The Classic Mystery Novel MEGAPACK®. Hay James
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said Jack suddenly to me, “are the greenest-looking woman I ever saw. Go over and get yourself a drink of water. And say to yourself as you go, ‘the Storms may be down, but damned if they’ll ever admit it.’”
I went past Dennis Clark to the water cooler. Anita Willetts didn’t look up from her chair, but wept steadily on. I saw her fumble for another handkerchief, and I put mine in her hand. She looked up then from reddened, swollen eyes, hesitated and finally took the handkerchief.
I drew a glass of water and drank it slowly. “You’re Lola Storm, aren’t you?” said Anita Willetts, presently. A certain awkwardness in her tone made me nod and turn at once to leave. She did something which surprised me. She leaned out, and patted my hand. “Sit down, my dear. You needn’t leave. I feel quite sure you and your husband didn’t murder Mr. Darnley.”
She had obviously adored the dead man, and I was deeply touched. I was disconcerted when she added shrewdly, “If you’d wanted to kill him, you had only to drive him on to your cottage. Or so it seems to me.” She must have seen me flush, for she added, “I don’t mean to be offensive, but it was odd, your picking him up. But then—” and again her eyes overflowed “—Mr. Darnley had been acting so oddly I can’t help believing your story is true. In a way I feel responsible for the dreadful thing that happened to him.”
“You feel responsible!”
“Because of that money he carried in his bag,” said Miss Willetts, evidently grateful for a chance to unburden her mind. “I got that money for him, Mrs. Storm. Every noon hour for two weeks I cashed checks for him at his various banks. I used to feel extremely nervous coming back to the office with several thousand dollars in my purse, and Mr. Darnley made me nervous by his attitude. He warned me to tell no one about the money, particularly I wasn’t to let anything slip to Mr. Elliott. I thought it was all wrong then, and that last day when he told me he was making a trip, and started off to the train with those two bags, well, I think I knew he would never come back.”
“You saw him start to the train,” I said excitedly. “You knew he was coming to Crockford!”
“No, Mrs. Storm. He told me he was going to Chicago.”
She had little more to add. She had been shocked, perplexed and bewildered by the whole affair. When she had last seen Hiram Darnley in the office at one o’clock on that Friday afternoon, when he had picked up those traveling bags, he had worn a mustache, he had been dressed in quiet, impeccable taste. “He was,” said Miss Willetts sadly, “a most fastidious dresser. I’ve seen the clothes he wore up here, and I can’t conceive how he could bring himself to put them on.”
Presently she was called upstairs to testify. Dennis Cark followed her. It was four o’clock when Lester Harkway appeared at the door and said, “Well, Mr. Storm, it’s your turn next.”
Jack took a long breath and rose. I rose, too. I knew it wasn’t exactly legal, my going to the court room while Jack testified, but I didn’t expect to yield the point without a battle. None was necessary. Harkway conveniently looked away when we reached the proper door, and I slipped in. The policeman even found an inconspicuous chair for me, and though Dr. Rand, who was presiding from a raised bench which overlooked the room, certainly saw me, he gravely pretended not to.
I stared hard at the members of the jury! I was prejudiced perhaps, but I didn’t like their looks. Jack was sworn immediately. It was explained to him that the hearing was informal, and it was not explained that the informal hearing might well pave the way to a charge of murder. That was understood.
The room was very small and, since the windows had been curtained, dark. A single naked electric bulb burned overhead. The furniture was the poorest grade of pine; faded, worn linoleum was spread upon the floor. But the machinery of justice—even in a cheap and illy furnished court room—has a certain frightening, impressive quality. As I remember it, I felt I needed air.
When Jack began to speak I relaxed. He talked to Dr. Rand as simply and naturally as though the two of them had been alone, and I know his manner had its effect upon the jury. I watched them.
“He’s going over great,” Harkway whispered.
His tone seemed abstracted, and I noticed that his eyes were fixed upon a door set in the wall near the jury box. “What’s that?” I whispered.
“The jury room. I’ve closed that door twice already. It keeps coming open.”
He rose, tiptoed past the jury, closed the door again and leaned there against the wall. From the witness chair Jack said, “My only connection with Hiram Darnley came through Luella Coatesnash. I believed at the time I met him and I believe now that she sent him to me.”
“Wait a minute before going on,” said Dr. Rand. “I want to put this cablegram in evidence.” Whereupon he read out the following message, received the day before from Paris: “I did not request Hiram Darnley to telephone the Storms or to go to Crockford. I cannot understand his actions or his use of the name Elmer Lewis. I have not communicated with Darnley since leaving America. Luella Coatesnash.”
Jack turned white. “That cablegram,” he said, “is a lie. A palpable, unmitigated lie! I have some rights here, and I insist…”
“Control yourself,” began Dr. Rand. “You’re out of order, you must…”
He, too, broke off. The members of the jury were surging to their feet. There was a violent commotion near the box, and at first I couldn’t see what was happening. Then I saw. The door to the room beyond was open, and Harkway had seized and was struggling with someone who had been crouched at the keyhole, listening there. It was a woman. One arm shielded her face from view, and then she dropped her arm, ceased struggling and I saw her clearly.
It was Annabelle Bayne.
There was a stunned silence. Then, in cold fury, Dr. Rand rose from the bench. “What were you doing in the jury room?” Annabelle Bayne pushed back the hair from her face. “Eavesdropping,” she said clearly, “what do you suppose?” Before, in his outraged astonishment, he could speak she whirled on Jack. “You! Listen, you! I wanted to see how far you’d go in blackening the character of a very old woman who isn’t present to defend herself. That, my fine lad, is a pretty low way to defend yourself from a charge of murder.”
If I ever saw outright hatred in a human being’s eyes, I saw it in the eyes of Annabelle Bayne as she looked at Jack.
CHAPTER TEN
The Man with a Bag
Annabelle Bayne turned on her heel and started to walk quickly from the court room. I’ve never seen an angrier man than Dr. Rand. “Come back here!” he shouted from the bench. “You’re by no means finished with this court.”
For a moment I think she meant to defy the order, but I suppose his tone alarmed her, for she turned around, came back and quietly sat down. She seemed perfectly self-possessed, and as Jack resumed his testimony she even smiled to herself. An odd, contained and scornful little smile it was.
A moment later Jack stepped down. He had finished his story in an aura of anti-climax. The jury was inattentive and uninterested. Jack’s future and mine were at stake, but the jurymen were watching Annabelle Bayne.
“Now, Miss Bayne,” said Dr. Rand, “you will kindly take the stand.”
The coffee-colored hat went up, the strange eyes flashed, and for a second time I fancy she considered open defiance. She thought better of it, rose and sauntered slowly forward.
“This is quite beyond me,” she said, as she languidly took the oath. “I know nothing about this case.”
“You know why you hid in the jury room. That’s a serious offense. Explain it!”
“I’ve told you what I was doing there,” she said sullenly. “Luella Coatesnash is a friend 6f mine, an old, very dear friend, and I was determined to hear what was being said behind her back. What that man—” she looked hard at Jack “—was saying. I’ve heard of the rumors