Asey picked up the pin. “Where’d you get that?”
“What? That? Oh, yes. That pin, you mean?”
“Yup,” said Asey. “That pin I’m holdin’ in my hand. Not two other pins in Chicago. This here pin now. Where’d you get it?”
“Why, I found that,” said Schonbrun glibly.
“Did, did you? When?”
“A long time ago. Several months ago. Picked it up in the street, but there wasn’t any chance of hockin’ it up around here so I kept it.”
“Sure you didn’t find it yesterday afternoon? Right here on the Cape?”
“Now, listen, brother. This ain’t no way for you to act at all, suspectin’ everything you find.”
“Listen yourself,” returned Asey. “Are you goin’ to tell me where an’ when you found this an’ who it belonged to, or am I goin’ to trot you up to court on Monday mornin’ an’ let you get indicted for murder? You just think it over a little.”
“Well,” said Schonbrun resentfully, “this afternoon cornin’ back from Provincetown a lady give me a lift. When I got out I must have picked it up or else it just slipped into my pocket. It was hers.”
“An’ I suppose it just slid into the furthest corner of a pack of cigarettes. Yup. An’ I thought you come back on the tail of a truck.”
“Did I say that? That was goin’ down. I drove back with this lady.”
“Ever see her before?”
“Naw, but she was a peach. She picked me up off the road. Most ladies won’t.”
“An’ a little child shall lead ’em,” Asey murmured. “How could you have picked it up an’ not known about it? How did it slip into your pocket? Did she give it to you, or did you steal it?”
“I never stole a thing in my life,” Schonbrun declared. “Never. It just must of fell into my pocket.”
“You didn’t know the woman?”
“I think she said something about bein’ a Mrs. Carey of Indianapolis.”
Asey looked at him admiringly. “A truthful man’s as rare as a white crow anyhows, but I got to hand it to you, Schonbrun. Of all the barefaced liars I ever see in my life, you take the grand prize. If you won’t tell about the pin, we’ll let it go for the time bein’. You was sayin’ that your brother wa’n’t such a good man.”
“O. K.,” said Schonbrun cheerfully. “Suits me fine. About Dave. Well, after pa died he worked sellin’ papers an’ things an’ then he went to high school an’ worked afternoons. In a factory. Then one day he come home an’ packed up his things an’ left. He took all the money ma had an’ my bank too along with him. We found out later he’d gone to college or something. These guys he’d been working with at the factory had introduced him to some other guys that sent him to college an’ paid his way. He never showed up more than three or four times after that. An’ he never paid back the money he stole. That guy was a dirty,—well, he was a dirty scum if ever there was one. An’ do you know what? About four years ago it was that ma found this picture I told you about in the newspaper. She thought it was him an’ she wrote a letter, but no one ever answered it at all.
“Well, we got on, she worked an’ so did I. Then about a year an’ a half ago I got sick. There was something the matter with my lungs, see, an’ I had to go to a hospital. Ma didn’t have a lot of money an’ of course I couldn’t do anything an’ then we each of us wrote another letter askin’ if this Sanborn was Dave an’ to give us some money. Ma went to see him, but he kicked her out of his swell apartment just the way he kicked me yesterday. He said he’d call the police if she bothered him again. So I thought then that it wasn’t Dave. I never really knew till yesterday, see?”
He lighted a cigarette with his free hand.
“An’ ma lost her job about that time, an’ I got sicker an’ nearly died. An’ what do you think I found out when I got well an’ out of the hospital? She’d run out o’ money an’ starved to death. She’d been so sure that this Sanborn was Dave that she’d gone there again, but he wouldn’t have anything to do with her. A woman she knew told me. An’ she died on the streets. See? That’s the kind of guy my brother was. Say, I know twenty-five people who’d kill him an’ think they’d done a good day’s work, if they’d only known he was alive. It wasn’t just ma an’ me he double-crossed. Not much. That guy he double-crossed every one he had anything to do with.”
For the first time since we had found him Schonbrun seemed actually to be telling the truth. There was nothing false about the rancor he felt toward his brother. Even if he had lied like a trooper about the pin and about half a dozen other things, I felt that this at least was genuine.
“Does he like sardines? I mean, did he?” Asey asked.
“Couldn’t say. I don’t know.” But I knew that he did. There had been the barest hesitancy in his answer, but I noticed it and I knew Asey had too.
“We’ll leave that ’long of the pin, then,” Asey remarked. “You just went there an’ then got thrown out an’ then went away again. That’s your story?” Schonbrun nodded. “That’s my story an’ I stick to it.”
“You know,” Asey said to me, “one thing that still seems funny to me yet is that blanket that you found tucked over him.”
“Blan—” Schonbrun started to speak and then stopped.
Asey crowed happily. “I sort of hoped I could get you even though I thought you’d made one good slip to-night. Now, you went back to the cabin after you left the first time, didn’t you?”
Schonbrun looked at Asey admiringly. “Jeese, you ain’t such a fool, are you?”
“Only on the outside. Let us in on visit number two. You got along a ways an’ then you remembered the platinum case, didn’t you? Or the watch? An’ you said to yourself that you was kind of a chump to beat it as quick as you had? Was that it?”
“Yeah.”
Emma looked at Asey in astonishment. “Elucidate, dear Sherlock. What drove you to that conclusion?”
“Well, from the way this feller has been talkin’, he reminds me of a man I used to know out in Alexandria, Egypt. He lied like the ole Harry, but he was a persistent sort. Nothin’ much of a hero about him, fact he was a little coward, just like this feller. An’ it ’peared to me that if he was in Schonbrun’s shoes he’d think ’n’ act just that way. I don’t think this feller has the—the,” he searched for a word, “the innerds, to kill his brother. If he had, he’d ’a’ done it a long time ago. But I knew he’d be the sort that’d go beggin’ back again.”
Schonbrun seemed to take no offense at Asey’s analysis of him. “I thought like that,” he said. “I thought I’d go back an’ have another try. I was goin’ to tell him I’d tell people who he was if he didn’t come across.”
“Blackmail,” I said.
“Well, lady, you can call it blackmail if you like. Anyway, I went back an’ before I went around to the front door I peeked in a window. He was layin’ by the side of the table, but there wasn’t no blanket on him when I saw him. I thinks to myself, some one’s found you out, buddy boy, an’ give you what you been askin’ for all these years. I wanted to go in an’ take that case an’ see if he had any money, but I didn’t. I was scared some one would spot me doin’ it an’ then if I tried to get rid of them there might be trouble. So I beat it again.”
“What time was it when you come back?”
“I don’t know exactly. I heard a clock strike five. It was that clock in town, that one on the church with the green top.”
“Congregational church,” said Asey. “Yup. That’s the only one you can hear from this place an’ it’s always right, bein’ as how it’s electric. Did you hear it before or after you looked into the window?”
“Quite a while before. I remember because I’d just bu’sted my shoelace an’ there was so little of it that wasn’t bu’sted that I had a hard time gettin’ to mend it any more.” He stuck out his feet in their dirty worn oxfords. The laces were nothing but a series of knots. I thought of his brother’s hand-made footwear.
“An’ so you thought some one had killed your brother, but you weren’t goin’ to let any one know anything about it?”
“Not a chance. I didn’t dare. See, the first thing any one would do would be to put the bracelets on me. An’ I had enough of the wrong side of the bars in Taunton. I wasn’t cravin’ another stretch with maybe the chair at the end of it. But anyways, there wasn’t no wrappin’ on him when I saw him.”
“See any one when you left the cottage the second time?”
“Naw. I went around by the back of the cabin. I didn’t want to be seen. I went way in back of the meadows. I didn’t touch the road till I come out nearly on the main street.”
“Was there a path?”
“A sort of a one.”
“You’re tellin’ the truth about that then, because that’s the tracks from the cranberry bogs. But I guess you wouldn’t tell if you had seen any one, would you?” Schonbrun’s pig-eyes twinkled. “Not unless you got me arrested an’ I was in a hole. I told you the guy that done this was a friend of mine. He done something I never got the back-bone to do.”
“Hm. How much would it take to make you tell? The truth, that is. Not just another fairy story.”
“A century note,” said Schonbrun promptly.
Asey pulled out his wallet. “Here you be. I’ll stick it in your vest pocket for you.”
“Thanks. Well, it was a man I saw edging around the woods as I was cornin’ back the second time.”
“Kind of a man? What’d he look like?”
“He was about as tall as I am. Dark an’ very tanned. I noticed that. I slid down behind some bushes an’ I don’t think he saw me. I didn’t take such a look at his face, but he had on good clothes. You could tell that. An’ he wore one of them blue caps close to the head. What d’you call ’em?”
“Berries,” explained Asey.
“He had one of ’em on. An’ he had a sort of green shirt, I noticed that, an’ his suit was gray flannel or gray something.”
“I wonder,” I said, “if it could have been Kurth?”
“I hope to goodness it is. Everything’s sounded like him since we started in this mornin’. I declare to goodness I think every tall dark man in New England was makin’ a call on Sanborn yesterday afternoon. Well, could you tell him if you saw him again?”
“Perhaps. But probably not unless he had on the same outfit I wouldn’t.”
“Now,” said Asey cajolingly, “tell us how you got that pin.”
“It’s like I told you the last time. A woman picked me up cornin’ out of Provincetown this afternoon. It must just have slipped into my pocket. Her name wasn’t what I told you. I don’t know her name. But the initials on the car were an M an’ a IT. I noticed that as I got in. She told me she’d been down looking the place over.”
“Didn’t she say anything about this here murder?”
“Not a thing. Honest. She was a lousy driver—we didn’t talk much of any; why she even nicked a couple of fenders goin’ through the main street here, she was so punk.”
I knew that Maida Waring had rarely taken her car out of the garage that she didn’t do some injury to it. It was a marvel among her friends that she herself had escaped injury.
“An’ you don’t know if your brother liked sardines?”
Schonbrun shook his head.
“An’ you didn’t see any sardine tin when you was there at the cabin, either time?”
As he started to reply, Dot Cram, dressed in pajamas and dressing-gown, came downstairs.
She took one look at Schonbrun, he stared at her, and for the second time in twenty-four hours, she fainted.
Emma and Betsey took charge of her and led her back to her room.
“Well,” I remarked to Asey, “I wonder what that means?”
Asey wondered too.
“Mr. Schonbrun,” I asked,“have you ever seen that girl before?”
He shook his head. “No, I never did. An’ I found out it don’t pay to tell you two sleuths anything but what’s true. But I’ll tell you something more I remembered. I thought I saw some one in a white dress in the woods when I came up to the cabin the second time. It wasn’t till after I saw that man. But I might of been mistaken. It might of been clothes on a line or something. I ain’t real sure of it.”
“You saw the man after you found your brother dead,” I reflected, “and you think you saw some one before you found him?”
“The first’s right, but I’m not so sure of the other.”
“What made you think of it now?” I wondered if he had seen Dot and if that had recalled it to his mind. “I don’t know. I just did.”
“I wisht,” Asey sighed, “that we could be sure of anything you say.”
“Listen, brother. Everything I told you lately is true. You two are a little too good for me. But, say, did that girl know my brother?”
“She was engaged to marry him.”
“I asked because she might of thought I was him or something. But she oughtn’t to be flopping. She ought to be thankin’ God she’s well out of a bad bargain. He’d probably pull a fake marriage an’ then ditch her.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Because, lady, like I been tryin’ to tell you, that guy never did a straight thing in his life. He got a girl I know of into trouble before he left home. He wouldn’t stick to one woman if some one chained him to her, he wouldn’t. She was his cousin, too. The daughter of one of ma’s sisters. She jumped into the river after he left. Sounds like something you read about in the papers, don’t it, or like a movie? Yeah. But the difference is that it’s true.”
Asey and I were silent. It occurred to me that possibly it was instinct and not his patent-leather hair that had made Bill Porter suspicious of Sanborn. I had almost forgotten about Bill and I said as much.
“Bill’s got to learn to take care of himself,” Asey replied. “I’ll run around by the station on my way home an’ see that Joe Bump stays there just to make sure there’s no funny business to-night. He sleeps in the fields all summer, an’ he won’t mind parkin’ on a camp stool till Monday mornin’. I don’t reckon Bill’ll do much sleepin’, but it sure ought to teach him a lesson, all this.”
“Where do I bunk?” Schonbrun asked.
“You come home long o’ me an’ sleep in your fetters, feller. I hope a good night’s sleep’ll refresh your mem’ry about sardine tins an’ a lot o’ other things, too. That’s something we got to look forward to to-morrer, Miss Prue, findin’ out about that tin an’ about Kurth an’ his wife. I reckon Schonbrun an’ me’ll be gettin’ along.”
“But how can you drive?” I protested. “And oughtn’t some one to look after your head?”
“It’ll be all right. I forgot to say I guess the doctor kind of recognized that petticoat.”
“What?”
“Yup. I’m kind of ’fraid your ’scutcheon is goin’ to suffer a blot or two from this day’s goin’s-on.”
“Well,” I said resignedly, “no one talks about escutcheons till there’s a blot on them anyway. I shall hold Bill responsible for any damage done to my reputation.”
“You could sue him,” Asey grinned.
“But what do you think about this business, Asey?”
“Who do I think done this murder? Well, Dot went over there an’ gave Sanborn back his ring, ’cordin to all ’counts. Then this feller here went there twice. Then there was Bill. Far’s I can see, first they was the brother, then Bill, then Dot an’ then the brother again. Then there’s the stranger that might of been Kurth, an’ the white skirt that might of been almost any one. An’ Schonbrun says the brother was alive when he left—”
“He was,” Schonbrun interrupted.
“An’ Bill says he was alive an’ he left him that way. We don’t know about Dot, an’ I ain’t so sure about your second visit, Mr. Schonbrun, though I don’t think you got the spirit to do it. But the strange feller might o’ done it, an’ maybe not. I don’t know. That one-syl’ble’ maid might of done it ’f she’d had wings like an angel, an’ so might Betsey an’ so might you if I didn’t think you two was too much Cape Codders by blood to do anything of the kind. An’ so might Mrs. Manton, if she’d weighed anything less’n a million pounds. An’ then there’s the lady of the sparkly pin. I s’pose you know,” he spoke to Schonbrun, “that the woman that picked you up an’ gave you a lift is the wife of the gent most likely you saw meanderin’ around the cabin?”
“She is? Say, listen, brother. Then I can tell you something more. I guess I got a little fresh with her or something, for she looks at me an’ laughs when I kidded her an’ says nothin’ doin’, that she’s got a perfectly good husband of her own, an’ she don’t play with strange men. I says why ain’t he on the job then, an’ she sort of smiles an’ says she’s right on her way to see he does now. I asks her if it’s golf or another woman, an’ she says it was another man an’ another woman both.” He stopped and lighted a cigarette.
“Damn your weed,” said Asey with the first show of irritation he had made all day. “Get on.”
“So I asks her if he’s run away or she’s run away, and she says no, they’d been divorced. An’ she says she’s down on the Cape huntin’ him because he’s found out the truth about the other man, an’ she’s afraid he’ll do something crazy. Say,” said Schonbrun excitedly, “it was Dave who was the man? Do you think so?”
“I haven’t a doubt of it now, if what you say is true, have you, Asey?”
“Is it the truth, feller?”
“Gospel,” said Schonbrun.
“Well,” Asey grinned, “I guess that’s that, an’ I guess the rest will keep till mornin’. Mister, I hope your limbs is as stiff to-morrer as my head is sore right now. Give us your other hand. I’m goin’ to tie you up all nice an’ safe.”
Schonbrun submitted cheerfully. “I guess I got it cornin’ to me, all right.”
I assisted them to the car. “Good night,” I said, “and for mercy’s sake, do be careful of your head, Asey. And please, Mr. Schonbrun, see that he doesn’t go rampaging around any more to-night.”
They drove off down the lane. Wearily I sat down in the living-room and thought. I was reminded of Bill’s stock and somewhat vulgar expression. “No matter how thin you slice it, it’s still bologna.” That sentence expressed my thoughts admirably. No matter how carefully I mulled over our list of suspects, they were, so to speak, still bologna.
Betsey came downstairs. “We’ve finally got Dot to sleep and Emma says she’s retiring before anything else turns up. Snoodles, I’m getting surer by the minute that Dot must have done this. Although the brother is sort of in the limelight, isn’t he?”
“As far as I can make out,” I told her, “with this feeble and sleepy and thoroughly useless brain of mine, Asey is right; practically any one at all might have done it. I’m that confused, Betsey, that I’m not sure but what you and I did it together. If I think one more thought about Dale Sanborn, who would seem to be where he very rightly belongs, I shall be seized with fits, like a cat. And that reminds me. Has Ginger been fed and looked after to-day, or hasn’t he? It’s the first time in years that I’ve neglected him.”
“Come on to bed,” said Betsey comfortingly. “Ginger’s in his basket in your room. I’ll make you a hot toddy and run you a tub and you’ll feel like a new woman when you’ve finished with them.”
Ordinarily I do dislike being coddled, but somehow it was restful being coddled that night. I sank down into bed and wondered how many gray hairs I’d added to my scalp during the day.
In the middle of the night Ginger woke me by prancing on my stomach. I tried to quiet him, but he refused to be quieted. Now many people insist that a cat is dull in comparison with a dog, but as I always remark to the intense annoyance of all of my dog-loving friends, Ginger is a remarkable cat. I do not claim that he is psychic, but it was he who discovered the burglar last winter in our home in Boston and roused me by licking my face so I was able to telephone the police in time to keep the Whitsby pearls in the family.
I turned on my flashlight and looked at him, tail five times normal size, all the hairs on his back standing on end. It occurred to me that his prancing this time might not be without reason. I snapped out my light, closed my eyes tightly and listened. Distinctly I heard some one move in the living-room. I pulled on my kimono, picked up the torch and crept downstairs.
At the foot of the staircase I bumped into some one. I turned on the light. It was Dot.
“What is the matter?” I demanded.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Miss Prudence. I craved a cigarette and Betsey was sleeping so peacefully that I hadn’t the heart to disturb her.”
“Bed is the place for you,” I said severely.
“I know it is. Miss Prudence, I’m sorry for the way I’ve acted, all this silly fainting, I mean. But when I came downstairs to-night and saw that man, I thought it was Dale.”
“You’ve never seen the brother before?”
“I never knew he existed.” She gave a little sigh. “But he is built like Dale, and oh, I don’t know. I’ve been pretty shot all day, I guess. I’ll try to be more sensible to-morrow.”
We went up-stairs together. At my door she leaned over unexpectedly and kissed me.
“Please believe in me, Miss Prudence. I didn’t kill him. Please believe in me.”
I patted her shoulder and told her to run along to bed, that to-morrow everything would be cleared up.
In my room Ginger blinked at me. His hair was still fluffed up on end. I pulled off my kimono and told him to get into his basket. “It wasn’t a burglar,” I said, “and everything’s all right. You’re a nice cat, but to-night you let your enthusiasm run away with you.” He looked at me, blinked again, and walked with studied carelessness to his basket. The insolent flick of his tail and the proud curl of his whiskers said as plainly as words, “All right, if you say so, I’ll obey. But you’re wrong.”
And his very assurance about it put me into one of those nervous states where, in our house that never squeaked, I heard noises and footsteps till dawn.