CHAPTER IV
Thr Problem of the Diamond
I WAS scarcely surprised when Godfrey’s card was brought in to me at the office next morning. Both Mr. Graham and Mr. Royce happened to be out at the time, so that I had the inner room to myself, and I directed that Godfrey be shown in at once.
“I was expecting you,” I said, rising to shake hands with him. “That stare of yours last night warned me that you’d be around to demand an explanation.”
“Demand is hardly the word,” he corrected, as he sat down. “Beseech would be nearer it. I confess I was never more surprised in my life than when I saw you sitting there calmly chatting away with Mrs. Tremaine.”
“Then you have met her? She thought she was mistaken.”
“You mean she knew me?” he asked quickly.
“She asked who you were—she fancied she’d met you somewhere.”
Godfrey laughed a little dry laugh.
“She has,” he said, “but it’s strange she remembers it, for I’ll swear she never looked at me—or perhaps,” he added, knitting his brows, “she has some special reason to remember. I happened to be in the hall of the Marathon apartment house talking with Higgins, the janitor, when she and her husband came in from dinner the night that man Thompson was killed there—perhaps you remember about it?”
I nodded, smiling.
“Yes, I remember.”
Something in my face caught his attention.
“You mean you know something about it?” he asked quickly. But a movement of feet across the floor outside interrupted him. “We can’t talk here,” he said. “Will you be at home to-night?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll look you up,” and he turned to go.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I’m not with Mrs. Fitch any more.”
“Aren’t you?”
“No—I’m quartered at the Marathon.”
“At the Marathon?”
“Yes—suite fourteen—Higgins will show you up.”
He stared at me an instant with starting eyes. Then the door opened and Mr. Royce came in, followed by two clerks.
“I’ll look for you this evening,” I added, hugely enjoying his stupefaction.
He nodded mechanically, and turned away, walking like a man in a dream.
“Well,” began Godfrey, as he settled back in his chair and looked around the room, “this is about the last place on earth I’d have expected to find you.”
“And yet it’s not so wonderful,” I pointed out. “I had to change my lodgings and found that these would suit.”
“It’s in your blood,” he went on, smiling. “It has been ever since that affair of Miss Holladay. You’ll never get it out. But I’m glad you’re here. I’ve an idea that we’re just on the threshold of a very remarkable mystery, and you can help a lot.”
“Then the murder wasn’t the end?”
“No; I fancy it was only the beginning. Now tell me how you happened to be with Mrs. Tremaine last night.”
“Tremaine had an important business engagement,” I said, “which he couldn’t break. He’d promised to take her to the theatre and had secured seats. Rather than disappoint her, he asked me to take his place.”
“And she didn’t object?”
“She made the best of it, I guess.”
“She seemed to be getting a good deal of fun out of it.”
“She was. She’s the most unconventional creature I ever met. She’d interest you, Godfrey.”
“I don’t doubt it in the least. But Tremaine interests me, too. You don’t happen to know what this business engagement was?” and he looked at me with a queer smile.
“No; I suppose that it had something to do with his railroad.”
“His railroad?”
I related briefly the project in which Tremaine was engaged.
“Well, perhaps it was connected with that,” Godfrey said, when I had finished, “but indirectly—very indirectly. He spent the evening in Dickie Delroy’s box at the opera.”
It was my turn to stare. “Are you sure?”
“Quite sure—I saw him there. Tremaine, I understand, was taken up by Delroy some time ago and has been cutting quite a swath in society—it’s easy enough to understand why. That’s not the first time he’s been in the Delroy box.”
“But,” I asked, more and more astonished, “how did he accomplish it?”
“I don’t know. A polished fellow like that has an open sesame, sometimes. More than likely, he’s interested Delroy in his railroad scheme, and Delroy has become fascinated with him, just as you’ve evidently been.”
“Yes,” I admitted, candidly, “I have.”
“I saw at a glance that he’s a smooth one. I believe that railroad business is just a blind-he doesn’t look the man to waste his time building castles in the air.”
“Oh, if you could hear him!” I protested.
“I wish I could.”
“I can introduce you—as a reporter looking for a story, say.”
“No, it won’t do. I’ll try to get at him some other way.”
“I don’t believe it’s a blind,” I persisted. “His heart’s too deeply in it. Besides, I don’t see that we have any reason to suspect him of anything. If it’s a blind, what’s his real game?”
“I give it up. That’s just what we’ve got to find out.”
“Godfrey,” I said suddenly, “there’s two points I’d like to submit to you—both rather important ones, I fancy. But first I want you to tell me the story of the crime, just as it occurred. I suspect there were some details that didn’t get into the Record. Start a cigar first.”
He took a cigar and struck a match.
“There were,” he assented with a smile, “a number of details that didn’t get before the public. Most of them have an unfortunate tendency to implicate Miss Croydon.”
“Miss Croydon?”
“Yes; I don’t mean implicate her in the actual crime—I don’t for an instant believe she had any hand in that; but they seem to indicate that she wasn’t frank with us—that she’s concealing something—protecting somebody. Now there wasn’t any use in telling the fool public that; they’d jump at once to the conclusion—why,” he broke off, abruptly, with some heat, “even as it was”
“Yes,” I said, somewhat surprised at his irritation, “I noticed the shots at her.”
“Some of them were outrageous! It’s a shame that such a woman as that—but you shall judge,” and he told me the story substantially as I have set it down in the first chapters of this history. “There isn’t the least doubt,” he added, “that she took the clippings from Thompson’s pocket-book, and I think it very improbable that she has told us the whole truth concerning the minor details of the crime, but nevertheless she’s innocent.”
He got up and walked across the room and placed his finger over a little hole in the woodwork of the bedroom door.
“There’s where the bullet from her revolver struck,” he said. “There’s no doubt about that—it was taken out and found to fit. I’d give a good deal to know who it was she fired at and why she fired. I tell you, Lester, the more one thinks about that affair, the more incomprehensible it becomes, there are so many questions which seem unanswerable. Who was Thompson? How did he get in condition to receive her? Was the murderer a friend of Thompson’s? If not, how did he get into the rooms? Above all, why, after he had knocked Thompson down, should he stand over him and shoot him through the heart? That savours more of a wild beast than of a human being.”
He paused a moment in a sort of helpless perplexity, then sat down abruptly and turned to me.
“What were your points?” he asked.
“The first,” I said, looking at him, “will, I fear, help to tip the scale against Miss Croydon. She came here the morning after the inquest and tried to rent this apartment.”
He stared at me, astounded, his cigar in the air, while I repeated the story Higgins had told me. When I had finished, he sat gazing into vacancy, his lips compressed.
“I see it puzzles you,” I said, at last, enjoying his perplexity. “I confess I couldn’t make anything out of it.”
“Puzzles me!” he repeated, getting up again and walking nervously about the room. “Why, it’s the most astounding thing I ever heard—it’s the most unexplainable feature of this whole unexplainable case. I should think she’d never want to enter these rooms again. But perhaps Higgins was mistaken,” he added, stopping short.
“That might be,” I admitted, “though he swears he wasn’t.”
“Well, let’s pass over it for a moment. What’s the second point? Is it another staggerer?”
“Not a staggerer—but another twist to the puzzle, I imagine. Did Thompson have any jewelry on him?”
“Jewelry? Not a bit, he was practically in rags.”
“Where was his body lying?”
“Right here,” and he indicated the spot with his foot.
“And right there,” I said, “two days later, I found this, pressed into the carpet,” and I took the little paper packet from my pocket-book.
He opened it carefully and looked at what lay inside. Then he whistled softly.
“A diamond, by all that’s wonderful!”
“Tell me what it came out of,” I said.
“One of a group, I should say; or perhaps a border around a larger central stone.”
“Precisely,” I nodded. “And last night I happened to notice that Mrs. Tremaine wore a pin with just such an arrangement of stones. One of the small diamonds in the border was missing.”
Godfrey wrapped up the tiny bit of crystal and handed it back to me with an exceedingly thoughtful face.
“That’s a mighty pretty bit of evidence,” he said, at last; “though, of course, it may be only a coincidence. Taken by itself, it isn’t worth a cent; in connection with other evidence, it would be worth a great deal.”
“And there isn’t any other?”
“Just one little bit. You say Tremaine comes from Martinique. Well, among Thompson’s clothes I found a peculiar nut, called a snake nut, which grows only in the West Indies. When you add to this that Thompson’s clothing was all such as is worn in the tropics, the presumption is pretty strong that he lived for a while somewhere in Tremaine’s neighbourhood.”
I nodded; then my face fell.
“After all,” I pointed out, “all that amounts to nothing. Both Tremaine and his wife can prove an alibi. They weren’t in the building when the crime was committed. You yourself saw them coming back.”
“Yes—but it’s a significant fact that no one saw them go out.”
“Oh, well,” I said, with a sudden revulsion of feeling, “that doesn’t prove anything, either. We mustn’t let our suspicions carry us away, Godfrey. If you knew the Tremaines, you’d see how ridiculous it is to suspect them—on no better evidence than this, anyway.”
“I don’t suspect them,” corrected Godfrey, smiling. “I’m simply seeking the truth. If the Tremaines are innocent, as they very probably are, it will do them no harm for us to investigate them a little.”
“No,” I agreed; “of course not.”
“And that’s just what I want you to do. You’re here on the inside. Keep your eyes and ears open. In the meantime, I’ll set our newspaper machinery at work to look up Tremaine’s career. Maybe, in that way, we’ll get enough foundation to start a theory on.”
“And the diamond?”
“The diamond may not have come from the pin, at all. It’s no uncommon thing to lose a stone like that. Or if it did, she may have dropped it here at some other time—perhaps she was in here the next day to have a look at the body.”
“I doubt that,” I objected. “She’s not a woman who’d have a curiosity for that sort of thing.”
“Well, we’ll puzzle it out in time. If I only had a chance to study Tremaine, to hear him talk, to watch him without being seen. That would be worth more to me than all this theorising. Then I’d have my feet on solid ground; I could—sh!—who’s that?”
A door opened and a step crossed the hall. There came a tap at my door.
Godfrey shot me one electric glance; then, lightly as a panther, he seized coat and hat and disappeared into the bedroom, leaving the door slightly ajar.