Grant stared again at the card. A tiny silver bell seemed to tinkle a sort of warning in a recess of his brain. The name was not engraved in copper-plate, but printed in heavy type. Somehow, it looked ominous. His first impression was to bid Minnie send the man away. He distrusted any first impression. It was the excuse of mediocrity, a sign of weakness. Moreover, why shouldn’t he meet Isidor G. Ingerman?
“Show him in,” he said, almost gruffly, thus silencing shy intuition, as it were. He threw the card on the table.
Mr. Ingerman entered. He did not offer any conventional greeting, but nodded, or bowed. Grant could not be sure which form of salutation was intended, because the visitor promptly sat down, uninvited.
Minnie hesitated at the door. Her master’s callers were usually cheerful Bohemians, who chatted at sight. Then she caught Grant’s eye, and went out, banging the door in sheer nervousness.
Still Mr. Ingerman did not speak. If this was a pose on his part, he erred. Grant had passed through a trying day, but he owned the muscles and nerves of an Alpine climber, and had often stared calmly down a wall of rock and ice which he had just conquered, when the least slip would have meant being dashed to pieces two thousand feet below.
There was some advantage, too, in this species of stage wait. It enabled him to take the measure of Adelaide Melhuish’s husband, if, indeed, the visitor was really the man he professed to be.
At first sight, Isidor G. Ingerman was not a prepossessing person. Indeed, it would be safe to assume that if, by some trick of fortune, he and not Grant were the tenant of The Hollies, P. C. Robinson would have haled him to the village lock-up that very morning. It was not that he was villainous-looking, but rather that he looked capable of villainy. He was a tall, slender, rather stooping man, with a decidedly well-molded, if hawk-like, face. His aspect might be described as saturnine. Possibly, when he smiled, this morose expression would vanish, and then he might even win a favorable opinion. He had brilliant black eyes, close set, and an abundant crop of black hair, turning gray, which, in itself, lent an air of distinction. His lips were thin, his chin slightly prominent. He was well dressed, and managed a hat, stick, and gloves with ease. Altogether, he reminded Grant of a certain notable actor who is invariably cast for the rôle of a gentlemanly scoundrel, but who, in private life, is a most excellent fellow and good citizen. Oddly enough, Grant recognized in him, too, the type of man who would certainly have appealed to Adelaide Melhuish in her earlier and impressionable years.
Meanwhile, the visitor, finding that the clear-eyed young man seated in an easy chair (from which he had not risen) could seemingly regard him with blank indifference during the next hour, thought fit to say something.
“Is my name familiar to you, Mr. Grant?” he inquired.
The voice was astonishingly soft and pleasant, and the accent agreeably refined. Evidently, there were surprising points about Mr. Ingerman. Long afterwards, Grant learned, by chance, that the man had been an actor before branching off into that mysterious cosmopolitan profession known as “a financier.”
“No,” said Grant. “I have heard it very few times. Once, about three years ago, and today, when I mentioned it to the police.”
The other man’s sallow cheeks grew a shade more sallow. Grant supposed that this slight change of color indicated annoyance. Of course, the association of ideas in that curt answer was intolerably rude. But Grant had been tried beyond endurance that day. He was in a mood to be brusque with an archbishop.
“We can disregard your confidences, or explanations, to the police,” said Ingerman smoothly. “Three years ago, I suppose, my wife spoke of me?”
“If you mean Miss Adelaide Melhuish—yes.”
“I do mean her. To be exact, I mean the lady who was murdered outside this house last night.”
Grant realized instantly that Isidor G. Ingerman was a foeman worthy of even a novelist’s skill in repartee. Thus far, he, Grant, had been merely uncivil, using a bludgeon for wit, whereas the visitor was making play with a finely-tempered rapier.
“Now that you have established your identity, Mr. Ingerman, perhaps you will tell me why you are here,” he said.
“I have come to Steynholme to inquire into my wife’s death.”
“A most laudable purpose. I was given to understand, however, that at one time you took little interest in her living. I have not seen Mrs. Ingerman for three years—until last night, that is—so there is a chance, of course, that husband and wife may have adjusted their differences. Is that so?”
“Until last night!” repeated Ingerman, almost in a startled tone. “You admit that?”
Grant turned and pointed.
“I saw, or fancied I saw, her face at that window,” he said. “She looked in on me about ten minutes to eleven. I was hard at work, but the vision, as it seemed then, was so weird and unexpected, that I went straight out and searched for her. Perhaps ‘searched’ is not quite the right word. To be exact, I opened the French window, stood there, and listened. Then I persuaded myself that I was imagining a vain thing, and came in.”
“What was she doing here?”
“I don’t know.”
“She arrived in Steynholme on Sunday evening, I am told.”
“I heard that, too.”
“You imply that you did not meet her?”
“No need to imply anything, Mr. Ingerman. I did not meet her. Beyond the fanciful notion that I had seen her ghost last night, the first I knew of her presence in the village was when I recognized her dead body this morning.”
“Strange as it may sound, I am inclined to believe you.”
Grant said nothing. He wanted to get up and pitch Ingerman into the road.
“But who else will take that charitable view?” purred the other, in that suave voice which so ill accorded with his thin lips and slightly hooked nose.
“I really don’t care,” was the weary answer.
“Not at the moment, perhaps. You have had a trying day, no doubt. My visit at its close cannot be helpful. But—”
“I am feeling rather tired mentally,” interrupted Grant, “so you will oblige me by not raising too many points at once. Why should you imagine that conversation with you in particular should add to my supposed distress?”
“Doesn’t it?”
“No.”
“Why, then, may I ask, do you so obviously resent my questions? Who has so much right to put them as I?”
Grant found that he must bestir himself. Thus far, the honors lay with this rather sinister-looking yet quiet-mannered visitor.
“I am sorry if anything I have said lends color to that belief,” he answered. “Candidly, I began by assuming that you forfeited any legal right years ago to interfere in behalf of Miss Melhuish, living or dead. Let us, at least, be candid with each other. Miss Melhuish herself told me that you and she had separated by mutual consent.”
“Allow me to emulate your candor. The actual fact is that you weaned my wife’s affections from me.”
“That is a downright lie,” said Grant coolly.
Ingerman’s peculiar temperament permitted him to treat this grave insult far more lightly than Grant’s harmless, if irritating, reference to the police.
“Let us see just what ‘a lie’ signifies,” he said, almost judicially. “If a lady deserts her husband, and there is good reason to suspect that she is, in popular phrase, ‘carrying on’ with another man, how can the husband be lying if he charges that man with being the cause of the domestic upheaval?”
“In this instance a hypothetical case is not called for. Three years ago, Mr. Ingerman, you had parted from your wife. Your name was never mentioned. Apparently, none in my circle had even heard of you. Miss Melhuish had won repute as a celebrated actress. I met her, in a sense, professionally. We became friends. I fancied I was in love with her. I proposed marriage. Then, and not until then, did the ghost of Mr.”—Grant bent forward, and consulted the card—“Mr. Isidor G. Ingerman intrude.”
“So marriage was out of the question?”
“If you expect an answer—yes.”
Ingerman rested the handle of his stick against his lips.
“That isn’t how the situation was represented to me at the time,” he said thoughtfully.
Grant was still sore with the recollection of the way in which the superintendent of police had forced him to confess the pitiful scheme whereby a woman in love had sought to gain her ends. He refused to sully her memory a second time that day, even to gain the upper hand in this troublesome controversy.
“I neither know nor care what representations may have been made to you,” he retorted. “I merely tell you the literal truth.”
“Possibly. Possibly. It was not I who used the word ‘lie,’ remember. But if you are ungracious enough to refuse to withdraw the offensive phrase, let it pass. We are not in France. This deadly business will be fought out in the law courts. I am here to-night of my own initiative. I thought it only fair and reasonable that you and I should meet before we are brought face to face at a coroner’s inquest, and, it may be, in an Assize Court.... No, no, Mr. Grant. Pray do not put the worst construction on my words. Someone murdered my wife. If the police show intelligence and reasonable skill, someone will be tried for the crime. You and I will certainly be witnesses. That is what I meant to convey. The doubt in my mind was this—whether to be actively hostile or passively friendly to the man who, next to me, was interested in the poor woman now lying dead in a wretched stable of this village.”
The almost diabolical cleverness of this long speech, delivered without heat and with singularly adroit stress on various passages, was revealed by its effect on Grant. He was at once infuriated and puzzled. Ingerman was playing him as a fisherman humors a well-hooked salmon. The simile actually occurred to him, and he resolved to precipitate matters by coming straightway to the landing-net.
“Is your friendship purchasable?” he inquired, making the rush without further preamble.
“My wife was, I was led to believe,” came the calm retort.
Grant threw scruples to the wind now. Adelaide Mulhuish was being defamed, not by him, but by her husband.
“We are at cross purposes,” he said, weighing each word. “Your wife, who knew your character fairly well, I am convinced, thought that you were open to receive a cash consideration for your connivance in a divorce.”
“She had told me plainly that she would never live with me again. I was too fair-minded a man to place obstacles in the way when she wished to regain her freedom.”
“So it was true, then. What was the price? One thousand—two? I am not a millionaire.”
“Nor am I. As a mere matter of pounds, shillings, and pence, it was a serious matter for me when my wife’s earnings ceased to come into the common stock.”
“My first, if rather vague, estimate of you was the correct one. You are a good bit of a scoundrel, and, if I guess rightly, a would-be blackmailer.”
“You are talking at random, Mr. Grant. The levying of blackmail connotes that the person bled desires that some discreditable, or dangerous, fact should be concealed.”
“Such is not my position.”
“I—I wonder.”
“I can relieve you of any oppressive doubt. I informed the police some few hours ago that you have appeared already in a similar role.”
“Oh, you did, did you?” snarled Ingerman, suddenly abandoning his pose, and gazing at Grant with a curiously snakelike glint in his black eyes.
“Yes. It interested them, I fancied.”
Grant was sure of his man now, and rather relieved that the battle of wits was turning in his favor.
“So you have begun already to scheme your defense?”
“Hadn’t you better go?” was the contemptuous retort.
“You refuse to answer any further questions?”
“I refuse to buy your proffered friendship—whatever that may mean.”
“Have I offered to sell it?”
“I gathered as much.”
Ingerman rose. He was still master of himself, though his lanky body was taut with rage. He spoke calmly and with remarkable restraint.
“Go through what I have said, and discover, if you can, the slightest hint of any suggested condonation of your offenses, whether avowed or merely suspected. I shall prove beyond dispute that you came between me and my wife. Don’t hug the delusion that your three years’ limit will save you. It will not. I wish you well of your attempt to prove that I was a consenting party to divorce proceedings. I came here to look you over. I have done so, and have arrived at a very definite opinion. I, also, have been interviewed by the police, and any unfavorable views they may have formed concerning me as the outcome of your ex parte statements are more than counteracted by the ugly facts of a ghastly murder. You were here shortly before eleven o’clock last night. My wife was here, too, and alive. This morning she was found dead, by you. At eleven o’clock last night I was playing bridge with three city men in my flat. When the news of the murder reached me to-day my first thought, after the shock of it had passed, was:—‘That fellow, Grant, may be innocently involved in a terrible crime, and I may figure as the chief witness against him.’ I am not speaking idly, as you will learn to your cost. Yet, when I come on an errand of mercy, you have the impudence to charge me with blackmail. You are in for a great awakening. Be sure of that!”
And Isidor G. Ingerman walked out, leaving Grant uncomfortably aware that he had not seen the last of an implacable and bitter enemy.
It was something new and very disturbing for a writer to find himself in the predicament of a man with an absolutely clear conscience yet perilously near the meshes of the criminal law. He had often analyzed such a situation in his books, but fiction diverged so radically from hard fact that the sensation was profoundly disconcerting, to say the least.
He did not go to the post office. He was not equal to any more verbal fire-works that evening. So he lit a pipe, and reviewed Ingerman’s well-rounded periods very carefully, even taking the precaution to jot down exact phrases. He analyzed them, and saw that they were capable of two readings. Of course, it could not be otherwise. The plausible rascal must have conned them over until this essential was secured. Grant even went so far as to give them a grudging professional tribute. They held a canker of doubt, too, which it was difficult to dissect. Their veiled threats were perplexing. While their effect, as apart from literal significance, was fresh in his mind, he made a few notes of different interpretations.
He went to bed rather early, but could not sleep until the small hours. Probably his rest, such as it was, would have been even more disturbed had he been able to accompany Ingerman to the Hare and Hounds Inn.
A small but select company had gathered in the bar parlor. The two hours between eight and ten were the most important of the day to the landlord, Mr. Tomlin. It was then that he imparted and received the tit-bits of local gossip garnered earlier, the process involving a good deal of play with shining beer-handles and attractively labeled bottles.
But this was a special occasion. Never before had there been a Steynholme murder before the symposium. Hitherto, such a grewsome topic was supplied, for the most part, by faraway London. To-night the eeriness and dramatic intensity of a notable crime lay at the very doors of the village.
So Tomlin was more portentous than usual; Hobbs, the butcher, more assertive, Elkin, the “sporty” breeder of polo ponies, more inclined to “lay odds” on any conceivable subject, and Siddle, the chemist, a reserved man at the best, even less disposed to voice a definite opinion.
Elkin was about twenty-five years of age, Siddle looked younger than his probable thirty-five years, while the others were on the stout and prosperous line of fifty.
They were discussing the murder, of course, when Ingerman entered, and ordered a whiskey and soda. Instantly there was dead silence. Looks and furtive winks were exchanged. There had been talk of a detective being employed. Perhaps this was he. Mr. Tomlin knew the stranger’s name, as he had taken a room, but that was the extent of the available information.
“A fine evenin’, sir,” said Tomlin, drawing a cork noisily. “Looks as though we were in for a spell o’ settled weather.”
“Yes,” agreed Ingerman, summing up the conclave at a glance. “Somehow, such a lovely night ill accords with the cause of my visit to Steynholme.”
“In-deed, sir?”
“Well, you and these other gentlemen may judge for yourselves. It will be no secret tomorrow. I am the husband of the lady who was found in the river outside Mr. Grant’s residence this morning.”
Sensation, as the descriptive reporters put it. Mr. Tomlin was dumbly but unanimously elected chairman of the meeting, and was vaguely aware of his responsibilities. He drew himself a fresh glass of bitter.
“You don’t tell me, sir!” he gasped. “Well, the idee! The pore lady’s letters were addressed to Miss Adelaide Melhuish. Perhaps you don’t know, sir, that she stayed here!”
“Oh, yes. I was told that by the local police-constable. Have I, by any chance, been given her room?”
“No, sir. Not likely. It’s locked, and the police have the key till the inquest is done with.”
“As for the name,” explained Ingerman, in his suave voice, “that was a mere stage pseudonym, an adopted name. My wife was a famous actress, and there is a sort of tacit agreement that a lady in the theatrical profession shall be known to the public as ‘Miss’ rather than ‘Mrs.’”
“Well, there!” wheezed Tomlin. “Who’d ever ha’ thought it?”
The landlord was not quite rising to the occasion. He was, in fact, stunned by these repeated shocks. So Hobbs took charge.
“It’s a sad errand you’re on, sir,” he said. “Death comes to all of us, man an’ beast alike, but it’s a terrible thing when a lady like Miss— Mrs. ——”
“Ingerman is my name, but my wife will certainly be alluded to by the press as Miss Melhuish.”
“When a lady like Miss Melhuish is knocked on the ’ead like a—”
Mr. Hobbs hesitated again. He also felt that the situation was rather beyond him.
“But my wife was flung into the river and drowned,” said Ingerman sadly.
“No, sir. She was killed fust. It was a brutal business, so I’m told.”
“Do you mean that she was struck, her skull battered?” came the demand, in an awed and soul-thrilling whisper.
“Yes, sir. An’ the wust thing is, none of us can guess who could ha’ done it.”
“Lay yer five quid to one, Hobbs, that the police cop the scoundrel afore this day fortnight,” cried Elkin noisily.
Then Mr. Siddle put in a mild word.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “let me remind you that we four will probably be jurors at the inquest.”
That was a sobering thought. Elkin subsided, and Hobbs looked critically at the remains of a gill of beer.
Ingerman took stock of the chemist. He might easily induce the others to believe that Grant was the real criminal, but the quiet man in the black morning-coat and striped cloth trousers was of finer metal. He knew instantly that if he could persuade this one “probable juror” of Grant’s guilt, the remainder would follow his lead like a flock of sheep.
But there was no need to hurry. Next day’s inquest would be a mere formality. The real struggle would begin a week or a fortnight later.
“You have said a very wise thing, sir,” he murmured appreciatively. “Even my feelings must be kept under better control. But this is no ordinary murder. Before it is cleared up there will be astounding revelations. Mark the word—astounding.”
Hobbs, whose heavy cheeks were of a brick-red tint, almost startled the conclave by a sudden outburst which gave him an apoplectic appearance.
“You’re too kind’earted, Siddle,” he cried. “Wot’s the use of talkin’ rubbish. We all know where the body was found. We all know that Doris Martin an’ Mr. Grant were a’sweet-’eartin’ in the garden—”
“Look here, Hobbs, just keep Doris Martin’s name out of it!” shouted Elkin, smiting the table with his fist till the glasses danced.
“Gentlemen!” protested Siddle gently.
“It’s all dashed fine, but I’m not—” blustered Elkin. He yielded to Ingerman’s outstretched hand.
“I seem to have brought discord into a friendly gathering,” came the mournful comment. “Such was far from being my intent. Landlord, the round is on me, with cigars. Now, let us talk of anything but this horror. If I forget myself again, pull me up short, and fine me another round.”
Siddle half rose, but thought better of it. Evidently, he meant to use his influence to stop foolish chatter.