The Classic Mystery Novel MEGAPACK®. Hay James
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any corner, looking just as she looked fifteen years ago.” Hark way folded his napkin. “I’m not acquainted with the old dame myself, but that sounds exaggerated to me.”
The sad little story had reached its sad conclusion. Hark-way had no other information, and presently he left us. Jack and I lingered in the dining room, talking, speculating, trying to fit together the murder of Hiram Darnley and the fifteen-year-old tragedy. Why we should have believed there was a connection, I do not know. But we did believe it and our instinct was correct, although the link eluded us for days.
Many times Jack and I have driven past the village burial ground, a calm and lovely place on a wooded hill. We had often planned to examine the quaint old-fashioned stones; that night, for the first time, we walked through the scrolled iron gates. A white moon shone upon the city of the dead, and silvered brief graven paragraphs which perpetuated the memory of forgotten lives. We discovered the plot we sought, paused before a mausoleum of gray granite that bore the Coatesnash name. Luella’s husband lay inside. Beside the mausoleum, a slender marble shaft pointed like a finger toward the sky. There was no name on the shaft, simply the engraved inscription: “Sacred to the Memory of My Only Child”
Silently we returned to the car.
Jack proposed the beach road home. It was longer, but on a moonlit night enchanting. The opening of the Crockford summer season was still weeks away, and the neighborhood which would ring with music and with laughter was dark and silent, touched with beauty and a kind of piercing melancholy. The only lights for blocks twinkled from the windows of an old stone house, obviously built years before the plague of country clubs and summer cottages transformed the shores of Long Island Sound. Set upon a natural rise, surrounded by extensive grounds, it commanded the deserted landscape.
Jack was driving casually and he barely missed a small car without a tail-light, parked beside the road. He cursed, jammed on his brakes. I grabbed his arm.
“Who’s that?”
“Don’t do that, Lola!”
“Look, Jack, look.”
Jack looked. A short stout man, burdened by a bag, was walking ahead of us along the beach. It was impossible to recognize him from the distance, but he seemed familiar. Jack got out of the car. I got out.
The man ahead turned into the grounds of the stone house. We crept closer, watched him stroll up a wooden sidewalk, mount steps, knock. Annabelle Bayne opened the door. We saw her clearly as light gushed forth from inside. We identified her guest.
It was Franklyn Elliott.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A Light in a Window
Hand in hand, with instinctive caution, Jack and I moved away from the lighted dwelling. Sand whispered sibilantly beneath our feet; the waves of Long Island Sound sighed against the beach; overhead the white moon spent itself in prodigal glory. We were too bewildered, both of us, for speech.
After pleading illness as an excuse to avoid the coroner’s inquest, Franklyn Elliott had come openly to Crockford. But had he come openly? I tried to recall the strolling figure. It seemed to me there had been a furtiveness in the lawyer’s attitude, a surreptitiousness in the very way he walked. And certainly Annabelle Bayne had admitted him with suspicious speed.
We approached our car. Jack paused beside the other car—a yellow roadster—looked into the empty seat, lighted a match, stooped to examine the license plates.
“New York plates, Lola. This must be Elliott’s car. He probably drove up from town this afternoon. Sure, it’s his car. His initials are on the door.”
By this time I had my fill of sleuthing. Frankly, I didn’t wish to encounter Franklyn Elliott, particularly in this vicinity. When Jack proposed that we drive on a distance, stop and watch for him, I declined at once, but eventually Jack wore me down.
A sheltered spot a little off the road and well known to Crockford swains lay near by. The night was clear but cold; we had the place to ourselves. Jack switched off the lights, and silently we settled down to wait. Perhaps half an hour later the yellow roadster shot past toward the village.
We started in pursuit. There was little traffic; we easily kept the car in sight. Elliott drove at high speed; Jack kept fairly close behind. Soon we found ourselves in the center of the drowsing village.
The advance car pulled abruptly to the curb, directly in front of the Tally-ho Inn. We parked across the street. It was past eleven. The restaurant was long closed. The adjoining lobby, revealed by plate-glass windows, was empty except for the yawning clerk.
Franklyn Elliott alighted from his car, removed two bags and walked boldly into the hotel. He crossed the wide, old-fashioned lobby, approached the desk. The clerk roused. The clerk was Bill Tevis, a perennial college boy, who attended school one semester and worked at the Tally-ho Inn the next. He and Elliott held a short conversation. Both men stepped into the clerk’s office. Presently Elliott emerged, started up a broad stairway leading to the rooms, climbed out of sight.
Bill Tevis came outside and got into the yellow roadster. Jack crossed the street.
“Hi, Bill! Where you going?”
A little surprised, Bill answered readily, “To the Inn garage. I’m putting up the car for a guest.”
“Look here, old man. Do you know who your guest is?”
“Sure,” said Bill. “What’s it to you?”
Jack hesitated. “I’ve been parked across the street looking in. I noticed something peculiar. That man didn’t register.”
Bill would have driven off at once, but Jack said quickly, “You weren’t born yesterday. It’s against the law to assign people rooms unless they register, and you know it is. You can’t convince me Franklyn Elliott registered. I was watching.”
The college-boy clerk became defiant. “He took my room. So he’s my personal guest, not a hotel guest. What’s against the law about that?”
Jack shrugged. “Standish might not be keen about the arrangement if he learned about it.”
Bill turned sulky. “Go ahead and be a heel. Run to the cops if you want to.”
“I don’t want to,” Jack said slowly, “and I won’t. I’d hate to get you into trouble. But why did you agree to such a queer arrangement?”
Bill snapped on the ignition. “I like my job, that’s why. Mrs. Coatesnash owns the Tally-ho Inn, in case you’re interested. And Elliott’s her lawyer.”
Jack was baffled. “Didn’t Elliott explain?”
“He said he didn’t want police to find out he was here until tomorrow. Else they might think it funny he didn’t show up for the inquest. He said he was here on private business.”
Which was all we could gather from Bill Tevis.
More mystified than ever at the end of the crowded day, we went home and to bed. The morning papers—we recklessly bought Boston, New York and New Haven editions—devoted columns to the inquest, and it was surprising the amount the newspaper men had found out about a supposedly secret hearing. Even the incident of Annabelle Bayne was printed. I was about to toss the papers aside, when Jack whistled and handed me a copy of the New York Globe.
The Globe, pursuing devious methods of its own, had scored a journalistic beat. An enterprising girl reporter had tracked down the shop where Darnley’s clothing had been purchased, a small second-hand store in the upper regions of the Bronx. The proprietor, an alarmed little Jew, clearly remembered the well-dressed gentleman who had appeared on March 20th to trade his own expensive apparel for “the shoddiest stuff you’ve got in the place.” As indisputable proof, he produced—and the Globe photographed—the garments Hiram Darnley had worn when he left his office.
It was information of a sort, but again it led to no conclusion, except the inescapable conclusion that Darnley had been bound on some illegal mission. But what