Ramshackle House. Footner Hulbert

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ with excitement; his hands gripping the edge of the paper made it rattle with their trembling. Nevertheless in her first glance Pen was assured that no disaster threatened their house. There was even a sort of pleasure mixed with his horror. Her first reaction was to chagrin at having been frightened for nothing.

      “What’s the matter?” she asked sharply.

      “Look! Look!” he said, pointing to the paper.

      With her own swift, swimming motion she moved behind him, and looked down over his shoulder. She read staring headlines:

      WEALTHY NEW YORK STOCKBROKER FOUND MURDERED

      She was freshly annoyed by what seemed to be such ridiculous excitement. “What’s that got to do with you?” she demanded.

      “Read! Read!” he said hoarsely.

      She impatiently read what was under the headlines:

      “Collis Dongan of the old New York family, wealthy clubman and member of the Stock Exchange, was found dead in his apartment last night. Mr. Dongan, a widower without children resided at the exclusive Hotel Warrington. The body was found by his valet George Canfield who had been away on a vacation granted him by his master over the holiday. The revolver with which the deed was done was found lying near, and at first it was supposed to be a case of suicide. But Doctor Raymond Morsell the hotel physician who was quickly summoned by the frightened servant, instantly pronounced that the wound could not have been self-inflicted. The bullet had entered the base of the skull. The body was found lying in Mr. Dongan’s living-room. It was fully clothed. There were no signs of any struggle. Every indication pointed to the fact that he had been shot down from behind without warning. Apparently he had been dead three days. His blood was matted and dried in the rug on which he lay.”

      Pen looked up in disgust. “What do you want me to read this horrible stuff for?” she asked. “It’s like all the other cases.”

      “Read on!” said her father.

      “After having summoned the doctor, the valet’s next thought was to notify the dead man’s partner Donald Counsell who occupied an apartment on the same floor in another part of the hotel.…”

      Pen read this name without any sensation beyond a sudden quickening of interest. She needed no further urging to read on.

      “…but Counsell was not found in the hotel. Developments followed fast after that. The valet, Canfield, remembered that when he left his master on Friday night Counsell was with him, and the two men were quarrelling, apparently over business matters. He heard Counsell, who is a young man, violently abusing his senior. Dongan was not seen alive after that. Various persons living in the hotel testified to having heard a muffled sound which might have been a shot at 11.15 Friday night. At 11.20 the night clerk saw Counsell leaving the hotel, clearly in a state of agitation.

      “The dead man’s brother, Richard H. Dongan, vice-president of the Barrow Trust Company, was notified, and at his suggestion a hasty search of the books of Dongan and Counsell was conducted for the purpose of establishing a possible motive for the crime. The firm was found to be heavily involved owing to certain speculations of the junior partner on the exchange. By the break in Union Central last week Counsell stood to lose seventy-five thousand dollars, which apparently he had no means of raising. It is supposed that he appealed to his partner for help, and upon being indignantly refused, shot the elder man. The case against Counsell was made complete when Thomas Dittmars, bookkeeper to Dongan and Counsell, reluctantly identified the revolver as one belonging to Counsell, and pointed out Counsell’s initials scratched on the butt. The bookkeeper knew the weapon because more than once it had been loaned to him when he had a large amount of Liberty bonds to deliver for the firm. Dittmars knew nothing of the transactions in Union Central because they were entered in the firm’s private ledger to which only the partners had access. No trace of Counsell has been discovered since he left the hotel.”

      Thus far the summary of facts which heads all newspaper stories. Several columns of comment and hypothesis followed:

      “On the face of it it is one of the most dastardly crimes in recent years. Dongan befriended the young man upon his graduation from college and admitted him to a partnership in his business only to be swindled and finally to be shot down by his protégé.”

      Pen for the moment disregarded what followed. She had to stop and think, she would have said, but as a matter of fact she was incapable of thinking. She was conscious only of a dull horror that numbed her faculties. She had not yet taken it in. Outwardly she was quite composed. With the palm of her hand she thoughtfully polished a dull spot on the velvety surface of the table.

      Pendleton fairly babbled in his excitement. “When I first read the story he was in the drawing-room with you. I didn’t know what to do! I didn’t know what to do!”

      Pen was sharply recalled to the necessity for action. “Well, what are you going to do?” she asked quietly.

      “My duty,” said the little man swelling a little.

      “Inform against him?”

      “Inform? What a word to use!” said Pendleton with asperity. “I mean to give him up to justice as he richly deserves.”

      “But he didn’t do it,” said Pen with an odd, detached air. The words came out of her involuntarily.

      Pendleton stared. “How do you know?”

      “By instinct,” she said simply.

      “Fiddlesticks!” said Pendleton. “You read the paper, didn’t you?”

      Pen merely smiled the smile that women use when they decline to argue with a man. It is very exasperating to a man.

      “You have seen the man once and exchanged a few pleasantries with him!” he cried. “Do you presume to decide from that whether or not he is capable of murder?”

      “I suppose he could shoot a man—with sufficient provocation,” she said coolly. “Any man could I suppose…but not like that. Not in the back!”

      Pendleton flung up his hands. “Isn’t that like a woman! Just because he has fine eyes I suppose, and a taking smile!”

      It never reached Pen who was busy with her own thoughts. She knew in her heart without reason, without arguments that the charge was false, but she was searching for reasons that would convince a man. Her instinct led her unerringly to the weak spots of the case against Counsell.

      “Why should he leave his pistol behind to convict him?” she asked. “Why should he introduce himself to us under his right name?”

      Pendleton waved this impatiently aside. “Oh, they always make some slips. That’s how they’re caught. From the first I felt there was something funny about him.”

      “It was you who first asked him to stay,” said Pen indignantly.

      “Yes. But I didn’t expect the house to be turned upside down to entertain him,” he retorted. “Something funny about him, skulking down the Bay like that. You remember how he said he preferred to be alone.”

      “There’s nothing criminal in that!”

      “I don’t know. Very strange he should slink out of the house without saying good-night to me. Perhaps he saw me reading the paper.”

СКАЧАТЬ