The Black Eagle Mystery Part 17

"Both to burn," George agreed. "You couldn't get much out of her."

"All I wanted just now," said his father, striking a match, "the rest'll come in time."

I was just going to ask him what more he expected, when a clerk opened the door and said:

"Mrs. Babbitts is outside to see Mr. Whitney."

The chief squared round like a flash, the lit match dropping to the hearth. His face, usually heavy and stolid, lit into an almost avid eagerness.

"Show her in," he ordered and the clerk disappeared.

"What are you expecting to get from Molly?" George asked. "Isn't she finished?"

"Not quite." The old man's eyes were on the door, his cigar unlit in his hand. I hadn't often seen him so openly on the qui vive. "Molly's had further orders."

"What?"

"You'll see," was the answer.

Molly entered with the cold of the night still around her. Her long coat was b.u.t.toned wrong, her hat on one side. Haste was written all over her, haste and that bright-eyed, jubilant exhilaration that took possession of her when things were moving her way. She was like a little game dog on the scent, and I'd often heard the old man say she'd make the best woman detective he'd ever known. He was awfully fond of her, and took a sort of paternal pride in her nerve and cleverness, just as he did in George's.

"Well, Molly," he said-"got that stuff for me?"

She nodded, her little body seeming to radiate a quivering energy:

"Today at the lunch hour. I came the minute I got off."

"Go ahead. I said not to tell anybody till you told me first. Well, you're going to tell me first now."

Standing by the table, her eyes bright on the old man, she said slowly and clearly:

"Troop says he never took Miss Whitehall down from her offices on the night of January the fifteenth."

George gave a smothered e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n and started forward. I was transfixed-not believing my ears. Only the chief looked unmoved, leaning against the mantelpiece, holding Molly's glance with his.

"Go on," he growled.

"He says that he was there later than usual, until eight, because of the accident and the other car being broken. Before that he took down the two Azalea Woods Estates clerks, Iola Barry and Tony Ford, but not Miss Whitehall. After the accident he ran out into the street, and when he came back the people were on every landing ringing the bells and wild because the elevator didn't come. He went up and took them off, but Miss Whitehall wasn't among them. He said that he'd heard some of them got tired of waiting and went by the stairs."

"He thought Miss Whitehall went that way?"

"Yes, it was the only way she could have gone. He supposed she'd got impatient or hysterical and just rushed pell-mell down."

"Did Troop or anyone else see her in the lower hall or leaving the building?"

"No, I questioned him careful about that. He thought she'd seen the excitement on Broadway and run down and maybe met someone who'd told her what had happened. And not wanting to get in it she'd gone out the side door. Anyway he said she wasn't in the ground floor hall, or out in the street with the others or he'd have seen her."

There was a pause. In that pause-like figures in a picture-I saw George, amazed, petrified, staring at his father, Molly looking from one to the other, and the chief with his brows low down and his head drooped, gazing at the fire. In a moment they would burst into speech-the speech that was withheld while that astounding revelation found acceptance in their minds.

To hear what they said-to listen to what I couldn't believe and yet couldn't contradict-was more than I could stand just then. Without a word, unnoticed by any of them, I slipped out, fled down the hall, into the elevator and out to the street.

It was cold, a sharp, frosty night, with a few stars shining in the deep-blue sky. Dark ma.s.ses of men flowed out of the doors of skysc.r.a.pers and drained away down the subway entrances. I jostled through them, elbowing them right and left, instinctively turning my face uptown, deaf to the curses that followed me, blind to the lights that stretched in a spangled vista in front.

What did it mean? What _could_ it mean? I'd understood the lie about Barker but now those other lies! She had said she went down about six, in the elevator. I'd heard her, there was no getting away from it. Was _that_ the reason the old man had wanted to see her? Suddenly I saw again his look of hungry expectation when Molly was announced, and with a stifled sound, I stopped short. As lightning plays upon a dark landscape, for a moment showing it plain, I had a clear glimpse of the line of thought he'd been pursuing. The horror of it held me rooted there, rigid as a dead man, in the midst of the hurrying crowd.

Incredible-hideous-unbelievable! a.s.sociation with criminals had warped and diseased his judgment. And then like a sinister shadow, creeping on me dark and ominous, rose the memory of her guarded face, the flame of color she couldn't hide, the dropped purse. I started out again, fighting the shadow, but all I had to fight with was my belief in her.

She couldn't-it was impossible, I'd die swearing it. And battering against that belief, came questions, insistent, maddening. Why couldn't she speak out? Why didn't she admit the truth-say that Barker was her lover and have done with it? Why had she lied-about him, about the time she left, about everything she could have frankly admitted, if-if-- When I got there I could go no farther. Cursing under my breath I forged along, the air ice-cold on the sweat that was damp on my forehead.

CHAPTER X

MOLLY TELLS THE STORY

Friday night I brought the information from Troop in to Mr. Whitney, and knew then for the first time why he wanted it.

Gee, it was an awful thought!

As I sat there between him and Mr. George-Jack Reddy went away, I don't know why-with neither of them saying a word, I saw, like it was a vision, the Harland case spreading out black and dreadful. It made me think of ink spilled on a map, running slow but sure over places that were bright and clean, trickling away in directions no one ever thought it would take.

I left soon after Jack, as I could see they wanted to get rid of me.

Before I went the old man said to try and get a line on the Whitehalls'

servant-I might work it through Iola-and find out what time Miss Whitehall came home the night of January fifteenth. If I couldn't manage it I was to let him know and it could be pa.s.sed on to O'Mally, but he thought I had the best chances. That, as far as he knew now, was the last he'd need of me. My work at the Black Eagle was done. The next day would be my last one there. Say nothing to anyone about it-simply drop out. The reappearance of Miss McCalmont was his affair.

In the next twenty-four hours things came swift, as they do in these cases. You'll have a long spell with the wires dead, then suddenly they'll begin to hum. And you've got to be ready when it happens-jump quick as lightning. I learned that in the Hesketh case.

The first chance came that night, was sitting in the parlor when I reached home-Iola! She had the hope of a new job-a good one-and wanted a recommendation letter from Miss Whitehall, and naturally, being Iola, couldn't go unless I came along and held the sponge.

It was so pat you'd think fate had fixed it, and it worked out as pat as it began. While Iola was in the parlor getting her letter I stayed in the kitchen-very meek and humble-and when the servant came back-Delia was her name-started in to help her with the dishes. We grew neighborly over the work, she washing and I wiping, and what was more natural than that we'd work around to the affairs of the ladies. They'd lost all their money and Delia was going to leave. How did that happen now? Sure, it's the feller that killed himself done it-didn't I know? I only had to let her talk, she was the flannel-mouth Irish kind. Here are the facts as they went in to Whitney & Whitney the next day.

Miss Whitehall was generally very punctual, always getting home about half-past six. On the night of January fifteenth she didn't get back till a quarter to eight. Such a delay was evidently not expected as Mrs.

Whitehall became extremely nervous, couldn't keep still or settle to anything. At a quarter to eight, hearing the key inserted in the door, Delia had gone into the hall, and seen Miss Whitehall enter. She was very pale and agitated. Delia had never seen her look so upset. She walked up the pa.s.sage, met her mother and without a word they went into a bedroom and shut the door.

At dinner she ate nothing and hardly spoke at all-looked and acted as if she was sick. The next morning when she read of the Harland suicide in the paper she nearly fainted, and after that was in bed for three days, prostrated by the shock, she told Delia.

I guessed this would be my last piece of work on the Harland case and I wasn't sorry. There was an awfulness coming over it that was too much for me. But it wasn't, not by a long shot. I was in deeper than I knew, so deep-but that comes later. I'll go on now to tell what happened that last night I was in the Black Eagle Building.

It was coming on for closing time and I was making ready to go. I'd cleared up all my little belongings, and was standing by the switchboard pressing the tray cloth careful into my satchel, when I heard a step stop at the door and a cheerful voice sing out:

"Just in the nick of time. Spreading her wings ready for flight."

There in the doorway, filling it up with his big shape, was Tony Ford.

For the first moment I got a sort of setback. Mightn't anyone-thinking of home and husband and finding yourself face to face with a gunman?

With one hand still in the satchel I stood eyeing him, not a word out of me, solemn as a tombstone. It didn't phaze him a bit. Teetering from his heels to his toes, a grin on him like the slit in a post box, he stood there as calm as if he'd never come nearer murder than to spell it in the fourth grade.