CHAPTER IX
CLUES
“AND what was the nail driven home with?” I pursued, looking about.
“That’s a queer thing, too,” he returned. “Some heavy mallet or hammer must have been used. True, it could have been driven by some other hard or heavy object, but I see nothing indicative about. No bronze book-ends or iron doorstop.”
We scanned the room, but saw no implement that would act as a hammer.
“I think I may say,” Keeley went on, “that never have I seen a case with so many bizarre points. To be sure they may be all faked in an attempt to bewilder and mislead the investigators, but even so, such a number of clues, whether real or spurious, ought to lead somewhere.”
“They will,” I assured him. “Where are you going to begin?”
“I don’t know where I shall begin, but I shall end up with the watch in the water pitcher. That, you will find, will be the bright star in this galaxy of clues.”
“Just as a favour, Kee, do tell me why you stress that so. Why is that silly act more illuminating than the other queernesses?”
“No, Gray, I won’t tell you that now. Not that I want to be mysterious, but that may be my trump card, and I don’t want to expose it prematurely. You’d know yourself if you’d ever studied medical works.”
“Medical works! I can’t see any therapeutic value in the incident. Is it voodoo, or a medicine-man stunt?”
Griscom came into the room just then, and Moore asked him again as to the watch.
But we gained no new knowledge. The watch had been lying on a small jewel tray on the dresser. The water pitcher had been on a near-by table. It seemed, like all the rest of the inexplicable circumstances, a mere bit of wanton mischief.
“Why do you look so worried, Griscom?” Kee said, eying the man closely.
“I am worried, sir. About them weskits.”
“Oh, pshaw, they’re of small consequence compared to the graver questions we have to face.”
“Yes, sir, but it’s queer. Now, I know those two weskits were in their right place Wednesday morning. And Miss Alma said the master gave ’em to her of a Tuesday afternoon.”
“Oh, she just mistook the day,” I said, hastily, anxious to keep her name out of the discussion.
But Moore was interested at once.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Perfectly sure,” the man replied. “Miss Alma was here Tuesday afternoon and the master may have given her the weskits then, but she didn’t carry them home, for they were here Wednesday morning.”
“One of you must be mistaken as to the day,” I repeated. “And it doesn’t matter, anyway.”
“Oh, keep still, Gray,” Kee said, impatiently. “What about the Totem Pole, Griscom? Was that here Wednesday morning?”
“I don’t know for certain” He looked perplexed.
“Of course you don’t,” I broke in, irrepressibly. “You can’t remember exactly incidents that made no real impression on you at the time. Nobody can. And don’t try to be positive about these things when you’ve really only a vague recollection.”
“No, sir,” Griscom said, speaking deferentially enough, but I caught a slight gleam of obstinacy in his eye.
“Are you talking about those waistcoats?” asked Everett, coming into the room.
“Yes,” Kee said, “why?”
“Only that I’m puzzled. Miss Remsen says her uncle gave them to her on Tuesday, but I know that he wore the dark blue moire one on Wednesday.”
“At dinner time?” Moore asked.
“Yes, we don’t dress in summer, unless there are ladies here. He had it on at dinner I’m positive.”
“Then it’s all part of the planted evidence,” I informed them. “Whoever staged all the foolish scene on the bed, also grabbed up two waistcoats and the Totem Pole, made a bundle of them and deposited it in Miss Remsen’s boathouse.”
“Then why did she say she wanted them for patchwork”
“She didn’t at first,” I urged, not realizing where my argument led. “But she was so put about and bewildered by that fool coroner that she scarcely knew what she was saying”
“I think you scarcely know what you’re saying, Gray,” and Moore looked at me in kindly admonition. “You’d better hush up, if you don’t mind. I’m not sure Miss Remsen needs an advocate, but if she does, your incoherent babblings won’t do her any good.”
Though he smiled, his tone was serious, and I began to see I was making a fool of myself.
I turned on my heel and left the room, not trusting myself to hush up to the degree desired. In the sitting room, I saw Billy Dean, looking disconsolate.
I was surprised, for he had seemed cheerful enough up to now.
On a sudden impulse, and with a glance that he could not mistake for other than confidential, I said:
“So you saw the canoe Wednesday night?”
“Yes,” he said, answering my eyes rather than my words. Then realizing his slip, he said, quickly, “No, not a canoe, I heard a motor boat about midnight.”
“Yes, and a canoe later,” I persisted. “Look out, Dean, I’m not investigating, I’m only anxious to help—the innocent,” I finished, a little lamely.
“I don’t get you,” the young man said, stubbornly, and again the red flamed in his cheeks.
“Oh, yes, you do, and please understand we’re at one in this matter. I want you to promise not to say anything about it to any one. You see, your unfortunate trick of blushing like a schoolgirl gives you away, and makes you seem to admit far more than you know. Now, before Detective March or Keeley Moore gets after you, just you tell me what you know and let me advise you. I’m as loyal to Miss Remsen as you can possibly be, even if you are in love with her and I’m not.”
I made this not entirely veracious statement to set the poor chap’s mind at rest, for I could see dawning jealousy in his frank and open countenance.
He responded to my sincerity of manner and tone, and speaking almost in a whisper, said:
“I didn’t see her, my room is in the other wing, but I heard Alma’s paddling. I’d know her stroke among a thousand. Nobody paddles as she does.”
“Oh, you couldn’t recognize a mere paddle stroke!”
“Yes, I could. It’s unique, I tell you. She has a peculiar rhythm, and if you know it, it’s unmistakable.”
“At what time was this?”
“About half past one; a few minutes later, just after the clock in the hall had chimed the half hour.”
“Why do you tell me this?”
He glared at me. “That’s a nice question, when you’ve fairly dragged it out of me! But I’m banking on your statement that you’re loyal to Alma and I’m hoping that you can somehow ward off inquiries from Mr. Moore or keep the police away from her house.”
“You don’t think she had anything to do with”
“Of course, I know Alma Remsen had nothing to do with her uncle’s death, if that’s what you’re trying to say, but I do believe she was here late that night, and if that fact is discovered, it means trouble all round.”
He had suddenly acquired a dignity quite at variance with his former boyish embarrassment, and spoke earnestly and steadily.
“Why would she come here at such an hour?”
“She—she comes at any time—she has her own key” He was floundering again.
“Yes, I know, but at half past one at night! What could be the explanation?”
“I can’t tell you I daren’t tell you,” he moaned like a child. “But oh, Mr. Norris, do stand by! Do use any tact or cleverness you may possess to keep the hounds off her track! She will be persecuted, unless we can save her!” He began to look wild-eyed, and I began to fear that Miss Remsen had even a worse and more imbecile helper in him than in me.
But the whole affair was growing in interest, and I was glad to have a sympathizer in my belief in Alma Remsen’s innocence, whatever sort he might be.
For I had caught a few words from the next room and I felt certain that Everett and Keeley Moore were talking over the strange story of Alma and the waistcoats.
Feeling I could do no more with Dean just then, I went back to the bedroom.
“Sifting clues?” I asked, trying to speak casually.
Kee looked at me, and smiled a little.
“Absent clues rather than present ones,” he said. “You see, the waistcoats and the Totem Pole disappeared, but so did the plate—the fruit plate.”
“Is that important?” I asked.
“Why, yes, in a way. Everything that is here or that isn’t here is important.”
“A bit cryptic, but I grasp your meaning,” I told him. “Then the hammer that belongs to the nail is important?”
“Very much so,” Kee answered, gravely. “Do you know where it is?”
“I don’t, but it seems to me you haven’t looked for it very hard. If the murderer is one of this household, presumably he used a hammer belonging here.”
“Then it loses its importance. The hammer is only of interest if it was brought in from outside.”
“Have you made any headway at all, Kee?”
“Not much, I confess. Mr. Everett here inclines to Ames”
“And Ames inclines to Everett,” was the somewhat surprising observation of the secretary himself.
“Yes,” he went on, as I looked at him in amazement, “but I think, I hope, Ames only suspects me because it’s the conventional thing to do. In stories, you know, nine tenths of the crimes are committed by the confidential secretary.”
“Not so many,” I said, judicially: “Four tenths, at most. Then, three tenths by the butler, three tenths by the inheriting nephew, and two tenths by”
“Hold up, Gray,” Keeley cried, “you’ve used up your quota of tenths already. But Ames is a really fine suspect.”
“Except that he can’t dive and I can,” Everett helped along. “And there’s no way out of this locked apartment except through a window. And all the windows are on the Sunless Sea.”
“Could you dive into that and come up smiling?” asked Kee.
“I could,” Everett said, “but I’d rather not. I know the rocks and all that, but it’s a tricky stunt. Ames could never do it.”
“Unless he’s been hoaxing you all as to his prowess in the water,” Moore suggested.
“Yes, that might be,” Everett assented, thoughtfully.
Then Moore and I started for home. As we left the house, he proposed we go in a boat, of which there seemed to be plenty and to spare at the dock.
In preference to a canoe, Keeley selected a trim round-bottomed rowboat, and we started off.
He did the rowing, by choice, and he bent to his oars in silence. I too felt disinclined to talk, and we shot along the water, propelled by his long steady strokes.
I looked about me. The whole scene was a setting for peace and happiness—not for crime. Yet here was black crime, stalking through the landscape, aiming for Pleasure Dome, and clutching in its wicked hand the master of the noble estate.
I looked back at the wonderful view. The great house, built on a gently sloping hill, shone white in the summer sunlight. The densely growing trees, judiciously thinned out or cut into vistas, made a perfect background, and the foreground lake, shimmering now as the sun caught its wavelets, veiled its dangers and treachery beneath a guise of smiling light.
We went on and on and I suddenly realized that we had passed the Moore bungalow.
“Keeley,” I said, thinking he had forgotten to land, “where are you going?”
“To the Island,” he replied, and his face wore an inscrutable look, “Come along, Gray, but for Heaven’s sake don’t say anything foolish. Better not open your mouth at all. Better yet, stay in the boat”
“No,” I cried, “I’m going with you. Don’t be silly, Kee, I sha’n’t make a fool of myself.”
“Well, try not to, anyway,” he said, grimly, and then we made a landing at Alma Remsen’s home.
It was a tidy little dock and trim boathouse that received us, and I realized the aptness of the name “Whistling Reeds.”
For the tall reeds that lined some stretches of its shore were even now whistling faintly in the summer breeze. A stronger wind would indeed make them voiceful.
Back of the reeds were trees, and I had a passing thought that never had I seen so many trees on one island. So dense that they seemed like an impenetrable growth, the path cut through them to the house was not at once discernible.
“This way,” Kee said, and struck into a sort of lane between the sentinel poplars and hemlocks.
But a short walk brought us out into a great clearing where was a charming cottage and most pleasant grounds and gardens.
There were terraces, flower beds, tennis court, bowling green and a field showing a huge target, set up for archery practice.
It fascinated me, and I no longer wondered that Miss Remsen loved her island home. The house itself, though called a cottage, was a good-sized affair, of two and a half stories, with verandahs and balconies, and a hospitable atmosphere seemed to pervade the porches, furnished with wicker chairs and chintz cushions.
Yet the place was so still, so uninhabited looking that I shuddered involuntarily. I became conscious of a sinister effect, an undercurrent of something eerie and strange.
I glanced off at the trees and shrubbery. It was easily seen that the Island, of two or three acres, I thought, was bright and cheerful only immediately around the house. Surrounding the clearing for that, the trees closed in, and the result was like an enormous, lofty wall of impenetrable black woods.
I quickly came back to the house, and as we went up the steps, Alma Remsen came out on the porch.
I shall never forget how she looked then.
For the first time I saw her close by without a hat. Her hair, of golden brown, but bright gold in the sunlight, was in soft short ringlets like a baby’s curls. I know a lot, having sisters, about marcel and permanent, about water waves and finger curls, but this hair, I recognized, had that unusual attribute, longed for by all women: it was naturally curly.
The tendrils clustered at the nape of her neck and broke into soft, thick curls at the top of her head. I had never seen such fascinating hair, and dimly wondered what it was like before she had it cut short.
She wore a sort of sports suit of white silk with bands of green.
She glanced down at this apologetically.
“I ought to be in black,” she said, “or, at least, all white. But I am, when I go over to the mainland. Here at home, it doesn’t seem to matter. Does it?”
She looked up at me appealingly, though with no trace of coyness.
“Of course not,” I assured her. “Our affection is not made or marred by the colour of a garment.”
This sounded a bit stilted, even to me, but Kee had told me not to make a fool of myself and I was trying hard to obey.
“Sit down,” she said, hospitably, but though calm, she was far from being at ease.
“We’re only going to stay a minute,” Kee said. “We must get home to luncheon. It’s late now, and my wife will be furious. Miss Remsen, I think I’ll speak right out and not beat about the bush.”
She turned rather white, but sat listening, her hands clasped in her lap and her little white-shod foot tapping nervously on the porch floor.
“I want to ask you,” Keeley Moore spoke in a tone of such kindness that I could see Alma pluck up heart a bit, “about the waistcoats. Though it may be a trifling matter, yet great issues may hang on it. When you said your uncle gave them to you, were you strictly truthful?”
She sat silent, looking from one to the other of us. When she glanced at me I was startled at the message in her eyes. If ever a call of SOS was signalled, it was then. Without a word or a gesture her gaze implored my help.
But with all the willingness in the world, what could I do? Keeley had warned me against making a fool of myself, and though I would gladly have defied him to serve her, I could see no way to do so, fool or no fool. All I could do, was to give her back gaze for gaze and try to put in my eyes all the sympathy and help that were surging up in my heart.
I think she understood, and yet I could see a shadow of disappointment that I could, as she saw, do nothing definite.
Moore was waiting for his answer, but she was deliberate of manner and speech.
“By what right are you questioning me, Mr. Moore?” she said.
“Principally by right of my interest in you and your welfare and my great desire to be of service to you.” Kee’s sincerity was beyond all doubt.
“That is the truth?”
“Yes, Miss Remsen, that is the truth.”
“Then, I will tell you, that you can be of service to me only by refraining from questioning me and ceasing to interest yourself in my welfare.”
The asperity of the words was contradicted by the supplicating glance and the troubled face of the girl before us. Her eyelids quivered with that agonized trembling I had learned to know, and she fairly bit her lips in an effort to preserve her poise.
“I’m sorry not to take you at your word, and leave you at once, but I must warn you that the police will doubtless come to see you, and I’m sure you are in need of advice.”
“Police!” she breathed, scarcely audibly.
“Yes; Not Hart, but more likely Detective March. He is not an unkind man, but he will do his duty, and it will be an ordeal for you. Now, won’t you let me help you, as a friend, or, if not, won’t you call a lawyer, of good standing and repute?”
“A lawyer!” she breathed, exactly as she had spoken of the police. Clearly, the poor child was at her wits’ end. The reason for her distress I did not see, for surely nobody could dream of her being mixed up in a crime. The obvious explanation was that she was shielding somebody, and this was my theory.
I came to a swift conclusion that she had gone to Pleasure Dome that night, that she had seen or heard the murderer at his fell deed, and that it had so unnerved her that she could not control herself when thinking of it.
This seemed to point to Billy Dean, that is, if she cared for him as he did for her.
Kee was forging ahead.
“Yes. Please try to realize, Miss Remsen, that the visit from the police detective is inevitable. He will doubtless come this afternoon. You will have to see him; one can’t evade the law. Now, let me help you to be a little prepared for him, and not let him throw you into spasms of terrified silence, or, worse, impetuous and incriminating statements.”
Still looking at him steadily, Alma Remsen seemed to change. Her face grew calm, even haughty; her lips set in a straight line that betokened determination and courage; and her eyes fairly gleamed with a beautiful bravery that transformed her into a veritable goddess of war.
She seemed to have taken up her sword and her shield, and I think it was at that moment that I realized that I loved her and adored her as something far above earthly mortals.
I couldn’t help her, at least, not at the moment, but I could worship her and did so, with the innermost fibres of my being.
Then this new Alma spoke.
“Mr. Moore,” she said, “and Mr. Norris, I thank you for this visit. I thank you for the kindness that prompted it, and for your offers of assistance. But there is nothing you can do, either of you. I am alone in the world; alone, I must fight my battles and conquer my foes. Alone I must defend my actions and accept my misfortunes. I live alone, I shall always be alone, and alone I must decide upon my course in this present crisis. Please believe I am grateful and please believe I am sorry not to accept your kindly offered assistance. But I cannot tell you anything, I cannot—I cannot—Merry!”
Her final despairing call brought the old nurse on the run.
“Yes, lamb, yes, my darling,—there, there”
Mrs. Merivale clasped the trembling girl to her bosom and glared at us as at vile interlopers.
“Please to go away, gentlemen,” she said, in a repressed tone that indicated wrath behind it. “Please leave my young lady for the present. She will see you, if she wishes, at some other time. But now, she is nervous and all wrought up with the horror of her uncle’s death. If you are men, let her alone!”
The last plea was brought out with a dramatic touch worthy of a tragedy queen, and I know I felt like a worm of the dust and I devoutly hoped that Keeley felt even more so.
He gave one last bit of unsolicited advice.
“You’d better be with Miss Remsen when the police come, Mrs. Merivale,” he said, and no one could have put any construction on his words other than the kindest and most disinterested counsel.
Then we went away, and Keeley rowed us home without a word.