CHAPTER XII
WHEREIN CLIVE PLAYS THE FOOL
“MR. VAIL,” spoke up the chief, a new smoothness and consideration in his manner, “it is my duty to mention for the second time this evening that anything you may say is liable to be used against you. I merely speak of it. Now that I’ve done so, if you care to go on answering my questions—”
“Fire away!” said Vail.
“The slayer of Willis Chase,” said the chief portentously “was outside the house. He climbed in by an open window. His deed accomplished, he climbed hastily out again. In other words he, too, was outside the house shortly before and shortly after the crime.”
“What do you mean?”
“You say you made the rounds outside the house. You declare you were awake and on guard. Did you not see or hear any one climbing to the veranda roof or walking on it or getting into that open window? From your own statement you could not have been far from that window, at least once, in circling or starting to circle the house. You could not have avoided seeing or hearing any trespasser on the trellis or on the roof just above you. It is established that you were out there at the time the murder must have been committed.”
“I did not see any one or hear any one out there,” said Vail.
“Yet you admit you were there?”
“Yes. And nobody else was. I’d have heard him on the roof. And I’d have heard the vines rustle.”
“I agree with you. You would. Mr. Vail, I have had much respect for you. I had still more for your great-uncle, Mr. Osmun Vail. But I am afraid it will be my painful duty to place you under arrest. Unless we—”
“Reuben Quimby, you old fool!” shrilled Miss Gregg. “Why, this boy is—”
“Now, now!” boomed Joshua Q. Mosely. “Don’t you go calling bad names, ma’am, prematoorely. I get the chief’s drift. He’s dead right. The evidence is clear. Don’t you see? Vail here admits he went outside a little before the murder and that he came in again a little after it. He says he wasn’t farther off than the walk that borders the porch. He admits he didn’t see or hear any one else. That can’t mean but just one thing. It means he shinned up those vines and into the window and—and did what he went there to do—and came back in time to run upstairs when the dog waked us. And I heard you tell the doctor on the phone that it was Vail’s own knife the murder was done with. There’s nothing else to it. He—”
“It’s you who are the old fool, Mosely, not only the chief!” exclaimed Clive Creede, wrathfully, as the rest sat open-mouthed with dismay at the linking of the chain of seemingly stupid questions. “If you knew Mr. Vail as we know him—as the chief ought to know him—you’d know he couldn’t do such a thing. He couldn’t! Why, what motive could he have? Absolutely none. It needs a terrific motive to make a man commit murder. Juries take that into account.”
“But—”
“Thax had no such motive. I could swear to that. If his butler or any other servant should have overheard and testify to the petty quarrel between him and Chase that I walked in on early in the morning, when I came here, any jury would laugh at such a squabble leading to a crime. I speak of it because the butler was in the outer hall at the time and may give a wrong impression of the spat; and some shyster lawyer may try to magnify it. It was nothing. Chase wanted to come to board and Vail, for some reason, didn’t want him to. At least that is all of the quarrel I heard. But men don’t kill each other for puerile causes like that. Any more than for the silly dispute I overheard them having a few days ago at the Hunt Club in Stockbridge when Vail threatened he’d—”
“You idiot!” growled Thaxton. “What are you trying to get at? You’ve known Chase and me all our lives. You know we were good chums. And you know we were forever bickering, in fun, and having mock disputes and insulting each other; from the time we were kids. So—”
“That’s just what I’m saying,” urged Clive eagerly. “That’s what I’m trying to hammer into the chief’s head. You had no real motive, no matter what servants or other people may be dragged forward to testify about hearing spats and squabbles between you. You were his friend. Why, Chief, you’re out of your mind when you threaten to arrest him!”
“From all I’m hearing,” said the chief grimly, “I figure I’m less and less out of my mind. Mr. Vail, do you care to tell the nature of the quarrel between you and the deceased—the one Mr. Creede says he ‘walked in on’?”
“I’ve told you,” interposed Creede vehemently, “and so has he, that it was just a sort of joke. It has no bearing on the case. As Vail says, he and Chase were always at swords’ points—in a friendly way. Besides,” he went on, triumphantly, “I can attest to the truth of at least one important part of what he’s just told you. I can swear to it. He said a few minutes ago that he made a round of the house from top to bottom, about one o’clock. He did. I heard him. I couldn’t get to sleep till nearly two. I heard the stable clock strike one. Then almost right afterward I heard soft steps come upstairs and tiptoe along the hall. I heard them pause at the room next to mine, and I heard a rattle as if the door was being tried. Then the steps passed on to—”
“Sounded as if he tiptoed to the room next to yours and tried the door?” interrupted the chief. “Who was occupying the room next to you?”
Clive’s lips parted for a reply. Then, as his eyes suddenly dilated his mouth clamped.
“Who was occupying that room?” repeated Quimby in augmented interest. “The room he stopped at and whose door he tried.”
“I—I don’t know,” stammered Clive. “And it’s of no importance anyhow. I mentioned it to prove Vail could be corroborated in part of his account of how he spent the night, and that if part of his story was true it all was true. He—”
“I don’t agree with you that it’s ‘of no importance,’ whose locked door he tried to open,” snapped the chief. “It is highly important in every way. If—”
“Then I can clear up the mystery,” said Vail wearily. “My own bedroom is next to Creede’s. That is the room in which Chase was sleeping.”
“Ah! Then—”
“Only,” pursued Vail, “my loyal friend here is mistaken in saying I tried the door. I didn’t try that or any other door.”
“I never said you did, Thax!” protested Clive eagerly. “I said I heard a rattle, as if a door was being tried. It may have been a door somewhere rattling in the wind, or it may have been—”
“On a windless night?” cut in the chief. “Or did the killer of Willis Chase try first to get into his room by way of the door and then, finding that locked, enter the room later by the open window? In that case—”
“Shame!”
It was Doris Lane who broke in furiously upon the chief’s deductions.
“Oh, it is shameful!” she hurried on, her eyes ablaze, her slender body tense. “You are trying to weave a filthy net around him! And this poor sick blundering friend of his is inadvertently helping you! Thaxton Vail could no more have done a thing like that than—than—”
Choking, she glanced at her aunt for reënforcement. To her astonishment old Miss Gregg had lost her momentary excitement and was sitting unruffled, hands in lap, a peaceful half-smile on her shrewd face. Apparently she was deriving much pleasing interest from the scene.
“But, Chief!” stammered the luckless Clive, looking miserably at Vail. “I can’t even be sure it was Thax whose steps I heard up there. It may have been any one else’s. I only spoke of it to corroborate him. Oh, why didn’t Chase stay in the magenta room? There’s no way of climbing into that from the ground. If only Thax hadn’t made him change rooms—”
“Will you be quiet?” stormed Doris, aflame with indignation. “Isn’t he suffering enough from these senseless questions; without your making it worse?”
“Hush, Doris, dear!” soothed Miss Gregg. “Don’t interfere. I’m sure Reuben Quimby is doing very well indeed—for Reuben Quimby. His questions aren’t stupid either. A few of them have been almost intelligent.”
“Thanks, dear little girl,” whispered Vail, leaving his seat of inquisition and bending above the tremblingly angry Doris. “It’s fine of you. But you mustn’t let yourself get wrought up or unhappy on my account. I—”
“There’s something else, Chief,” boomed Joshua Q. Mosely, “something that maybe’ll have a bearing on this, in the way of character testimony. I can swear to the prisoner’s homicidal temper. See this swelling on my chin? He knocked me down early in the evening. Mrs. M. and all these others can testify to that. The prisoner—”
“There is no ‘prisoner,’ Mr. Mosely,” gravely corrected the chief. “No arrest has actually been made—yet. But in view of the circumstantial testimony, Mr. Vail,” he proceeded, rising and advancing on the unflinching Thaxton, “in view of the testimony, I fear it is my very painful duty to—”
“To stop making a noise like Rhadamanthus,” interpolated Miss Gregg, “and sit down and listen for a minute to the first gleam of sane common sense that has filtered into this mess. Thax, is the old Elzevir Bible still on its lectern in the study?”
“Why—yes,” answered Vail, puzzled. “But—”
“You remember it, don’t you, Doctor?” she asked, as she wheeled suddenly on the gaping physician.
“The Elzevir Bible?” repeated Dr. Lawton, coming garrulously out of the daze into which an unduly swift and unforeseen sequence of events is wont to plunge the old. “Why shouldn’t I remember it? It was Osmun Vail’s dearest possession. He paid a fortune for it. I remember how you used to scold him for putting it on a lectern in his study instead of locking it up. And I remember the day you insisted on protecting it with that ugly gray cloth cover because you said the damp was getting into the precious old leather. If Oz Vail had cared less for you or been less afraid of you he’d never have allowed such a sacrilege. But what’s that got to do with—”
She had not waited to hear him out, but had left the room. The chief fidgeted annoyedly. The others looked blank. As Quimby cleared his throat noisily, as if to speak, the little old lady returned. Reverently between her veined hands she bore a large volume neatly covered with a sleazy dark gray muslin binding.
“Do you recognize it, Doctor?” she asked.
“Yes, yes, of course,” said Lawton, impatiently. “But at a time like this, surely—”
He paused. For she was paying no attention to his protest. Advancing to the table, Miss Gregg laid the Book reverently upon it. Then she placed both hands on its cover.
“Chief,” she said with a queer solemnity in her imperious voice, “I have something to say. On the chance you may not otherwise believe me, I am attesting to my statement’s truth on this Book of Books. Will you hear me?”
“Why—why, of course, Miss Gregg!” exclaimed the chief. “But you are not called upon to take oath. This is not a courtroom, nor am I a magistrate. Besides, your unsupported word—”
“I prefer to make my statement with my hands upon this Book,” she insisted, “in order that there can be no question, now or later, as to my veracity. I hoped I might be able to avoid making the statement at all. It is not a pleasant confession to make, and it may hold me up to ridicule or to possible misconception. But I have no right to consider my own wishes when a net of silly circumstantial evidence is closing around an innocent man. You will hear me out?”
“Certainly, ma’am. But perhaps later it might—”
“Not later,” she refused, with a brief return to the imperiousness which was her birthright. “Here is my story: Last evening after I went to bed I got to thinking over the robberies. And no matter what courses of reasoning I might follow I couldn’t make it seem that any one but Thaxton Vail had committed them. So I—”
“Auntie!” cried Doris, in keen distress.
Vail’s face flushed. He looked with pitiful dismay at his old friend. But Miss Gregg went on without glancing at either of the two young people:
“I deduced that he might be sitting up examining his plunder or might even be planning to steal more while the rest of us were asleep. By the time the stable clock struck one I couldn’t lie there inactive any longer. I got up and put on this dressing gown and slippers. That is how I chanced to have them on when the alarm was given. Doris was sound asleep. I crept out of our suite without waking her. She was asleep; as I said. I could hear her. That is one of the joys of being young. Young folks’ consciences are so tough from many sins that they sleep like babes.”
She caught herself up in this philosophical digression. Then, clasping the Book a little tighter, she continued:
“I tiptoed out into the passageway. There was a faint light in the lower hall. I looked down. Macduff was lying at the foot of the stairs. I think he heard me, for he lifted his head from between his paws and wagged his tail. Then I peered over the banisters. And I saw Thax sitting at his study table. He was dressed—as he is now. The coast was clear for a peep into his room in case he had left any of the stolen things lying around there. So I tiptoed to his door and tried it. It was locked. Of course,” she added primly, “I didn’t dream Willis Chase was in there. Yes, I tiptoed to his room and tried the knob. That was the rattling sound Clive Creede heard just after the stable clock struck.”
She glanced sharply at Creede. Clive nodded in wordless gratitude.
“As I was starting back toward my suite,” she went on, “I heard Thax begin to climb the stairs. I crouched back behind the highboy in the upper hall. I didn’t care to be seen at that time of night rambling around my host’s house in such costume—or lack of costume. (It was not coyness, understand. It was fear of ridicule. Coyness, in a woman of my age, is like a scarecrow left in a field after the crop is gathered.)”
“Auntie!” protested Doris again, but Miss Gregg went on unchecked:
“Well, there I hid while he went past me, near enough for me to have stuck a pin in him. And, by the way, he did not try the knob of the room where Willis Chase was. He didn’t try any doors at all. He just groped along till he came to the third story stairs. Then he went up them.”
There was a slight general rustle at this announcement. Miss Gregg resumed:
“I wondered what he had been doing in his study alone at one o’clock. I wondered if he was looking over the loot there. I couldn’t resist the temptation to find out. (You know, Chief, I believe that Providence sends us our temptations in order that we may yield to them gracefully. If we resist them, the time will come when Providence will rebuke our stubbornness by sending us no more temptations. And a temptationless old age is a hideous thing to look forward to. But that is beside the point. Excuse me for moralizing. The idea just occurred to me, and it seemed too good to keep to myself.) Let me see—where was I?”
“You said you were tempted to go down to the study while Mr. Vail was in the third story,” prompted Quimby. “To see if you could find—”
“Oh, yes,” she recalled herself. “Quite so. I was tempted. That means I yielded. I scuttled down there as fast and as quietly as I could. I almost fell over the dratted dog at the bottom of the stairs. I got to the study at last. But I barely had time to inspect the desk top and one or two drawers—no sign of the plunder in any of them—when I heard Thax Vail coming downstairs. There was no chance to run back to my room. So I—I— In short, I so far lost the stately dignity which I like to believe has always been mine, as to—in fact, to dodge down behind the desk—in the narrow space between it and the wall. By the way, Thax, you must—you simply must—tell Horoson to see the maids sweep more carefully in that cranny. I was deathly afraid the dust would make me sneeze. It was shamefully thick.”
“Well, ma’am?” again prompted Quimby.
“Excuse me, Chief. I am a housewife myself. (That’s the only kind of wife I or any one else ever cared for me to be, by the way.) Well, there I hid. Thax came into the study. And as he wouldn’t go out of it I had to sit there on the floor. I suppose it was only for a couple of hours at most, though I could have sworn it was at least nine Arctic winters. All of me went to sleep except my brain. My legs were dead except when they took turns at pringling. So was my back till I got a crick in it. And the dust—”
“While you were there,” asked the chief, “did Mr. Vail leave the room?”
“If he had,” she retorted, in fierce contempt, “do you suppose I’d have kept on sitting there in anguish, man? No, the inconsiderate ruffian stayed. He didn’t even have the decency to go to sleep so I could escape. I heard the stable clock strike two, and then, several months later, I hear it strike three. (Oh, I forgot! My hands are on the Book. It struck three an hour later. Not several months later.) Then, just after it struck three that wretched man got up and stretched and went out.”
“Yes?”
“He walked to the front door and opened it. By that time I was on my feet. Both of them were asleep—both my feet, I mean—and I had to stamp them awake. It took me perhaps five seconds, and it hurt like the very mischief. Then I was for creeping up to bed. But as I saw the open front door I was tempted again. I thought perhaps he had had some signal from an accomplice outside—a signal I hadn’t heard. I went toward the door. And at that instant the collie here set up the most awful yowling. I bolted past him up the stairs. As I got to the top I looked back. Macduff was still yowling. And Thax Vail came running into the house to see what ailed the cur.”
“Then—”
“What I am getting at is that Thax was not out of my sight for more than thirty seconds in all—thirty seconds at the very most,” she concluded. “And I leave it to your own common sense if he could have climbed to the window of his room in that time, found and killed Willis Chase in the dark (he carried no flashlight—I saw that through the kneehole of the desk as he went out), climbed down again and gotten into the house—all inside of thirty seconds. He couldn’t. And you know he couldn’t.”