The Winning Clue Part 46

Reaching Furmville early Sunday morning, Bristow went straight to his bungalow, where Mattie had breakfast waiting for him.

"You is sholy some big man now, Mistuh Bristow!" she informed him. "Sence you been gawn, folks done made it a habit to drive by hyuh jes' foh de chanct uv seem' you."

Before the day was over, he found that this was true. And he liked it. He spent a great deal of his time on the front porch, finding it far from unpleasant to be regarded as a second Sherlock Holmes.

Late in the afternoon his Cincinnati friend, Overton, called on him, puffing and gasping for breath as he climbed the steps. Bristow was glad to see him; it afforded him an opportunity to discuss his success. He did not try to delude himself in that regard; he was proud of what he had accomplished--rightfully proud, he told himself--and pleased with his plans for the future.

"Gee whiz!" the fat man panted. "This hill is something fierce. It's only your sudden dash into the limelight that drags me up here."

"You behold"--Bristow softened his statement with a deprecating laugh--"Mr. Lawrence Bristow, a finished, honest-to-heaven detective, a criminologist."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm going to make it my profession. I'm starting out as a professional detective."

Overton burst into bubbling laughter.

"That's rich!" he exclaimed. "You'd never in the world make good at it.

Why, Bristow, you're lame; you've a crooked nose; that heavy, overhanging lip of yours--those things would enable any crook to spot you a mile off." He laughed again. "I'd like to see you shadowing some foxy second-story worker!"

"I said 'a consulting detective'," Bristow corrected him. "That shadowing business is for the hired man, the square-toed, bull-necked cops. I'll work only as the directing head, the brains of the investigations."

"Oh, that's different," said Overton, at once conciliatory. "That's nearer real sense. Big money in it, isn't there?"

"Yes. I'm not an eleemosynary inst.i.tution yet."

Overton mopped his fat cheeks.

"Ah, me!" he sighed. "We never know what's ahead of us, do we? A year ago you were dubbing around in Cincinnati trying to sell real estate and working out crime problems on paper--and here you are now, a big man.

It's hard to believe."

"It is, however, a very acceptable fact."

"No doubt, no doubt," a.s.sented the fat man.

On Overton's heels came the chief of police. After getting a minute recital of what had happened in Washington and Baltimore, he agreed that Braceway was only setting up straw men for the pleasure of knocking them down.

"Even if there is something mysterious in Morley's conduct, in what occurred in Baltimore," said the chief, "it can't do away with the open-and-shut fact that Perry did the murder."

"Of course," Bristow commented. "But what's the news with you?"

"For one thing, Perry gave us last night what he calls a confession. In it he says he did tell Lucy Thomas he knew where he could get money 'or something just as good'; he did go to Number Five in a more or less drunken condition; and he got as far as the front door.

"There, he says, he thought he heard a noise across the road from him, and he lost his nerve. He tiptoed down the steps and went away, pa.s.sing in between Number Five and Number Seven. He ran all the way back to Lucy's house, threw down the key he had got from her, and then went to his own rooming-house. He says he stayed there the rest of the night."

"Is that all?"

"That's all."

"How about the lavalliere? Wasn't it found under his window? The papers said so."

"Yes; in the gra.s.s in the yard. But he denies knowing anything about it."

"Of course! And his confession is nothing but a confirmation of the case against him."

"Exactly. He seems to want to hang himself. And he'll do it. The grand jury meets next Thursday. He'll be indicted then, and tried two weeks later."

"What are the people here saying about Braceway's bitterness against Morley? Anything?"

"Yes. I'd meant to tell you about that. Some of the gossip hits Withers pretty hard. They can't understand what's behind this persecution of Morley after it's been proved that Perry did the murder. You've seen hints of it in the papers.

"And it looks queer. Some say Withers is guilty, out-and-out guilty, and afraid the case against Perry won't hold good. So, they say, he wants to get a case against Morley."

"A sort of second line of defense?"

"I reckon so. But, then, there are others saying right now that Morley was mixed up in some sort of scandal for which Withers wants revenge.

That's what you said at the very start. Remember?"

Bristow laughed softly.

"Yes; I had that idea, and I've reasoned it out. On the way to Washington, and after we got there, I saw that Braceway wasn't entirely frank with me. You know how a man can feel a thing like that. He gets it by intuition.

"And it worried me. Having handled the case here, I didn't want him to spring some brand new angle which possibly, in some way, might make me look like a fool.

"I puzzled over the thing a whole lot. What was it he was after without letting me in on it? The night we talked to Morley in the station house, I got it. We were in a cab at the time, a lucky thing, because, when it burst upon me, I narrowly escaped hysterics. The thing came to me like an inspiration.

"Braceway was afraid Morley knew something detrimental to Withers and would spring it under questioning. Understand now: it wasn't directly connected with the murder, but something that would make it pretty hot for Withers. And here was the laugh: while Morley didn't know it, I did.

Braceway had made the trip to gag Morley, to see that he didn't uncover something which, after all, Morley didn't know--and I did!

"It was this: about nine months ago Mrs. Withers, while in Washington, got a lawyer, the firm of Dutton & Dutton, to draw up for her the necessary papers for suing Withers for a divorce. In these doc.u.ments she set forth in so many words that her husband had treated her with the utmost brutality, so much so that she lived daily in danger of death while under his roof.

"She regarded him, she swore, as capable of murdering her at any time.

Now, do you see? If that had gotten into the newspapers, if Morley had known of it through Maria Fulton and had blurted it out, no power on earth could have kept down the very reasonable a.s.sumption that Withers had had a hand in his wife's death--or, at least, had regarded it with complaisance.

"No wonder I laughed, was it? But I said nothing about it to Braceway. I couldn't have explained to him how I knew it, although the tip came to me straight enough. And, as there's no earthly chance of Withers having been implicated in the crime, why worry about it?

"I merely laughed and--kept quiet."

Greenleaf had listened in great solemnity to this amusing recital.

"Maybe you're right," he said. "But Withers has done some funny things."

"What things?"

"His wife was buried in Atlanta Thursday morning. He immediately left Atlanta, and hasn't been seen or heard of since--a sharp contrast to old Fulton. He got back here early Friday morning and came up to Number Five.

They're going to keep that bungalow."

"When did Withers leave Atlanta?"