CHAPTER II
A Tangled Web
SIMMONDS had dropped on one knee beside the body. He was up again in an instant.
“No need for an ambulance,” he said tersely. “He’s dead.”
The words seemed to rouse the girl from the ecstasy of horror which possessed her, and she buried her face in her hands, shuddering convulsively. Godfrey caught her as she swayed forward, and led her gently to a chair.
“Perhaps you don’t remember me, Miss Croydon,” he said. “Godfrey’s my name—it was only the other night at Mrs. Delroy’s I met you. It was Jack Drysdale who introduced me—you know I’m an old friend of his.”
“Yes,” she murmured indistinctly, “I remember quite”
An exclamation from Simmonds interrupted her. He had picked up a small, pearl-handled revolver from the floor in the corner.
“Is this yours, miss?” he asked.
She nodded faintly.
He snapped it open and looked at the chambers. One had been discharged. He sniffed at the barrel, then held it out to Godfrey. The odour of burnt gunpowder was plainly discernible.
Godfrey’s face hardened as he turned to the janitor, who had regained his breath and stood staring on the threshold.
“My friend,” he said, “shut the door”
He stopped as he heard the tramp of heavy feet approaching along the corridor.
“Wait,” said Simmonds. “There come my men. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Godfrey nodded curtly, and waited until Simmonds closed the door after him.
“Now, Miss Croydon,” he said, “tell me quickly how it happened. I can’t help you unless I know the whole story, and I want to help you.”
The gentleness of his voice, the quiet assurance of his manner, the encouraging glance, combined to calm and strengthen her. She sat up, with an effort of self-control, and clasped her hands together in her lap.
“There isn’t much to tell,” she began, striving to speak steadily. “I came here to—to keep an appointment” She stopped, her voice dying away, unable to go on.
“With this man?” asked Godfrey. “Who is he?”
“I don’t know,” and she cast a horrified glance at the huddled form. “I never saw him before.”
“Then it wasn’t he you came here to meet?”
“No—that is—it may have been” And again she stopped.
“Miss Croydon,” said Godfrey, gently yet clearly, “I can’t help you unless you’re quite frank with me, and I fear you are going to stand in need of help. Did you kill this man?”
“No!” she cried. “Oh, no!”
Her face was in her hands again and she was trembling; it was impossible to doubt that she spoke the truth.
“Then who did?”
There was no answer; only a dry, convulsive sobbing.
As Godfrey paused to look at her, the door opened and Simmonds came in. He closed it and snapped the lock.
“There’s a policeman outside and one at each landing,” he announced. “We’ll look things over here, and then search the building. First, let’s look at the body.”
It was lying partly on its back, partly on its right side, with its legs doubled under it. The face was a bearded one, rough, coarse, and a little bloated-not a prepossessing face under any circumstances, and actively repulsive now, with its gaping mouth and widely staring eyes. It was tanned and seamed by exposure to wind and rain and there was a deep scar across the left temple.
“Between fifty and sixty years of age,” remarked Godfrey. “Pouf! smell the whiskey.”
Then, looking into the staring eyes, he uttered a sudden exclamation.
“See there, Simmonds, how the right pupil’s dilated. Do you know what that means?”
Simmonds shook his head.
“No, I can’t say I do.”
“It means,” said Godfrey, “that somebody hit this fellow a hard blow on the left side of the head and produced a haemorrhage of the brain.”
Simmonds gave a little low whistle.
“That could hardly have been her,” and he nodded toward the girl, who had regained her self-control and was leaning anxiously forward, eyes and ears intent.
“No, of course not. Let’s see if he was really shot.”
They stripped back the shirt from the breast. A little blood was still welling from a wound just over the heart.
“That’s what did the business,” observed Simmonds, “and at close range, too; see there,” and he pointed to the red marks about the wound. “He wasn’t shot from the corner, that’s sure. Let’s see what he’s got in his pockets.”
The examination was soon made. There were only a pipe, a knife, a package of cheap tobacco, a handful of loose coins, and an old pocket-book containing a little roll of newspaper clippings and a receipt for a month’s rent for suite fourteen made out to “H. Thompson.”
“Thompson,” repeated Simmonds, “and a lot of clippings. Can you read French, Godfrey?”
“A little,” answered Godfrey modestly. “Let me see.” He took the clippings and looked at the first one. “‘Suresnes, September 16, 1891.’” he read haltingly. “‘I have to report an event the most interesting which has just happened here, and which proves again the futility of vows the most rigorous to quiet the ardent desires of the human heart or to change the’”
“Oh, well,” interrupted Simmonds, “we can’t waste time reading any more of that rot; it sounds like a French novel. The coroner can wrestle with it, if he thinks it’s worth while.”
He replaced the clippings in the purse, which he slipped back into the pocket from which he had taken it.
“Now,” he added, rising to his feet, “we’d better get the girl’s story.”
“Do you know who she is?” asked Godfrey, in a low voice. As he glanced at her, he was startled to note her attitude of strained attention, which, as he turned, lapsed instantly to one of seeming apathy.
“I heard you call her Miss Croydon.”
“Yes—she’s the sister of Mrs. Richard Delroy.”
Again Simmonds whistled.
“The deuce you say! Dickie Delroy! Well, that doesn’t make any difference,” and he turned toward her resolutely.
“Miss Croydon,” he began abruptly, though perhaps in a gentler voice than he would have used toward thy average suspect, “were you in the room when this man was killed?”
“Yes sir.”
“You know him?”
“Only slightly,” she answered coolly, disregarding Godfrey’s stare of amazement. “His name, I think, was Mr. Thompson.”
“You had an engagement with him here?”
“Yes, sir; on a private matter which cannot concern the police.”
Simmonds passed that over for the moment.
“Will you kindly tell us just what happened?” he asked.
“I drove here in a cab,” she said, speaking rapidly, “which I told to wait for me. In the vestibule, I met the janitor, and asked to be conducted to suite fourteen. He brought me up here where Mr.—Mr. Thompson was waiting. I entered and closed the door. We were talking together, when the door of the inner room opened and a man came out. Before I realised what he was doing, he had raised a bar of iron he held in his hand and struck Mr. Thompson upon the head. Then, standing over him, he drew a revolver and fired one shot at him. I had shrunk away into the corner, but thinking him a madman, believing my own life in danger, I drew my pocket-pistol and fired at him. Without even glancing at me, he opened the outer door and disappeared. The janitor rushed in a moment later.”
“Did your shot hit him?” asked Simmonds.
“I don’t know; I think not; he showed no sign of being wounded.”
Simmonds stood looking at her; Godfrey turned to an examination of the opposite wall.
“Miss Croydon’s shot went wild,” he said, curiously elated at this confirmation of her story. “Here’s the bullet,” and he pointed to it, embedded in the wood work of the bedroom door.
Simmonds took a look at it, then he returned to the inquiry.
“Did you know this intruder?” he asked.
“No, sir; I’d never before seen him,” she answered steadily.
“Will you describe him?”
She closed her eyes, seemingly in an effort at recollection.
“He was a short, heavy-set man,” she said, at last, “with a dark face and dark moustache which turned up at the ends. That is all I can remember.”
“And dressed how?”
“In dark clothes; he wore a slouch hat, I think, drawn down over the eyes. I didn’t see the face clearly.”
The answer came without hesitation, but it seemed to Godfrey that there was in the voice an accent of forced sincerity.
“What did he do with the bar of iron?” asked Simmonds.
“As soon as he struck the blow, I think he—he threw it down. I remember hearing it fall”
“Yes-here it is,” said Godfrey triumphantly, and fished it out from under a chair which stood near the wall. “But see, Simmonds-it’s not a bar, it’s a pipe.”
Simmonds examined it. It was an ordinary piece of iron piping, about fifteen inches in length.
“Her story seems to be straight,” he said, in an undertone to Godfrey. “What do you think about it?”
“I think she’s perfectly innocent of any crime,” answered Godfrey, with conviction. He had his doubts as to the absolute straightness of her story, but he concluded to keep them to himself.
“Well, there’s nothing more to be learned out here,” remarked Simmonds, after another glance around.
“Suppose we take a look at the other room,” and he led the way toward the inner door.
It was an ordinary bedroom of moderate size and with a single closet, in which a few soiled clothes were hanging. The bed had been lain upon, and evidently by a person fully dressed, for there were marks of muddy shoes upon the counterpane, fresh marks as of one who had come in during the evening’s storm. An empty whiskey bottle lay on a little table near the bed.
“I guess Thompson was a boozer,” observed Simmonds.
“Yes,” agreed Godfrey, “his face showed that pretty plainly.”
“Well, the man we’re after ain’t in here; we’ll have to search the house.”
“Can’t we let Miss Croydon go home? She won’t run away—I’ll answer for that. Besides, there’s nothing against her.”
Simmonds pondered a minute.
“Yes, I suppose so,” he said, at last. “Of course, she’ll have to appear at the inquest. Do you know her address?”
“Yes—twenty-one East Sixty-ninth Street.”
Simmonds jotted it down in his note-book.
“All right,” he said. “You’d better take her down to her cab.”