NO CLUE! (Murder Mystery). Hay James
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found it easy to forget the peculiar and forbidding expression the features wore, even in death. It was partly fear, partly defiance—as if her last conscious thought had been a flitting look into the future, an exulting recognition of the certain consequences of the blow that had struck her down.
Put into words, it might have been: "You've murdered me, but you'll pay for it—terribly!"
A servant handed Hastings the blanket he had ordered. He looked toward the sky.
"I don't think it will rain any more," he said. "And it's best to leave things as they are until the coroner arrives.—He'll be here soon?"
"Should get here in half an hour or so," Judge Wilton informed him.
The detective arranged the blanket so that it covered the prone form completely, leaving the hat over the face as he had first placed it. With the exception of the hat, he had disturbed no part of the apparel. Even the folds of the raincoat, which fell away from the body and showed the rain-soaked black skirt, he left as he had found them. The white shirtwaist, also partly exposed now, was dry.
"Anybody move her hat before I came out?" he asked; "you, judge; or you, Mr. Webster?"
They had not touched it, they said; it was on the grass, beside her head, when they discovered the body, and they had left it there.
Again he was silent, brows drawn together as he stood over the murdered woman. Finally, he raised his head swiftly and, taking each in turn, searched sharply the countenances of the three men before him.
"Does—didn't anybody here know this woman?" he asked.
Berne Webster left his place at the opposite side of the body and came close to Hastings.
"I know who she is," he said, his voice lower even than before, as if he wished to keep that information from the servants.
Hastings' keen scrutiny had in it no intimation of surprise. Waiting for Webster to continue, he was addressed by the shivering Mr. Sloane:
"Mr. Hast—Mr. Hastings, take charge of—of things. Will you? You know about these things."
The detective accepted the suggestion.
"Suppose we get at what we know about it—what we all know. Let's go inside." He turned to the servants: "Stay here until you're called. See that nothing is disturbed, nothing touched."
He led the way into the house. Sloane, near collapse, clung to one of Judge Wilton's broad shoulders. It was young Webster who, as the little procession passed the hatrack in the front hall, caught up a raincoat and threw it over the half-clad Hastings.
Chapter III.
The Unexpected Witness
In the library Hastings turned first to Judge Wilton for a description of the discovery of the body. The judge was in better condition than the others for connected narrative, Arthur Sloane had sunk into a morris chair, where he sighed audibly and plied himself by fits and starts with the aroma from the bottle of smelling salts. Young Webster, still breathing as if he had been through exhausting physical endeavour, stood near the table in the centre of the room, mechanically shifting his weight from foot to foot.
Wilton, seated half-across the room from Hastings, drew, absently, on a dead cigar-stump. A certain rasping note in his voice was his only remaining symptom of shock. He had the stern calmness of expression that is often seen in the broad, irregularly-featured face in early middle age.
"I can tell you in very few words," he said, addressing the detective directly. "We all left this room, you'll remember, at eleven o'clock. I found my bedroom uncomfortable, too warm. Besides, it had stopped raining. When I noticed that, I decided to go out and smoke my good-night cigar. This is what's left of it."
He put a finger to the unlighted stump still between his lips.
"What time did you go out?" asked Hastings.
"Probably, a quarter of an hour after I'd gone upstairs—fifteen or twenty minutes past eleven, I should guess."
"How did you go out—by what door?"
"The front door. I left it unlocked, but not open. At first I paced up and down, on the south side of the house, under the trees. It was reasonably light there then—that is to say, the clouds had thinned a little, and, after my eyes had got accustomed to it, I had no trouble in avoiding the trees and shrubbery.
"Then a cloud heavier than the others came up, I suppose. Anyway, it was much darker. There wasn't a light in the house, except in my room and Berne Webster's. Yours was out, I remember. I passed by the front of the house then, and went around to the north side. It was darker there, I thought, than it had been under the trees on the south side."
"How long had you been out then, altogether?"
"Thirty or forty minutes." He looked at his watch. "It's a quarter past twelve now. Let me see. I found the body a few minutes after I changed over to the north side. I guess I found it about five minutes before midnight—certainly not more than twenty minutes ago."
Hastings betrayed his impatience only by squinting under his spectacles and down the line of his nose, eying Wilton closely.
"All right, judge! Let's have it."
"I was going along slowly, very slowly, not doing much more than feeling my way with my feet on the close-shaven grass. It was the darkest night I ever saw. Literally, I couldn't have seen my hand in front of me.
"I had decided to turn about and go indoors when I was conscious of some movement, or slight sound, directly in front of me, and downward, at my feet. I got that impression."
"What movement? You mean the sound of a fall?"
"No; not that exactly."
"A footstep?"
"No. I hadn't any definite idea what sort of noise it was. I did think that, perhaps, it was a dog or a cat. Just then my foot came in contact with something soft. I stooped down instinctively, immediately.
"At that moment, that very second, a light flashed on in Arthur's bedroom. That's between this room and the big ballroom—on this floor, of course. That light threw a long, illuminating shaft into the murky darkness, the end of it coming just far enough to touch me and—what I found—the woman's body. I saw it by that light before I had time to touch it with my hand."
The judge stopped and drew heavily on his dead cigar.
"All right. See anything else?" Hastings urged.
"Yes; I saw Berne Webster. He had made the noise which attracted my attention."
"How do you know that?"
"He must have. He was stooping down, too, on the other side of the body, facing me, when the light went on——"
Sloane, twisting nervously in his chair, cut into Wilton's narrative.
"I can put this much straight," he said in shrill complaint: "I turned on the light you're talking about. I hadn't been able to sleep."
"Let's have this, one at a time, if you don't mind, Mr. Sloane," the detective suggested, watching Webster.
The young man, staring with fascinated intensity at Judge Wilton, seemed to experience some new horror as he listened.
"He was on the other side of it," the judge continued, "and practically in the same position that I was. We faced each other across the body. I think that describes the discovery, as you call it. We immediately examined the woman, looking for the wound, and found it. When we saw she was dead, we came in to wake you—and try to get a doctor. I told Berne to do that."
During the last few sentences Hastings had been walking slowly from his chair to the library door and back, his hands gouged