The Trigger of Conscience (Detective Story serial)/Part 4

by Isabel Ostrander

[ PART IV ]

 

SYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING CHAPTERS.

When Detective James Doyle, who was supposedly the new house secretary of the Broadlawns Country Club, is killed by a shot at the club's Halloween dance, Renwick Crane, the famous detective from O'Hare's Agency in the city, undertakes to find the murderer. Sheriff Coburn and Coroner Fellowes are already on the scene when Crane arrives. Samuel Estridge, the well-known criminal lawyer, is the secretary of the club, and Rutherford Sowerby, the banker, is another member. Crane learns that Doyle was shot through the heart, as he stood on the veranda under the dim light of a dragon lantern. The electric lights had been lowered, and the shot came from the inside through an open window. After the tragedy, Philip Dorrance and his wife, “Empress Josephine;” Ogden Bowles, a broker of forty who has brought Mrs. Carter; Ralph Fraser, of Texas, a guest of his brother, Jack Fraser, and Mrs. Fraser; Mrs. de Forest and her niece, Alice Dare; Gerald Landon, a young man in Sowerby's bank—all gather in the rotunda of the club. Young Mrs. Sowerby has fainted and has to be taken home. Crane has a talk with Mrs. Carter, who spoke to Doyle shortly before the fatal shot, and Mrs. de Forest assures him she heard two pistol reports. The sheriff retains Mrs. de Forest's necklace, which is found in the dragon lantern, and Crane then permits everybody to leave. He himself remains at the club. After a careful study of the building, he finds Estridge in the billiard room, and gets a line on the various members. Taking leave of Estridge on the veranda, he is surprised to find Murdock, the club steward, with a pail and brush, removing the crimson stain on the porch. Then Saunders, a man employed by Estridge to watch the grounds, reports that Lindsay, another of Estridge's guards, was found unconscious in the bushes, a gash in his head, a small pistol at his side. Crane examines Murdock and finds the steward's story is not entirely straight. Jewett, one of Crane's men, next reports to Crane certain mysterious movements of Murdock. Crane then sees Fellowes, and they are both inclined to think Doyle may have been killed by a bullet from the small revolver, which hit Lindsay in the bushes, when it was tossed out of a second-story window. In an interview with Mrs. Sowerby, the detective infers she is trying to hide something. Ralph Fraser, who proffers his service as a gun expert, loses his enthusiasm when he sees the small gun. Crane next sees Mrs. Carter and Philip Dorrance quarreling in a glen, and, when he calls on Mrs. Carter, she tells him she left Mrs. Sowerby alone in the dressing room on the second floor of the club, when she came below, just before the fatal shot.

 

CHAPTER XI.

The Shot from the Air.

It seemed to Crane, despite his long years of training in self-control, that his face must have betrayed his surprise at Mrs. Carter's astonishing revelation, but he did not permit his glance to waver, and his voice was as steady as her own calm one. “You did not hold any conversation with Mrs. Sowerby when you came upon her in the dressing room?”

“No. There are two rest rooms, you know, and I had been reclining in the other one; I merely glanced in her room as I passed. I do not know when she went downstairs. As I told you, the sound of the shot, just as I reached the bottom, stunned me so that I was practically oblivious to everything about me for some little time. But in what way can I help you, Mr. Crane?” She hesitated and then added: “I trust the matter will be cleared up soon and the murderer discovered, not only in the interests of justice, but because I am thinking of going away.”

She glanced off as she spoke toward the little cottage, half hidden among the bare trees, and there was an unmistakable note of wistfulness in her tones. The controversy, which he had overheard in part in the glen that morning, returned to the detective's mind, and her final words rang again in his ears: “The world is wide and Broadlawns is only a tiny corner of it.” Had she defied Dorrance to the end, and would what he meant to tell run her and drive her forth from her quiet home?

“Isn't your decision rather a hasty one, Mrs. Carter?” His tone was that of studied indifference, but the one in which she replied was slightly shaken.

“No. I have not discussed it, but for some time I have considered returning to my old home. As soon as I can arrange my affairs and dispose of my little place here I am going back.”

“To Raleigh?”

“Who told you I came from there?” Her voice had steadied once more, but each word came slowly as though carefully chosen. “As a matter of fact we lived quite a little way out in the country, several miles from any one, except negroes and what are known down there as 'poor whites.' However, after my husband's death, I transacted my financial affairs with bankers in Raleigh and naturally gave them as my business reference on coming here.”

“You had friends here, Mrs. Carter? Why did you select Broadlawns as your home?”

“A mere whim.” A little twisted smile came to her lips. “I wanted to get away from the South and everything that would remind me of it. I had seen pictures of the Broadlawns Country Club at the time of a golf tournament, several years ago, and, when I came to New York, an agent for suburban real estate whom I consulted had this cottage on his list. I came out to see it and was charmed by the whole atmosphere of the place, but of late I find that I have been growing homesick, and the climate does not agree with me. As soon as I am no longer needed as a witness for that tragic affair at the club I want to return to North Carolina.”

“Yet if you were so anxious to get away from everything that reminded you of the South, you could not have been very happy there.” Crane remarked. “You must forgive these personal questions, Mrs. Carter, but I shall have to make out the fullest possible report for my chief concerning every one who was on the scene of the crime.”

“I quite understand,” she replied. “My married life was not altogether happy, chiefly because of the loneliness and isolation in which my husband lived. He was elderly and had many eccentricities, but, after his death, I found pleasant friends in Raleigh during the short period of my stay there, and those I have made here are less congenial.”

“What was your husband's full name, Mrs. Carter, and when did he die?”

“Asa Carter; his death took place about three and a half years ago. My maiden name was Nina Shirley, and I came from Charlotte. I was an orphan when I married Mr. Carter, eleven years ago. Doubtless some of my former school friends in Charlotte would remember me, but I have seen none of them since my marriage. My husband would tolerate no visitors, and my desultory correspondence soon languished. Our nearest post-office address, by the way, was a tiny hamlet called Mosely. I think, Mr. Crane, that that is all the information I can give you.”

Her air of finality was pointed, but the detective made no move to depart. Instead he asked: “Do you know of any enmity which you may have incurred, Mrs. Carter, either here, or elsewhere? Is there any one, man or woman, to whom you may, however unconsciously, have given cause to harm you?”

“What a strange question!” She spoke in a low voice scarcely above a whisper. “Why should any one wish to harm me, Mr. Crane? I came here a stranger, desiring only peace and seclusion, and I sought no society, the people hereabout sought me. It was only after repeated urging that I consented to become a member of the country club, but I have participated very little in the social life there and have made no really close friendships. To my knowledge I have not an enemy in the world.”

“You say that you have made no close friendships, yet, among all the people here, with whom have you most frequently been associated?”

For a moment her smooth brow wrinkled as though in thought, and then she replied hesitatingly: “There is always rumor and gossip about a woman alone, especially in a small,circumscribed country-club community. I have avoided any but the most formal associations with the members, although Mrs. Fraser has been very cordial, and I have found little Miss Dare most unaffected and charming.” She paused. “I have occasionally consulted Mr. Estridge or Mr. Sowerby about investments, and, when I first joined the club, Mr. Dorrance offered to teach me to play golf, but I did not care for it and proved a poor pupil. After several seasons I found myself barely acquainted with the others, with the exception of Mr. Bowles. He has been assiduous in his attempts to relieve my loneliness. If any gossip has reached your ears it must be in connection with his attentions to me, but they are merely those of a friend; I have no intention of ever marrying again. Really, Mr. Crane, I cannot understand what these questions may mean! Has any one been making any absurd accusations against me?”

Resentment struggled with a sort of resigned tolerance in her tone, and, with the insufficient data at his command, the detective dared not betray the knowledge gained by overhearing that conversation in the glen. But another phrase, which had been used by the woman before him, returned to his mind: “Women have shown me scant mercy in my life.” He decided to make one last effort.

“No one has been making any direct accusations, Mrs. Carter, but, as you say, there are always rumors and petty gossip in a place like this, not only about you, but about all other young and attractive women, and they are most cruel to their own sex. These are merely routine questions, for you, in common with the others who were present at the moment of the murder last night, have established your position. But can't you tell me if there is any woman who has been unkind to you and whom you have in your power to aid or injure if you would?”

Mrs. Carter rose, and the setting sun glinted on her copper-red hair as it had done that morning, her voice, too, holding the same note of controlled contempt. “I realize now that you have already been listening to what you call petty gossip about me, Mr. Crane, but I do not know to what you allude. None of it has reached my ears. However, as I have already stated, I have not an enemy in the world; nor is there any one, man or woman, whom I could injure if I would.”

Crane rose also, and his frank, boyish, ingratiating laugh broke the tension in the air. “Mrs. Carter, I may tell you in confidence that, in my preliminary interviews with the different ladies of the country-club colony, each one has seemed to consider the others their potential enemies. I will not trouble you further now, and I will not intrude upon you again until the inquest, unless it is absolutely necessary.”

His hostess' manner softened to graciousness as she accompanied him to the gate. “I wish it were within my power, Mr. Crane, to aid you in your inquiry, but the horrible affair of last night is as much of a mystery to me as it must have been to all those present, except the murderer himself; more, in fact, since some of the house committee, at least, must have known why poor Mr. Grant—or Doyle—was installed in the club in the first place, whereas the majority of us were, and still are, ignorant of the motive for his presence there.”

Taking leave of her the detective cranked up his little car and descended into the valley. Here the homes of the country-club colony clustered about the Colonial mansion of Mrs. de Forest. It was not to that august matron, however, that he paid his next visit, but, aided by the directions of a small boy whom he met by the roadside, he pulled up before a modern bungalow, its grounds still ablaze with late autumn flowers, and, alighting, asked for Mrs. Fraser.

She appeared almost upon the heels of her trim little maid, and her firm handclasp held no hint of other than the sentiments which she expressed in her greeting. “Can I help you in any way, Mr. Crane? My brother-in-law said that he met you at the coroner's this morning, but, unfortunately, both he and my husband have gone over to the club. However, if I may be of any assistance, I shall be only too glad to answer any questions to the best of my knowledge.”

“Thank you.” He accepted the seat to which she motioned him in the spacious, chintz-hung drawing-room and regarded her appreciatively across the little tea table, at which she proceeded to busy herself. Her mouth was sensitive, but humorous, her eyes candid and clear with the atmosphere of the clean outdoors which had tanned her skin an honest brown and tinted her chestnut hair with a faded gold. “I asked for you, Mrs. Fraser, but it was really Mr. Ralph Fraser I wanted to consult once more, for I understand that he is quite an authority on firearms.”

“That sort of thing is a hobby with Ralph, but I know very little about it; I have a horror of killing things.” She gave a little shiver. “Whenever Ralph comes to see us he brings some new freak pistol or deadly trick knife. He goes to all kinds of trouble to find these things, but it is merely the enthusiasm of the collector.”

“And your husband does not share it any more than you?”

She laughed. “Oh, Jack goes duck shooting every year, but, aside from that, I believe his only passion, beside business, is golf; he is as crazy about it as I am, and, if this dreadful thing had not happened at the club last night, we were going to teach Ralph to play during this visit. He brought down an outfit of everything suggested to him in a sporting-goods shop.”

“Did he bring anything else, Mrs. Fraser? Any new freak weapon which he may have added to his collection? I should like to see it if he did. I am interested in such things, myself,” the detective remarked casually.

“I don't know.” She handed him a cup of tea across the little table. “Ralph only arrived on the final train before the dance last evening, and I was so busy dressing and seeing that he was served with a belated dinner that I really did not pay much attention to him beyond a hurried greeting. I believe I did overhear him tell Jack that he had some rather remarkable curiosity to show him later. If it is in the line of his hobby I am sure that he will be only too delighted to exhibit it to you, too.”

Crane stirred his tea reflectively for a moment and then observed: “Of course I am trying to interview every one who was present when my colleague was killed last night, but it is rather a large order, in so short a time, before the inquest. Can you help me by telling me something about the rest of the people who were there?”

Mrs. Fraser raised protesting hands.

“Don't ask me for current gossip, please! I never listen to any; perhaps that is why I am on cordial speaking terms with every one. They have all been here longer than we, with the exception of Mr. Bowles, who only became a member this season, and Mrs. Carter, who settled here two or three years ago.”

“Mrs. Carter is one of your best friends, is she not, Mrs. Fraser?” Crane put the question in an idly inconsequential tone, but his hostess' surprise at its tenor made her reply with naïve haste: “Why, no. I was among the first to call upon her, and I found her very interesting. You see, we all know each other's every mood so well out here that, at times, we bore each other to tears, and a new personality is welcome. I tried to draw Mrs. Carter out and make a real friend of her, but there is something baffling about her. This something, while it does not actually repel one, seems to hold one at arm's length. She has always been very pleasant, but I do not feel that I know her any better than on the day of my first call.” Mrs. Fraser paused and drew a deep breath. “But all this is dangerously close to gossip, isn't it? Mrs. Carter is reserved, but really very charming.”

Crane placed his teacup upon the table. “Miss Dare is also a newcomer, is she not? And Mr. Landon, too?”

“Oh, Alice Dare is sponsored by her aunt, Mrs. de Forest, who is quite the leader of everything out here, and Gerald Landon is our own house guest and a dear boy. Jack put him up at the club for the season, and he plays splendid golf!” she exclaimed enthusiastically. “I think you know that he has a position in the bank of which Mr. Sowerby is president, and he and Alice—but there—I am gossiping again!”

Crane smiled. “I have already heard rumors of an engagement between them, Mrs. Fraser, so you are not telling tales out of school.”

Her face sobered. “That rumor is a little premature, I am afraid, for they are both mere children without a penny between them, and Mrs. de Forest has more ambitious plans for her niece.”

“Mrs. de Forest is very wealthy herself, is she not?” the detective asked. “I have heard of some famous diamonds of hers, and her estate on the hill seems to be the most pretentious on the countryside.”

“Oh, yes, she has a great deal of money, I believe, but Alice is an orphan and wholly dependent upon her,” Mrs. Fraser responded, adding, with a little laugh, “I suppose the whole neighborhood has heard about the famous De Forest necklace, but she hasn't worn it lately. I fancy it is too gorgeous for our modest set out here. You are not going, Mr. Crane? My husband and his brother ought to be back from the club very shortly, and they may be able to give you information of more value than I have been able to do, especially as Jack——”

She caught herself up suddenly, biting her lips, and Crane was quick to follow up her slip. “What, Mrs. Fraser? Why do you think that your husband would be especially able to give me information of value?”

She flushed beneath the clear tan of her cheeks and, after hesitating, drew a deep breath. “I am afraid that I have gone too far, now, not to explain, but I hope you will believe me. My husband has never betrayed the confidence of any one else to me, but wives have a sort of way of divining things, you know, and Jack is a member of the house committee of the club. I do not know why that poor detective, who was shot last night, was ever engaged to come out here, but I believe Jack does know, just as you must. That is why I thought that he would be better informed of the situation and able to help you.”

“You have not asked him, Mrs. Fraser?” Crane smiled as he held out his hand, and she smiled, too, as she placed hers within it.

“No, Mr. Crane. I knew that he would have told me if he could, but I observed last night, in the excitement following the shooting, that he did not seem as surprised as the rest at the penetration of your associate's disguise, nor even at the fact of the murder itself, and he was anxious only to discover the author of it. Of course he could not have anticipated the crime, but that he was not astounded when it did take place shows that there must have been a very serious reason for the employment of a private detective at Broadlawns—a reason as serious as life and death itself! I am wondering——”

“Yes?” he asked, as she hesitated once more.

“Why that moment of all others was chosen for the murder, virtually in the presence of a score of people, when the poor fellow might so easily have been done to death at any time during the past month in one of his solitary rambles about the lonelier stretches of the golf course. Could he have been on the point of succeeding, in whatever his quest was, or could some one else among us have discovered his identity and had another cause to fear the presence of a detective?”

“What made you think of that?” Crane asked quickly.

“I dare not accuse anybody!” She had paled beneath her tan, and her reply came in a low tone, surcharged with emotion. “I have not spoken of this to any one, not even my husband, because I was not sure of myself, sure, I mean that my imagination had not played me false. Yet it has been on my mind ever since, and I do not think the noise of the shot could have quite robbed me of my senses, although it startled me, of course. Besides, I saw it an instant before the sound came.”

“Saw what, Mrs. Fraser?” The detective prompted her eagerly.

“A tiny flash of light like a spark, which winked and went out, just as the roar of the shot reverberated through the wide spaces of the foyer.”

“You were standing with Miss Dare, your husband, and your brother-in-law, between the entrance to the conservatory and the door leading to the billiard room, were you not? Do you recall in what direction you yourself were facing?” Crane could scarcely restrain the excitement which he felt from betraying itself in his tones. “Was it toward the porch and the window where the dragon lantern hung?”

“No,” she responded slowly. “I remember distinctly that I was facing straight across the hall, past the foot of the staircase and in the general direction of the steward's desk and the entrances to the dining and smaller supper rooms. I was singing with the rest and had raised my eyes slightly, as most amateurs do when they reach for a higher note than their usual range. That is how I happened to see the tiny flash, I suppose, for it seemed to start quite far above my head, above the heads of any one there, and, in the brief second before it disappeared, I fancied that it moved slightly in a downward course. It was as though the shot were fired from the air.”

“You say that you were looking past the foot of the stairs, but, if that moving spark, which you saw, were above the heads of any one standing on the floor of the rotunda, could it not have come from somewhere upon the staircase itself” asked the detective. “Think carefully, Mrs. Fraser, for it is important.”

3ut Mrs. Fraser shook her head with decision. “No, Mr. Crane. That was the first thought which came to me after the lights were turned on and the body discovered, but the flash was much farther over toward the center of the hall than where the stairs end.”

“Do you recall who was standing on the opposite side of the hall when the lights went up?”

“No!” she replied quickly, too quickly for her assertion to carry conviction. Evidently realizing this she added: “In the general excitement it seemed ages before someone found the switch for the lights, and then everybody was rushing about in the wildest confusion. But, while the people were assembling for the singing and the string orchestra was playing the introduction, I noticed several people on the opposite side of the hall; Mrs. de Forest in her chair, the Dorrances, Mr. Bowles, Murdock behind his desk, and several others moving about between. Really, Mr. Crane, that little flash may have meant nothing.”

“Then, if it were not the flash from the revolver shot which killed Doyle—to put into plain words what your suspicions really mean, Mrs. Fraser—why did you say that the motive for his murder might have been other than the errand which brought him here, that some one else among you might have had a different cause to fear the presence of a detective?”

She looked genuinely distressed. “I—I scarcely know!” she said. “Naturally I was curious why a detective should have been installed in our peaceful little club without the knowledge of the majority of the members in the first place, and, in casting about in my own mind, I could think of only two reasons which might be even remotely possible; theft, or some impending social scandal. None of those on the opposite side of the hall, when the lights were lowered, could have been thought of as guilty of the former, for the steward is the essence of integrity, and the rest were all members like ourselves. As for scandal—sordid enough to reach the divorce courts, I mean—that is equally unthinkable. I had a vague idea, without an iota of knowledge to back it up, that some one might have had a private reason, quite apart from our lives out here, for fearing Doyle's presence. Of course it is the most probable thing, isn't it, that, in the darkness, some stranger stole up from the rear hall beside the staircase——”

It was Crane's turn to shake his head. “And going out into the center of the hall, fired that shot which seemed to come from up in the air? No, Mrs. Fraser, I think we must dismiss that as even a possibility. But, if you know of no scandal and no theft, may I ask why you thought Doyle was sent out here?”

“Well, there have been a series of petty thefts, I believe, from the men's lockers. Besides, minor complaints have been made about the way the club accounts were kept during the summer. Our real clubhouse secretary left very suddenly and supposedly went West for his health, just before Mr. Doyle appeared among us, you know, and, although I had no more reason to suspect him of dishonesty than my own husband, I cannot think of any other reason for Doyle's having been engaged to come to Broadlawns at all.”

“Mrs. Fraser”—Crane paused at the doorway, to which she had accompanied him—“you will learn at the inquest why my colleague was summoned here, and, in the meantime, I want to thank you for being as candid with me as you have. I will promise you to keep your confidence.”

“I may have been indiscreet, but I told you only what I thought it was my duty to disclose, even though I may have been mistaken about that little flash of light,” she responded. “If it is not necessary I do hope that you will not mention my silly little suspicions to any one.”

He promised and took his departure, but, as he turned his flivver into the road that led to the club, the detective realized that his clear-eyed, level-headed hostess had told him as much as she dared of her real suspicions, that she would not have mentioned them had they been either petty or silly, and that in her he had discovered a possible ally who might prove as valuable as Estridge himself.

He had started out that morning without a possible clew to guide him. Now he was returning to the club with a multiplicity of vague indications which pointed in so many different directions that he scarcely knew which to endeavor to trace first.

Why had Mrs. Sowerby lied and claimed to have been in the conservatory? In reality she had been upstairs at the moment the fatal shot was fired? What was the secret which Dorrance had threatened to divulge concerning Mrs. Carter, and whence had come her sudden decision to leave Broadlawns?

Aside from these questions, however, two others had presented themselves to Crane's mind. These he determined to have settled without loss of time by his operatives. One was born of a too hasty reply in the coroner's cottage that morning, and this question was unconsciously attested to by a remark of the lady whom he had just left; the second was the result of a ray of sunlight striking through the bare branches of trees.

On his arrival at the club he found a group of men, among them Rutherford Sowerby and the Fraser brothers, evidently awaiting him on the veranda, but, with a wave of his hand in greeting, he kept on around the drive to the rear. There the ubiquitous Murdock hastened out to him before he had fairly alighted, and he requested that the two men, who had come out with him from the agency, be summoned.

“Walsh,” he began without ceremony to the younger of his operatives, “I want you to catch the next train into town—the club bus will take you to the station. I may want my own car here as well as this flivver. Go straight to the old man and tell him I want you to go to Charlotte, North Carolina. Find out all you can about a young girl who lived there eleven years ago, an orphan named Nina Shirley, who married a rich, elderly man named Asa Carter and went to live on an estate near Mosely, a village not far from Raleigh.”

Walsh, who had evidently been hearing the gossip of the club servants, smiled knowingly. “I get you, sir,” he answered. “Tall, good-looking vamp with red hair pulled down tight over her ears.”

“Not red hair—black!” Crane interrupted him brusquely. “I don't believe it was red until she came North, Walsh. Find out, if you can, why she wears it in that fashion; I think there may be a reason with a story behind it.”

After he had concluded his instructions and Walsh had departed Crane turned to the other operative. “Jewett, without asking any questions of anybody or making yourself too conspicuous, I want you to nose around the clubhouse and see if you can find in the wall of either the big, round entrance hall or the conservatory the mark of a single bullet hole.”

“Yes, Mr. Crane.” Jewett spoke as stolidly as though he had been asked to find a package of cigarettes. “About how large caliber a bullet would it be?”

“Unless I am very much mistaken, Jewett, it will be of the smallest caliber known—.22, and you will find the mark of it considerably higher than your head.”

CHAPTER XII.

“I Killed Him!”

Well, Mr. Crane, have you been making much progress?” Rutherford Sowerby demanded. The detective had joined him and the Fraser brothers on the veranda, a few minutes later.

Crane shook his head noncommittally. “I can't tell just yet, Mr. Sowerby. I stopped at your house this morning, and, although you were not there, Mrs. Sowerby very kindly received me.”

“What?” demanded the ungallant husband. “A fat lot of valuable clews she could give you! All the gossip and petty scandal of the neighborhood!”

“It wasn't what Mrs. Sowerby told me, so much as what she did not tell me, which I found of partial interest in regard to the case.” Crane smiled and turned to the younger of the Fraser brothers. “Everybody is most hospitable to me out here. I had lunch with Mr. Estridge, and just now, Mr. Fraser, your wife gave me a very delightful cup of tea.” As he spoke, however, the detective looked beyond Jack Fraser to the latter's brother-in-law and observed that Ralph Fraser's face had turned a dull, brick red.

“Did she give you any information of value? By Jove, I wish she or some one could!” Jack Fraser exclaimed. “Aside from all selfish notions about the scandal of the thing and its reactions upon all of us here, more or less, it is the confounded mystery and the cowardly way the poor fellow was done to death that gets me! Of course, except for my brother here——”

“Oh, don't mind me!” Ralph Fraser rejoined. “I'm only an outsider; you three know why he was brought down in the first place and that ought to give you a line on the man who killed him. You can mark my words, though; this inquest of yours out here on Monday won't amount to a hill of beans. I'll watch the papers for the real results when I get back to Texas and Mr. Crane has had a chance to work out the case.”

“I hope to work out some minor details, at least, in connection with it fore that, Mr. Fraser,” Crane remarked.

“Unless my brother is held as a material witness, which seems a most remote contingency, he has decided to go directly home again.” Jack Fraser turned to the bank president as he spoke. “It will disappoint Elsie a lot, for she had looked forward to converting him to golf during this visit. But, after this tragedy, of course, the club will be closed for the autumn and winter, at least.”

“Yes,” Ralph. assented somewhat grimly, “after I let a clerk in a sporting-goods store sell me a mail bag full of dinky little clubs and a couple of boxes of balls!”

“That is one funny thing about it!” Jack laughed. “If you happen to be a novice and you leave it to those chaps they usually load you up with all sorts of useless things, but the one who sold you that outfit of yours, Ralph, must have been caught napping, for he left out one of the most essential, if not the most essential, of the lot! I went through your bag at the house this morning and found that you have no driver!”

“Thought you brought your golf bag with you when you came over to the dance last night, Fraser,” Sowerby remarked. “I've got a battered old driver that you can use, if they keep the course open. Don't play any more myself since I broke my ankle in that motor accident, a year ago, though my wife will persist in calling it gout! However, we're getting away from the main issue. About that shot last night, Mr. Crane——”

But Renwick Crane had slipped away quietly, without a word of excuse of apology, and, sauntering past the conservatory, where Jewett was painstakingly looking for the microscopic bullet hole, he found his way to the locker room at the rear. Its sole occupant was a slim, but athletic-appearing, young man in the late twenties. A healthily tanned, smooth-shaven countenance turned in eager curiosity to the detective. “Hello, Mr. Crane! How are things coming with your investigation? I guess you don't remember me, meeting such a crowd of us here last evening.”

“Yes, I do,” Crane said. “You are the Frasers' friend, Mr. Landon, aren't you? You stood in the entrance to the conservatory when that shot was fired, I think you told us.”

The young man nodded. “Funny thing about that,” he remarked. “It must have been my nerves, of course, but I am in pretty fair condition and not usually jumpy. I could not actually have heard that bullet strike Doyle's body, even without the roar of the shot still pounding in my ears, but I could swear that I heard a dull sort of 'ping,' right near me, at the same instant that the revolver must have been fired. I suppose I was closer to that window, where Doyle was standing, than anybody else, but not close enough to hear the whir of the bullet, let alone the impact when it found its mark. Odd, isn't it?”

“Very!” The detective spoke dryly, but the blood leaped suddenly in his veins. “I have found it to be my experience that imagination plays strange tricks with the most normal of us in moments of tense excitement. The entrance to the conservatory is wide; were you standing nearer the windows, or more toward your right, where the Frasers and Miss Dare were standing?”

Gerald Landon bent once more over the golf bag and the clubs he was examining, but not quickly enough to hide the boyish flush which mounted to his brow. “I was standing toward the left of the conservatory entrance, with my back almost turned to the windows of the rotunda which look out upon the veranda,” he replied frankly. “I happened to be looking straight at the group of people you mention when the sound of the shot came.”

“Then you saw nothing else at that instant? No sudden flash of light across your eyes, for instance?”

“No, Mr. Crane, not until the hubbub arose and all the lights were turned on full. I can tell you that, in spite of all that I went through overseas, I had a sickish minute when I ran out on the veranda with the others and saw that poor chap lying there! I liked him, and I believe that I got to be more chummy with him than any of the members of the club. I'm only a guest here, and, of course, I had no more suspicion of his real identity than most of the rest of us.” Landon glanced up with a whimsical twinkle in his eyes. “Maybe he suspected me, though, of whatever it was he came out here to investigate! I don't think so, for it seems to me that it was I who sought his society, and he was a quiet sort of fellow; never talked much or asked a single question that I can remember. I used to drag him out to play a round of golf with me now and then. Just think of it! He handled this very driver many a time!”

As he spoke the young man held out a golf club,-and Crane took it and examined it gravely, mentally noting its weight and shape and general difference from the others in Landon's bag. He handed it back and asked casually: “Haven't seen any odd driver lying about here anywhere, have you?”

“No. I'm just own sorting out my clubs from Jack's, for I've played my last round of the season. As soon as the inquest is over I shall be off for town.”

Crane sauntered leisurely around the room, idly examining such lockers as were open, with the air of an interested visitor, but his keen, darting glance missed nothing. Then, with a nod to Landon, he strolled back into the rotunda once more and to the left of the conservatory entrance.

Jewett, who was still pottering about within, suddenly heard a low, peculiar whistle. He hurried out to find his superior eying, with great absorption, a small spot in the oak paneling of the wall, just above his head.

“That's just a wormhole; I saw it before,” Jewett remarked. “There are plenty more of them in the paneling on the other side of the entrance. The steward told me that these panels were very old and were brought from some other building and set in here.”

“Wormhole, is it?” retorted Crane. “I've seen antique oak before, but I never saw a wormhole like freshly bored wood, nor one that dropped a grain or two of new sawdust. Look down at your feet.”

The operative did so and uttered an exclamation of amazed vexation, as the yellowish specks glinted back at him from the floor which had been highly waxed for the dance of the previous night.

“That's what comes of taking things for granted. It explains, also, why I am still in the old rut, though years longer with the old man than you, Mr. Crane!” he declared. “I did notice that hole up there, but I had examined the others pretty thoroughly first, and I didn't think it would be worth while to probe this one.”

His tone was so crestfallen that Crane withheld a rebuke and merely said: “Get a chair with a wooden seat and lend me your penknife; its blade is longer than mine. Look sharp, Jewett, before that group on the veranda are wise to what we are doing. Never mind about excuses now; we all make mistakes.”

Jewett. obeyed and, with alacrity, mounting the chair, his superior took from him the knife with its keen, narrow blade and began twisting it in the tiny hole which marred the time-mellowed grain of the ancient wood.

Grain after grain of sawdust fell until, as the probe ground deeper, it began pouring in a continuous trickle upon the chair and floor. The early dusk was already dimming the spacious hall, and Crane worked quickly to end his task before Murdock appeared to turn on the lights. At last he felt the point of the knife grate against something metallic, and, with a muttered exclamation of satisfaction, he began twisting the blade in a wider circle.

“Strike something?” asked Jewett, his stolidity gone.

“I think so,” Crane responded cautiously in an undertone. “That bunch still out on the porch?”

“Yes. There were only three of them before, but now there are a couple more,” reported Jewett after reconnoitering. “They seem to be moving toward the door now; I guess they're breaking up. What's that? Got it?”

Crane stepped down from the chair, turned it about with its back to the wall and slid it quickly along the floor to a distance of several feet from the betraying hole. Then, closing the knife, he motioned Jewett to follow him and slipped into the conservatory. It was only when they were securely hidden from view behind a cluster of screening shrubs that he held out his hand to his companion. Upon the palm a diminutive globule of steel winked wickedly back at them.

“What's it mean?” Jewett demanded in a whisper and proceeded to answer himself. “There was two shots fired last night, and they were from different revolvers. Where's the one this came from?”

“I don't know yet, but I think that when we find it—and I am certain that it is still about the club somewhere—it will prove to be the oddest-looking weapon of its size that you ever came across. I am going to look about, and, in the meantime, I want you to find that steward. Don't let him out of your sight until I send for you.”

“No fear if you mean that Murdock!” retorted Jewett. “He's been tailing me all day; I couldn't lose him for a minute, and the questions he's been asking me would fill a book. There—that must be him, now!”

During his speech the lights had sprung up in the huge circular hall, which they had just left, and Crane dropped the bullet into his vest pocket and handed the knife hastily to his companion.

“Here, Jewett, you go out first and talk to him about anything under the sun except what we've just found. Get him away to the locker room or pantries on some pretext, so that I can beat it out of here without his knowing that we have been consulting together.”

“All right, Mr. Crane.” Jewett grinned and added: “Judging by his complexion I've a pretext in my hip pocket that will make him go off with me to any little quiet corner, and its not my gat, either!”

Left alone Crane made a careful circuit of the conservatory, dodging like a shadow from one tall shrub to another, sweeping aside the fanlike leaves of the palms where they concealed the floor. He looked searchingly into every corner, but with no success. Finally he emerged and was instantly hailed by a cluster of men who had gathered before the log fire on the hearth. Beside the Frasers and Rutherford Sowerby the group now included Samuel Estridge and a dapper young man in a Tuxedo, whom the detective recognized as Mr Carter's companion of that morning in the glen.

Crane strolled over to them, and Estridge presented him to Mr. Philip Dorrance, who expressed his pleasure with an obviously nervous little cough. “Just dropped in for a minute to see how the investigation into that sad affair of last night was getting on, Mr. Crane,” he explained. He was slightly flushed, and his pale, prominent blue eyes gleamed with a sort of triumphant excitement. “Have to be trotting along in a few seconds. My wife and I are dining out this evening with some friends down toward Rosemere, and we must motor several miles. She sent me—I mean I came to learn if anything had been accomplished toward solving the mystery.”

His loquacity and overcordiality made the detective wonder for a moment whether or not he was exhilarated solely by his nervous sensibility.

“I do not know the method of procedure followed by the local authorities, Mr. Dorrance, nor whether they are in the habit of disclosing the initial steps of their progress or not, but we do not discuss the possible clews, which we have obtained in a case, until we have reached definite results.” Crane spoke in a pleasant tone, but the meaning of his words sunk in, and Dorrance's flush deepened.

“Perhaps it would have been better for this fellow Grant, or Doyle, if he had taken some one into his confidence,” he replied.

“We are going to close the club on Monday for an indefinite period,” Estridge announced hurriedly to Crane. “Of course Murdock will remain here in charge, and an outside man or two will be kept, but the waiters and understewards will go. I don't imagine that any of us will care to gather here again until the spring comes. Sowerby and I are going to dine here to-night, and, if you would care to join us——”

“Thank you, Mr. Estridge, you gentlemen are both very kind, but I have work to do and shall have time only for a hurried meal. If you will excuse me now——” The detective was retreating as gracefully as possible when Jack Fraser called after him: “None of us are going just yet, except Mr. Dorrance. If you will come into the locker room a little later perhaps we can show you something that will merit further investigation on your part!”

Crane laughed and shook his head as he disappeared into the billiard room, but the laughter died from his lips when the door had closed behind him, and he relaxed for a moment upon the leather seat which ran around the wall. For the first time he felt the inertia of mental and physical fatigue. He had frequently worked for days and nights without sleep, but then there had been some definite lead for him to go upon; now all real clews seemed to be lost in a maze of small talk and gossip of a snobbish community where not even death by violence was taken seriously, and each person appeared to care only for his neighbor's opinion.

Then the detective's hand crept up to his vest pocket, and he roused himself. The bullet, which reposed there, had not killed his colleague, but if he could discover whether it had been sped by accident or design, he would have gone a long way toward simplifying the apparent multiplicity of possible motives for the murder. Mrs. Fraser's keen wits had probed to the depths of the mystery without her even having knowledge of the loss of Mrs. de Forest's necklace; surely he, with his training and experience, was not to be baffled now!

Rising he began pacing back and forth in the narrow aisle between two pool tables, his mind alert once more. Where, in the short space of a minute or two at most, could any one have gone from the farther side of the hall, whence had come that tiny flash of light when the shot rang out, and where, unobserved or unnoted, had he or she concealed so cumbersome an object as that which he sought? Not upstairs, for Mrs. Carter's presence upon the lowest step guarded that domain; not out to the rear of the club where a host of gossiping servants would have been waiting with curious eyes and prattling tongues, nor upon the veranda with its excited group about the dead man.

Neither could the weapon have been concealed in the conservatory nor locker room, for he had already searched both. What hiding place for it, then, remained?

Crane's eyes were lowered in thought as he paced reflectively to and fro. Suddenly he paused, and the question in his mind was answered at last. From beneath one of the tables, resting upon the bracket provided for it, protruded the handle of the bridge used in making difficult shots. From the corresponding bracket, under the edge of the other table, there appeared a handle of quite another kind.

It was a grip of leather and slanted at a sharp angle which denoted its unusual brevity when compared to the ordinary bridge. Crane stooped and glanced beneath the table, then closed his fingers gingerly about the leather grip and drew forth a new golf club of highly polished, but singularly heavy, wood.

Meanwhile the group about the fireplace in the great hall remained intact. Young Dorrance seemed to have forgotten his announced intention of immediate departure and was holding forth sarcastically about the ability of all detectives, official and private. Only the Frasers disputed with him, for Sowerby and Estridge were conversing aside in lowered tones, but all five were so deeply engrossed that they failed to observe the cat-footed Murdock when he took his accustomed place behind his desk. A tall, ungainly stranger, with whom he appeared to be upon the best of terms, lounged confidentially across the counter.

Neither did any of them become aware of the reappearance of Crane. He passed them silently, one hand held behind him, and joined the two at the steward's desk. Jewett glanced in quick inquiry at his superior, and, when the latter nodded, he stepped aside and, entering the little office, he took up his stand directly behind Murdock, but the steward was oblivious to his presence.

He stood as though transfixed, gazing with a sort of horror at the golf club which the detective laid upon the counter before him, and it was only when Crane's voice, grown swiftly stern, rang out through the hall that the five men by the hearth ceased their several discussions and moved instinctively forward.

“Murdock, is this the golf club with which you reached out to touch that passing waiter last night, at the moment when the shot was fired?”

“I—I don't know, sir!” the wretched steward exclaimed. “I told you, sir, that I shouldn't be able to tell if I saw it again!”

“You put it back in the bag beneath the counter before you vaulted over and out to the veranda, to where Doyle's body lay?”

“Y—yes, sir!”

“Then how do you explain its presence, in place of one of the bridges, under a pool table in the billiard room?”

“I haven't the least idea, sir. The bag and all were gone when I tried to show it to you, if you recall, sir!” Murdock's ruddy face had blanched, and he was trembling visibly.

“Perhaps you could tell if this were the same club or not by taking it up and flourishing it as you did last night, Murdock.” A note of command had entered the detective's tones. “Grasp it by the head.”

“But I didn't, sir!” The steward's pallid face took on a waxen hue. “I must have lifted it from the bag by the head, of course, but I swung it out by the grip. I—now that I look at it, sir, I am positive that this is not the same.”

“Try it and see.” Crane's inexorable voice directed. “Take up that driver and show me just what you did last night!”

Murdock glanced about him wildly for a means of escape, and for the first time he became aware of the five men who had ranged themselves behind the detective. One of them uttered a startled exclamation and advanced a step or two, but at that moment the steward broke down.

“I can't, sir!” he said. “It's no use for me to bluff any longer! May God forgive me—I killed him!”

CHAPTER XIII.

The Driver of Death.

His dramatic confession of the murder ended in a cry that echoed back from the high-arched ceiling of the hall, and Murdock collapsed and would have fallen to the floor had not Jewett grasped him beneath the arms from behind and supported him to the chair beside the small safe.

Of the five men, standing back of Crane on the other side of the steward's desk, only Samuel Estridge strode forward. “You, Murdock?” he exclaimed. “That's stuff and nonsense! You never killed Doyle—you haven't the nerve to harm a flea!”

Jack Fraser cast a swift, troubled glance at his brother, whose face was a study. Ralph Fraser stood immovable, without meeting his eyes. Philip Dorrance had fallen back, his weak mouth beneath the small, sleek mustache, working like that of a rabbit in his startled amazement, and old Rutherford Sowerby sputtered and snorted, but no words would come.

The steward had buried his face in his hands and was swaying back and forth. Deep sobs racked him. It was doubtful if he even heard the famous criminal lawyer's expostulation, but, when Crane spoke, the questions penetrated to his all but distraught brain.

“If you shot Doyle how did you do it, Murdock? What motive had you?”

“None, sir, I swear it!” Murdock raised a face suddenly grown old and haggard. “I don't know how I shot him. I never meant to do it! It was that devil's machine which you just laid on my desk there, sir—that thing that looks like a driver. It's some kind of a gun, and it went off in my hands!”

“Not a devil's machine, but merely, I think, a cleverly concealed weapon of unique design.” Crane turned suddenly and faced Ralph Fraser. “It is the driver missing from your set of clubs, is it not, Mr. Fraser? A driver which projects not golf balls, but these!”

He held out upon his open hand the tiny steel bullet which he had pried from the oak paneling, and Ralph Fraser squared his shoulders and came forward.

“Yes, it is mine,” he said. “I brought it as a surprise for my brother and his friends to see, and I never thought that an accident like this could occur! I had a mighty bad time of it after that shot sounded in my ears, I can tell you, but it didn't——”

“How was I to know he was a detective?” asked Murdock. He was too perturbed to grasp the significance of the interrupted sentence. “I never did know for sure until last night, but I suspected him from the very first day he came, and we began going over the books together. When they bring them into court, and it's proved how I've been changing the accounts right along, thieving everywhere I could, nobody ever will believe that I didn't know what that thing was—that I didn't pick it up and shoot purposely at him when the lights were out!”

“What's that!” Sowerby found his voice and emitted it in a sudden roar, as he stepped forward. “What's that about your falsifying the accounts, Murdock, and embezzling from the club?”

“It's true, sir, all of it!” Murdock replied. “All but that I meant to kill the man you put on my track! I'd have run away, maybe, but I never would have harmed him.”

“Oh, I can't stand this!” Ralph Fraser broke in impetuously. “What's the good of torturing the fellow? Crane, here, knows as well as I do that he's inno——”

“Stop!” The detective spoke in a peremptory undertone. “We'll get the confession of what he did do, Mr. Fraser, before we reassure him as to what he didn't do.”

“What did you do it for, Murdock?” Estridge's persuasive voice sounded before the indignant Sowerby could bellow again. “You've been with us ever since we founded the club, and we trusted you as we would have trusted each other. You never complained about the amount of your salary. How much have you taken from us, and how long has this been going on?”

“For a little more than a year, sir, and I've kept account of every penny, meaning that you should have it back from my life insurance.” Murdock's usually impassive countenance was working with emotion. “I knew how I was trusted, and I couldn't sleep nights with the shame of it, but none of you seemed to miss the money, so it didn't make me feel as bad after a time, and I went on taking more and more! I've had a matter of over two thousand dollars from the club since I started to run crooked, and nobody suspected, not even the last secretary, Martin. An increase of salary wouldn't have helped, you see, sir; I had to have more tahn that, but I'd counted the cost, like any careful man would, and, if I was caught, I'd meant to take my medicine. I never intended to harm a hair of Doyle's head!”

“May I interfere for a moment, Mr. Estridge?” asked Crane. “I know this particular matter is not my province, but, in a way, it is connected with the case upon which I am working.”

“Certainly, Crane. Go ahead,” the lawyer responded briefly after a keen, searching glance at the other's face.

“Murdock, you say that you have kept account of every penny which you have stolen from the members of this club. Where is this account?”

“Here, sir!” Murdock thrust a trembling hand in his breast pocket and drew forth a little red notebook. Jewett took it from him and passed it across the counter to Crane. “It's got the amount and the date and the page on the club books where I changed each item. I'm glad I've told, for it is a load off my mind; but if only you could believe that I never knew what that deadly thing was when I picked it at random from the bag at my feet! 'Twas not me that killed Doyle! It was the devil himself that sped the shot!”

“No, Murdock, you did not kill Doyle! The bullet, which flew from this concealed revolver when you accidentally released the firing pin in the head of the club is this bullet which I hold in my hand. See!” He held out the little steel globule. “It harmed no one, but imbedded itself in the oak paneling over there.”

Amid amazed exclamations from all, except Ralph Fraser and Jewett, Murdock started from his chair with protruding eyes.

“You—you mean that, sir?” he asked hoarsely, “It's the truth you are telling me? I didn't kill him, after all? Oh! Thank God! Thank God!”

He sank back in his chair and buried his face in his hand, sobbing aloud in the reaction of relief, while the others crowded around Crane with excited questions.

“What does this mean?” Sowerby's voice rose above the rest.

“It means, gentlemen, that two shots were fired simultaneously, this one, by the miracle of accident, going off at the same instant as the other. But I will explain later. Murdock, the story you told me was partly the truth, then?”

“Yes, sir, partly.” Murdock wiped his eyes and straightened in his chair. “I told you the truth, but not all of it. The lights were lowered, and the singing was going on. I saw that waiter from the caterer's starting to pass my desk on his way to the supper room. Thinking to stop him from disturbing a minute that was as sacred as church I reached down into the golf bag. Somebody had left it under the counter for safe-keeping, instead of taking it to the locker room where it properly belonged. This instrument of Satan was the first stick which came to my hand, and I took hold of it, without looking, and drew it out. I only meant to tap the fellow on the arm with it and motion him back, and it all happened in a minute, though it takes long to tell it. As I grabbed it I must have flourished it in the air, for I felt something jump under the head, there was a wee flash of light in front of me, and then there came a crash fit to wake the dead. You gentlemen all know what happened after that; the sound of something falling outside and the excitement and the lights going up once more and everybody crowding out on the veranda. I rushed out with the rest, but, when I saw what I'd done—or thought, until a minute ago, that I'd done—something seemed to die inside of me, too, and then I remember that I still had in my hand the thing that had fired the shot. I was fairly crazed to get rid of it, and there wasn't time to put it back in the bag. Before anybody took hold of the affair and began to give orders I ran back into the billiard room and pushed the club under one of the tables, with the grip leaning on an empty bridge rest. No one missed me or knew that I had touched any of the clubs under my desk, until Mr. Crane suspected.”

“You changed the books and stole from our accounts,” Estridge observed, as though he had not been following the explanation of the previous night's event. “Did you pilfer anything from the lockers, or the ladies' dressing rooms, or pick up any articles of value that the members may have dropped.”

“No, sir. I've found things from time to time, like Mr. Sowerby's scarf-pin and Mrs. Dorrance's gold bag, but they've always been promptly posted on the bulletin board,” responded Murdock. “Somehow it didn't seem like stealing, just to alter the books, especially as none of you missed the few dollars that meant so much to me.”

“Then you have never retained unlawful possession of anything belonging to a club member, whether its disappearance was mentioned or not?” the lawyer asked.

“Never, sir. I—I've told you everything. I can't restore the money now, but I'm ready to make whatever amends you gentlemen and the law require of me.” He buried his head again in his hands. “I might have known that I would be caught, sooner or later, but I had no choice.”

“Why?” Estridge asked again. “Why have you needed so much extra money during this past year? After your years of faithful service, Murdock, why didn't you come to one of us for a loan?”

“I couldn't, sir, without explaining what I wanted it for, and that would have been as much as my position here was worth. Besides I expected each month to recoup.”

“You were gambling?” The lawyer's tone was sharpened with incredulity, and even Sowerby looked his amazement. Murdock's native Scotch thrift and canniness had become proverbial around the club.

“Well, sir, you might call it that, in a manner of speaking.” The steward hesitated. “I—I acted on some tips which came my way in a fashion that I can't explain, and I won just enough now and then to make me keep on, thinking that one more, a flyer would not only let me put back all I had taken, but leave me a bit more.”

“'A flyer?'” repeated Sowerby, “You were playing the stock market, Murdock? Who gave you the tips? If you are frank with us we may come to some arrangement.”

Murdock shook his head, and his rugged jaw set. “I'm sorry, sir,” he said decidedly. “All my own savings went with what I took from the club accounts, or I could make a partial restitution. It was the stock market, but I can't tell you where the tips came from, nor how I got them. 'Twas my own savings that went first, before I thought of tampering with the books, but well I know that is no excuse. There's nothing more that I can say, sir. I've confessed, and I'm ready to go to prison.”

Motioning to Jewett to stand guard over him, Crane turned to the others. “Gentlemen, we have just time for a brief conference before your dinner engagements. Shall we adjoin to the billiard room?”

“Not I!” Philip Dorrance exclaimed in some haste. “It is a wonder that my wife has not telephoned for me before this. You won't mind, I'm sure, if I trot along?”

No one evincing the slightest interest in his continued presence the young man took his departure, and Crane picked up the driver from the desk and led the way to the billiard room.

“It seems incredible!” Jack Fraser ejaculated. “I could swear that I only heard one shot. 'The chances are a million to one against such a coincidence.”

“The odds are not as great as that,” observed Estridge thoughtfully. “I have seen things proved in court, in more cases than one, which apparently only a miracle could have brought to pass. We will have to decide later what is to be done about Murdock's falsification of the accounts, but I am inclined to believe his story of the accidental shooting. Mr. Fraser can tell us if he did leave his golf bag containing that freak weapon behind the desk.”

Ralph Fraser nodded. “I did,” he affirmed. “We arrived late, and, as I had that dance with my sister-in-law, I did not wait to go to the locker room, but leaned over and rested my bag under the counter. I didn't dream that any one would molest it, for Jack had mentioned that he often did this when he was in a hurry. I handed my coat and hat to the nearest steward. It was criminally careless of me to have left the gun loaded, of course, but that was sheer vanity on my part; I wanted to take it somewhere out on the green to-morrow, where it would be safe, to astonish my brother and you gentlemen with a little impromptu target practice. I can tell you that, until the coroner stated this morning that the bullet which killed your man was a .32 I've been through Hades!”

“Where did you get the thing, anyway?” Jack asked. “How does it work?”

“One of the head officials of a big firearms company—I gave him my word not to mention his name, and, as no actual harm has been done except to an oak panel and the nervous system of the steward, to say nothing of my own, I think I may be permitted to keep my promise—is a bug on golf, and he doped this out merely as a curiosity. I happened to be in a position to do a favor for him, and, knowing my hobby, he presented it to me.” Ralph Fraser took up the club from where Crane had placed it on a billiard table. “Don't be alarmed, gentlemen. I know how to handle it safely. It really is shaped precisely like a driver, you see, but there is a hollow metal tube or barrel, concealed in the shaft, and, when the head is pressed in a certain way, it releases a firing pin which discharges a .22 caliber bullet through the grip. My friend tried to work it out with a trigger, but it wasn't practicable. I thought it a mighty neat little contrivance and an interesting addition to my collection, but, after last night, I never want to see the wretched thing again!”

He laid it down once more upon the table and Estridge remarked dryly: “It is ingenious, at all events. I thought I had come in contact with most styles of man-killing instruments in my professional career, but this is unique.”

“It is a devilish sort of contrivance, and I think we can dispense with any further demonstration of it, if you don't mind my saying so, Fraser,” said Sowerby. “I hope you'll keep it under your eye until you get it away from the club.”

“Still, you gentlemen owe Mr. Fraser a vote of thanks in a way,” Crane observed. “It was this device of his which unwittingly scared the steward into his admission of theft.”

“Do you think his confession was complete?” Jack Fraser asked significantly. “Granted that he was unnerved, he is a canny sort of rascal. Was that embezzlement the only robbery which he committed, or attempted to commit?”

Estridge glanced in quick warning from the speaker to his brother. At the same moment an understeward knocked upon the door.

“Excuse me, please, sir.” His eyes wavered and then rested upon the detective. “Mr. Dorrance is on the wire for Mr. Crane. I told him that you were engaged, but he wouldn't take no for an answer. He says it is most important.”

“What does that little——” Sowerby was beginning, but Crane had already started for the door.

“Just pardon me,” he remarked, “the question of Murdock is a matter for the officers of your club to decide, but I cannot afford to leave a possible stone unturned in the affair which brought me out here. The other matter, of which three of you four know, is also extraneous. I am here for the sole purpose of finding the murderer of Jim Doyle!”

CHAPTER XIV.

Telltale Numerals.

The lawyer turned to the understeward. “Henry, upon what telephone did Mr. Dorrance call up?”

“The main one, sir, on Murdock's desk,” Henry replied.

“Perhaps Mr. Crane would prefer to have it switched to one of the extensions in the locker room?” the lawyer suggested.

“Isn't there an extension, also, in the office which was occupied by Martin and the late—er—Grant?” Crane had paused in the doorway.

“Yes. Would you care to use that?” asked Estridge. “The office has been locked since last night, but I have the key here.”

“Then will you have Henry switch the call to that extension, please, and cut off all other connections in the club for a few minutes?” As the understeward disappeared at a nod from the lawyer Crane added: “Also, if you have the combination to the safe in the secretary's office and keys to the desk, or any other receptacles which may be locked in there, I should like to have them.”

“I can give you the combination to the safe, of course, unless Doyle changed it, and, although the coroner must have the keys which were taken from the body, I have a duplicate set here,” Estridge remarked, as the two proceeded to the little office. “Do you want to compare the accounts with the memoranda in Murdock's notebook?”

“Only one or two items to assure myself that he wasn't lying in general; the rest of his confession doesn't interest me,” responded the detective. “I hope to find some private notes of Doyle's—notes intended for our agency and jotted down too late to be transmitted to us.”

Murdock was still seated behind his desk with his head bowed in his hands, and Jewett loitered near, but the steward did not look up nor appear to be conscious of their presence in the rotunda, as Estridge unlocked the door of the other little office, and they entered, the lawyer switching on the light.

“Your man was methodical and businesslike,” the latter observed. “When I went to O'Hare I told him to send me down some one who could, at least, act the part and keep books after a fashion. But that fellow would have deceived even me, had I not known who he was! He might have been a private secretary or bookkeeper all his life!”

Crane smiled. “Doyle has acted in both capacities, at one time or another, before he came to us,” he said. “That was the reason why the old man picked him for this case.”

“But why the disguise? I am sure none of us would have recognized him as he appeared when it was removed.”

“How sure are you?” Crane ignored the impatient insistence of the telephone extension on the desk to inquire quizzically, “Have the clients you have defended in court all come from the underworld, Mr. Estridge? One would not think so, judging from your financial rating.”

The attorney looked startled. “Just what do you mean?”

“Doyle has run to earth more than one crook in the so-called smart set, and he once helped to convict of murder the leading banker of a small suburban community,” replied the detective. “Naturally, before selecting a man for your job, O'Hare had you all looked up as to general standing, and he discovered that you were all practical newcomers here, Mr. Estridge. Doyle was the best man for the case, but was it improbable to conjecture that, among all the members of your club and their transient guests, there might not be one who had come into contact with him in some other investigation he has conducted among people of your class? The world is not so wide, as a certain member of your club remarked this morning.”

“There's something in that,” Estridge conceded, as he turned to the door. “You'll find me in the billiard room, or dining with Sowerby, if you need me, Crane.”

The detective reversed the key and locked himself into the cubby-hole of an office before he took the receiver of the telephone from the hook.

“Hello! Crane speaking.”

“What detained you all this time?” The peevish voice of Philip Dorrance, raised to a high pitch of mental strain, came to him over the wire, and it seemed to the detective's keen ear that deeper, but unmistakably feminine, tones mingled, as in a running undercurrent, with those of the speaker. “We have something of the most vital importance to tell you, and my wife would like you to come at once!”

“But your dinner engagement?” Crane could not resist the suggestion.

“Hang the dinner! We're not going! When I reached home I found that my wife had made a discovery which requires the immediate services of a detective, and you are the nearest. We don't care what it costs.” There was an odd hesitation, a seeming reluctance in Dorrance's tones, in spite of his insistence, and now he paused while the contralto feminine voice sounded again. The words were indistinguishable, but it was obvious that he was being coached.

“If Mrs. Dorrance's discovery has no direct bearing on the matter I am investigating I really must decline,” Crane said firmly. “O'Hare's private agency in New York, from which I came, will send a man out to you on the first train if you will telephone to him and state the nature of your prospective case. The one I am working on is of more importance to me than any fee.”

“But this is something that cannot be discussed over the phone, and my wife thinks that it may have a direct bearing on the other affair!” Dorrance's voice rose sharply, and, after a moment, he added: “She says to tell you she is positive that it will change the whole course of your investigation, and she is sending the motor for you.”

“Thanks, but I have two cars here of my own,” responded the detective dryly. “Please give my compliments to Mrs. Dorrance and tell her that I have one or two points to look into before I leave the club. I shall be grateful for any assistance she may be able to render me in this case, of course, and I will be with you later.”

“You must come now, man, I tell you!” The wire squeaked with Dorrance's agitation. “My wife demands it! You are wasting your time until you hear what she has to tell you!”

“You will pardon me, but I must be the best judge of that since the investigation is in my hands,” Crane retorted. “I can be with you in an hour, not before.”

He rang off abruptly, heedless of the sputtered protestations which were choked into silence, and looked about him. The desk was not unlike that of a hotel office and identical with Murdock's except that it ran the length of the small room, with a space in front of it for the convenience of members, and was in a separate apartment instead of opening directly into the great hall. The wicket was barred, too, but Crane quickly unlocked it with a key from among those which, together with a slip of paper, the attorney had placed upon the counter before he passed within.

The safe was larger and of a different model than that in the steward's office. As Crane had anticipated it would not open when he worked the combination on the paper which Estridge had left, and he glanced about for some clew to the change in numbers which Doyle must have made. Methodical in all things the late operative, foreseeing the possibility of an attack upon him and the coming of a successor, must have prepared some hint for a trained eye of the change he had effected.

The first object which met his gaze was a large rack for mail with numbered pigeonholes on the wall above the empty chair. It was identical with the rack in Murdock's office, but Crane remembered that the latter had been new and highly varnished, with envelopes protruding here and there, where the members had forgotten to inquire for their mail. This one was old and dusty, yet, in a series of the compartments, small white cards had been placed.

Carefully noting the number of the pigeonhole from which he removed it Crane picked out one of the cards and found it to be, significantly enough, a left-over invitation to the Harvest Dance, during which Mrs. de Forest's necklace had disappeared. That which interested him more, however, was an annotation down in one corner, in hand-printed characters: “L—7.”

Taking a pencil from his pocket Crane jotted down after the characters the number 2—that of the compartment from which he had taken the card. Then he collected the others, adding the numbers in turn.

There were eight cards in all. Seating himself in the chair he spread them out on the counter before him like a new and unique game of solitaire. For a time he studied them with a puzzled frown, then his brow cleared, and, as he rearranged them, he whistled softly.

He had taken the card marked “L-7” from the second pigeonhole; others were labeled with the letter “R” before the various numbers. These ranged in scattered order from 3 to 14. Assuming that they actually represented the new combination of the safe Crane considered it as a first supposition that “L” and “R” represented a turn of the knob to the left or right as indicated; that the numbers of the pigeonholes, from which he had taken them, was the order in which the turns were to be made, and those upon the cards themselves must correspond to the figures on the dial.

This theory was further strengthened by the discovery upon the last card—that marked “L-6”—of a word faintly penciled in the same small, hand-printed characters; “open.” Surely that could only apply to the knob in the center of the dial and must mean that the combination had been completed!

Crane rose and kneeling upon the floor before the safe he spread out his cards in a row—all in the order of the numbered compartments in the rack from which he had removed them. Arranged thus they read: “R-4; L-7; R-9; L-3; R-8; L-11; R-14; L-6.” Placing his ear close he turned the knob from zero to the number 4 on the right of the dial and felt a glow of satisfaction as he caught faintly the fall of a tumbler within. A quick twist of his wrist brought the knob back to number 7 on the left. In rotation through the other figures, printed on the cards, each stop produced that scarcely audible click which assured him that he was indeed upon the right track.

When the eighth number had been reached the door of the safe swung open, and Crane gathered up his cards before he looked within at the orderly piles of ledgers and account books, each marked with the month and year, with which the receptacle was half filled.

Selecting two or three of the latter at random the detective took from his pocket the notebook which Murdock had surrendered to him. A rapid comparison of a few of the items listed by the steward with the figures in the club accounts proved that the latter had told the truth, in part at least, and Crane laid them aside, but not before ascertaining one significant fact; since the date of Doyle's arrival, a month previous, not a single peculation had been committed by Murdock.

Turning once more to the safe Crane searched for the private notes of which he had spoken to Estridge. He was certain that Doyle must have taken notes, had anything, bearing upon his investigation, occurred during the last hours prior to his death. Before starting from the agency in town Crane had run hastily through the brief reports sent in by Doyle from time to time, and it was evident from them that the operative had obtained no definite lead regarding the identity of the thief he had come to track down, unless he had done so after mailing the last report which had been received on the Tuesday before.

In none of them had he mentioned the possibility of an attack upon himself, but that would not have been Doyle's way; he had undertaken to recover the necklace and capture the thief. Any physical danger incurred in the commission of a case he had always persisted in regarding as his own private business and no affair of the agency, in spite of O'Hare's repeated warnings.

Crane ruffled the leaves of every ledger and examined all the packets and envelopes in the compartments which lined the upper part of the safe, but without success. Surely Doyle must have had some reason of his own for changing the combination of the safe, and if he made any note in the case, which he had not had time to post, he would have secreted them in this safe. Had any papers been found on the body Crane was confident that the coroner would have mentioned them to him that morning. Where could they be?

Even as he racked his brains for a solution to the problem the detective noticed that the ledger for the past month, which he had previously examined and laid beside him on the floor, did not close as evenly as the rest. Taking it up again he eagerly examined the binding. The inner lining of the board back had been slit at the top, and, as he handled it, something rustled in the space between.

Taking out his stout pocketknife Crane ripped the lining down each side, disclosing a single sheet of paper which had been inserted in the aperture next to the back. It was covered with disjointed notes in Doyle's writing, but it was manifest that they must have been jotted down in haste and under a state of excitement which had been unusual to that impassive operative. Although rumpled the paper was fresh, and the ink, which had been used for the added lines at the bottom of the page, was not as deeply black as the rest.

Crane spread the document out on the counter and dropped into his chair. Here is what he saw:

17-L & 31-G having affair, 31 more serious than 17. Look up 19-N; sort of Cinderella and stuck on 16-G.

10-L & 12-G engaged? 10 don't trust me & face seems familiar, but can't place her yet; 12 shy of me, too, must look up his record,

16-G is o. k. In love with 19-N, all right & no cap. but straight. Most likely subject at first, so fooled around golf green with him & tried him out. N. D.

17-L afraid of me but more afraid of 28-G. 31-G leery of me.

Club accounts altered, but only small sums taken at a time. Think M. is the man—too anxious to help me with books. Not nerve enough for big job.

31-G more worried. Sounded 10-L but still can't get her number.

Oct. 29: 31-G desperate for money. Sure M. on that I'm dick, but thinks put here to check up books. 19-N & 16-G nervous.

Oct. 30: 31-G tried to bribe me for all money in club under my care and for me to make get-away. Offered 1st mortgage on property, but happen to know it is in name of 5-L. 19-N & 16-G avoid each other like plague; up to some mischief. Possible subjects to date: 17-L; 12-G; 3i-G; 19-N, & M as long shot. 12-G watching me now from hall.

Oct. 31: 12-G giving me the eye again, this time through window from porch, where M. has hung Jap. lantern. Dance coming off soon,

What is 19-N doing under lant——

Here the cryptic scrawl broke off abruptly, as though the writer had been interrupted at his task, and for some moments Crane sat staring in bewilderment at it. Clearly Doyle had meant it as a correlation of facts and observations for his own study alone, yet there must be some key to the enigma which this fresh set of numbers presented,

“10-L” was evidently a woman, since the operative had not been able to place her, and “12-G” was as obviously a man, as Doyle had made a note to look up his record. “M” was designated with no number, and, if “L” could be assumed as a starter to indicate lady and “G” gentleman, what could “19-N” mean?

The detective rose and began pacing the small inclosure reflectively. For the time being the urgent summons from the Dorrances was forgotten, as was the lesser importance of his own lack of food and brain fag from loss of sleep. If Doyle had intended those notes for himself alone why on earth hadn't he written the names, or at least initials? He had hidden the single page with extreme care, yet he had left an ingenious clew to the changed combination, and the safe itself contained nothing else which the house committee might not freely have examined.

Where had he got those infernal numbers, anyway? Surely he would not have resorted to those on the pigeon-holes of the mail rack again. Crane turned and studied it for a moment, but the numbers, when applied to the document in his hands, made no sense, and impatiently he resorted once more to a perusal of the latter.

The only person with whom Doyle had “fooled around the golf green” was young Landon; he, therefore, must be “16-G,” and “19-N,” with whom the latter was in love, could be none other than little Alice Dare, the “sort of Cinderella.” “M” was undoubtedly Murdock, but what were those numbers and how had Doyle come to apply them?

All at once a light broke over him. Gathering up the ledgers he thrust them back in the safe and closed it. He had barely straightened when a knock sounded upon the door.

Vaulting the counter Crane unlocked it to find the understeward, Henry, standing upon the threshold, a laden tray in his hands, from which savory odors arose. “Mr. Estridge's compliments, sir, but the dining room is closed, and we've kept this hot for you as long as we could. Mr. Dorrance has telephoned again, but Mr. Estridge gave orders that you were not to be disturbed.”

Realizing all at once that he was voraciously hungry Crane expressed his thanks and added: “Henry, the lockers, in which the members keep their golf clubs and extra things, are numbered, are they not?”

The man looked his surprise, but replied promptly enough. “Yes, sir, both in the ladies' and gentlemen's locker rooms.”

“Do you know to whom each belongs?”

Henry permitted himself to smile discreetly. “I ought to, sir. They have been under my special charge, as you might say, for the past two years. I've a list of the members with the numbers of their lockers, if you would care to see it.”

“I should, very much. Will you bring it to me now, please, and then give orders to have my larger car—the one in which I came out from town last night—at the veranda steps in fifteen minutes? Where is Mr. Estridge?”

“In the billiard room, sir. I will get the list at once and see that your car is ready on time.”

Crane attacked the contents of the tray with such vigor that he was halfway through his meal when the steward returned, and, as the latter closed the door behind him again, the detective drew Doyle's notes from his pocket and compared them with the list of lockers.

The meaning leaping out at him now in all clarity, and he whistled softly as he read. Of the ladies Mrs. Sowerby had locker No. 17, Mrs. Dorrance No. 5, Mrs. de Forest No. 19, and Mrs. Carter No. 10. In the men's room Bowles' locker was number 12, Landon's 16, Dorrance's 32, and Sowerby's 28.

“Ah!” said Crane to himself. “It didn't take Doyle long to discover that Mrs. Sowerby and Dorrance were having a flirtation, to say nothing of Mrs. Carter and Bowles, and that love affair between the two young kids. But why was Bowles shy of him?”

Pausing only to copy on the back of Doyle's notes the names of those whose locker numbers the late operative had mentioned Crane replaced the sheet of paper in his pocket and then finished his dinner hastily. He rang for the steward to remove the tray, returned the list to him, and, locking the door of the little office, he sought the billiard room. “Mr. Estridge, I want to thank you most heartily for your thoughtfulness. But for you I should have had no dinner, for I had quite forgotten all about food.”

The attorney, who had been knocking the balls aimlessly about on one of the tables in solitude, glanced up and laid down his cue.

“You found something to interest you?” he asked.

“Very much so!” replied Crane. “I'd like a little chat with you some time to-morrow, if I may have it, but now I want to return to you the keys you lent me and give Murdock's notebook into your possession. You'll find, I think, that his itemized list of peculations is correct in the main, but you won't be able to open the safe with the combination you handed me. I'll give you the real one to-morrow.”

“I thought so!” Estridge said. “I have some notes to prepare on a case of my own which comes up next week, and you will find me at my lodge all day.”

Crane took leave of him and proceeded to his waiting car, but, as he tore through the night toward the Dorrances', that unfinished final sentence scrawled by Doyle rang in the detective's ears, as though the lips now cold in death were whispering them! “What is 19-N doing under lant——”

What, indeed, had Alice Dare, the pauper niece of Mrs. de Forest, been doing beneath the dragon lantern, wherein had been coiled her aunt's stolen necklace?

CHAPTER XV.

Mrs. Dorrance Advances a Theory.

Even had he not mentally noted its general location that afternoon Crane could not have failed to find the Dorrance's pretentious house. It was illuminated so brilliantly that it stood out in all the ugliness of its hybrid architecture against the night sky, and, as Crane whirled up the driveway, the entrance door was flung open, and Philip Dorrance's figure, prancing excitedly, was silhouetted against the glare from within.

“Great Scott, why didn't you come sooner, Crane?” He seized the detective's arm, before the latter had fairly reached the top step of the veranda, and dragged him in. “My wife has been like a mad woman! You said an hour, and here it is nearly midnight, and some officious fool at the club refused to put you on the wire again!”

“I told you, Mr. Dorrance, that I had one or two points to clear up there before I left, although I did not anticipate being detained so long,” Crane responded, adding: “Perhaps I have come too late, and Mrs. Dorrance has retired?”

“'Retired!'” repeated the other with a gurgle. “You don't know my wife when she get's going, but you will! Come along; she's in the drawing-room.”

As he followed his host the detective amusedly noted the change in his appearance from a few hours before. His tie was twisted, his collar and shirt front wilted, and, instead of his usual jaunty strut, he sidled cringingly down the hall. The latter, although spacious enough, was cluttered with spurious armor, chairs, and settles copied from every known period, and hung with portraits, the suspiciously shiny varnish of which belied the antiquity of the costumed characters they represented.

The apartment which they entered was large, and had manifestly been “done” by some interior decorator with an eye to his client's purse solely, but here the details of his immediate surroundings escaped Crane's observation for the moment.

Wide as the drawing-room was it seemed to be filled with the ponderous bulk of the beetle-browed woman who in disheveled evening dress was pacing heavily back and forth. Mentally the detective flattened himself against the wall. The lady paused and demanded in a deep, shaking voice: “Is this Mr. Crane. You have come at last!”

“I am sorry I could not get here before, Mrs. Dorrance.” He bowed. “It is an unconscionable hour to call at your home—even upon such business as mine.”

“Hour! What do hours matter, or anything else in the world!” She flung her arms out with such violence that the threads of one shoulder strap snapped ominously. “There is a thief abroad in our community, Mr. Crane! A robber who would stop at a crime of no magnitude!”

“Now, Josephine!” said her husband in what was meant to be a soothing tone, but she turned upon him. “Hold your tongue, Philip, or go to bed! Were they your jewels, I should like to know? I shall tell this person just what I think, and nothing can stop me!”

In spite of himself Crane started slightly. Could she have heard of the theft of the necklace? If so why should she become so wrought up over another woman's loss? But he was vouchsafed no time for idle conjecture.

“Mr, Crane, I do not know why your unfortunate predecessor came to Broadlawns, but, after a certain conversation, immediately following the tragedy at the club last night, I had an inkling. I was standing beside the chair of an elderly friend who has—or had—a diamond necklace of which she was inordinately vain. She has exhibited it on every possible occasion, until last evening. Two days ago she told me that she considered it too gorgeous to wear to so small an affair as the dance, but I was convinced then that she was not telling the truth, particularly as she made some catty remark about my emeralds!” The lady paused and then broke out in a throaty wail: “My emeralds! My emeralds which have been in the Farr family for generations! Oh, this will kill me!”

“Then you might just as well die sitting down as standing up, Josephine,” Philip Dorrance exclaimed in a sudden burst of spirit, born of nerves strained to the breaking point. “It doesn't matter about me, of course, but Mr. Crane had no sleep last night, and he has been on the go all day. In common humanity you might offer him a chair.”

“Upstart!” Mrs. Dorrance remarked in what was intended to be an aside, but she turned once more to the detective with a visible effort at self-control. “I beg your pardon. Please be seated; my own agitation, which my husband seemingly does not share, will not permit me to remain quiet. I was standing beside this elderly friend when the sheriff approached her, and, to my astonishment, I heard her say that she felt herself partly responsible for the death of the young man whom we had known as Mr. Grant. Her contrition vanished in elated astonishment, however, when the sheriff told her that Grant had succeeded in what he had undertaken. Then he and Mr. Estridge carried her off to talk privately with her, and, on learning that the supposed secretary was in reality a detective, I commenced to put two and two together.

“This friend of mine had worn her necklace to the dance in September, but she left early in great agitation. There was some sort of a scene which was kept as quiet as possible. I had noticed the necklace particularly on her arrival—no one could help it—it made a display that was almost vulgar on a person of her age! I remembered distinctly that I had not seen it when she departed, for I assisted in putting her cloak about her shoulders. Nothing but theft could bring a detective to our eminently select country club, and no theft could be of much concern nor so closely connected with my friend, as to make her feel partly responsible for that detective's death but the loss of her greatest treasure. Am I not right, Mr. Crane?”

“My dear Mrs. Dorrance, I am not here in Broadlawns on the same mission as my colleague was, but solely to investigate his murder,” Crane responded firmly. “I must decline to discuss anything else.”

“That girl Alice Dare would neither affirm nor deny my supposition when I called on her aunt to-day, and she received me in Mrs. de Forest's place, but I am confident that she knew! Perhaps it will repay her when you learn what I have to tell you!” There was morbid triumph in Mrs. Dorrance's husky tones. “If Mrs. de Forest's necklace was actually stolen, and your associate killed because he had discovered the identity of the thief, then you would do well to guard my house, for I, too, have been robbed, and we are all likely to be murdered in our beds! My precious emeralds are gone!”

“Your emeralds!” the detective exclaimed. “That is most unfortunate, and you have my deepest sympathy, but I scarcely see how that has any bearing on the identity of my colleague's murderer.”

“The emeralds are not gone, exactly, but Harlier, the jeweler, claims that some time during the past month they have been taken from their original settings and fakes substituted in their place,” Dorrance explained in a hurried tone. “They were cleaned in his establishment, just before the dance in September, and nothing was found to be wrong with them then, but my wife got a notion a day or so ago that some of the settings might be loose, so I took them in to Harlier's again. A man from there telephoned out and told Mrs. Dorrance of the substitution, while I was returning from the club late this afternoon, and she is convinced that it has something to do with the theft of Mrs. de Forest's necklace and the killing of your man last night. Nothing would do but I must send for you at once. You see?”

His voice was almost apologetic, but Crane shook his head. “I am afraid that I don't,” he disclaimed. “Mrs. Dorrance has given me no valid reason for her suspicion that the necklace you speak of was stolen, or that my colleague was sent here to find it. I cannot discuss his case, as I said before, but, with my own knowledge of it, I can see no connection between the identity of his slayer and that of the person who effected the substitution of fakes for your emeralds.”

“You cannot?” Mrs. Dorrance, who for the moment had subsided, spent with her emotions, started up indignantly. “What if I should tell you I happen to know the necklace was stolen, know that man was sent here to find it, and that he was shot after he did find it? His murderer is still at large, and another robbery of greater magnitude has been discovered, and you see no connection! To say the least I am disappointed, Mr. Crane, for I had heard some really intelligent things of you!”

“If your knowledge were authentic, Mrs. Dorrance—which I do not admit—I should have to know how you came by it before changing my plans and theories.” Crane's tone was a study in skepticism as he warily led her on. “Woman's intuition may be all very well in its way, but you have given me only one fact: that fakes have been substituted for your emeralds. In the investigation of a murder we must have cold facts to go upon.”

“'Woman's intuition' indeed!” Something very like a snort was emitted by his affronted hostess. “I have heard that you detectives depend more than a little for valuable clews on backstairs gossip—the testimony of servants. I pay mine better than any one in the neighborhood, though Heaven knows I have nothing to conceal, and I am rewarded by the only loyalty which seems to exist nowadays. I could tell you things!”

“Josephine!” exclaimed her husband. “Remember that you have had to pay costs already in two suits for libel and one for malicious mischief!”

“That will do.” Mrs. Dorrance's tone was ominously quiet. “You will remember, Philip, that it was I and not you who paid the costs. The hussies were guilty in each case. I am conducting this interview. Mr. Crane, you must know from your professional experience that servants will talk, and nothing—positively nothing—can be kept from them. Concerning Mrs. de Forest's necklace, her maid and mine are intimate friends, but mine receives higher wages. Need I be more explicit?”

“I think I understand,” Crane said. “But, after all, a maid's suspicions and predilection for sensational gossip, of which you have just spoken——”

“I am speaking now of facts, not suspicions, and both maids are reliable witnesses. I do not care to be brought into this matter any further than is necessary to recover my own jewels, naturally, for what would be added glory for you in your profession would ostracize me in my set out here, and what I say to you now must be strictly confidential. I have locked the doors leading to the servants' wing, and my husband doesn't count, for he would not dare to repeat anything. Mrs. de Forest's necklace is safe in the hands of the sheriff, and, knowing that, she would not be inclined to tell you whom she suspected of stealing it, nor help you in your search for Doyle's murderer, lest it bring upon her own household the scandal and disgrace she has done everything to avoid.”

“Oh, Heavens!” exclaimed the wretched Philip, but his ejaculation was unheeded.

“Love,” Mrs. Dorrance continued—her austere tone conveyed no impression of that tender passion—“will sometimes cause impulsive young people to do desperate, even criminal, things. Mrs. de Forest treats that orphan niece of hers like an upper servant and has provided her with smart clothes and the outward advantage of wealth, only that the girl might the more quickly make a rich marriage and be off her hands. I have this from her own lips, Mr. Crane. The girl has rewarded her by falling in love with a penniless bank clerk; all Broadlawns can substantiate that. Mrs. de Forest forbade the match, and the young couple were desperate. On reaching home from the Harvest dance Mrs. de Forest accused her niece—in the hearing of another person, although she did not know it—of stealing her necklace. Alice denied it, of course, and threatened to go away and earn her own living and be free.

“I did not learn this until a week later, and, in the meantime, I foolishly decked the girl out in my emeralds for a masquerade at a week-end house party. I make no direct accusation, but I have heard that clever work can be done by expert jewel fakers in three days, and this house party in the Berkshires lasted from Friday until Monday. When the emeralds were returned to me I put them away without a close inspection, and it was only a few days ago that I discovered that the settings of the brooch and pendant were loose. Lately Alice Dare and her lover have given every evidence of a nervousness that amounted to sheer fright; a dozen people have remarked upon it at the club. Last night, after that murder, when Mrs. de Forest and her niece returned to their home there was another scene between them. Mrs. de Forest this time accused her niece of putting the necklace back where—where Doyle must have found it. I saw the girl in the early part of the evening dawdling about the very window through which he was afterward shot. I hope that I am unprejudiced and just, but these are facts which I have given you. Do they interest you sufficiently to listen to my theory of the murder?”

Crane had attended to every word, and again Doyle's interrupted question leaped to his mind, although instinctively he shrank from the possibility which this dominant woman had laid bare. Neither face nor voice betrayed him as he replied calmly: “Your facts might interest me, Mrs. Dorrance, if it were not for a seeming inconsistency. Why is the necklace, which you say is now in the hands of the sheriff, not a fake as well as your emeralds?”

“If you have had any experience with gem thefts you should know that diamonds are the most difficult jewels in the world to imitate with any hope of deceiving even the most casual glance, while it would take an expert to detect the difference between real emeralds and some of the marvelous manufactured ones which are on the market now,” Mrs. Dorrance remarked coldly. “Moreover—but that is a part of my theory which you evidently do not consider worth hearing.”

“Most assuredly I do, Mrs. Dorrance, but first let me warn you that you have not a shred of even circumstantial evidence to support your idea as to when and by whom your emeralds were substituted. With that theory fixed in your mind you may have overlooked other possibilities, and, as you say, you desire above all things to be just, especially in so serious a matter.”

Mrs. Dorrance's jaw set, and for an instant her dark eyes flashed. Then she controlled herself and responded: “Quite so! May I ask what other possibilities you suggest, Mr. Crane?”

“Where do you keep your emeralds when you are not wearing them? At a bank here or in town?”

“Neither. I have a fireproof safe, built into my dressing-room wall, and no one on this earth knows the combination except myself.”

“Josephine!” that gentleman exclaimed in shocked reproach. “I trust you don't suggest——”

“I suggest nothing!” she said. “Whenever I go to that safe I lock my door and hang a dark cloth over the knob so that my maid cannot spy upon me through the keyhole, and that woman knows more than you ever will, Philip! If I told you one half of what she has repeated to me concerning the actions of certain empty-headed dolls and dyed-haired vixens in this neighborhood you would realize that nothing can be kept from her—nothing but the combination of my safe!”

“On returning from the Harvest dance you put your jewels immediately away, Mrs. Dorrance?”

“Yes. I did not open the safe until a few days later when I took out the emeralds to lend to Miss Dare.”

“When she returned them——”

“I placed them in the safe so quickly that, as I told you, I scarcely looked at them, beyond a glance to see that all the pieces were there. The safe remained closed until I took out the emeralds, a few days ago, to see that all the settings were secure before wearing them to the dance. Harlier's are always very prompt in their work for me, and I thought it odd when, on Thursday they told my husband that the repairs could not be finished in time. The official explained this afternoon that they had not wished to alarm me until they had examined every stone to determine if all or only a part of the set had been exchanged for imitations. Not one of them is left, Mr. Crane! All—all of them are gone!”

Philip, who at the reference to “dolls” and “vixens” had subsided, now interposed.

“I thought myself that the chap's manner at Harlier's was odd when I took the emeralds in to him on Thursday,” he observed. “As soon as the inquest is over I mean to have a thorough investigation made of the substitution, Josephine. You can safely leave everything in my hands.”

“What! Trust you to find my emeralds for me?” his wife demanded in contemptuous wrath. “I want the most expert advice in the country, both detective and legal, and I intend to have it! Moreover, as soon as this stupid inquest is finished, I shall take the first train to town and interview the head of Harlier's himself! I am convinced, however, that my theory will prove to be the truth.”

“Will you tell me that theory now, Mrs. Dorrance?” asked Crane. “I know part of it, of course. You think that, some time during the Harvest dance, Miss Dare managed to steal her aunt's necklace.”

“Yes; I believe that she was afraid to take it home, or confess to her lover then what she had done, but secreted it about the club somewhere. A girl values the good opinion of the man she cares for, and I think she meant to sell the necklace at the first opportunity to get to town, persuade Gerald Landon to elope with her, and then produce the money with trumpery, some romantic story of a legacy which she had concealed from her aunt. He is sufficiently young and in love to have swallowed it. However, her aunt's unexpected accusation must have thrown her into a panic, and she did confess to him what she had done.” Mrs. Dorrance paused and added: “I do not pretend to say whether it was fear or honesty which impelled him, but it is my opinion that he persuaded her to return them at the earliest opportunity, and they decided on the dance last night as the most favorable time for placing the necklace where it would be found.

“That girl was crazy to marry him, though, and they had to have money, so, when I foolishly offered to let her have my jewels for the week-end, she saw her chance for a second coup. This time she would not fail, for the substitution might not be discovered for months, and much could happen in the meantime. So much for my emeralds, but to get back to the necklace. Neither of those two young conspirators had counted on the possibility of a private detective being installed at the club, but, as Halloween drew near, I think they suspected the real identity and purpose of the new secretary that would account for their increasing nervousness and fright, yet they had no other course but their original plan to follow.

“It is my belief that the girl concealed that necklace in the lantern. Doyle saw her do it and stationed himself there. Both she and her lover knew that her guilt would be exposed. But, Mr. Crane, it is also my firm conviction that Gerald Landon came to the dance prepared for that very contingency and determined to go to any length to protect the girl who had stolen through love of him. I am not romantically inclined, but this is sheer logic. You will remember that he stood alone in the door of the conservatory. That window, where the lantern hung and Doyle stood, was within his unobstructed view and range. When he saw that Doyle knew and meant to remain on guard until he could recover the necklace and denounce Alice—well, it is my theory that Gerald Landon chose that moment of darkness to seal the detective's lips forever, even if he went to the chair for it! Have you a better theory, Mr. Crane?”

There was a horrified gasp from Philip, but Crane's face remained impassive as he replied: “None that I am prepared to offer, Mrs. Dorrance, but I must earnestly request that you will not repeat this theory of yours to any one else until after the inquest. You will have cause to amend it, I think, before then.”

To be concluded in next week's issue of DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE.