“Why can’t Harvey walk out of this apartment openly in daylight?” Sam’s thoughts had harked back to the immediate necessity of safety for his friend. “Bill Martin’s a good scout. Once on the yacht, Harvey’ll find things to do that’ll take his mind off his troubles.”
“We daren’t risk his walking out openly,” Miss Livingston said, “because the place is watched. If you don’t know why, perhaps your fat friend who called on me with you does. That’s a small reason. We might be able to get around it if Harvey would go, but he has made up his mind to stay here until he sees justice done.”
“Aren’t we men dumb?” Sam exclaimed, whole-heartedly. “What help could he be to justice shut up in a nice well-ventilated and advertised cell, awaiting trial on a capital charge? I’ll have to see him. You didn’t by any chance tell him that I was the murderer, did you?”
“I didn’t.” Miss Livingston was almost betrayed into a laugh. “And that’s no thanks to any belief in your innocence, either. I was sure you were guilty; jealous, probably, of Hugh Oliver. No, I kept quiet because some arrangement with you seemed to offer my only hope of smuggling Harvey out of the country. I was prepared to bargain with you. My silence for his safety.”
“So I gathered,” Sam said, dryly. “Suppose I drop in on you this evening? I’m executor of Connie’s will and I’ve a letter from her that I think may be a comfort to Harvey. At least it’s a proof that even after five years’ separation she cared more for him than she did for any other man.”
“The complexities of the human heart are beyond human understanding,” remarked Miss Livingston, sententiously, as she rose. “We’ll expect you about eight-thirty. Don’t forget to unbolt your back door, young man, so that your Chinese junk can sail in.”
Once the lady was gone, Sam began to go over what she had told him, and of a sudden, with blinding force was struck with what amounted to a certainty that Harvey Thorne was Consuela’s slayer. That flamboyant article in the evening papers could hardly have escaped him. Undoubtedly he had seen it and his call on the eighth floor was made for the express purpose of locating his ex-wife. Then, when he had misunderstood Sam to the extent of imagining that Consuela was expected there, nothing could have been easier than to watch for her, concealed in the swarm of masqueraders already beginning to congregate in the entrance hall. He might even have gone back to the apartment, moved only by a desire to see Connie once again while she was still free, or to plead with her to return to him. And if Connie had been contemptuous, or as exasperating as no one else could be——
More than likely Thorne had thought he was hiding her engagement to Oliver in the hope that he had not heard of it.
Sam tried to review their conversation in his mind. Most of it had been trivial. They had been separated for too many years for an easy renewal of intercourse. Finally, Thorne had spoken of Connie and had made it abundantly clear that he had never recovered from his infatuation.
Was he the sort of man who would rather see her dead than know her married to another? He had always seemed easy-going rather than intense, but he had revealed unsuspected depths of suffering when talking of his wife.
Sam seized his head in his hands. Was suspicion in this case to be directed away from one of his friends only to settle more firmly on another? And if Harvey had slain his wife, what was he going to do about it? He, the Police Commissioner of New York City.
One thing he was most certainly not going to do, and that was give the poor fool up to justice.
Harvey had suffered much in his short adult life, and, if he had killed Connie, he would suffer still more in the future. He, his and her old friend, would spare him anything he could, confident that that would have been Connie’s wish. And after all, it could do the city no harm. He was not letting loose a habitual criminal to prey on it.
He reached for his telephone with the idea of calling Bill Martin and finding out when his boat was to sail. Then he held his hand. He had a sudden flash of intuition—of warning—what if he himself were not freed from suspicion in the eyes of the police? Why was Sing spying on him? What if his wire were tapped? He might play right into their hands if he mentioned Harvey over the phone.
He told himself that this was ludicrous—far fetched. The Commissioner of Police afraid of the force he commanded; but still he did not telephone.
Sing, in a very bad temper, came in with the two bottles of liqueurs, gave Sam his change, and was walking back to his kitchen with the bottles, when his master stopped him.
“You may leave those. They are a commission. Ladies dislike to buy liquor for themselves.”
“I am to deliver them for you?” Sing asked, awakening to a sudden interest.
Sam concealed a smile. It hardly seemed likely that Sing cherished a passion for the movie-mad Eliza, but the thought was amusing and the liqueurs would furnish an excuse for his own call on his neighbor if he were watched, since any sudden intimacy might arouse interest.
“No,” he said. “I’ll take them to Miss Livingston myself before I go out this evening.”
This visit was short and less harrowing than he had anticipated.
Harvey looked ill, but was quite collected. Sam gave him Connie’s letter, telling him to keep it if he wished, and advised him of the provisions of her will. Harvey shaded his eyes with his hand for a minute, then placed the letter in an inner pocket with the gentle words, “Thanks, Sam,” and at once changed the subject.
“You have arranged about the funeral?”
“Yes,” Sam replied. “It will be entirely private. A simple service at the Little Church Around the Corner.”
“And the interment?” Harvey’s fingers, interlaced, showed the first sign of his nervous tension.
“I shall have to buy a lot tomorrow. Unless, that is, I find a deed in her box at the State Trust Company.”
“Don’t do that,” Harvey leaned toward him, touchingly moved. “Whatever you find, Connie is still my wife in my eyes. I want her buried with the Thornes, where I can sleep beside her when my time comes. Is there any objection to that? I’ll give you a letter to Lester and Simpson, who have charge of all my affairs. They’ll see to everything.”
“No objection, old man,” Sam hesitated. “Only I’d like you to be out of the country before it became known. It’s sure to create talk and I don’t want to see you hounded by reporters.”
“God, no I” Thorne passed a hand over his hair, brushing back the locks that had fallen forward on his forehead. “I’m in no state to endure a probing of my reasons. I’ll warn Lester to swear that I wirelessed him from Tahiti. No, that’s too far. Where could I have had the news? Europe? It was probably in the Paris Herald. Connie was greatly admired there.”
“Lester will know the best lie to tell,” Sam assured him, soothingly. “The thing for you to do is to get out of town as fast as you can.”
“I’m not going.” Thorne’s mouth set in a stubborn line. “I mean to find Connie’s murderer, and then——”
“And then?” Sam repeated, interrogatively.
“Then I’ll kill him with my naked hands.” The words burst forth savagely and Sam asked himself whether this was the longing for a just retribution or an attempt to act as Harvey fancied an innocent man in his position would act.
“You’d only hamper the officials if you stayed here, old man. But we’ll talk of that later. Meanwhile suppose you give me that authorization for your lawyers?”
Obediently Thorne went into his room to write the necessary letter, and Miss Livingston popped out of her own chamber to talk to Sam.
“How do you find him?” she asked.
“Amazingly calm,” Sam answered. “But I haven’t yet broached any plan to get him away. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what to suggest until I’ve seen Bill Martin. I hope to catch him at the Club when I leave here. After what you said about watchers, I had a sudden hunch that it might not be healthy to phone from my rooms.”
“That sounds like sense to me,” Miss Livingston nodded. “I’ve notified my office that I have the grippe. My secretary is competent to carry on without me for a few days. I flatter myself my organization is well-nigh perfect. I’ll stay on guard here and see that he doesn’t go out or run any risks, but I’ll be happier when he’s gone.”
“Do you think you can manage him?”
The question was so ridiculous that she did not even answer it. She, not to be able to manage a mere man, forsooth!
Sam went dose to her and spoke in a whisper.
“Have you ever asked yourself if Harvey could have done this thing? In sudden jealousy, perhaps. I mean to protect him, you understand. What you say will make no difference with me, but I want the truth. What time last night did he get here?”
Miss Livingston raised her single eyeglass from force of habit, then remembering Sam’s objection to it, charitably let it fall to the end of its platinum chain.
“Certainly I’ve considered it,” she returned, tartly. “I’m not a moron. And the answer is that I know positively that he did not do it, so don’t give that another thought.”
“How do you know?” Sam asked, naturally enough.
Miss Livingston fronted him with an inscrutable expression on her face. “I may tell you some day, all in good time,” she replied. And Sam noted that his most pertinent question remained unanswered.
Sam finally ran Bill Martin down at—of all impossible places to reach—the Aquarium, where, long after closing time, he was still deep in heated controversy with an authority on sponges and the lower forms of animal life to be found in tropical waters.
Securing his attention under difficulties, Sam mentioned that Harvey wanted to know where the yacht was berthed and when he expected to sail? Whereupon Bill, an anemic-looking, bald-headed little man with a sunburnt nose, burst forth into unexpectedly lurid language, a son of a sea cook being about the mildest epithet he applied to Harvey.
“We were ready to sail today, but where is he, I ask you? He never came in last night. I’ve been looking for him everywhere, shouting about all over town——”
This alarmed Sam, anxious that Harvey’s presence in the city should not be advertised; but it developed that Bill’s idea of a thorough search was an amble through the Natural History Museum and the Aquarium, murmuring to himself, “I wonder where the damn’ fool has got to?”
No harm had been done, and when the little man (another who scorned the daily papers) heard the startling news that they contained and that if it was learned that he was within reach, his friend might he in danger of detention until the curiosity of reporters and police was satisfied, his one thought was to hasten their departure lest he find himself deprived of the services of an extra navigator and willing helper. The question of Harvey’s innocence, complicity, or guilt never troubled a mind that found anemones and sea snails of far more importance than human beings.
It developed that Thorne’s gear was already on board, that Bill would sleep on the yacht that night in order to be ready to sail as early as possible; and, promising to deliver Harvey not later than 10 a.m. the next day, Sam left him amid the coldly glistening tanks with their strange inhabitants, to the more congenial society of the controversial expert.
It remained to get Harvey away from the apartment undetected, and that, when he took a survey of the surroundings, did not look so easy.
Rightly or wrongly, on his return he thought he marked down at least four unnecessary loiterers, plain-clothes men or reporters, who would be equally dangerous, in the immediate vicinity of the entrance; while within the doors which Thady opened for him was no less a menace than Detective McCurdy.
McCurdy did not welcome him home with any enthusiasm, but Thady was undisguisedly glad to see him.
“Sure now, Mr. Mellon, can’t ye tell this man to quit pesterin’ me? I’ve told him all I know and he’s all for puttin’ words in me mouth that I never said at all.”
Sam was in a quandary. To side with Thady would further antagonize McCurdy, whom already he recognized as an enemy. He essayed a middle course, glancing humorously at the detective as though indulgent of old Thady’s peculiarities. But McCurdy was not of a friendly nature. He averted his eyes even when the Commissioner addressed him jocularly:
“What’s it all about, McCurdy? Maybe I can help you out.”
“It’s about a lady, Mr. Mellon. A lady in a white nightgown, that went away early from the party. She was cryin’, and that’s God’s truth if it was the last word ever I spoke. But I don’t know her name, nor ever did. And that’s no lie.” Thady had burst out in considerable indignation before McCurdy attempted to open his mouth.
“A lady in a white nightgown?” Sam addressed the detective, while his heart sank at this mention of Alix in her Josephine costume. “That would he a domino, of course. There were numbers of them of all colors, McCurdy. You must have noticed that.”
“And was they all crying?” The detective muttered, belligerently.
“A good many were,” Sam returned. “There was a tragic interruption to that party.”
“That come later, Mr. Mellon,” Thady volunteered, and Sam heartily wished he could have prevented this utterance. “This young lady left quite early in the evenin’.”
“Are you sure of that, Thady?” Sam drawled, assuming an indifference he was far from feeling. “Don’t make any mistake. Detective McCurdy’s time is too valuable to waste running down false leads. It was some hours after the tragedy in the penthouse that you got word of it, remember.”
Thady pushed his cap to one side and scratched his head.
“I ain’t reelly sure of nothin’,” he declared. “That was a rare night for excitement. Good as a theayter it was, to see all them people dressed up so grand. Full of fun, they was, too, stickin’ masks and funny faces up close to me an’ sayin’ in squeaky voices: ‘Don’t you know me, Thady? Sure I came out of the same bog hole you did in the old country.’ An’ the like. But as for me rememberin’ that this lady asked were you in, I don’t remember it an’ there’s no use his insistin’ that I do.”
Sam fixed his gaze on McCurdy’s red face with a pretense of amusement.
“Still on the trail of your favorite suspect, McCurdy? I’ve no objection to that, but neither I nor Inspector Dolan will countenance manufactured evidence. Thady’s an honest man and there’s no use telling him what he thinks. You ought to have experience enough to know that such testimony won’t stand up under cross-examination. I don’t say forget about me, I merely suggest that you don’t let the real culprit crawl between your feet while you are watching me.”
No sooner had he said it than he was sorry. There was Harvey to get off, whether between McCurdy’s feet or slipping through his outstretched fingers he didn’t care. But for the moment McCurdy was concentrating on the tearful girl, and Sam brought the conversation back to her: “If you really want to know, I’ll gladly tell you that no lady in a white domino called on me that night.”
“Nor any dame in a white dress?” McCurdy asked, quickly, transfixing Sam with a cold greenish stare.
“Nor any lady in a white costume,” Sam replied, steadily. “At least not while I was at home. You surely remember that I went out, not only to the masquerade, but also to see how my niece was getting along. She was far from well. Sing, my servant, was out. If you have reason to think such a call was made, all I can say positively is that I saw no such person and that if she called during my absence there was no one to admit her to my apartment.”
He paused, then resumed his jocular manner.
“And really, McCurdy, I’ve never known my guests to depart in tears, flattering as such grief at parting would be.”
With a mutter of unintelligible words, McCurdy stamped out into the night, leaving Sam uncertain whether he had helped or harmed the cause he served.
It might have comforted McCurdy had he known that the Police Commissioner was as much at sea in this case as he was.
Cudgel his brains as he might, Sam could think of no motive for Connie’s murder if he dismissed jealousy on Thorne’s part, and Miss Livingston asserted his innocence positively.
Yet surely no one killed without a reason, and who had any reason to wish Connie ill—to put an end to that bright if aimless life? That was the question continually before him, and he found no answer to it. When asked if he knew of any enemies, he had replied with an unhesitating “No.”
There was nothing malicious or snobbish about Connie. Nothing at all that he knew of to justify or account for enmity. Who then had dealt her that blow in the back? He did not know.