The Bartlett Mystery Part 14

"Sit there!" he said authoritatively, and they sat there, Carshaw trying to take an interest in a "drunk" who was brought in, and Fowle alternately feeling the sore lump at the back of his head and the sorer cartilage of his nose. After waiting half an hour Carshaw protested, but the sergeant a.s.sured him that "a man from the Bureau" was _en route_ and would appear presently. At last Clancy came in. That is why he was "out"

when Senator Meiklejohn inquired for him.

"H'lo!" he cried when he set eyes on Fowle. "My foreman bookbinder! Your folio looks somewhat battered!"

"Glad it's you, Mr. Clancy," snuffled Fowle. "You can tell these cops--"

"Suppose _you_ tell me," broke in the detective, with a glance at Carshaw.

"Yes, Fowle, speak up," said Carshaw. "You've a ready tongue. Explain your fall from grace."

"There's nothing to it," growled Fowle. "I know the girl, an' asked her to come with me this evening. She'd been fired by the firm, an'--"

"Ah! Who fired her?" Clancy's inquiry sounded most matter-of-fact.

"The boss, of course."

"Why?"

"Well--this newspaper stuff. He didn't like it."

"He told you so?"

"Yes. That is--the department is a bit crowded. He--er--asked me--Well, we reckoned we could do without her."

"I see. Go on."

"So I just came up-town, meanin' to talk things over, an' find her a new job, but she took it all wrong."

Clancy whirled around on Carshaw. Evidently he had heard enough from Fowle.

"And you?" he snapped.

"I know nothing of either party," was the calm answer. "I couldn't help overhearing this fellow insulting a lady, so put him where he belongs--in the gutter."

"Mr. Clancy," interrupted the sergeant, "you're wanted on the phone."

The detective was detained a good five minutes. When he returned he walked straight up to Fowle.

"Quit!" he said, with a scornful and sidelong jerk of the head. "You got what you wanted. Get out, and leave Miss Bartlett alone in the future."

Fowle needed no second bidding.

"As for me?" inquired Carshaw, with arched eyebrows.

"May I drop you in Madison Avenue?" said Clancy. Once the police car was speeding down-town he grew chatty.

"Wish I had seen you tr.i.m.m.i.n.g Fowle," he said pleasantly. "I've a notion he had a finger in the pie of Winifred Bartlett's dismissal."

"It may be."

Carshaw's tone was indifferent. Just then he was aware only of a very definite resentment. His mother would be waiting for dinner, and alarmed, like all mothers who own motoring sons. The detective looked surprised, but made his point, for all that.

"I suppose you'll be meeting that very charming young lady again one of these days," he said.

"I? Why? Most unlikely."

"Not so. Do you floor every man you see annoying a woman in the streets?"

"Well--er--"

"Just so. Winifred interested you. She interests me. I mean to keep an eye on her, a friendly eye. If you and she come together again, let me know."

"Really--"

"No wonder you are ready with a punch. You won't let a man speak.

Listen, now. The patrolman held you and Fowle because he had orders to arrest, on any pretext or none, any one who seemed to have the remotest connection with the house in One Hundred and Twelfth Street, where Winifred Bartlett lives with her aunt. You've read of the Yacht Mystery and the la.s.soing of Ronald Tower?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Tower are my close friends."

"Exactly. Now, Rachel Craik, Winifred's aunt, was released from custody an hour ago. She would have been charged with complicity in the supposed murder of Tower. I say 'supposed' because there was no murder. Mr. Tower has returned home, safe and sound--"

"By Jove, that's good news! But what a strange business it is! My mother was with Helen Tower this morning, trying to console her."

"Good! Now, perhaps, you'll sit up and take notice. The truth is that the mystery of this outrage on Tower is not--cannot be--of recent origin. I'm sure it is bound up with some long-forgotten occurrence, possibly a crime, in which the secret of the birth and parentage of Winifred Bartlett is involved. That girl is no more the niece of her 'aunt' than I am her nephew."

"But one is usually the niece of one's aunt."

"I think you need a cigarette," said Clancy dryly. "Organisms accustomed to poisonous stimulants often wilt when deprived too suddenly of such harmful tonics."

Carshaw edged around slightly and looked at this quaint detective.

"I apologize," he said contritely. "But the crowd got my goat when it jeered at me as a murderer. And the long wait was annoying, too."

Clancy, however, was not accustomed to having his confidences slighted.

He was ruffled.

"Perhaps what I was going to say is hardly worth while," he snapped. "It was this. If, by chance, your acquaintance with Winifred Bartlett goes beyond to-day's meeting, and you learn anything of her life and history which sounds strange in your ears, you may be rendering her a far greater service than by flattening Fowle's nose if you bring your knowledge straight to the Bureau."

"I'll not forget, Mr. Clancy. But let me explain. It will be a miracle if I meet Miss Bartlett again."

"It'll be a miracle if you don't," retorted the other.

So there was a pa.s.sing whiff of misunderstanding between these two, and, like every other trivial phase of a strange record, it was destined to bulk large in the imminent hazards threatening one lone girl. Thus, Clancy ceased being communicative. He might have referred guardedly to Senator Meiklejohn. But he did not. Oddly enough, his temperament was singularly alike to Carshaw's, and that is why sparks flew.

The heart, however, is deceitful, and Fate is stronger than an irritated young man whose conventional ideals have been besmirched by being marched through the streets in custody. The garage in which Carshaw's automobile was housed temporarily was located near One Hundred and Twelfth Street. He went there on the following afternoon to see the machine stripped and find out the exact extent of the damage. Yet he pa.s.sed Winifred's house resolutely, without even looking at it. He returned that way at half past six, and there, on the corner, was posted Fowle--Fowle, with a swollen nose! There also was their special patrolman, with an eye for both!

The mere sight of Fowle prowling in unwholesome quest stirred upwrath in Carshaw's mind; and the heart, always subtle and self-deceiving, whispered elatedly: "Here you have an excuse for renewing an acquaintance which you wished to make yourself believe you did not care to renew."

He walked straight to the door of the brown-stone house and rang. Then he rapped. There was no answer. When he had rapped a second time he walked away, but he had not gone far when he was almost startled to find himself face to face with Winifred coming home from making some purchases, with a bag on her arm.