Corson made every one sit perfectly still and without speaking for about two minutes.

Then, rising himself, he opened Miss Prall's door and bade her come out.

"Now," he said, "I admit I made as little noise as possible, but did you hear me go out of the front door?"

"Of course I did!" declared the spinster, haughtily. "I heard you tiptoe to the door, open it stealthily and close it the same way."

She looked calmly about, and then seeing the consternation on the faces of Richard and Eliza and the amused satisfaction on the countenances of the detectives, she saw she had made a false step, and became irate.

"What is it?" she began, but Richard interrupted her.

"Don't say a word, Auntie," he begged; "you see gentlemen, Miss Prall is a little sensitive about her slight deafness, and sometimes she imagines sounds that are not real."

"I'm not deaf!" Let.i.tia cried, but Eliza interposed:

"Do hush, Let.i.tia. You only make matters worse! Will you be quiet?"

The tone more than the words caused Miss Prall to drop the subject, and Gibbs proceeded.

"Now, you see, Mr. Bates, we can't accept your aunt's testimony that you didn't leave your room last night."

"I didn't ask you to," retorted Richard; "nor do I need it. I tell you I was in bed by or before midnight, and did not leave my bed until I was summoned by Bob Moore after the tragedy had occurred. Now, unless you have some definite and sufficient reason to suspect me of falsehood, I have no need to bring any proof of my a.s.sertion."

"That's so, Gibbs," said Corson, meditatively. "There's no reason, I know of, to inquire into Mr Bates' doings."

"There's reason to inquire into the doings of everybody who had the slightest connection with this matter," said Gibbs severely. "But unless there's a doubt, we needn't yet ask for proof of their words."

He glared at Miss Prall, with the evident implication that he might feel a doubt of her word.

However, when she and Miss Gurney stated that they had retired at about eleven and had not left their rooms until called up by Richard to hear the tragic news, no comment was made by Gibbs and Corson merely looked at them abstractedly with the air of a preoccupied owl.

"Then," resumed Corson, "now that we've placed your whereabouts and occupations, will you state, any or all of you, what opinion you hold as to the ident.i.ty of the women who are responsible for the death of Sir Herbert Binney?"

"Those chorus girls," said Miss Let.i.tia, promptly. "I always told him he'd get into a moil with them, and they'd fleece him. They are a smart lot, and Sir Herbert, though a shrewd business man, was putty in the hands of a clever or designing woman!"

"But these girls are mere children--"

"In years, perhaps," Miss Prall broke in, "but not in iniquity. A gentleman of Sir Herbert's mild and generous nature could be bamboozled by these wise and wicked little vampires until they'd stripped him of his last cent!"

"You seem to know a lot about them, Madam."

"Because Sir Herbert has told me. He often described the cleverness with which they wheedled and coerced him into undue generosity, and though he laughed about it, it was with an undercurrent of chagrin and vexation.

And so, the time came, I feel certain, when Sir Herbert, like the worm in the proverb, turned, and what he did or said, I don't know, but I haven't the slightest doubt that it led, in some way, to such hard feeling and such a deep and desperate quarrel, that the affair resulted in tragedy."