No Clue Part 17

"I don't know! I noticed its absence this morning."

"There you are!--But," Hastings qualified, to avoid the quarrel, "the nail-file isn't much of a clue if unsupported." He approached cordiality. "And I appreciate your intending to tell me. That was what you intended to give me in confidence, wasn't it?"

"Yes," Webster answered, half-sullen.

Hastings changed the subject again.

"Did you know Mildred Brace intended to clear out, leave Washington, today?"

"Why, no!" Webster shot that out in genuine surprise.

"I got it from Russell," Hastings informed, and went at once to another topic.

"And that brings us to the letter. Judge Wilton tell you about that?"

Webster was lighting a cigarette, with difficulty holding the fire of the old one to the end of the new. The operation seemed to entail hard labour for him.

"In the grey envelope?" he responded, drawing on the cigarette. "Yes. I didn't get it."

He took off his coat. The heat oppressed him. At frequent intervals he pa.s.sed his handkerchief around the inside of his collar, which was wilting. Now, more than ever, he gave the impression of exaggerated watchfulness, as if he attempted prevision of the detective's questions.

"n.o.body got it, so far as I can learn," Hastings said, a note of sternness breaking through the surface of his tone. "It vanished into thin air. That's the most mysterious thing about this mysterious murder."

He, in his turn, began pacing the floor, a short distance to and fro in front of Judge Wilton's chair, his hands behind him, flopping the baggy tail of his coat from side to side.

"You doubtless see the gravity of the facts: that letter was mailed to Sloanehurst. Russell has just told me so. She waved it in his face, to taunt him about you, before she dropped it into the mail-box. He swears"--Hastings stopped, at the far end of his pacing, and looked hard at Webster--"it was addressed to you."

Webster, again with his queer, high-pitched laugh, like derision, threw back his head and took two long strides toward the centre of the room.

There he stood a moment, hands in his pockets, while he stared at the toe of his right shoe, which he was carefully adjusting to a crack in the flooring.

Judge Wilton made his chair crackle as he moved to look at Webster. It was the weight of the detective's gaze, however, that drew the lawyer's attention; when he looked up, his eyes were half-closed, as if the light had suddenly become painful to them.

"That would be Russell's game, wouldn't it?" he retorted, at last.

"Mrs. Brace told me the same thing," Hastings said quietly, flashing a look at Wilton and back to the other.

"d.a.m.n her!" Webster broke forth with such vehemence that Wilton stared at him in amazement. "d.a.m.n her! And that's the first time I ever said that of a woman. It's as I suspected, as I expected. She's begun some sort of a crooked game!"

He trembled like a man with a chill. Hastings gave him no time to recover himself.

"You know Mrs. Brace, then? Know her well?" he pressed.

"Well enough!" Webster retorted with hot repugnance. "Well enough, although I never had but one conversation with her--if you may call that bedlam wildness a conversation. She came to my office the second day after I'd dismissed her daughter. She made a scene. She charged me with ruining her daughter's life, threatened suit for breach of promise. She said she'd 'get even' with me if it took her the rest of her life. I don't as a rule pay much attention to violent women, Mr. Hastings; but there was something about her that affected me strongly, she's implacable, and like stone, not like a woman. You saw her--understand what I mean?"

"Perfectly," agreed Hastings.

There flashed across his mind a picture of that incomprehensible woman's face, the black line of her eyebrows lifted half-way to her hair, the abnormal wetness of her lips thickened by a sneer. "If she's been after this man for two weeks," he thought, "I can understand his trembles!"

But he hurried the inquiry.

"So you think she lied about that letter?"

"Of course!" Webster laughed on a high note. "Next, I suppose, she'll produce the letter."

"She can't very well do that."

Something in his voice alarmed the suspected man.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

Hastings smiled.

"What do you mean?" Webster asked again, his voice lowered, and came a step nearer to the detective.

Hastings took a piece of paper from his pocket.

"Here's the flap of the grey envelope," he said, as if that was all the information he meant to impart.

Webster urged him, with eyes and voice:

"Well?"

"And on the back of it is some of Mildred Brace's handwriting."

The old man examined the piece of paper with every show of absorption.

He could hear Webster's hurried breathing, and the gulp when he swallowed the lump in his throat.

The scene had got hold of Wilton also. Leaning forward in his chair, his lips half-parted, the thumb and forefinger of his right hand mechanically fubbing out his cigar, so that a little stream of fire trickled to the floor, he gazed unwinking at the envelope flap.

Webster went a step nearer to Hastings, and stood, pa.s.sing his hand across the top of his head and staring again out of his half-closed eyes, as if the light had hurt them.

"And," the old man said, regarding Webster keenly but keeping any hint of accusation out of his voice, "I found it last night in the fireplace, behind the screen, in your room upstairs."

He paused, looking toward the door, his attention caught by a noise in the hall.

Webster laughed, on the high, derisive note. He was noticeably pale.

"Come, man!" Judge Wilton said, harsh and imperious. "Can't you see the boy's suffering? What's written on it?"

"What difference does it make--the writing?" Webster objected, with a movement of his shoulders that looked like a great effort to pull himself together. "If there's any at all, it's faked. Faked! That's what it is. People don't write on the inside of envelope flaps."

His face did not express the a.s.surance he tried to put into his voice.

He went back to the piano and leaned on it, his posture such that it might have indicated a nonchalant ease or, equally well, might have betrayed his desperate need of support.

"This letter incident can't be waved away," Hastings, without handing over the sc.r.a.p of envelope, proceeded in even, measured tones--using his sentences as if they were hammers with which he a.s.sailed the young lawyer's remnants of self-control. "You're not trifling with a jury, Mr.

Webster. I believe I know as much about the value of facts, this kind of facts, as you do. Consider what you're up against. You----"

Webster put up a hand in protest, the fingers so unsteady that they dropped the cigarette which he had been on the point of lighting.