The Girl at Central Part 11

"A strange case, isn't it?" he said.

"Awful strange," I answered.

"If it wasn't for your story of that man on the 'phone I think they'd arrest Dr. Fowler to-night."

"Didn't you believe what he said?"

I wasn't going to give away my thoughts any more than I'd been willing to give away what I heard on the wire. And it seemed that he was the same, for he answered slow and thoughtful:

"I'm not saying what I believe or don't believe, or maybe it's better if I say I'm not ready yet to believe or disbelieve anything,"-then he looked up at the sky, red behind the trees, and spoke easy and careless: "They say Miss Hesketh had a good many admirers."

"Do they?" was all he got out of me.

That made him laugh, jolly and boyish.

"Oh, you needn't keep your guard up now. Your stuff'll be in the papers to-morrow, and, take it from me, that fellow that sent the message is going to get a jar."

"The man I listened to?"

"Sure. He hasn't got the ghost of an idea anyone overheard him. Can't you imagine how he'll feel when he opens his paper and sees that a smart little h.e.l.lo girl was tapping the wire?"

It's funny, but I'd never thought of it that way. Why, he'd get a shock like dynamite! It got hold of me so that I didn't speak for a spell, thinking of that man reading his paper to-morrow-over his coffee or maybe going down in the L-and suddenly seeing printed out in black and white what he thought no one in the world knew except himself and that poor dead girl. Babbitts went on talking, me listening with one ear-which comes natural to an operator.

"We've been rounding up all the men that were after her-not that they were backward with their alibis-only too glad to be of service, thank you! Carisbrook was at Aiken, a lawyer named Dunham was up state trying a case; Robinson, a chap in a bank, was spending the week-end on Long Island. There was only one of them near here-man named c.o.kesbury. Do you know him?"

Both my ears got busy.

"c.o.kesbury," I said, sort of startled, "was c.o.kesbury at the Lodge last week?"

"He was and I know just what he did."

"What did he do?"

He laughed out as gay as you please, for he saw he'd got me just where he wanted.

"When I've tried to find out things from you you've turned me down."

"Aw, go on," I said coaxing, "don't you know by experience I'm no talking machine to give out every word that's said to me."

"I believe you," he answered, "and it'll be good for your character for me to set a generous example. c.o.kesbury was at the Lodge from last Sat.u.r.day on the one-ten train to last Monday on the eight-twenty."

"Gee!" I said, soft to myself.

"You can quell those rising hopes," he replied. "He wasn't the man you heard."

"How do you know?"

"Because hearing that he was a friend of Miss Hesketh's, I spent part of yesterday at Azalea and found that Mr. c.o.kesbury can prove as good an alibi as any of them."

"Did you see him?"

"No, he wasn't there and if he had been I wouldn't have bothered with him. I saw someone much better-Miner, the man who owns the Azalea Garage, where c.o.kesbury puts up his car. It appears that the trip before last c.o.kesbury broke his axle and had to have his car towed down to the garage and left there to be mended. When he came down Sat.u.r.day he expected it to be done and when it wasn't, got in a rage and raised the devil of a row. He had to go out to his place in one of Miner's cars which left him there and went back for him Monday morning."

"Then he had no auto on Sunday."

"Miss Morganthau will take the head of the cla.s.s," then he said, low, as if to someone beside him: "She's our prize pupil but we don't say it before her face for fear of making her proud," then back to me as solemn as a priest in the pulpit, "That is the situation reduced to its lowest terms-he had no car."

"Well that ends _him_," I said.

"So it seems to me. In fact c.o.kesbury gets the gate. I won't hide from you now that I went to Azalea because I'd heard a rumor of that talk on the phone and thought I'd do a little private sleuthing on my own.

Didn't know but what I was destined to be the Baby Grand Burns."

"And nothing's come of it."

"Nothing, except that it drops c.o.kesbury out with a thud that's dull and sickening for me, but you can bet your best hat it's just the opposite for him."

"Well, I guess yes," I said and walked along wondering to myself whose voice that _could_ have been.

VIII

After the inquest there was no more question about who was suspected. It was as if every finger in Longwood was raised and pointed to Mapleshade.

The cautious people didn't say it plain-especially the shop-keepers who were afraid of losing custom-but those who had nothing to gain by keeping still came out with it flatfooted.

It wasn't only that n.o.body liked the Doctor, or believed his story, it was because the people were wild at what had been done. They wanted to find the murderer and put him behind bars and seeing that things pointed more clearly to Dr. Fowler than to anybody else they pitched on him. All the gossip about the quarreling came out blacker than ever. The papers were full of it and the other worse stories, about Sylvia's allowance and the will of her father. There wasn't a bit of dirty linen in the Fowler household that wasn't washed and hung out on the line for the public to gape at, and some of it was dirtier when they'd got through washing than it had been before.

There were those who didn't scruple to say that the whole tragedy was a frame-up between Virginie Dupont and the Doctor. If you talked sensible to them and asked them how Virginie could have got word to him that Sylvia was running away, they'd just push that to one side, saying it could be explained some way, everything wasn't known yet-but one thing you _could_ be sure of-the one person who knew the whereabouts of that French woman was Dr. Daniel Fowler.

I believe there were some days after the inquest when, if there'd been an anarchist or agitator to stand on the postoffice steps and yell that Dr. Fowler ought to be jailed, a crowd would have gathered, gone down to Mapleshade, and demanded him.

Fortunately there was no one of that kind around, and he stayed quiet in his home, not even coming to the village. Two days after the inquest I saw Anne and she said he and Mrs. Fowler hadn't been out of the house-that they were in a state of siege what with reporters and the police and morbid cranks who hung round the grounds looking up at the windows.

That same evening I stayed over time in the Exchange, lending a hand.

The work was something awful, and Katie Reilly, the new girl, was most snowed under and on the way to lose her head. I wanted to see her through and I wanted the credit of the office kept up, but it's also true that I wanted to be on the job myself and hear all that was pa.s.sing. Believe me, it was hard to quiet down in my bedroom at night after eight hours at the switchboard right in the thick of the excitement. Besides, I'd got to know the reporters pretty well and it was fun making them think I could give them leads and then guying them.

I liked Babbitts the best, but there were three others that weren't bad as men go. One was Jones, a tall thin chap like an actor, with long black hair hanging down to his collar, and Freddy Jasper, who was English and talked with an awful swell dialect, and a sallow-skinned, consumpted-looking guy called Yerrington who belonged on a paper as yellow as his face and always went round with a cigarette hanging from his lip like it was stuck on with glue.

It was nearly eight and work was slacking off when I started to go home.

What with the jump I'd been on and listening to the gabbing round the door I'd forgotten my supper. It wasn't till I saw the Gilt Edge window with a nice pile of apples stacked up round a pumpkin, that I remembered I was hungry and walked over. There were only three people in the place, Florrie Stein, the waitress, and a woman with a kid in the corner.

I was just finishing my corn beef hash with a cup of coffee at my elbow and stewed prunes on the line of promotion when Soapy and Jones and Jasper came in and asked me if they could sit at my table. "Please yourself," said I, "and you'll please me," for politeness is one of the things I was bred up to, and they sat down, calling out their orders to Florrie Stein.

They naturally began talking about "the case"-it was all anybody talked about just then-and for all I knew so much about it, I generally picked up some new bits from them. So I went to the extravagance of three cents worth of jelly roll, not because I wanted it, but because I could crumb it up and eat it slow and not give away I was sitting on to listen.

"We can talk before you, Miss Morganthau," said Babbitts, "because while we all agree you're the belle of Longwood, we've found out by sad experience you're a belle without a tongue."