Unseen Hands/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI
MISS RISBY SPEAKS
WHAT could that cryptic conversation mean? For some little time after he had dismissed the operative and sent him back to Headquarters Odell sat lost in thought. It did not seem possible that even the sardonic little hunchback, embittered as he was with all the world, could have been referring to the series of crimes which had already carried off his own mother and brother, unless he were indeed insane, as the woman Gerda had hinted. But had she in her turn been referring to him when she gave to Odell himself that mysterious warning?
Obviously, if each suspected the other neither could be guilty; yet what could the "melodrama" be, and why should Rannie Chalmers's callous, sneering remark have shaken the woman momentarily from her well-studied pose? At whom could she have been looking with murder in her eyes when the hunchback came upon her, as he had said? If she were not concerned in the tragic mystery what was her purpose in this house?
Even as the questions thronged his brain, a casual remark of Taylor's recurred to him with startling significance. "I never saw so many books in my life … a lot of them are on medical subjects."
It was natural that a chronic invalid should be interested in his condition, perhaps to a morbid extent, and would collect all the data he could find bearing on his case; but what if Rannie had gone further in his study of medicine? If his library contained any volumes on toxicology it would open up a new field of conjecture.
Odell dismissed the matter from his thoughts for the time being and started upstairs. He would have liked to investigate it at once; but Richard Lorne had summoned him in the first place, and he had not yet had an opportunity of hearing his version of the mystery.
At the top of the stairs, however, he all but collided with Smith, who with finger on lip beckoned him into an alcove formed by the bay window over the entrance door.
"Something's up, Sergeant," he whispered hurriedly. "Taylor told me you were here, and I was just coming down to find you."
"The chief told me about Miss Chalmers's attempt to elude you yesterday"—Odell was beginning, but the operative cut him short.
"I mean to-day, now! She never left her room yesterday after that scene with her aunt when she got home, and this morning she went down to breakfast with a face like a thundercloud. I was sitting in the hall outside the dining-room door reading my paper and waiting to see what her next move would be, when that housemaid, Jane, came running up the back stairs.
"She was all excited and smiling, but when she saw me she changed like a shot; gave me a cool little nod, and then got a duster out of the hall closet and began fussing around and humming as if there was nothing on her mind but her hair; yet I noticed that she didn't get very far from that dining-room door, and she kept her eyes on it, too.
"Miss Meade and the two young ladies and the hunchbacked boy were the only ones who had come down to breakfast; and when they finished and came out I watched Jane.
"She turned when she heard their chairs moved back and went up the back stairs; and I walked to the front of the hall and stood in the library door behind the curtain, where I could see up the main staircase. Miss Cissie left the dining-room first and started for her room; and there was Jane waiting for her in the upper hall. They stood talking together for a minute; and I saw Miss Cissie jump as if she'd been shot and grab Jane by the arm and drag her off down the hall.
"Miss Meade and her younger niece stayed in the dining-room talking to Peters; but before I had a chance to get upstairs Rannie Chalmers came out and started up ahead of me, so I went down the hall to the back stairs.
"When I reached the second floor he was just entering his room, talking to Gerda; and Miss Cissie and Jane were nowhere to be seen. Rannie's door was open and I waited here, where we are standing now, until Gerda came out; and then he followed her and went down-stairs again. I hurried over to Miss Cissie's door and listened. Jane was saying: 'Oh, miss, it's much too good for me'; and Miss Cissie said, 'Nonsense! I can't wear it any more now that I am in mourning, and I appreciate what you've done for me. I'll give you ever so many more pretty things if you will bring me any other messages that may come that way, Jane, and never tell anybody.'
"It wasn't what she said so much, Sergeant, though it was enough to show me that Jane had put something over on me, as the way she said it; you never heard such a change in anyone's tone in your life! Her voice was low but shaking with excitement and happiness too. You could tell. I moved away just in time to see Jane come out and whisk up to her own room with a pink evening dress over her arm."
"Humph!" Odell ejaculated. "Where is the young lady now?"
"Still in her room."
"Well, go outside and ask Blake and Shaw—they're on the day watch—if they saw Jane talking to anyone at either entrance to the house; then come back and don't let Miss Cissie out of your sight if she leaves her room. If she should go out while I am here, be sure you let me know before you trail her."
The operative started upon his errand, and Odell went to the door of Mr. Lorne's room and knocked. An eager voice fairly bellowed the command to enter, and he obeyed, to find the sick man sitting bolt upright among his pillows.
"At last!" the latter exclaimed. "Where the devil were you all day yesterday, Sergeant? I kept the wires hot ringing up Headquarters for you, and got Titheredge to go down there; but all that your captain would say was that you were working on the case. What have you discovered? Do you know who the scoundrel is who cut that picture-wire and tried to break my neck on the stairs?"
Odell shut the door carefully and drew a chair up to the bed.
"I can't tell you very much at this stage of the game. Mr. Lorne." He smiled noncommittally. "I have come rather to hear what you have to tell me about the whole affair. I understand that it was your desire to notify us even before the portrait fell in the library."
"Yes. I was talking it over with Titheredge when Gene came in with the letter. I felt that those accidents which resulted in the deaths of my poor wife and her son with so short a time between might have been deliberately designed to appear as accidents. I don't know why the conviction came to me. There was no one I could suspect, no motive I could fathom; and yet I felt sure as the days passed after Julian's death that something sinister and horrible lay behind it all.
"I'm a plain, hard-headed business man, and never took any stock in this psychic stuff, but there has been an oppression aside from our natural grief in the air; the children all felt it and I shouldn't wonder if Effie, my sister-in-law, did too, although she is such a diffident little body that I doubt if she ever had an independent thought in her life.
"It was as if there were someone else in the house, someone whom we could not see, who was waiting to pick us off one by one like fruit from a tree." He paused, and the ruddy color swept over his face. "I suppose that sounds like damn-fool talk to you. Sergeant; for, as Titheredge said, I hadn't a tangible fact to back up my suspicions until the portrait fell."
"Some more facts are in my possession now, Mr. Lorne, which substantiate your suspicions," Odell observed gravely. "I have proof that that razor was not drawn across your step-son's throat by his own hand, and strong circumstantial evidence, in which the specialists and your family physician concur, that Mrs. Lorne's death was deliberately brought about. The attempts upon your life and that of your other step-son were self-evident, of course."
"Proof!" Richard Lorne repeated lifting his clenched right hand over his head only to let it fall impotently once more. "Christine! My poor Christine and her boy! And I've got to lie here like this! I can't make a move to find the fiend and get my hands about his throat! Sergeant, I'll give you anything in the world, all that I've got, if you'll find him for me and then let me have my way with him."
"It's my business to find him, sir; that's what I'm here for," Odell replied reassuringly. "You're not going to be useless in this investigation by any means simply because you are ill; you might be able to help me more than anybody. Mr. Lorne, you may not be conscious of it yourself, but there must have been something more than what we will call a psychic influence which made your conviction of foul play so strong. Think! Try to remember when the first misgivings came to you and what caused them. No matter how trivial it may seem to you, I want to hear it."
"It was something my poor wife said in her delirium, as I thought at the time. Later, after her death, it kept recurring to my mind, and I began to wonder whether she had actually been delirious after all when she spoke." For a moment Lorne turned his head away in an obvious effort to control his emotion. "It was just at dawn on the day before her death, and she had asked for me. The night nurse, Miss Risby, was still on duty; and my sister-in-law, worn out, was asleep on the couch at the other side of the room.
"I sat down beside the bed and lifted my wife's hand, holding it close. She smiled faintly at me; then her eyes glittering with fever followed the Risby woman around the room. I had never liked that nurse; she was officious, and she seemed unwilling at any time to leave me alone with my wife. Now she kept pottering about, moving bottles and rattling the cracked ice until I thought I should shout. Then she picked up a blanket and went over to the couch to place it about Effie—Miss Meade—and the moment her back was turned my wife's hand tightened on mine. 'Dick,' she whispered, 'send her away. Don't let her come in here any more. She's killing me.' I tried to soothe her, thinking of course that she was off her head; but she clawed at my hand, and the most piteous expression came over her poor face.
"‘Oh, won't you believe? Isn't there going to be any help for me? I'm not crazy, Dick dear, I know. She pretends to be kind, but she makes me suffer more all the time, and there's something—something diabolical in her eyes. For God's sake, keep her away from me! I tell you she means my death!’"
For an instant there swept across the detective's mind that sentence uttered by Gerda: "Watch their eyes!" Was it of Miss Risby that she had been trying to warn him? But Miss Risby had already gone. …
"Mr. Lorne, did your wife mention Miss Risby's name? Could she not have been speaking of the day nurse?"
"No. Her eyes were fixed on the Risby woman all the time; and when she turned and came toward the bed my wife shrank back in her pillows as far as she could get, holding to my hand with all her feeble strength. 'Dick,' she cried out, and her voice was hoarse with terror, 'I implore you! Do what I ask! I am not mad, I know!' Then that confounded nurse intervened and practically ordered me from the room, and like a fool I went. My poor wife's eyes had been so wild, her words so incredible, and her manner so violent, that it did not occur to me for a moment that she could be in full possession of her faculties. I supposed as a matter of course that it was all a mere figment of her disordered imagination.
"When I look back now, Sergeant, I could kill myself. I feel as guilty as though I myself had caused her death. My God, if I had only listened and believed!" He threw his sound arm up across his eyes and for a space lay very still. When at last his arm dropped to his side once more the detective saw the traces of tears on his fat cheeks.
"Yet I have nothing even now against that nurse except my poor wife's accusation; and I would hesitate to accuse any woman of so vile and purposeless a crime. It is only that I could not put those words from my thoughts and they were the last my wife ever spoke to me. The next time I saw her she was raving in delirium; then the state of coma ensued which continued until the end. After her death I thought of mentioning my misgiving to the doctor; but I knew that he would not give it a moment's credence, and I tried to put it from my own mind. But I couldn't; I shall hear that pitiful, desperate appeal ringing in my ears while I live!"
"Did both the nurses leave immediately after Mrs. Lorne passed away?" Odell asked.
"Within a few hours; as soon as the undertaker had gone. I wanted Miss Meade to keep the other one, Miss Brown, with her for a day or two, as she was so terribly broken up by my wife's death that I was afraid she would be ill herself; but she said that she wanted to be alone with me and the children. Of course Miss Risby could have had nothing to do with the further events which occurred here in this house; and I can't even now bring myself to suspect her of causing my wife's death, but that warning must have meant something. My poor wife must have known instinctively that she was being done to death, and mistakenly suspected the Risby woman. Then came the morning when we found Julian up there with his throat cut, and I began to feel that fear of a damnable conspiracy at work against all of us!"
"I think that your wife's words alone would have justified official investigation, Mr. Lorne," the detective remarked. "In view of the fact that the specialists themselves could not agree as to why she had not responded to treatment, they seem particularly significant."
"I know; but I thought I should only be laughed at, and I shrank from the idea of the notoriety which would ensue." Lorne flushed again. "I didn't even tell Titheredge of what my wife had said. He's a man of sound common sense with a trained legal mind; and when he ridiculed the suggestion that there could be anything more than coincidence in the two deaths, I realized the reception I would probably receive from the authorities if I went to them with my story. I was getting desperate, though, and I would have summoned you people that night before the portrait fell if Titheredge hadn't stopped me."
"How? Why should he have stopped you?" Odell noted the change which came over the face of the injured man at his query.
"He said that my theory presupposed what he called an inside job; and the thought that suspicion should be directed against any of the family was too monstrous to be borne. I couldn't force myself to consider such a hideous possibility, great as was my inner conviction that those deaths were more than accidental. Then Gene came in with the letter, and the picture fell. After I saw the severed ends of the wire cable which had held it in place I knew that there could be no more dodging of the issue, no matter what it might bring to all of us."
"Until then you had absolutely nothing to sustain that conviction except what Mrs. Lorne had said in that last conversation with her? Nothing tangible, I mean. There were no circumstances connected with the death of your step-son which you considered suspicious, save the fact itself following so closely upon your wife's death?"
"Nothing. Julian was in a highly nervous condition. He had gashed himself badly only a day or two before while trying to shave, owing to the uncontrollable tremor of his hands. What proof have you, Sergeant, that he was murdered?"
A knock upon the door and the entrance of Doctor Adams saved Odell from the necessity of a reply, and with a promise to return later for a further conference he withdrew.
He was starting downstairs when the sound of Rannie's high, whining voice from the library made him pause. Now would be as good a time as any to examine the cripple's collection of medical books.
Half an hour later, when Doctor Adams emerged from his patient's room he came face to face with Barry Odell, and he noted the extreme gravity of the detective's countenance even before the latter asked abruptly:
"Doctor, will you give me the addresses of the two nurses who were in attendance upon Mrs. Lorne in her last illness?"
"Certainly, Sergeant." The physician looked the surprise and curiosity which he did not voice as he drew a note-book from his pocket. "Miss Brown's address is 720 West One-hundred-and-tenth Street, and Miss Risby—let me see—Miss Risby lives at the Hotel for Professional Nurses in Fifty-second Street."
"Have you employed them both on cases before? Do you know them well?"
"I've had them each on several cases but not together. I've known Miss Brown since she graduated and Miss Risby for about two years, and I can vouch for them both in every way." The physician hesitated. "You know that the Chief Medical Examiner has ordered an autopsy on Mrs. Lorne? It is to take place on Monday."
"I knew that one was contemplated," Odell responded. "I shall see you again there, Doctor. Thank you for the addresses."
He left the house and made his way first uptown to the residence of Miss Brown, but found that she was out on a case. As he had intended merely to sound her in a general way as to her opinion of her fellow nurse, her absence was of small moment, and he hurried downtown to the second address. Here fortune favored him; Miss Risby was in and would join him at once in the reception room.
While he waited, Odell's thoughts went back to that last half hour in Rannie's room. The medical books he had found there were by no means confined in subject to spinal diseases. They had appeared rather to his unlearned eye to cover the whole field of materia medica; but one small volume in particular had given him food for thought. It was a treatise on diseases of the blood; and the chapter on septicemia had been faintly marked by the imprint of a thumb upon the margin, a small, delicate thumb, which had left a trace of aromatic grease upon the white surface of the page. The perfume had been distinctly noticeable when he opened the book. Was this another evidence of the strange carelessness which had characterized each phase of this astonishing series of crimes?
"Mr. Odell?" A quiet, self-contained voice at his side roused him from his thoughts; and the detective rose to find confronting him a tall, slender girl with wide-set, intelligent gray eyes, and masses of pale golden hair bound severely around her small head.
"Sergeant Odell, from Police Headquarters," he corrected her pleasantly but in a lowered tone, with a cautious glance about the deserted reception room. "We are investigating the murder of Mrs. Richard Lorne."
If he had hoped by the abruptness of the statement to shake the girl from her attitude of serene composure he was doomed to disappointment.
"Murder?" she repeated, regarding him thoughtfully. Do you mean it has been decided that she was murdered?"
You were in nightly attendance upon her, I understand, Miss Risby; and yet you do not seem surprised," Odell observed significantly.
"Because I am not. It would be too much to say that I actually suspected my patient was being done to death; but I could not understand why she did not rally under the treatment My own impressions were too vague for me to approach the physician in charge with them, but they were strong enough to make me take every precaution possible during my hours on duty. I am heartily glad that an investigation is to be made."
"Every precaution," the detective repeated; and a light broke suddenly over him. "Is that why you would not leave Mrs. Lorne alone with her husband?"
A slight flush came into the girl's face, but her eyes met his steadily.
"Yes, Sergeant Odell. She was in my charge, and I did not think it wise. I have no proof; I make neither explanation nor defense of my conduct. It was my prerogative to deny my patient any communication, even with members of her family, which might prove harmful to her in her condition, and I exercised it."
"But you permitted her sister to be almost constantly with her; you must have had some especial reason for denying that privilege to Mr. Lorne."
The girl hesitated, but only for a moment. Then she said slowly:
"If you understood the ethics of my profession and the position in which we nurses stand in relation to the physician in charge of a case, you would realize why I have mentioned this to no one until now. I noticed that Mrs. Lorne grew rapidly worse after each interview alone with her husband; and on at least one occasion I am sure, although I cannot prove it, that the bandage upon her hand and arm had been tampered with. Because of that lack of proof I dared not mention the matter to Doctor Adams, but I did my best to protect my patient; until the hour of her death she was never, during my hours on duty, alone again with Mr. Lorne."