CHAPTER XXI
GRAHAM IS NOT A FOOL
LEFT alone, except for a highly intrigued sergeant of police at the end of the library, Landis and Bernard stared at each other with frowning eyes.
“There’s something rotten in Denmark!” Bernard growled.
“Mother-in-law stuff?” hinted Landis. “Natural maternal jealousy? She couldn’t possibly have shot him!” He had lowered his voice so that Sergeant Forbes would not hear.
Bernard heaved about in his chair.
“Lord knows,” he sighed. “Well, let’s quiz the others, especially ‘Uncle Joel’! We may learn something and we can talk it over afterwards.”
“Suppose we have a look around first,” Landis suggested. “We may find something to ask them about.”
Bernard agreed and they walked to the end of the library. Armor, bow and quiver were exactly as they had found them when they first returned. They passed on through the lateral hall to the billiard-room, where they found the door to the sunken garden unlocked. So was the door at the end of the wing hall. They mounted the narrow stairs there and emerged in the hall above, to be instantly challenged by a large policeman. Having quieted him with some asperity, Landis led the way to Miss Mount’s door. It was unlocked and the key was on the inside. Her room seemed undisturbed. The door at the far side of the bathroom was locked, the key on Miss Mount’s side.
The huge, ornate house, where death had once crashed the gate at dinner time and had now tried to do so again, yielded no clue to the man or woman who had guided his dark feet there. The case was tangled, confusing and apparently meaningless. Their mutual sense of frustration amounted to real alarm.
“Come on downstairs again and tackle that bunch,” Bernard growled as they left Miss Mount’s room. “This business has got my goat! It’s the first case I ever saw where nothing fits!”
“It will, though,” answered Landis with an attempt at cheerfulness. “Go ahead. Lead the way.”
They returned to the library and one by one questioned Russell, Allen, Isabelle and Anita in the order named. Bernard was angry. His whip-lash questions left Russell frankly furious, Allen white about the mouth, Isabelle in tears and Anita thoroughly cowed. But he learned nothing. All four declared that they had been in their rooms from six-thirty until seven-thirty when the gong rang and Susan screamed. There was nothing to disprove their statements. Otherwise they had nothing to tell except to verify what the detectives had learned from Graham and Stimson.
Finally, with a courtesy that attempted amends for his companion’s ferocity, Landis dismissed them all and, going to the reception-room, asked Miss Mount to tell Mr. Joel Harrison that they would like to see him at once in the library. He told Miss Mount to go to bed if she liked.
She did not return. It was some time before Joel Harrison put in an appearance. At length his long, clumsy figure, fully dressed and unexpectedly neat, ambled into the doorway from the hall and Landis invited him to be seated. He obeyed, peering at them as a child peers up at a stranger of whose good-will he is not quite sure.
“Now, Mr. Harrison,” Landis began, “we want your help! You went to the funeral this afternoon and came home about six?”
Joel’s face clouded, then suddenly darkened to anger.
“I did, sir! I went to it! I came home precisely at six and went straight to my bed! I tell you frankly,” he went on, his voice rising, “I was nauseated with the heavy odor of the flowers in that closed room, instead of out in God’s open air where they are at home! Ridiculous! Senseless!” he snorted. “Gentlemen, our civilization, as we call it, has much to answer for!”
Landis hesitated, rather at a loss.
“The funeral of your brother—er—affected you, too, no doubt?”
Joel Harrison leaned forward and tapped his questioner on the knee, lowering his voice confidentially.
“There you have it!” he murmured. “I didn’t like to say anything! Miss Mount and Isabelle and little Mrs. Graham were crying! They seemed quite sincere! What a mummery, young man! Between ourselves, I was utterly disgusted! Yes, sir, disgusted!”
“A mummery?” exclaimed Landis. “You consider your brother’s funeral a mummery?”
After one pitying glance, Joel shook his head.
“You, too?” he whispered. “My dear young man, you don’t know my brother! It’s all tomfoolishness! The whole proceeding was nonsense! Mason is away somewhere! Why, don’t you realize that my brother is far too selfish, far too accustomed to having his own way, to allow anyone—anyone—to do away with him?” He leaned back in his chair with the satisfaction of a man who has solved a difficult problem.
“I see your point,” replied Landis. “Perhaps it was kinder to say nothing to the others. But you had some dinner?”
“Naturally! It was served to me after I had gone to bed. Our cook takes care of my modest wants.”
“That was before the gong rang? About seven, eh?”
“Possibly. It’s of no consequence.” Joel obviously was losing interest in the conversation.
“After your dinner was brought up, did you happen to hear any sort of commotion in the house, Mr. Harrison?”
Joel nodded.
“I was eating my dinner and reading when I heard someone screaming with laughter. There seemed to be a good deal of moving about on the stairs and down here. Naturally I paid no attention to it.”
“You didn’t come out to investigate, as you did on Saturday night, when you thought Mrs. Graham or Anita had screamed?”
“Certainly not! That was all foolishness! My dear sir, between ourselves, this entire household appears to have gone quite mad! Take yourselves for example! Who invited you? Where do you come from? We’ve never been introduced! I mean no offense, of course, but there you are!”
“You didn’t come out to investigate!” exclaimed Landis. “In that case, it must have been before the commotion that you locked Miss Mount’s door!”
Joel stared in amazement. His expression changed slowly to one of haughty reproof.
“Is this more nonsense?” he demanded. “I know nothing of Miss Mount’s door! That goes without saying! Let me add, please, that if you have anything of moment to communicate to me I shall be glad to give you an appointment in the morning! Now I must ask you both to withdraw!”
“You locked Miss Mount’s door tonight!” thundered Bernard suddenly. “Don’t try to deny it!”
Instantly Joel’s manner changed. He subsided in his chair like a pricked balloon. His haughty expression vanished to be replaced by one of harassed conciliation. The pathos beneath the humor of his muddled intelligence and quaint changes of mood was nothing to the pathos of this swift submission to a bullying tone. The elderly brother of the strong-willed millionaire cringed like a child and like a child tried to avert calamity by winning forgiveness.
“I apologise!” he exclaimed quickly. “I had no intention to offend. Entirely an oversight—”
“Then you did lock Miss Mount’s door?” snapped Bernard.
“I’m afraid not, sir! If you had given me any idea that such a duty was expected of me I should most certainly have seen to it! Perhaps if I did so now—?” He started to rise.
Hunched down in his chair, Bernard stared up at the old fellow from beneath penthouse brows for a moment, then shook his head slowly.
“If you didn’t lock it before dinner, it’s too late now. There’s nothing to be done,” he explained in a quieter tone.
“Never mind,” said Landis. “We’ll get around that all right. Now you’d better go back to your bed and your book. We’re sorry that we disturbed you. Good night, Mr. Harrison!”
With an air of intense but slightly puzzled relief, Joel bade them good night and straggled loose-jointedly out of the room. They listened until they heard his door close above.
“You don’t think he had anything to do with it?” asked Landis.
“I’m hanged if I know! Either he’s just crazy or he’s cunning and crazy. Or maybe he’s cunning enough to seem crazy! He has the skill and the motive and had the opportunity to kill his brother. He might shoot Graham to draw suspicion from himself, just because he would have no motive there. But that seems pretty far-fetched!”
“Let’s go up and see if Graham is asleep!” suggested Landis soothingly. “If he’s not, we’ll ask him about his wife. He’ll tell us all he knows, now, or I’m a billygoat.”
“Right you are,” agreed Bernard with a sigh.
Graham was very much awake and responded instantly to their gentle knock. As soon as he heard who they were he assured them he could get out of bed and in a moment unlocked and flung open the door. Landis helped him into bed again.
Wincing once or twice he settled himself on his back and looked at his visitors with quizzical irritation. “Do you suppose,” he demanded, “that I can get to sleep with a herd of elephants prowling outside my door? You can’t tell me that one lone flat-footed cop could make all that noise!”
With a remorseful chuckle, Landis swung one of Graham’s bedroom chairs into the hall and requested the policeman to sit down on it instead of tramping up and down. Pleased and slightly astonished, the cop sat down at once. Landis returned to the side of Graham’s bed in time to catch his answer to a question of Bernard’s.
“I know I’ve begged off answering twice. Your two questions involved the same thing. But I’m in no mood now to keep anything to myself any longer. I’ll only ask you to keep absolutely confidential what I’m going to tell you. For I’m morally certain that it can’t affect the case!” He glanced at Landis rather anxiously.
“You know we’ll do that if we can!”
Bernard nodded.
“Unless it does affect the case—and even then if we can!” he agreed.
“All right,” said Graham with a wry smile, “here goes! About five months ago—early in May—Mr. Brent told me that Mr. Harrison had a little highly confidential work he wanted done for him and that he, Mr. Brent, had recommended me for it. Of course, I was delighted, telephoned Mr. Harrison’s secretary, made an appointment and went to see him at his office.
“Mr. Harrison beat about the bush a bit and finally told me that he wanted me to go back to New York, drop everything else and find a young girl named Ethel Cuddy.”
Both detectives nodded with no apparent quickening of interest, though inwardly highly intrigued.
“I suggested a private detective agency,” continued Graham, “and Harrison blew up at once, roaring at me that if he had wanted a private detective he would not have sent for me.
“I kept quiet after that and he went on to say that the girl was the daughter of an old friend who had died insolvent. He had arranged with an old couple, a Mr. and Mrs. Cuddy, to bring her up as their own child. She was three when her father died. He had paid them small monthly sums for years for her education and her keep, as he put it. Recently, by the merest chance, he had read a brief item about an explosion of a still at the Cuddy home in which there was no mention of a daughter. He had investigated on his own hook and discovered that the girl had run away nearly three years before. Now he wanted her found.”
“Or his money back!” suggested Landis irrepressibly.
“He mentioned that,” laughed Graham. “He said he was going to make it hot for the Cuddys one of these days. But the girl had to be found first and he wanted me to find her.”
“Don’t see anything particularly confidential about that—from Harrison’s point of view,” grumbled Bernard.
“He explained that, too! He told me that, so far as he knew, Ethel Cuddy believed herself the daughter of the old couple she ran away from. He didn’t want her undeceived on that point because it might put ideas in her head if she learned that a millionaire was interested in her. Oh, he was quite, quite frank about it.”
“Pleasant character, Harrison,” observed Landis.
“So I thought! Anyhow, he wanted me to find where she was and report her circumstances to him. He did not want me to speak to her or get in touch with her in any way. It was a large order to find one girl in New York. But he offered me a thousand dollars and I undertook the job.”
Graham glanced up at this point to discover that his visitors were both smiling. He stared from one to the other.
“Of course you believed every word of that?” asked Landis. “It’s all so likely!”
“Wait a bit,” Graham frowned. “There’s something coming that’s a million times less likely and quite true!”
“We’ll try to believe you,” Bernard rumbled.
Graham laughed.
“That’s all I ask! Anyhow, I looked and looked and always failed. In the meantime, I’d met, at a friend’s studio, a girl named Ethel Craig. I guess you both know what it’s like when a girl bowls you over. She bowled me over clean! During this time she was trying to get on the stage again, as she was out of a job. I helped her all I could and we got to know each other well. She seemed to like me and one day, after I had been telling her about myself as a fellow will, she confided to me a little of her own early days. She told me that her parents were old and cross, her home environment a sordid and miserable one. They had made her do chores from morning till night and had never shown the slightest affection for her. Instead, their attitude had always been that she was a burden to them.”
Graham paused reminiscently.
“She had run away from home nearly three years before to seek her fortune and had changed her name so that they could not find her and drag her back!”
The two detectives sat forward in their chairs as though suddenly enlightened.
“It was Ethel Cuddy!” cried Landis.
“You’ve stolen my thunder!” Graham complained. “Ethel Cuddy it was! It seemed incredible of course. But with my search always in mind, it leapt to the eye. I wanted to surprise her and tell her what her name had been. But I had to stick to my bargain with Harrison. If I had shown her that I knew, she would have asked a million questions. So I just asked her what her name had been and she told me—Ethel Cuddy!”
“A thousand dollars for two words,” Landis commented. “What did you do about Harrison?”
“I telephoned from New York and came out here to see him. I told him the truth and that he need have no further anxiety about her as I proposed to marry her!”
“What did he say to that?” inquired Bernard.
“At first he was furious. Then he got grim and ugly and told me that I need have no expectations on her behalf just because he had expressed curiosity to know what had become of her. Of course I got up on my ear a bit and told him that such a question didn’t arise, although I expected the sum he had promised me for finding her. He grumbled a bit and gave me a check and that was that.”
“Did you—er—believe Harrison’s account as to her being the daughter of an old friend?” asked Landis tactfully.
Graham frowned.
“I’d fallen in love with her, Landis! Do you suppose I gave or give a damn who her parents were? I have no social aspirations, thank God! Ethel’s breeding and character speak for themselves!”
“You bet they do!” rumbled Bernard.
“But did you guess,” Landis persisted, “that Harrison’s interest in her might be, well, more than friendly?”
“What do you mean by that?” Graham snapped.
“Not what you mean! I mean, did you guess that she might be a—relative of Harrison’s?”
The young lawyer stared at Landis for a moment with angry eyes. Abruptly his expression lightened and he laughed.
“Look here, Mr. Landis, I’m not a fool! Of course I guessed it! That’s why, without his asking it, I volunteered not to speak to her at all of his interest. On the other hand I asked him for permission, after we were married, to bring her out to meet him as a friend and a valued client.”
“What was the idea of that?”
Again Graham stared, this time suspiciously.
“It’s fairly obvious, I should think. You’ve seen Ethel. Nobody could help liking her. Of course I wanted him to see her! Neither of us is over-supplied with money, though I have enough for us both. If Harrison was her—was a relation and grew fond of her, anything he did for her of his own free will was so much the better! On the other hand, in order to avoid even the suspicion of blackmail, I sought for no link between them and stipulated that our visit be after our marriage, when it was up to me to support her anyway.”
“Entirely ethical and extremely considerate,” Landis smiled. “What did he say to that?”
“He looked me up and down for quite a while and I think he saw clear through me. Anyhow he finally nodded and said: ‘All right, come and spend a week here if you like, after you’re married! That’ll save you the cost of a honeymoon!’ So I thanked him and got out!”
“Do you think he still had the idea that you might attempt to blackmail him?” asked Landis.
Graham shook his head.
“I don’t believe so. You see, a lawyer is in a confidential position toward his client anyway and such a thing would be out of the question. Also, I think he was shrewd enough to guess that I wasn’t that sort.”
“Probably he was. We are!” smiled Landis.
Graham thanked him with a nod and a slow flush.
“Anyhow,” he continued hastily, “I didn’t go near him again until Ethel and I were married. We were practically engaged when she told me her real name. We sent him an announcement card and got in exchange an invitation to stay here this week from Isabelle Harrison. I guess you fellows believe that I would have married and did marry Ethel regardless of any expectations or hopes I might have had from Harrison?”
“What difference does that make?” demanded Bernard. “Let your conscience be your guide! Personally, knowing you and Mrs. Graham, I don’t doubt it for a minute!”
“Nor I,” said Landis warmly.
“Thanks! Now, I want to remind you that Ethel knows absolutely nothing about all this. There’s no proof of course. If there should be anything in our guess, I naturally want to save Ethel any pain or—or mortification—”
“Was that why you wouldn’t tell us about her past?”
“Of course! It had nothing to do with the murder, as I told you! But I don’t feel like keeping anything dark after this crack somebody took at killing me. I can only trust to your kindness—”
“To which you can trust!” retorted Landis shortly. “What I want to know is this. Did her meeting Harrison accomplish what you hoped?”
“Of course it did! Or rather,” Graham added with a regretful laugh, “it did and it didn’t. Mr. Harrison was very cool to her when we first came, a week ago Saturday. But on Sunday morning Mr. Brent went off to shoot with Joel Harrison and Ethel, of her own innocent volition, drifted into a long, teasing conversation with Mr. Harrison. You see, she’s been on the stage and she’s learned how to amuse men of his type without losing any of her own dignity. In the afternoon he took her for a drive and a sail and Sunday night he called me into the library.”
“That was when Anita came in and had her row with him, wasn’t it?” Landis asked.
“Yes. She interrupted our talk in the middle. I found Mr. Harrison smoking and apparently in a good humor. He told me to sit down, presented me with a cigar and then said in his blunt way that he liked my attitude and liked my wife. He added that his girls had and would have plenty of money to make fools of themselves. He wound up by telling me that he was going to change his will and make a provision for Ethel in the future as he had provided for her in the past. He proposed to go into town on Monday and take me with him for lunch at the Bankers’ Club. And I gathered that he intended to see Mr. Brent and change his will.”
“But he didn’t do it!” exclaimed Landis.
“I supposed he had, though I didn’t ask him. My senior partner would be apt to say nothing to me about it and I supposed that there was plenty of time anyway. Nobody knew then that he would be dead on Saturday!”
“So he didn’t change it at all, eh? That’s tough.”
“He left me ten thousand dollars. I suppose he postponed doing anything for Ethel. Oh, well,” Graham shrugged, “I’ve enough for us both and now I won’t spend the rest of my life trying to head off her questions as to why he left her some money! But I didn’t want to tell you that conversation in the library either. It would have meant telling you the whole story and involving Ethel’s problematical past.”
“His offer, though, confirmed your natural assumption as to the reason for his interest in your wife!”
“I suppose it did.”
“The chances are,” said Bernard, “that she’ll never have to know if you keep her away from the Cuddys. By the way, to be frank about this thing, did your guess that Harrison might be Mrs. Graham’s father ever afford you an inkling as to who her mother might have been?”
“Good Lord, no! Why should it? Ethel went to the Cuddys, according to Mr. Harrison, when she was only three years old. Her mother might have been anybody. Probably she’s dead. That’s all shrouded in the mists of eighteen years. Ethel is twenty-one now. Some poor little stenographer, probably. Mr. Harrison was hardly a pleasant character.”
Bernard got up. Landis followed suit.
“Well,” said Bernard, “thanks for telling us all about it. Don’t worry. We’ll keep it dark. And don’t worry about this business tonight, either. We’ll see there’s no second attempt on you! Good night.”
“Good night,” said Landis. “Get some sleep now.”
Graham was staring after them. A rather startled expression had crept into his eyes.
“Good night,” he said absently. “Switch out the light, will you? Never mind locking the door unless you think it’s necessary.”
“Not at all, now,” Landis assured him.
They went out quietly, closed the door, nodded to the stiffly seated policeman and descended to the first floor again. Their talk with Graham explained his earlier reticence. It afforded them no direct clue to the solution of the double mystery.