The Black Eagle Mystery Part 33

"What the devil are you doing there? Haven't you heard?" Then his eye catching her, "Oh, it's Miss Whitehall. Well, young lady, you must have had a pretty tough time here last night."

She simply drooped her eyelids in faint agreement.

"What do you mean?" I cried, and looked from O'Mally's boisterously concerned countenance to Carol's worn, white one. "What is it, something more?"

She gave a slight nod and said:

"The last-the end this time."

O'Mally wheeled on me:

"She hasn't told you. He shot himself-here, last night, shortly after she arrived."

Before I had time to answer, Babbitts and the man in uniform, a police inspector, were beside us. Babbitts was speechless-as I was myself-but the inspector, pompous and stolid, answered my look of shocked amazement:

"A few minutes after one. Fortunately I'd got your instructions and the house was surrounded. My men heard the report and the screams and broke in at once."

I looked blankly from one to the other. There was a confused horror in my mind, but from the confusion one thought rose clear-Barker had done the best, the only thing.

The inspector, ostentatiously cool in the midst of our aghast concern, volunteered further:

"He didn't die till near morning and we got a full statement out of him.

For an hour afterward he was as clear as a bell-they are that way sometimes-and gave us all the particulars, seemed to want to. I've got it upstairs and from what I can make out he was one of the sharpest, most daring criminals I ever ran up against. I've had the body kept here for your identification. Will you come up and see it now?"

He moved off toward the stairs. O'Mally and Babbitts, muttering together, filing after him. I didn't go but turned to Carol, who had thrust one hand through the bal.u.s.trade that ran up beside where we were standing. As the tramp of ascending feet sounded on the first steps, she leaned toward me, her voice hardly more than a whisper:

"Do you know who it is?"

"Who what is?" I said, startled by her words and expression.

"The man upstairs?"

I was terror-stricken-the experiences of the night had unhinged her mind. I tried to take her hand, but she drew it back, her lips forming words just loud enough for me to hear:

"You don't. It's Hollings Harland."

"Carol!" I cried, certain now she was unbalanced.

She drew farther away from me and slipping her hand from the bal.u.s.trade pointed up the stairs:

"Go and see. It's he. There's nothing the matter with me, but I want you to see for yourself. Go and see and then come back here and I'll tell you. I know everything now."

I went, a wild rush up the stairs. In a room off the upper hall, the light tempered by drawn blinds, were O'Mally, Babbitts and the inspector, looking at the dead body of Hollings Harland.

CHAPTER XX

JACK TELLS THE STORY

When I came down she was waiting for me. With a finger against her lips in a command for silence, she turned and went along the pa.s.sage to the door from which I had seen her enter. I followed her and catching up with her as she placed her hand on the k.n.o.b, burst out:

"What is it-what _does_ it mean? Where's Barker? In the name of Heaven tell me quickly what _has_ happened?"

"I'll tell you in here," she said softly, and opening the door preceded me into the room.

It was evidently the dining-room of the house, a round table standing in the center, a sideboard with gla.s.s and china on it against the wall. A coal fire burned in the grate, and the blinds were raised showing the dazzling glitter of the snow outside. It was warm and bright, the one place in that sinister house that seemed to have a human note about it.

She pa.s.sed round the table to the fire and, standing there, made a gesture that swept the walls and unveiled windows:

"Last night in this room I at last understood the tragedy in which we've all been involved."

I stood like a post, still too bemused to have any questions ready.

There were too many to ask. It was like a skein so tangled there was no loose thread to start with.

"Did you know Harland was here when you came?" was what I finally said.

She nodded:

"I suspected it on Sunday afternoon. I was certain of it on Sunday night before I left New York." She dropped into a chair by the fire, and pointed me to one near-by at the table. "Sit down and let me tell it to you as it happened to me, my side of it. When you've heard that, you can read the statement he gave, then you'll see it all. Straight from its beginning to its awful end here last night."

Before she began I told her of our interview with Mrs. Whitehall and that we knew her true relationship to Barker.

She seemed relieved and asked if her mother had also told us of her position with regard to Harland. When she saw how fully we'd been informed she gave a deep sigh and said:

"Now you can understand why I prevaricated that day in Mr. Whitney's office. I was trying to shield my father, to help him any way I could.

Oh, if I'd known the truth then or you had-the truth you don't know even yet! It was Johnston Barker that was murdered and Hollings Harland who murdered him!"

I started forward, but she raised a silencing hand, her voice shaken and pleading:

"Don't, please, say anything. Let me go on in my own way. It's so hard to tell." She dropped the hand to its fellow and holding them tight-clenched in her lap, said slowly: "If my mother told you of that conversation I had with Mr. Harland you know what I discovered then-that he loved me. I never suspected it before, but when he pressed me with questions about Johnston Barker, so unlike himself, vehement and excited, I understood and was sorry for him. I told him as much as I could then, explained my feeling for the man he was jealous of without telling my relationship, said how I respected and trusted him, what any girl might say of her father. He seemed relieved but went on to ask if Mr. Barker and I were not interested in some scheme, some undertaking of a secret nature. _That_ frightened me, it sounded as if he had found out about us, had been told something by someone. Taken by surprise, I answered with a half truth, that Mr. Barker _had_ a plan on foot for my welfare, that he wanted to help me and my mother to a better financial position, but that I was not yet at liberty to tell what it was. I saw he thought I meant business, and as I go on, you'll see how that information gave him the confidence to do what he did later.

"I know now that the Whitney office discovered I had had a letter from Mr. Barker mailed from Toronto asking me to join him there and that I agreed to do so in a phone message that same day. That letter, directed to my office, was in typewriting and was signed with my father's initials. It was short, merely telling me that there was a reason for his disappearance which he would explain to me, that his whereabouts must be kept secret, and that he wanted me to come to him to make arrangements for a new business venture in which he hoped to set me up.

As you know I attempted to do what he asked, and was followed by two men from the Whitney office."

"How do you know all this?" I couldn't help b.u.t.ting in.

She gave a slight smile, the first I had seen on her face:

"I'll tell you that later-it's not the least curious part of my story.

Realizing by the papers that there was a general hue and cry for him I was very cautious, much more so than your detectives thought. I saw them, decided the move was too dangerous, and came back. At that time, and for some time afterward, I believed that letter was from my father."

"Wasn't it?"

She shook her head:

"No-but wait. I had no other letter and no other communication of any sort. I searched the papers for any news of him, thinking he might put something for me in the personal columns, but there was not a sign. Days pa.s.sed that way, my business was closed and I had time to think, and the more I thought the more strange and inexplicable it seemed. Why, in the letter, had he made no reference to the broken engagement, so vital to both of us, that night in the church. Why had he said nothing about my mother whose state of mind he would have guessed?