The Winning Clue Part 52

"All right," agreed Braceway. "I can give you the important points in a very few minutes; the high lights."

CHAPTER XXVIII

CONFESSION VOLUNTARY

Braceway leaned against the mantel, relaxed, swinging his cane slowly in his right hand, a careless, easy grace in his att.i.tude. He addressed himself to Fulton and Greenleaf, an occasional glance including Abrahamson in the circle of those for whose benefit he spoke.

Bristow listened now in unfeigned absorption, estimating every statement, weighing each detail. The tenseness of his pale face showed how he forced his brain to concentration.

"Having decided that the bearded man and the murderer were the same,"

Braceway began, "I asked myself this question: 'Who, of all those in Furmville, is so connected with the case now that I am warranted in thinking he did the previous blackmailing and this murder?' And I eliminated in my own mind everybody but Lawrence Bristow. He was the one, the only one, who could have annoyed Mrs. Withers one and four years ago, respectively, and also could have murdered her.

"Morley was at once out of the reckoning; he had known the Fultons for only the past three years. To consider the negro, Perry Carpenter, would have been absurd. Withers, of course, was beyond suspicion. Everything pointed to Bristow.

"With that decision last Wednesday afternoon, I went to Number Five and got all the finger-prints visible on the polished surfaces of the chair which was handled, overturned, in the living room the night of the murder. Fortunately, this polish was inferior enough to have been made gummy by the rain and dampness that night; and, in the stress of the few days following, had been neither dusted nor wiped off.

"Bristow did not touch this chair the morning the murder was discovered.

In fact, he cautioned everybody not to touch it.

"Reliable witnesses say he didn't touch it between then and the time I got the finger-prints. He declares he was never in the bungalow before he entered it in response to Miss Fulton's cry for help.

"I found on the chair the finger-prints of five different persons, four afterwards identified: Miss Fulton, the coroner, Miss Kelly and Lucy Thomas. The fifth I was unable to check up then.

"I did so later, in Washington.

"It was identical with the print of Bristow's fingers on the gla.s.s top of a table in his hotel room there. I didn't depend on my own judgment for that. I had with me an expert on finger-prints. And finger-prints, as you all know, never lie.

"All this established the fact, beyond question, that Bristow had been secretly in the living room of Number Five before, or at the time of, the commission of the crime."

He paused, giving them time to appreciate the full import of that chain of facts.

For the s.p.a.ce of half a minute, the room was a study in still life. The sound of Fulton's grating teeth was distinctly audible. Bristow made a quick move, as if to speak, but checked the impulse.

"In Washington," Braceway resumed, "he had the hemorrhage. It was faked--a red-ink hemorrhage. Before the arrival of the physician who was summoned, Bristow had ordered a bellboy to wrap the 'blood-stained'

handkerchief and towel in a larger and thicker towel and to have the whole bundle burned at once.

"This, he explained to the boy, was because of his desire that n.o.body be put in danger of contracting tuberculosis.

"By bribing the porter who had been directed to do the burning, I got a look at both the handkerchief and the towel. They were soaked right enough, thoroughly soaked--in the red ink.

"The physician was easily deceived because, when he came in, all traces of the so-called blood had been obliterated. Altogether, it was a clever trick on Bristow's part.

"His motive for staging it and for arranging for a long and uninterrupted sleep was clear enough. There was something he wanted to do un.o.bserved, something so vital to him that he was willing to take an immense amount of trouble with it. Golson's detective bureau let me have the best trailer, the smoothest 'shadow,' in the business--Tom Ricketts.

"At my direction he followed Bristow from the Willard Hotel to the electric car leaving Washington for Baltimore at one o'clock. Reaching Baltimore at two-thirty, Bristow p.a.w.ned the emeralds and diamonds at two p.a.w.nshops. He caught the four o'clock electric car back to Washington, and was in his room long before six, the hour at which his nurse, Miss Martin, was to wake him.

"On the Baltimore trip he had a left leg as sound as mine and wore no brace of any kind. He did wear a moustache, and bushy eyebrows, which changed his appearance tremendously. Also, he had changed the outline of his face and the shape of his lips.

"While he was in Baltimore, I searched the bedroom in which he was supposed to be asleep.

"Miss Martin, in whom I had been obliged to confide, helped me. We found in the two-inch sole of the left shoe, which of course he did not take with him, a hollow place, a very serviceable receptacle. In it was the bulk of the missing Withers jewelry, the stones unset, pried from their gold and platinum settings.

"They are, I dare say, there now."

The two policemen stared wide-eyed at Bristow. He was, they decided, the "slickest" man they had ever seen.

"You see why he executed the trick? It was to establish forever, beyond the possibility of question, his innocence. Plainly, if an unknown man p.a.w.ned the Withers jewelry in Baltimore while Bristow slept, exhausted by a major hemorrhage, in Washington, his case was made good, his alibi perfect.

"You can appreciate now how he built up his fake case against Perry Carpenter, his use of the b.u.t.tons, his creeping about at night, like a villain in cheap melodrama, dropping pieces of the jewelry where they would incriminate the negro most surely, and his exploitation of the 'winning clue,' the finger nail evidence.

"Furthermore, he gave Lucy Thomas a frightful beating to force from her the statement against Perry. In this, he was brutal beyond belief. I saw that same afternoon the marks of his blows on her shoulders. They were sufficient proofs of his capacity for unbridled rage. The sight of them strengthened my conviction that, in a similar mood, he had murdered Mrs.

Withers."

"The negro lied!" Bristow broke in at last, his words a little fast despite his surface equanimity. "I subjected her to no ill treatment whatever. Anyway"--he dismissed it with a wave of his hand--"it's a minor detail."

Braceway, without so much as a glance at him, continued:

"And that gave me my knowledge of her being a partial albino. She has patches of white skin across her shoulders, and Perry, in struggling with her for possession of the key to Number Five, had scratched her there badly. That, I think, disposes of the finger nail evidence against Carpenter.

"The rest followed as a matter of course. An examination of Major Ross'

collection of circulars describing those 'wanted' by the police of the various cities for the past six years revealed the photograph of Splain.

Bristow has changed his appearance somewhat--enough, perhaps, to deceive the casual glance--but the identification was easy.

"I then ran over to New York and got the Splain story. I knew he was so dead sure of having eluded everybody that he would stay here in Furmville. But, to make it absolutely sure, I sent him yesterday a telegram to keep him a.s.sured that I was working with him and ready to share discoveries with him. And I confess it afforded me a little pleasure, the sending of that wire. I was playing a kind of cat-and-mouse game."

Bristow put up his hand, demanding attention. When Braceway ignored the gesture, he leaned back, smiling, derisive.

"Morley's embezzlement and its consequences gave me a happy excuse for keeping on this fellow's trail while he was busy perfecting the machinery for Perry's destruction. The man's self-a.s.surance, his conceit----"

"I've had enough of this!" Bristow cut in violently, exhibiting his first deep emotion. He turned to Greenleaf:

"Haven't you had enough of this drool? What's the man trying to establish anyhow? He talks in one breath about my having changed the outline of my face and the shape of my mouth, and in the next second about recognizing as me a photograph which he admits was taken at least six years ago!

"It's an alibi for himself, an excuse for not being able to prove that I'm the man who p.a.w.ned the jewelry in Baltimore! It's thinner than air!"

But Greenleaf's defection was now complete.

"Go on," he said to Braceway. The more he thought of the full extent to which the embezzler had gulled him for the past week, the more he raged.

"Not for me! I don't want any more of the drivel!" Bristow objected again, his voice raucous and still directed to Greenleaf. "What's _your_ idea? I admit I'm wanted in New York on a trumped-up charge of embezzlement. This detective, by a stroke of blind luck, ran into that; and, as I say, I admit it.

"You can deal with that as you see fit; that is, if you want to deal with it after what I've done for law and order, and for you, in this murder case.

"But you can't be crazy enough to take any stock in this nonsense about my having been connected with the crime. Exercise your own intelligence!