Ghost’s homecoming was characteristically unobtrusive. Although possessed, he believed, of the solution to the mysteries, he made no attempt to communicate with the police. Had he done so, it is possible that they would not have recognized his name.
At no time had he been a figure of importance in the investigation, as far as the public knew. His name had appeared in the newspapers a number of times, but few persons associated him with the problem. Save for the half dozen who knew him intimately, he was remembered, if at all, as a nebulous nonentity who had been present, almost fortuitously, at the violent passing of the bootlegger Aye.
From the beginning, he had played a lone hand. It was his habit—the way he preferred to play all games, including the larger game of life, in which, after all, his detective interludes, so to call them, were only deprecating gestures.
He liked applause well enough, but he had no obtrusive vanity. He quested truth because he believed in truth; but his notion of truth was not always that of other men. Right and wrong were terms that he seldom employed in serious conversation. He preferred to think in terms of wisdom and unwisdom. His admiration of the police, at times sincere enough, was always qualified.
He descended from his train without ostentation and was driven at once to the home of Professor Chandler W. Moment.
The Chicago morning papers had been delivered quite early aboard the train. One had been propped against his sugar bowl during breakfast in the diner. He was thus in possession of all facts concerning recent developments and found them not without interest. Again the headlines were large and black. The “Dead Man” murders, at one length or another, had clung to the front page now for many days.
Obviously somewhat of an impasse had developed. Two men were now virtually under arrest, charged with the same crime—Stanley Moore and Clay Ridinghood. It was still, apparently, a police idea that solution of the Lear murder was solution also of the others—or that the others were unrelated and, by comparison, unimportant. The police idea, in point of fact, was not very clear. Nevertheless, two men were being held.
Ghost remembered Moore very well; that is, he remembered his testimony at the inquest, as reported by the press. It had been very frank, he thought; very honest even in its implications. Now the fellow appeared to be in serious difficulty. He had confessed to having quarreled slightly with Lear the day before the murder. There had been words exchanged about another member of the company. A woman.
In the case of Ridinghood, too, there was new and rather sensational evidence. The Ballantyne woman—“H’m,” muttered Ghost, “I had almost forgotten her!”—had also made a confession. She had confessed to withholding information at the inquest rather than seem to implicate the stage detective. It appeared, on reconsideration, that she had actually overheard the man Ridinghood in murderous conversation with Miss Carvel—i. e., with Mrs. Lear.
“By heaven!” Ridinghood had cried, “he ought to be killed!” And then: “By heaven, I’ll kill the adjective noun, myself, if he ever—!”
Ever what? He had apparently been silenced by Miss Carvel before he finished. This had been some days before the actual murder—while the company was still playing in Milwaukee. Milwaukee had been the “dog,” upon which the sensational comedy Green Terror had first been tried.
Well, it was a strong threat, if Miss Roberta Ballantyne really had heard it uttered; yet it meant nothing in particular, thought Ghost with a little smile. Stage people were that way—excitable, given to wild statements based only on a sudden choler. Few of them ever really indulged in massacre.
But why had Miss Ballantyne withheld so important a bit of evidence? From the police point of view, it was important in a high degree.
The answer seemed fairly obvious. None of the stage folk had been eager to implicate an associate, and Miss Ballantyne had spared Ridinghood and Miss Carvel almost as a matter of course or of professional courtesy. No doubt she had heard many similar outbursts in her time. But the arrest of Moore had opened her lips. She had remembered the Milwaukee threat at a timely moment, and had made it known. Ergo, she was more interested in sparing Moore than she was in sparing Ridinghood.
“Heigho!” said Walter Ghost. “‘What a tangled web we weave,’ indeed!” Which was, perhaps, the first time in months that he had failed to find an apposite quotation from his favorite book.
There was also in the morning papers a résumé of the earlier statement by Adrian Bluefield, or, as he was now known, Horace Gaunt. This latter, Ghost read with profound attention. It was surprising, he reflected, how closely the rascal approximated the truth in some of his conjectures. Was it possible that he knew the truth?
No, he was telling what he believed to be true—but with certain reservations dictated by caution. That Horace Gaunt had not known that his brother contemplated the murder of Amos Bluefield was beyond belief; and Ghost did not think it for a minute. On the whole, he reflected, it was probably a lucky break for Horace Gaunt that his precious brother had been anticipated.
Yet the beggar had actually mentioned Walsingham. Casually, to be sure. Would the police now take the hint and follow up that staring clue? Or would they, as before, continue to ignore one of the most significant circumstances of the entire episode?
It was Ghost’s private thought that they would continue to ignore it. And he had no objections. It was not his business to instruct the police.
At the home of the Moments he was welcomed as might have been a voyager returned from the antipodes.
“Yes,” he admitted, “I think I know the truth, at last. I think I have known it for some time. However, there is always the chance that I am a fool. I’ve demonstrated it often enough, heaven knows.”
Professor Moment was not to be put off. “What I want to know, Walter, is who killed Bluefield— and Lear. I don’t care who killed Gaunt and Greene. But I suppose it was the same man in each case?”
“No, I think not. I don’t think Greene’s case is related to the other three. It has never fitted into the pattern.”
“And the others do?”
“The others are the pattern by which subsequent murders must be judged.”
“Ah! And who killed Bluefield and Patrick Lear?”
Ghost laughed. “There is an appalling directness about your questions, Chandler. Until I can prove it, I’m not prepared to say. You may be sure I’ll tell you as soon as I may.”
Holly Moment looked at him with deep suspicion. “You hinted, Mr. Ghost,” she said accusingly. “You hinted at it in that telegram! I’m sure you did. Now, didn’t you?”
“Well, perhaps I did. I felt a trifle elated when I sent it off, and I may have been reckless enough to risk a long-distance suggestion.” He smiled. “Did you identify it?”
“‘Sit still, and hear the last of our sea-sorrow,’” she quoted. “Of course! It’s from Shakespeare’s Tempest. Father thought it was code. Prospero is talking to Miranda on the island. I thought you were just telling us to wait and we would soon know the answer to everything.”
“Well, I had that in mind.”
“But why ‘sea-sorrow’?”
He became more serious. “Look here: it’s a long story. It goes back a long time, as I have said before. I haven’t been to the police with it. I may never take it to the police. I don’t know what I shall do. I’m not a policeman. My connection with the case isn’t official. It isn’t even known, officially, that I have any connection with it. I’m in this on my own, because—well, first I was in it because I believed Holly to be in danger, and later, I suppose, because the thing fascinated me. Anyway, I can do as I please. What I want is a little honest advice.”
“Advice,” said the professor, “given gratis and copiously.”
“I know! Well, I thought I’d tell only four persons what I’ve discovered—you and Holly, of course, and Rainfall and Saxon. We’ve all mulled the thing over before, and none of us will tell, if we decide not to take it to the police. We all have sense—I hope—and probably we can reach as fair a decision as any haphazard jury. What do you think?”
Miss Moment was delighted.
“When?” asked the professor. “To-night?”
“If you like, and if the others can come. Yes, the sooner the better, I suppose.”
“I’ll call up Howard at once,” said Holly. “I’ve already told him about your telegram. He couldn’t make anything of it, either.”
Ghost gave her a curious little smile. “Couldn’t he?” he said.
“But what about Greene?” asked the professor. “If he doesn’t fit, what happened to him?”
“Oh, he was murdered, all right! I have an idea about that. I worked it out on the train, going down. I think somebody followed him to the shoemaker’s.”
“To the shoemaker’s!”
“Yes. I reached that conclusion as a result of thinking about Greene’s shoes.”
“His shoes!” cried the professor weakly.
“He wore black Oxfords, and they had just been half-soled. You know, I saw him at the morgue. Yes, they had just been half-soled. Just! Not within a day or two, but within an hour or two. Probably less. The soles were bright and clean. They had hardly been walked on. The nails were fresh and new. The rubber heels were new. The polish on the shoes simply shone.”
“Stepped into his car at the door of his house,” observed the professor.
“Possibly, but more than likely he went to a garage for it. To do that, he’d have to walk a little bit. The shoes were just from the cobbler’s bench, I tell you.”
“I still don’t see—”
“The cobbler’s awl, Chandler! The perfect instrument for such a murder. Somebody was with him or followed him. That somebody went into the cobbler’s place with him. It may have been somebody who knew where Greene was going. Anyway, he stole the cobbler’s awl, and—”
“Eureka!” cried the professor excitedly. “The cobbler himself!”
“Well, I thought of that,” confessed Ghost, “but I couldn’t imagine a motive.”
“Owed him money, probably,” said the professor.
Ghost smiled. “You solve these things with consummate ease, Chandler, once you get started. I wish I could do it in twice the time! Well, it’s only an idea, as I say. But if I were a clever detective, working on the Greene case, I’d look all over the west side of town for a cobbler who had lost an awl.”
Miss Moment came back, breathless. “They’re coming,” she said. “Howard and Dr. Rainfall were having dinner together, anyway, so Howard will bring the doctor here afterward.”
She pouted. “Couldn’t you give us just another little hint, Mr. Ghost?”
“‘Sit still, and hear the last of our sea-sorrow,’” he answered smiling.