NO CLUE! (Murder Mystery). Hay James

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СКАЧАТЬ Don't you, now?"

      "Why, no!"

      He was certain that she was not frank with him.

      "You mean," she added quickly, eyes narrowed, "I suspect—actually suspect some one in this house?"

      In his turn, he was non-committal, retorting:

      "Don't you?"

      She resented his insistence.

      "There is only one idea possible, I think," she declared, rising: "the footsteps that I heard fled from the house, not into it. The murderer is not here."

      He stood up, holding her gaze.

      "I'm your representative now, Miss Sloane," he said, his manner fatherly in its solicitude. "My duty is to save you, and yours, in every way I can—without breaking the law. You realize what my job is—do you?"

      "Yes, Mr. Hastings."

      "And the advisability, the necessity, of utter frankness between us?"

      "Yes." She said that with obvious impatience.

      "So," he persisted, "you understand my motive in asking you now: is there nothing more you can tell me—of what you heard and saw, when you were at your window?"

      "Nothing—absolutely," she said, again obviously annoyed.

      He was close to a refusal to have anything to do with the case. He was sure that she did not deal openly with him. He tried again:

      "Nothing more, Miss Sloane? Think, please. Nothing to make you, us, more suspicious of Mr. Webster?"

      "Suspect Berne!"

      This time she was frank, he saw at once. The idea of the young lawyer's guilt struck her as out of the question. Her confidence in that was genuine, unalloyed. It was so emphatic that it surprised him. Why, then, this anxiety which had driven her to him for help? What caused the fear which, at the beginning of their interview, had been so apparent?

      He thought with great rapidity, turning the thing over in his mind as he stood confronting her. If she did not suspect Webster, whom did she suspect? Her father?

      That was it!—her father!

      The discovery astounded Hastings—and appealed to his sympathy, tremendously.

      "My poor child!" he said, on the warm impulse of his compassion.

      She chose to disregard the tone he had used. She took a step toward the door, and paused, to see that he followed her.

      He went nearer to her, to conclude what he had wanted to say:

      "I shall rely on this agreement between us: I can come to you on any point that occurs to me? You will give me anything, and all the things, that may come to your knowledge as the investigation proceeds? Is it a bargain, Miss Sloane?"

      "A bargain, Mr. Hastings," she assented. "I appreciate, as well as you do, the need of fair dealing between us. Anything else would be foolish."

      "Fine! That's great, Miss Sloane!" He was still sorry for her. "Now, let me be sure, once for all: you're concealing nothing from me, no little thing even, on the theory that it would be of no use to me and, therefore, not worth discussing? You told us all you knew—in the library?"

      She moved toward the door to the hall again.

      "Yes, Mr. Hastings—and I'm at your service altogether."

      He would have sworn that she was not telling the truth. This time, however, he had no thought of declining connection with the case. His compassion for her had grown.

      Besides, her fear of her father's implication in the affair—was there foundation for it, more foundation than the hasty thought of a daughter still labouring under the effects of a great shock? He thought of Sloane, effeminate, shrill of voice, a trembling wreck, long ago a self-confessed ineffective in the battle of life—he, a murderer; he, capable of forceful action of any kind? It seemed impossible.

      But the old man kept that idea to himself, and instructed Lucille.

      "Then," he said, "you must leave things to me. Tell your father so. Tomorrow, for instance—rather this morning, for it's already a new day—reporters will come out here, and detectives, and the sheriff. All of them will want to question you, your father, all the members of the household. Refer them to me, if you care to.

      "If you discuss theories and possibilities, you will only make trouble. To the sheriff, and anybody representing him, state the facts, the bare facts—that's all. May I count on you for that?"

      "Certainly. That's why I've em—why I want your help: to avoid all the unpleasantness possible."

      When she left him to go to her father's room, Hastings joined the group on the front verandah. Sheriff Crown and Dr. Garnet had already viewed the body.

      "I'll hold the inquest at ten tomorrow morning, rather this morning," the coroner said. "That's hurrying things a little, but I'll have a jury here by then. They have to see the body before it's taken to Washington."

      "Besides," observed the sheriff, "nearly all the necessary witnesses are here in this house party."

      Aware of the Hastings fame, he drew the old man to one side.

      "I'm going into Washington," he announced, "to see this Mrs. Brace, the girl's mother. Webster says she has a flat, up on Fourteenth street there. Good idea, ain't it?"

      "Excellent," assured Hastings, and put in a suggestion: "You've heard of the fleeting footsteps Miss Sloane reported?"

      "Yes. I thought Mrs. Brace might tell me who that could have been—some fellow jealous of the girl, I'll bet."

      The sheriff, who was a tall, lanky man with a high, hooked nose and a pointed chin that looked like a large knuckle, had a habit of thrusting forward his upper lip to emphasize his words. He thrust it forward now, making his bristly, close-cropped red moustache stand out from his face like the quills of a porcupine.

      "I'd thought of that—all that," he continued. "Looks like a simple case to me—very."

      "It may be," said Hastings, sure now that Crown would not suggest their working together.

      "Also," the sheriff told him, "I'll take this."

      He held out the crude weapon with which, apparently, the murder had been committed. It was a dagger consisting of a sharpened nail file, about three inches long, driven into a roughly rounded piece of wood. This wooden handle was a little more than four inches in length and two inches thick. Hastings, giving it careful examination, commented:

      "He shaped that handle with a pocket-knife. Then, he drove the butt-end of the nail file into it. Next, he sharpened the end of the file—put a razor edge on it.—Where did you get this, Mr. Crown?"

      "A servant, one of the coloured women, picked it up as I came in. You were still in the library."

      "Where was it?"

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