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Anna Katharine Green >> Initials Only
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I attempted to smile, but instead, shuddered painfully, as I
raised my hand and pointed down at the street.
"They are imitating the man," I cried; "my husband and--and the
person he went out with. It looked dreadful to me; that is all."
One of the gentlemen immediately said some kind words to me, and
another smiled in a very encouraging way. But their attention
was soon diverted, and so was mine by the entrance of a man in
semi-uniform, who was immediately addressed as Clausen.
I knew his face. He was one of the doorkeepers; the oldest employee
about the hotel, and the one best liked. I had often exchanged
words with him myself.
Mr. Slater at once put his question:
"Has Mr. Brotherson passed your door at any time to-night?"
"Mr. Brotherson! I don't remember, really I don't," was the
unexpected reply. "It's not often I forget. But so many people
came rushing in during those few minutes, and all so excited--"
"Before the excitement, Clausen. A little while before, possibly
just before."
"Oh, now I recall him! Yes, Mr. Brotherson went out of my door
not many minutes before the cry upstairs. I forgot because I had
stepped back from the door to hand a lady the muff she had dropped,
and it was at that minute he went out. I just got a glimpse of his
back as he passed into the street."
"But you are sure of that back?"
"I don't know another like it, when he wears that big coat of his.
But Jim can tell you, sir. He was in the cafe up to that minute,
and that's where Mr. Brotherson usually goes first."
"Very well; send up Jim. Tell him I have some orders to give him."
The old man bowed and went out.
Meanwhile, Mr. Slater had exchanged some words with the two
officials, and now approached me with an expression of extreme
consideration. They were about to excuse me from further
participation in this informal inquiry. This I saw before he
spoke. Of course they were right. But I should greatly have
preferred to stay where I was till George came back.
However, I met him for an instant in the hall before I took the
elevator, and later I heard in a round-about way what Jim and
some others about the house had to say of Mr. Brotherson.
He was an habitue of the hotel, to the extent of dining once or
twice a week in the cafe, and smoking, afterwards, in the public
lobby. When he was in the mood for talk, he would draw an
ever-enlarging group about him, but at other times he would be
seen sitting quite alone and morosely indifferent to all who
approached him. There was no mystery about his business. He was
an inventor, with one or two valuable patents already on the market.
But this was not his only interest. He was an all round sort of
man, moody but brilliant in many ways--a character which at once
attracted and repelled, odd in that he seemed to set little store
by his good looks, yet was most careful to dress himself in a way
to show them off to advantage. If he had means beyond the ordinary
no one knew it, nor could any man say that he had not. On all
personal matters he was very close-mouthed, though he would talk
about other men's riches in a way to show that he cherished some
very extreme views.
This was all which could be learned about him off-hand, and at so
late an hour. I was greatly interested, of course, and had plenty
to think of till I saw George again and learned the result of the
latest investigations.
Miss Challoner had been shot, not stabbed. No other deduction was
possible from such facts as were now known, though the physicians
had not yet handed in their report, or even intimated what that
report would be. No assailant could have approached or left her,
without attracting the notice of some one, if not all of the
persons seated at a table in the same room. She could only have
been reached by a bullet sent from a point near the head of a small
winding staircase connecting the mezzanine floor with a coat-room
adjacent to the front door. This has already been insisted on, as
you will remember, and if you will glance at the diagram which
George hastily scrawled for me, you will see why.
A. B., as well as C. D., are half circular openings into the office
lobby. E. F. are windows giving upon Broadway, and G. the party
wall, necessarily unbroken by window, door or any other opening.
_____________________G.______
| ===desk |
| |
| Where Miss C Fell-x o
| A o
| o
E o
| _____ |
| |_____|table |
| o
| o
| B o
| o
| ________ H ________ |
| *** | |
| ** ** |elevator |
| ** staircase
| ** ** X. |_________|_____C_________D____
| ***
F Musician's Gallery
|____ ______________ ________________ ______
|
| Dining Room Level With Lobby
It follows then that the only possible means of approach to this
room lies through the archway H., or from the elevator door. But
the elevator made no stop at the mezzanine on or near the time of
the attack upon Miss Challoner; nor did any one leave the table
or pass by it in either direction till after the alarm given by
her fall.
But a bullet calls for no approach. A man at X. might raise and
fire his pistol without attracting any attention to himself. The
music, which all acknowledge was at its full climax at this moment,
would drown the noise of the explosion, and the staircase, out of
view of all but the victim, afford the same means of immediate
escape, which it must have given of secret and unseen approach.
The coat-room into which it descended communicated with the lobby
very near the main entrance, and if Mr. Brotherson were the man,
his sudden appearance there would thus be accounted for.
To be sure, this gentleman had not been noticed in the coatroom by
the man then in charge, but if the latter had been engaged at that
instant, as he often was, in hanging up or taking down a coat from
the rack, a person might easily pass by him and disappear into the
lobby without attracting his attention. So many people passed that
way from the dining-room beyond, and so many of these were tall,
fine-looking and well-dressed.
It began to look bad for this man, if indeed he were the one we had
seen under the street-lamp; and, as George and I reviewed the
situation, we felt our position to be serious enough for us severally
to set down our impressions of this man before we lost our first
vivid idea. I do not know what George wrote, for he sealed his words
up as soon as he had finished writing, but this is what I put on paper
while my memory was still fresh and my excitement unabated:
He had the look of a man of powerful intellect and determined will,
who shudders while he triumphs; who outwardly washes his hands of
a deed over which he inwardly gloats. This was when he first rose
from the snow. Afterwards he had a moment of fear; plain, human,
everyday fear. But this was evanescent. Before he had turned to
go, he showed the self-possession of one who feels himself so
secure, or is so well-satisfied with himself, that he is no longer
conscious of other emotions.
"Poor fellow," I commented aloud, as I folded up these words; "he
reckoned without you, George. By to-morrow he will be in the hands
of the police."
"Poor fellow?" he repeated. "Better say 'Poor Miss Challoner!'
They tell me she was one of those perfect women who reconcile even
the pessimist to humanity and the age we live in. Why any one
should want to kill her is a mystery; but why this man should
--There! no one professes to explain it. They simply go by the
facts. To-morrow surely must bring strange revelations."
And with this sentence ringing in my mind, I lay down and endeavoured
to sleep. But it was not till very late that rest came. The noise
of passing feet, though muffled beyond their wont, roused me in spite
of myself. These footsteps might be those of some late arrival, or
they might be those of some wary detective intent on business far
removed from the usual routine of life in this great hotel.
I recalled the glimpse I had had of the writing-room in the early
evening, and imagined it as it was with Miss Challoner's body
removed and the incongruous flitting of strange and busy figures
across its fatal floors, measuring distances and peering into
corners, while hundreds slept above and about them in undisturbed
repose.
Then I thought of him, the suspected and possibly guilty one. In
visions over which I had little if any control, I saw him in all
the restlessness of a slowly dying down excitement--the
surroundings strange and unknown to me, the figure not--seeking
for quiet; facing the past; facing the future; knowing, perhaps,
for the first time in his life what it was for crime and remorse to
murder sleep. I could not think of him as lying still--slumbering
like the rest of mankind, in the hope and expectation of a busy
morrow. Crime perpetrated looms so large in the soul, and this man
had a soul as big as his body; of that I was assured. That its
instincts were cruel and inherently evil, did not lessen its capacity
for suffering. And he was suffering now; I could not doubt it,
remembering the lovely face and fragrant memory of the noble woman
he had, under some unknown impulse, sent to an unmerited doom.
At last I slept, but it was only to rouse again with the same quick
realisation of my surroundings, which I had experienced on my
recovery from my fainting fit of hours before. Someone had stopped
at our door before hurrying by down the hall. Who was that someone?
I rose on my elbow, and endeavoured to peer through the dark. Of
course, I could see nothing. But when I woke a second time, there
was enough light in the room, early as it undoubtedly was, for me
to detect a letter lying on the carpet just inside the door.
Instantly I was on my feet. Catching the letter up, I carried it
to the window. Our two names were on it--Mr. and Mrs. George
Anderson: the writing, Mr. Slater's.
I glanced over at George. He was sleeping peacefully. It was too
early to wake him, but I could not lay that letter down unread; was
not my name on it? Tearing it open, I devoured its contents,--the
exclamation I made on reading it, waking George.
The writing was in Mr. Slater's hand, and the words were:
"I must request, at the instance of Coroner Heath and such of
the police as listened to your adventure, that you make no
further mention of what you saw in the street under our windows
last night. The doctors find no bullet in the wound. This
clears Mr. Brotherson."
V
SWEET LITTLE MISS CLARKE
When we took our seats at the breakfast-table, it was with the
feeling of being no longer looked upon as connected in any way with
this case. Yet our interest in it was, if anything, increased, and
when I saw George casting furtive glances at a certain table behind
me, I leaned over and asked him the reason, being sure that the
people whose faces I saw reflected in the mirror directly before us
had something to do with the great matter then engrossing us. His
answer conveyed the somewhat exciting information that the four
persons seated in my rear were the same four who had been reading
at the round table in the mezzanine at the time of Miss Challoner's
death.
Instantly they absorbed all my attention, though I dared not give
them a direct look, and continued to observe them only in the glass.
"Is it one family?" I asked.
"Yes, and a very respectable one. Transients, of course, but very
well known in Denver. The lady is not the mother of the boys, but
their aunt. The boys belong to the gentleman, who is a widower."
"Their word ought to be good."
George nodded.
"The boys look wide-awake enough if the father does not. As for
the aunt, she is sweetness itself. Do they still insist that Miss
Challoner was the only person in the room with them at this time?"
"They did last night. I don't know how they will meet this
statement of the doctor's."
"George?"
He leaned nearer.
"Have you ever thought that she might have been a suicide? That
she stabbed herself?"
"No, for in that case a weapon would have been found."
"And are you sure that none was?"
"Positive. Such a fact could not have been kept quiet. If a weapon
had been picked up there would be no mystery, and no necessity for
further police investigation."
"And the detectives are still here?"
"I just saw one."
"George?"
Again his head came nearer.
"Have they searched the lobby? I believe she had a weapon."
"Laura!"
"I know it sounds foolish, but the alternative is so improbable. A
family like that cannot be leagued together in a conspiracy to hide
the truth concerning a matter so serious. To be sure, they may all
be short-sighted, or so little given to observation that they didn't
see what passed before their eyes. The boys look wide-awake enough,
but who can tell? I would sooner believe that--"
I stopped short so suddenly that George looked startled. My
attention had been caught by something new I saw in the mirror upon
which my attention was fixed. A man was looking in from the corridor
behind, at the four persons we were just discussing. He was watching
them intently, and I thought I knew his face.
"What kind of a looking person was the man who took you outside last
night?" I inquired of George, with my eyes still on this furtive
watcher.
"A fellow to make you laugh. A perfect character, Laura; hideously
homely but agreeable enough. I took quite a fancy to him. Why?"
"I am looking at him now."
"Very likely. He's deep in this affair. Just an everyday detective,
but ambitious, I suppose, and quite alive to the importance of being
thorough."
"He is watching those people. No, he isn't. How quickly he
disappeared!"
"Yes, he's mercurial in all his movements. Laura, we must get out
of this. There happens to be something else in the world for me to
do than to sit around and follow up murder clews."
But we began to doubt if others agreed with him, when on passing
out we were stopped in the lobby by this same detective, who had
something to say to George, and drew him quickly aside.
"What does he want?" I asked, as soon as George had returned to
my side.
"He wants me to stand ready to obey any summons the police may
send me."
"Then they still suspect Brotherson?"
"They must."
My head rose a trifle as I glanced up at George.
"Then we are not altogether out of it?" I emphasised, complacently.
He smiled which hardly seemed apropos. Why does George sometimes
smile when I am in my most serious moods.
As we stepped out of the hotel, George gave my arm a quiet pinch
which served to direct my attention to an elderly gentleman who,
was just alighting from a taxicab at the kerb. He moved heavily
and with some appearance of pain, but from the crowd collected on
the sidewalk many of whom nudged each other as he passed, he was
evidently a person of some importance, and as he disappeared within
the hotel entrance, I asked George who this kind-faced, bright-eyed
old gentleman could be.
He appeared to know, for he told me at once that he was Detective
Gryce; a man who had grown old in solving just such baffling
problems as these.
"He gave up work some time ago, I have been told," my husband went
on; "but evidently a great case still has its allurement for him.
The trail here must be a very blind one for them to call him in.
I wish we had not left so soon. It would have been quite an
experience to see him at work."
"I doubt if you would have been given the opportunity. I noticed
that we were slightly de trop towards the last."
"I wouldn't have minded that; not on my own account, that is. It
might not have been pleasant for you. However, the office is
waiting. Come, let me put you on the car."
That night I bided his coming with an impatience I could not control.
He was late, of course, but when he did appear, I almost forgot our
usual greeting in my hurry to ask him if he had seen the evening
papers.
"No," he grumbled, as he hung up his overcoat. "Been pushed about
all day. No time for anything."
"Then let me tell you--"
But he would have dinner first.
However, a little later we had a comfortable chat. Mr. Gryce had
made a discovery, and the papers were full of it. It was one which
gave me a small triumph over George. The suggestion he had laughed
at was not so entirely foolish as he had been pleased to consider
it. But let me tell the story of that day, without any further
reference to myself.
The opinion had become quite general with those best acquainted
with the details of this affair, that the mystery was one of those
abnormal ones for which no solution would ever be found, when the
aged detective showed himself in the building and was taken to the
room, where an Inspector of Police awaited him. Their greeting
was cordial, and the lines on the latter's face relaxed a little
as he met the still bright eye of the man upon whose instinct
and judgment so much reliance had always been placed.
"This is very good of you," he began, glancing down at the aged
detective's bundled up legs, and gently pushing a chair towards
him. "I know that it was a great deal to ask, but we're at our
wits' end, and so I telephoned. It's the most inexplicable--There!
you have heard that phrase before. But clews--there are absolutely
none. That is, we have not been able to find any. Perhaps you can.
At least, that is what we hope. I've known you more than once to
succeed where others have failed."
The elderly man thus addressed, glanced down at his legs, now
propped up on a stool which someone had brought him, and smiled,
with the pathos of the old who sees the interests of a lifetime
slipping gradually away.
"I am not what I was. I can no longer get down on my hands and
knees to pick up threads from the nap of a rug, or spy out a spot
of blood in the crimson woof of a carpet."
"You shall have Sweetwater here to do the active work for you.
What we want of you is the directing mind--the infallible instinct.
It's a case in a thousand, Gryce. We've never had anything just
like it. You've never had anything at all like it. It will make
you young again."
The old man's eyes shot fire and unconsciously one foot slipped to
the floor. Then he bethought himself and painfully lifted it back
again.
"What are the points? What's the difficulty?" he asked. "A
woman has been shot--"
"No, not shot, stabbed. We thought she had been shot, for that was
intelligible and involved no impossibilities. But Drs. Heath and
Webster, under the eye of the Challoners' own physician, have made
an examination of the wound--an official one, thorough and quite
final so far as they are concerned, and they declare that no bullet
is to be found in the body. As the wound extends no further than
the heart, this settles one great point, at least."
"Dr. Heath is a reliable man and one of our ablest coroners."
"Yes. There can be no question as to the truth of his report. You
know the victim? Her name, I mean, and the character she bore?"
"Yes; so much was told me on my way down."
"A fine girl unspoiled by riches and seeming independence. Happy,
too, to all appearance, or we should be more ready to consider the
possibility of suicide."
"Suicide by stabbing calls for a weapon. Yet none has been found,
I hear."
"None."
"Yet she was killed that way?"
"Undoubtedly, and by a long and very narrow blade, larger than a
needle but not so large as the ordinary stiletto."
"Stabbed while by herself, or what you may call by herself? She
had no companion near her?"
"None, if we can believe the four members of the Parrish family who
were seated at the other end of the room."
"And you do believe them?"
"Would a whole family lie--and needlessly? They never knew the
woman--father, maiden aunt and two boys, clear-eyed, jolly young
chaps whom even the horror of this tragedy, perpetrated as it were
under their very nose, cannot make serious for more than a passing
moment."
"It wouldn't seem so."
"Yet they swear up and down that nobody crossed the room towards
Miss Challoner."
"So they tell me."
"She fell just a few feet from the desk where she had been writing.
No word, no cry, just a collapse and sudden fall. In olden days
they would have said, struck by a bolt from heaven. But it was a
bolt which drew blood; not much blood, I hear, but sufficient to
end life almost instantly. She never looked up or spoke again.
What do you make of it, Gryce?"
"It's a tough one, and I'm not ready to venture an opinion yet. I
should like to see the desk you speak of, and the spot where she
fell."
A young fellow who had been hovering in the background at once
stepped forward. He was the plain-faced detective who had spoken
to George.
"Will you take my arm, sir?"
Mr. Gryce's whole face brightened. This Sweetwater, as they called
him, was, I have since understood, one of his proteges and more or
less of a favourite.
"Have you had a chance at this thing?" he asked. "Been over the
ground--studied the affair carefully?"
"Yes, sir; they were good enough to allow it."
"Very well, then, you're in a position to pioneer me. You've seen
it all and won't be in a hurry."
"No; I'm at the end of my rope. I haven't an idea, sir."
"Well, well, that's honest at all events." Then, as he slowly rose
with the other's careful assistance, "There's no crime without its
clew. The thing is to recognise that clew when seen. But I'm in no
position, to make promises. Old days don't return for the asking."
Nevertheless, he looked ten years younger than when he came in, or
so thought those who knew him.
The mezzanine was guarded from all visitors save such as had
official sanction. Consequently, the two remained quite
uninterrupted while they moved about the place in quiet consultation.
Others had preceded them; had examined the plain little desk and
found nothing; had paced off the distances; had looked with longing
and inquiring eyes at the elevator cage and the open archway leading
to the little staircase and the musicians' gallery. But this was
nothing to the old detective. The locale was what he wanted, and
he got it. Whether he got anything else it would be impossible to
say from his manner as he finally sank into a chair by one of the
openings, and looked down on the lobby below. It was full of
people coming and going on all sorts of business, and presently he
drew back, and, leaning on Sweetwater's arm, asked him a few
questions.
"Who were the first to rush in here after the Parrishes gave the
alarm?"
"One or two of the musicians from the end of the hall. They had
just finished their programme and were preparing to leave the
gallery. Naturally they reached her first."
"Good! their names?"
"Mark Sowerby and Claus Hennerberg. Honest Germans--men who have
played here for years."
"And who followed them? Who came next on the scene?"
"Some people from the lobby. They heard the disturbance and
rushed up pell-mell. But not one of these touched her. Later her
father came."
"Who did touch her? Anybody, before the father came in?"
"Yes; Miss Clarke, the middle-aged lady with the Parrishes. She
had run towards Miss Challoner as soon as she heard her fall, and
was sitting there with the dead girl's head in her lap when the
musicians showed themselves."
"I suppose she has been carefully questioned?"
"Very, I should say."
"And she speaks of no weapon?"
"No. Neither she nor any one else at that moment suspected murder
or even a violent death. All thought it a natural one--sudden, but
the result of some secret disease."
"Father and all?"
"Yes."
"But the blood? Surely there must have been some show of blood?"
"They say not. No one noticed any. Not till the doctor came--her
doctor who was happily in his office in this very building. He saw
the drops, and uttered the first suggestion of murder."
"How long after was this? Is there any one who has ventured to make
an estimate of the number of minutes which elapsed from the time she
fell, to the moment when the doctor first raised the cry of murder?"
"Yes. Mr. Slater, the assistant manager, who was in the lobby at
the time, says that ten minutes at least must have elapsed."
"Ten minutes and no blood! The weapon must still have been there.
Some weapon with a short and inconspicuous handle. I think they
said there were flowers over and around the place where it struck?"
"Yes, great big scarlet ones. Nobody noticed--nobody looked. A
panic like that seems to paralyse people."
"Ten minutes! I must see every one who approached her during those
ten minutes. Every one, Sweetwater, and I must myself talk with
Miss Clarke."
"You will like her. You will believe every word she says."
"No doubt. All the more reason why I must see her. Sweetwater,
someone drew that weapon out. Effects still have their causes,
notwithstanding the new cult. The question is who? We must
leave no stone unturned to find that out."
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