DETECTIVE EBENEZER GRYCE - Complete Murder-Mysteries Collection: 11 Novels in One Volume
connection proving practicable, he found himself after a little while in communication with the man he wanted.
“I’m Gryce, of the New York police. A woman in whom we’re greatly interested has just entered your town under the name of Elvira Brown.”
“Elvira Brown!”
Mr. Gryce was startled at the tone in which this was repeated, even making due allowance for the medium through which it came.
“Yes. What’s there strange about that?”
“Only this: That’s the name of a woman who has lived in these mountains for forty years, and who died here three days ago. To-day we’re going to bury her.”
This was a blow to the detective’s expectations. What awful mistake had he made? Or had it been made by the man detailed to steal the name from the package—or by the woman in the shop, or by all these combined? He could not stop to ask; but he caught at the first loose end which presented itself.
“Well, it isn’t she we’re after, that’s certain. The one we want is middle-aged, and plain in looks and dress. If she came into your town, it was yesterday or possibly the night before. You wouldn’t be apt to notice her, unless your attention was caught by her lameness. Do you remember any such person?”
“No, and I don’t think anyone like that passed through my station. We’re off the main road, and our travelers are few. I would have noticed the arrival of a woman like that.”
Mr. Gryce, with an exclamation of chagrin, hung up the receiver. He felt completely balked.
But old as he was, he still had some of the tenacity of youth. He was not willing to accept defeat without one more effort. Going downtown as usual, he wandered again into the little dry-goods shop to see if the package had been sent.
Yes, it had gone, but the expressman had had some trouble with a drunken man who actually took the package out of his hands and didn’t give it back without a squabble. Strange how men can drink till they can’t see, and so early in the morning, at that!
Mr. Gryce’s vigorous hunch dismissed summarily this expression of opinion as altogether feminine. But he had something to say about the package itself, which kept the good woman waiting, though a customer or two demanded her attention.
“You’ll think me a fussy old man,” said he, “but I’ve worried about that package all night. She needs a new dress so much, and I’m afraid you didn’t have the right address. I remember it now—it was—was——”
“Barford on the Hudson,” she finished promptly. Evidently she begrudged the time she was wasting on his imbecilities.
“That’s it; that’s it. ‘Way up in the Catskills, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. Those people are waiting, sir. I shall really——”
“One moment! I want to buy something more for her. But I’ll send it myself this time; I won’t bother you again. Another dress, something bright and prettier than anything she has. She’ll forgive me. She’ll be glad to have it.”
“I don’t know, sir.” The woman was really very much embarrassed. She was honest to the core, and though she enjoyed seeing her goods disappear from the shelves, it wasn’t in her heart to take advantage of a man so old as this. “I’m afraid she wouldn’t be pleased. You see, it isn’t a fortnight since she bought and made up the one I sold her first, and she thought that a great extravagance. Now with the gray——”
“Are you speaking of the blue one?”
“No, it wasn’t blue.”
“What color was it? Haven’t you a bit left to show me? I should know better what to do, then.”
She pointed to a bolt of striped wool—a little gaudy for a woman whose taste they had both been speaking of as inclined to the plain and somber.
“That? But that’s bright enough. I’ve never seen her in that.”
“She didn’t like it. But something made her take it. She wore it when she came in last.”
“She did! Then I’m satisfied. Thankee all the same. Just give me a pair of gloves for her, and I’ll be getting on.”
She picked out a pair for him, and he trotted away, mumbling cheerily to himself as he passed between the counters. But once in his taxi again, he concentrated all his thought on that bolt of striped dress-goods. The colors were crimson and black, with a dot here and there of some lighter shade! He took pains to fix it in his mind, for this was undoubtedly the dress she fled in—an important clue to him, if this hunt should resolve itself into a chase with doubling and redoubling of the escaping quarry.
He spent the next two hours in acquainting himself with the location and some of the conditions of the town he now meant to visit. Though he could not understand Madame Duclos’ reason for taking the name of a woman so well known as this Elvira Brown, there was something in this circumstance and the fact that the person so styled had been at that moment at the point of death, which called, as he felt, for personal investigation. He hardly felt fit for any such purely speculative expedition as this; especially as he must do without the companionship, to say nothing of the assistance, of Sweetwater, whom he hardly felt justified in withdrawing from the task he had given him. So he picked out a fellow named Perry; and together they took the West Shore into Greene County, where they stopped at a station from which a branch road ran to the small town whither the package addressed to Elvira Brown had preceded them.
Accidents frequently determine our course, as well as turn us from the one we had mapped out for ourselves. By accident I mean, in this case, an actual one which had occurred on the branch road I have mentioned, by which the trains were held up and further progress in that direction made impossible. When this came to the knowledge of Mr. Gryce, he found it necessary to choose between trusting himself to an automobile for the rest of the journey, or of remaining all night in the town where the train had stopped. A glance at the hills towering up between him and his goal decided him to wait for the running of the trains next day; and after an inquiry or two, he left the station on foot for the hotel to which he had been recommended.
A philosopher, in many regards, Mr. Gryce quieted himself, under the irritation of this annoyance, with the thought that in this world we do not always know just what is best for us; and that the few hours of rest thus forced upon him by the seemingly unfortunate break in his plans might prove in the end to be the best thing that could happen to him. He accordingly took a good room, enjoyed a good dinner and then sat down in the lobby to have an equally good smoke. He chose a chair which gave him a prospect of the river, and for a long time, while vaguely listening to the talk about him, he feasted his eyes on the view and allowed some of its calm to enter his perturbed spirit. But gradually, as he looked and smoked, he found his attention caught, first by what a man was saying in his rear, and secondly by something he saw intervening between himself and the flow of shining river which had hitherto filled his eye.
The sentence which had roused him was one quite foreign to his thoughts and seemingly of little importance to him or to anyone about. It was in connection with a factory on the other side of the river, which was running overtime, and had not help enough to fill its orders.
“It’s women we want,” he heard shouted out. “Young women, middle-aged women, any sort of women who are anxious for steady work and good wages.”
The emphasis with which this announcement was made perhaps gave it point; at all events this one brief sentence sank into Mr. Gryce’s ear just as he began to notice a woman who sat with her back to him on the hotel piazza.
He was not thinking of Madame Duclos at that moment; nor was there the least thing about this woman to recall his secret quarry to mind. Yet once his eyes had fallen on her, they remained there for several minutes.
Why?
Perhaps because she sat so unnaturally still. In all the time he stared at her simple