The Girl at Central Part 14

"I speak only as one concerned for your health. A walk after business hours should be the invariable practice of those whose work forbids exercise."

"Thank you for your interest," says I, very haughty, "but it's well to look at home before we search abroad. The man who spends all his time riding in autos at the expense of the Press would be better employed exercising his own limbs than directing those of others. So start right along and walk quick."

He didn't budge, but says slow and thoughtful:

"Your remarks, Miss Morganthau, are always to the point. I'm going to take a walk this evening-say about seven-thirty."

"I hope you'll enjoy it," says I. "As for me, I'm going straight home to rest. I need it, what with my work and the ginks that stand round here taking up my time and running the risk of getting me fired"-the door handle clicked. I looked over my shoulder and saw a man coming in.

"Which way?" I says in a whisper.

"Down Maple Lane," he whispers back, and I was in front of my board with my headpiece in place when the man came in.

We walked up and down Maple Lane for an hour, and it may amuse you to know that what that simple guy wanted was to tell me to listen to every voice on my wires.

I looked at him calm and pitiful. _Me_, that had been listening till, if your ears grow with exercise, mine ought to have been long enough to tie in a true lover's knot on top of my head!

There's a wonderful innocence about men in some ways. It makes you feel sorry for them, like they were helpless children.

Then he capped the climax by telling me about Mrs. Cresset that morning-hadn't thought I'd heard a word. And as he told it, believing so honest that I didn't know, I began to feel kind of cheap as if I'd lied to someone who couldn't have thought I'd do such a thing. I didn't tell him the truth-I was too ashamed-but I made a vow no matter how sly I was to the others I'd be on the square with Babbitts. And I'll say right here that I've made good resolutions and broken them, but that one I've kept.

There's a little hill part way along the Lane where the road slopes down toward the entrance of Mapleshade. We stopped here and looked back at the house lying long and dark among its dark trees. The sky was bright with stars and by their light you could see the black patches of the woods and here and there a paler stretch where the land was bare and open. It was all shadowy and gloomy except where the windows shone out in bright orange squares. I pointed out to Babbitts where Sylvia's windows were, not a light in them; and then, at the end of the wing, four or five in a row that belonged to Mrs. Fowler's suite. Her sitting-room was one of them where Anne had told me she and the Doctor always sat in the evenings.

"They're there now," I said. "What do you suppose they're doing?"

"Search me," said Babbitts, "I can't answer for another man, but if I was in the Doctor's shoes I'd be pacing up and down, with my Circa.s.sian Beauty hair turning white while you waited."

"Yes," I said, nodding. "I'll bet that's what he's doing. I can see them, surrounded by their riches, jumping every time there's a knock on the door, thinking that the summons has come."

And that shows you how you never can tell. For at that hour in that room the Doctor and Mrs. Fowler were talking to Walter Mills, who had just come from Philadelphia, bringing them the first ray of hope they'd had since the tragedy. It was in the form of a diamond and ruby lavalliere that he had found the day before in a p.a.w.n shop and that Mrs. Fowler had identified as Sylvia's.

Four days later a piece of news ran like wildfire through Longwood: Virginie Dupont had been arrested and brought to Bloomington.

They put her in jail there and it didn't take any third degree to get the truth out of her. She made a clean breast of it, for she was caught with the goods, all the lost jewelry being found in the place where she was hiding. It sent her to the penitentiary, and her lover, too, for whom-anyway she said so-she had robbed Sylvia's Hesketh's room on the night that Sylvia Hesketh disappeared.

If her story threw no light on the murder it exonerated the Doctor, for it fitted at every point with what he had said.

I'll write it down here, not in her words, but as I got it from the papers.

For some time she had been planning to rob Sylvia, but was waiting for a good opportunity. This came, when the Doctor, being out of the house, she discovered that an elopement was on foot. She had read Sylvia's letters, which were thrown carelessly about, and knew of the affair with Jack Reddy, and when on Sunday morning she was sent to the village to get a letter from Reddy she guessed what it was. Before giving it to Sylvia she went to her own room, opened the envelope with steam from a kettle, and read it. Then she knew that her chance had come.

When evening drew on she hung about the halls and saw Sylvia leave at a few minutes past six, carrying the fitted bag. The coast being clear, she went to her room, took an old black bag of her own and stole back.

It was while she was getting this bag that the idea came to her of impersonating her mistress, as in that way she could steal some clothes.

She secured the jewelry in a pocket hanging from her waist, took some false hair that Sylvia wore when the weather was damp, and covered her head with it, and selected a little automobile hat of which there were several, over all tying a figured black lace veil.

What she particularly wanted was a new Hudson seal coat that had been delivered a few days before. No one but herself and Miss Hesketh knew of this coat as there had been so much quarreling about Sylvia's extravagance, that the girl often bought clothes without telling. After putting it on she filled her bag with things from the bureau drawers, and just as she was leaving saw the gold mesh purse on the dresser and s.n.a.t.c.hed it up.

All this was done like lightning and she thinks she left the house not more than twenty or twenty-five minutes after Sylvia. To catch the train she had to hurry and she ran up Maple Lane behind the hedge. She was nearing the village when she heard the whirr of an auto and through the hedge saw the two big headlights of a car, coming slowly down the Lane.

For a moment she paused, peeking through the branches and made out that there was only one person in it, Jack Reddy.

She reached the station only a few minutes before the train came in. As she had a ticket, she stood at the dark end of the platform, not moving into the light till the engine was drawing near. Then Jim Donahue saw her and came up, addressing her as Miss Hesketh. She had often tried to imitate Sylvia's voice and accent which she thought very elegant, and she did so now, speaking carefully and seeing that Jim had no doubt of her ident.i.ty. On the ride to the Junction she had only murmured "Good evening" to Sands, being afraid to say more.

At the Junction she was going to get off, take the branch line to Hazelmere and transfer there to the Philadelphia Express. In the women's waiting-room, which would probably be deserted at that hour, she intended taking off Sylvia's coat and hair and reappearing as the modest and insignificant lady's maid. She had thought this out in the afternoon, deciding that Sylvia would probably communicate with her mother in the morning and that the theft would then be discovered.

Inquiries started for the woman who had been seen on the train would lead to nothing, as that woman would have dropped out of sight at the Junction.

Everything worked without a hitch. The waiting-room was empty and she had ample time to take off the hair and put it in the bag, hang the coat over her arm with the lining turned out, and even pinch the small, soft hat into another shape. No one would have thought the woman who went into the waiting-room was the woman who came out.

And then came the first mishap-as she opened the door she stepped almost into Dr. Fowler. She was terror stricken, but even then neither her luck nor her wits left her, for almost the first sentence he uttered showed her that he knew of the elopement and gave her a lead what to say. She must have been a pretty nervy woman the way she jumped at that lead.

Right off the bat she invented the story about being sent by Sylvia to Philadelphia-to wait there at the Bellevue-Stratford.

The Doctor was furious and ordered her into his auto. There was nothing for it but to obey and in she got, sitting in the back. As she was stepping up, he close beside her, she remembered the gold mesh purse plain in her hand. Like a flash she bent forward and jammed it down between the back and seat.

The ride up the Riven Rock Road was just as the Doctor described it. It was after the lamp had been broken and he was back in the car starting it up, that she slipped out. She was determined to get away with all her loot and took the bag and coat with her, but between the hurry and fear of the moment forgot the purse.

She wandered through the woods till she saw a small scattering of lights which she took for one of the branch line stations. When the dawn came she had lost some of her nerve and felt it was too risky to carry the extra things. So she hid them at the root of a tree, took off the hat, tying the veil over her head, and walked across the fields to the station. As it was Monday morning there were a lot of laborers, men and women, on the platform. She mingled with them, looking like them in her muddy clothes and tied up head, and got away to Hazelmere without being noticed.

She was feeling safe in her furnished room in Philadelphia when she read of the murder in the papers. That scared her almost to death and she lay as close as a rabbit in a burrow, afraid to go out and cooking her food on a gas ring. It was the man she had stolen for who gave her away. When she refused to raise money on the jewels, he stole the lavalliere and p.a.w.ned it.

Under the trees where she said she'd left them, the police found the coat and hat. Beside them was the bag stuffed full of lingerie, gloves and silk stockings, and with the false hair crowded down into the inside pocket.

Besides clearing the Doctor her confession threw light on two important points-one that Sylvia had left the house at a little after six, and the other that Reddy had been at the meeting place at the time he said.

X

After the excitement of the French woman's arrest there was a sort of lull. For a few days people thought we were going to move right on and lay our hands on the murderer. But outside of proving that the Doctor wasn't the guilty one the crime was no nearer a solution than it had been the day it happened. Though there was still a good deal of talk about it, it began to die down in the public interest and it was then that the papers got to calling it "The Hesketh Mystery" in place of "The Hesketh Murder."

The reporters left the Inn and went back to live in town, coming in every few days to snoop around for any new items that might have turned up. Babbitts came oftener than the others and stayed later, and he and I had several more walks. We were getting to be like partners in some kind of secret business, meeting after dark, and pacing along the roads round the village, with the stars shining overhead and the ground hard and crumbly under our feet.

If you'd met us you'd have set us down for a pair of lovers, walking side by side under the dark of the trees. But if you'd followed along and listened you'd have got cured of that romantic notion mighty quick.

Our flirtation was all about evidence, and leads, and clues-not so much as a compliment or a baby stare from start to finish. I don't believe if you'd asked Babbitts he could have told you whether my eyes were brown or blue, and as for me-outside his being a nice kid he didn't figure out any more important than the weathervane on the Methodist Church.

It was "the case" that drew us together like a magnet drawing nails.

We'd speculate about it, look at it all round as if it was something we had hold of in our hands. I guess it was the mysteriousness of it that attracted him, and the reward, too. There was more in it for me as you know-but he never got a hint of _that_.

It was one evening, nearly four weeks after the murder that he gave me a shock-not meaning to, of course, for even then I'd found out he was the kind that wouldn't hurt a fly. We were talking of Jack Reddy, who we'd seen that evening in the village, the first time since the inquest.

"You know," said Babbitts, "it's queer but I keep thinking of that yarn of Jasper's, that evening in the Gilt Edge."

I drew away like he'd stuck a pin into me.

"Why do you think about _that_?" I asked loud and sharp.

"Why," he said, slow as if he was considering, "I suppose because it was so plausible. And I've been wondering if many other people have thought of it."

"I guess they have," I answered kind of fierce; "there's fools enough in the world, G.o.d knows, to think of anything. I make no doubt there's people who've tried to work out that _I_ did it, the reward tempting them to lies and sin."