The Million-Dollar Suitcase Part 31

CHAPTER XIX

ON THE HILL-TOP

Morning dawned on the good ship Jerry Boyne not so dismasted and rudderless as you might have thought. I'd carried that 1920 diary to my room and, before I slept, read the whole of it. This was the last word we had from the dead man; here if anywhere would be found support for the suggestions of a weakening mind and suicide.

Nothing of that sort here; on the contrary, Thomas Gilbert was very much his clear-headed, unpleasant, tyrannical self to the last stroke of the pen. But I came on something to build up a case against Eddie Hughes, the chauffeur.

I didn't get much sleep. As soon as I heard Chung moving around, I went down, had him give me a cup of coffee, then stationed him on the back porch, and walked to the study, shut myself in, and discharged my heavy police revolver into a corner of the fireplace; then with the front door open, fired again.

"How many shots?" I called to Chung.

"One time shoot."

Worth's head poked from his upstairs window as he shouted,

"What's the excitement down there?"

"Trying my gun. How many times did I fire?"

"Once, you crazy Indian!" and the question of sound-proof walls was settled. n.o.body heard the shot that killed Gilbert twenty feet away from the study if the door was closed. Mrs. Thornhill's ravings, as described in Skeet's letter to Barbara, were merely delirium.

I walked out around the driveway to the early morning streets of Santa Ysobel. The little town looked as peaceful and innocent as a pan of milk. In an hour or so, its ways would be full of people rushing about getting ready for the carnival, a curious contrast to my own business, sinister, tragic. It seemed to me that two currents moved almost as one, the hidden, dark part under--for there must be those in the town who knew the crime was murder; the murderer himself must still be here--and the foam of noisy gayety and blossoms riding atop. A Blossom Festival; the boyhood of the year; and I was in the midst of it, hunting a murderer!

An hour later I talked to Barbara in the stuffy little front room at Capehart's, brow-beaten by the noise of Sarah getting breakfast on the other side of the thin board part.i.tion; more disconcerted by the girl's manner of receiving the information of how I had found the 1920 diary hidden in Worth's bureau drawer. There was a swift, very personal anger at me. I had to clear myself instantly and thoroughly of any suspicion of believing for a moment that Worth himself had stolen or mutilated the book, protesting,

"I don't--I don't! Listen, Barbara--be reasonable!"

"That means 'Barbara, be scared!' And I won't. When they're scared, people make mistakes."

"You might see differently if you'd been there last night when c.u.mmings made his charge against Worth. That seventy two thousand dollars Worth carried up to the city Monday morning, he had taken from his father's safe the night before."

For a minute she just looked at me, and not even Worth Gilbert's dare-devil eyes ever held a more inclusively defiant light than those big, soft, dark ones of hers.

"Well--wasn't it his?"

"All right," I said shortly. "I'm not here to talk of Worth's financial methods; they're scheduled to get him into trouble; but let that pa.s.s.

Look through this book and you'll see who it is I'm after."

She had already opened the volume, and began to glance along the pages.

She made a motion for me to wait. I leaned back in my chair, and it was only a few moments later that she looked up to say,

"Don't make the arrest, Mr. Boyne. You have nothing here against Eddie--for murder."

Because I doubted myself, I began to scold, winding up,

"All the same, if that gink hasn't jumped town, I'll arrest him."

"It would be a good deal more logical to arrest him if he had jumped the town," Barbara reminded me. "If you really want to see him, Mr. Boyne, you'll find him at the garage around on the highway. He's working for Bill."

That was a set-back. A fleeing Eddie Hughes might have been hopeful; an Eddie Hughes who gave his employer back-talk, got himself fired, and then settled down within hand-reach, was not so good a bet. Barbara saw how it hit me, and offered a suggestion.

"Mr. Boyne, Worth and I are taking a hike out to San Leandro canyon this afternoon to get ferns for the decorating committee. Suppose you come along--anyhow, a part of the way--and have a quiet talk, all alone with us. Don't do anything until you have consulted Worth."

"All right--I'll go you," I a.s.sented, and half past two saw the three of us, Worth in corduroys and puttees, Barbara with high boots and short, dust-brown skirt, tramping out past the homes of people toward the open country. At the Vandeman place Skeet's truck was out in front, piled with folding chairs, frames, light lumber, and a lot of decorative stuff. The tall Chinaman came from the house with another load.

"You Barbie Wallace!" the flapper howled. "Aren't you ashamed to be walking off with Worth and Mr. Boyne both, and good men scarce as hen's teeth in Santa Ysobel to-day!"

"I'm not walking off with them--they're walking off with me," Barbara laughed at her.

"Shameless one!" Skeet drawled. "I see you let Mr. c.u.mmings have a day off--aren't you the kind little boss to 'em!"

I just raised my brows at Barbara, and she explained a bit hastily,

"Skeet thinks she has to be silly over the fact that Mr. c.u.mmings has gone up to town, I suppose." She added with fine indifference, "He'll be back in the morning."

"You bet he'll be back in the morning," Worth a.s.sured the world.

"Now what does he mean by that, Mr. Boyne?"

"He means c.u.mmings is out after him."

"I don't," Worth contradicted me personally. "I mean he's after Bobs.

She knows it. Look at her."

She glanced up at me from under her hat-brim, all the stars out in those shadowy pools that were her eyes. The walk had brought sumptuous color to her cheeks, where the two extra deep dimples began to show.

"You both may think," she began with a sobriety that belied the dimples and shining eyes, "looking on from the outside, that Mr. c.u.mmings has an idea of, as Skeet would say, 'rushing' me; but when we're alone together, about all he talks of is Worth."

"Bad sign," Worth flung over a shoulder that he pushed a little in advance of us. "Takes the old fellows that way. Their notion of falling for a girl is to fight all the other Johnnies in sight. Guess you've got him going, Bobs."

I walked along, chewing over the matter. She'd estimated c.u.mmings fairly, as she did most things that she turned that clear mind of hers on; but her lack of vanity kept her from realizing, as I did, that he was in the way to become a dangerous personal enemy to Worth. His self-interest, she thought, would eventually swing him to Worth's side.

She didn't as yet perceive that a motive more powerful than self-interest had hold of him now.

"Why, Mr. Boyne," she answered as though I'd been speaking my thoughts aloud, "I've known Mr. c.u.mmings for years and years. He never--"

"You said a mouthful there, Bobs." Worth halted, grinning, to interrupt her. "He never--none whatever. But he has now."

"He hasn't."

"Leave it to Jerry. Jerry saw him that first night in at Tait's; then afterward, in the office."

"Oh, come on!" Barbara started ahead impatiently. "What difference would it make."

They went on ahead of me, sc.r.a.pping briskly, as a boy and girl do who have grown up together. I stumped along after and reflected on the folly of mankind in general, and that of Allen G. c.u.mmings in particular. That careful, mature bachelor had seen this l.u.s.trous young creature blossom to her present perfection; he'd no doubt offered her safe and sane attention, when she came to live in San Francisco where they had friends in common. But it had needed Worth Gilbert's appearance on the scene to wake him up to his own real feeling. Forty-five on the chase of nimble sweet and twenty; c.u.mmings was in for sore feet and humiliating tumbles--and we were in for the worst he could do to us. I sighed. Worth had more than one way of making enemies, it seemed.