see, I see. You believe it the work of his brother.”
I stole a look at Mr. Gryce before replying. He had turned the vase upside down, and was intently studying its label; but he could not conceal his expectation of an affirmative answer. Greatly relieved, I immediately took the position I had resolved upon, and calmly but vigorously observed:
“What I believe, and what I have learned in support of my belief, will sound as well in your ears ten minutes hence as now. Before I give you the result of such inquiries as I have been enabled to make, I require to know what evidence you have yourself collected against the gentleman you have just named, and in what respect it is as criminating as that against his brother?”
“Is not that peremptory, Miss Butterworth? And do you think us called upon to part with all or any of the secrets of our office? We have informed you that we have new and startling evidence against the older brother; should not that be sufficient for you?”
“Perhaps so if I were an assistant of yours, or even in your employ. But I am neither; I stand alone, and although I am a woman and unused to this business, I have earned, as I think you will acknowledge later, the right to some consideration on your part. I cannot present the facts I have to relate in a proper manner till I know just how the case stands.”
“It is not curiosity that troubles Miss Butterworth—Madam, I said it was not curiosity—but a laudable desire to have the whole matter arranged with precision,” dropped now in his dryest tones from the detective’s lips.
“Mr. Gryce has a most excellent understanding of my character,” I gravely observed.
The Inspector looked nonplussed. He glanced at Mr. Gryce and he glanced at me, but the smile of the former was inscrutable, and my expression, if I showed any, must have betrayed but little relenting.
“If called as a witness, Miss Butterworth,”—this was how he sought to manage me,—“you will have no choice in the matter. You will be compelled to speak or show contempt of court.”
“That is true,” I acknowledged. “But it is not what I might feel myself called upon to say then, but what I can say now, that is of interest to you at this present moment. So be generous, gentlemen, and satisfy my curiosity, for such Mr. Gryce considers it, in spite of his assertions to the contrary. Will it not all come out in the papers a few hours hence, and have I not earned as much at your hands as the reporters?”
“The reporters are our bane. Do not liken yourself to the reporters.”
“Yet they sometimes give you a valuable clue.”
Mr. Gryce looked as if he would like to disclaim this, but he was a judicious soul, and merely gave a twist to the vase which I thought would cost me that small article of vertu.
“Shall we humor Miss Butterworth?” asked the Inspector.
“We will do better,” answered Mr. Gryce, setting the vase down with a precision that made me jump; for I am a worshipper of bric-à-brac, and prize the few articles I own, possibly beyond their real value. “We will treat her as a coadjutor, which, by the way, she says she is not, and by the trust we place in her, secure that discretionary use of our confidence which she shows with so much spirit in regard to her own.”
“Begin then,” said I.
“I will,” said he, “but first allow me to acknowledge that you are the person who first put us on the track of Franklin Van Burnam.”
Chapter XXX.
The Matter as Stated by Mr. Gryce
I had exhausted my wonder, so I accepted this statement with no more display of surprise than a grim smile.
“When you failed to identify Howard Van Burnam as the man who accompanied his wife into the adjacent house, I realized that I must look elsewhere for the murderer of Louise Van Burnam. You see I had more confidence in the excellence of your memory than you had yourself, so much indeed that I gave you more than one chance to exercise it, having, by certain little methods I sometimes employ, induced different moods in Mr. Van Burnam at the time of his several visits, so that his bearing might vary, and you have every opportunity to recognize him for the man you had seen on that fatal night.”
“Then it was he you brought here each time?” I broke in.
“It was he.”
“Well!” I ejaculated.
“The Superintendent and some others whom I need not mention,”—here Mr. Gryce took up another small object from the table,—“believed implicitly in his guilt; conjugal murder is so common and the causes which lead to it so frequently puerile. Therefore I had to work alone. But this did not cause me any concern. Your doubts emphasized mine, and when you confided to me that you had seen a figure similar to the one we were trying to identify, enter the adjoining house on the evening of the funeral, I made immediate inquiries and discovered that the gentleman who had entered the house right after the four persons described by you was Franklin Van Burnam. This gave me a definite clue, and this is why I say that it was you who gave me my first start in this matter.”
“Humph!” thought I to myself, as with a sudden shock I remembered that one of the words which had fallen from Miss Oliver’s lips during her delirium had been this very name of Franklin.
“I had had my doubts of this gentleman before,” continued the detective, warming gradually with his subject. “A man of my experience doubts every one in a case of this kind, and I had formed at odd times a sort of side theory, so to speak, into which some little matters which came up during the inquest seemed to fit with more or less nicety; but I had no real justification for suspicion till the event of which I speak. That you had evidently formed the same theory as myself and were bound to enter into the lists with me, put me on my mettle, madam, and with your knowledge or without it, the struggle between us began.”
“So your disdain of me,” I here put in with a triumphant air I could not subdue, “was only simulated? I shall know what to think of you hereafter. But don’t stop, go on, this is all deeply interesting to me.”
“I can understand that. To proceed then; my first duty, of course, was to watch you. You had reasons of your own for suspecting this man, so by watching you I hoped to surprise them.”
“Good!” I cried, unable to entirely conceal the astonishment and grim amusement into which his continued misconception of the trend of my suspicions threw me.
“But you led us a chase, madam; I must acknowledge that you led us a chase. Your being an amateur led me to anticipate your using an amateur’s methods, but you showed skill, madam, and the man I sent to keep watch over Mrs. Boppert against your looked-for visit there, was foiled by the very simple strategy you used in meeting her at a neighboring shop.”
“Good!” I again cried, in my relief that the discovery made at that meeting had not been shared by him.
“We had sounded Mrs. Boppert ourselves, but she had seemed a very hopeless job, and I do not yet see how you got any water out of that stone—if you did.”
“No?” I retorted ambiguously, enjoying the Inspector’s manifest delight in this scene as much as I did my own secret thoughts and the prospect of the surprise I was holding in store for them.
“But your interference with the clock and the discovery you made that it had been going at the time the shelves fell, was not unknown to us, and we have made use of it, good use as you will hereafter see.”
“So! those girls could not keep a secret after all,” I muttered; and waited with some anxiety to hear him mention the pin-cushion; but he did not, greatly to my relief.
“Don’t blame the girls!” he put in (his ears evidently are as sharp as mine); “the