“we can eliminate a design upon your personal safety as the motive.”
Jack nodded in agreement.
The other continued. “Next we will eliminate robbery. You drove up in a taxi. As you entered the back door it would have been easy for a thief to leave by the front door. The black-faced gentleman didn’t do that. Instead he did what no run-of-the-mine burglar ever does. He hid himself.”
I shivered. “He was waiting for us.”
“No, Mrs. Storm. I believe he was waiting for someone else.”
“For Elmer Lewis!” exclaimed Jack.
Bewildered, I interrupted. “But Lewis was dead when we drove up. Dead in Crockford, murdered.”
“Your intruder may not have known that. You have said Lewis wanted to come to the cottage, insisted upon coming. Isn’t it possible he expected to meet someone here?”
“Do you mean to say he expected to meet a man hidden in the closet with a poker in his hand? Am I to believe that?” Standish smiled vaguely. “Strange things happen, Mrs. Storm. After all, Lewis had one enemy. Why not two?”
“It seems a trifle thick,” Jack said doubtfully. “Two separate plots on the same man’s life in a single evening! Lewis was an odd duck, but he wasn’t simple. He went to considerable pains before he set out on his trip—cut the labels from his clothes, shaved his mustache, wore those glasses. One would think he might have taken a few elementary precautions to protect himself.”
“He did,” said Standish grimly. “I didn’t tell you two last night, but Lewis was armed. There was a gun in his overcoat pocket. And his right hand—you will remember—was jammed in the pocket.”
“Under the circumstances,” said Jack, “it might have been wiser if he had carried a gun on his lap.”
“Lewis anticipated trouble,” said Standish, “but my hunch is he didn’t anticipate what happened. He had provided for contingencies which—” The policemen looked around the bedroom. “—which might occur in this cottage.”
An automobile—our own car, by the way—chugged into the drive, came to a noisy halt. Blair popped out of it and strode purposefully across the yard. A moment later the little deputy swept into the bedroom, clothed in the authority of the law and the neatest uniform that Crockford has ever seen.
“Well?” said Standish.
Blair whipped out two white envelopes, and handed them to his superior. They were the cablegrams, long awaited, one signed by Luella Coatesnash, the other by the head of the Paris Sûreté. Standish opened the envelopes, rapidly perused their contents. Jack couldn’t conceal his eagerness. He stretched out his hand.
In silence Standish surrendered the printed sheet. I read over Jack’s shoulder. The message was short. It follows:
“ELMER LEWIS HANDLED NO BUSINESS FOR ME HAVE NEVER HEARD THE NAME. PLEASE CABLE EXPLANATIONS.
LUELLA COATESNASH.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Voice on the Telephone
For a long interval no one in the bedroom moved or spoke. Together Jack and I stared at the printed words which had deepened materially the embarrassment and danger of our situation. I was not precisely surprised, but I was angry and discouraged. A few minutes earlier Standish had been discussing the case in quite a friendly fashion, and now it seemed to me the atmosphere had subtly altered. Jack refolded the white paper, returned it to the police chief.
“And the other cablegram?”
“The other is a confidential report from the French police and merely verifies what you read. Mrs. Coatesnash was interviewed at her hotel this morning, expressed her willingness to be of assistance, but was helpless. Evidently she is bewildered at being drawn into the matter, and can neither explain who Elmer Lewis is or how he happened to use her name.”
“That,” said Jack, “is impossible for me to credit.”
Few outsiders had the temerity or the bad taste to criticize a Coatesnash on her own home grounds. The pompous little deputy, whom Luella had never so much as spoken to, bristled like a wet cat. Standish looked cold and alienated. This was a situation we were to face throughout the coming days; whenever our interests conflicted with those of Mrs. Coatesnash, inevitably we lost.
Said Standish, “I’ve known Luella Coatesnash since I was a boy in knickerbockers. In some ways she may be peculiar, but she is a fine old lady. I have the utmost confidence in her integrity.” Jack half rose in bed. “Isn’t it important that Lewis lured us to New Haven by using her name? Isn’t it strange? How is it to be explained?”
Blair displayed his claws. “There’s only your word for that tale, Mr. Storm. Your word alone!”
“There’s my wife’s word! If you were sufficiently enterprising you might discover the telephone operator who put through the call. Those girls listen in on everything. Have you done anything about tracing the call?”
“You bet we have! The local exchange has no record of a long-distance call made here yesterday afternoon. They don’t keep records of local calls, but neither of the girls remembers ringing this number at all. They’re both smart girls.”
Standish glanced at his assistant in brusque reproof. “For the present we will accept that the telephone call was made, exactly as it’s been described. We will accept that Elmer Lewis announced his intention of coming to Crockford on business for Mrs. Coatesnash. We will accept that Lewis, for a reason of his own, lied. Now where does that get us?”
I said, “It gets us back to the spot where we left off last night.”
“Not quite,” said Jack with a suspicious mildness. “Today we have cleared Mrs. Coatesnash. We’ve done it on the strength of a single unsupported statement. Which is no mean feat!” Standish said patiently, “How could Mrs. Coatesnash be expected to recognize the name Elmer Lewis if the man were using an alias? She might be acquainted with him under his right name. On the other hand, she might never have heard of him.
“The Coatesnash family is one of the most prominent in Connecticut. It would be very easy for a stranger to pick up the name, to learn certain things about Mrs. Coatesnash, to discover she was abroad and to take advantage of the fact.”
I chimed in, “It wouldn’t be easy for a stranger to know we are tenants of hers. Elmer Lewis knew it. He knew about the cottage. He knew the make and model of our car.”
Standish swung around to face me. “It’s easier than you imagine for unscrupulous persons to gather information about you, information you can’t dream they possess. Particularly when a large city is concerned. Let me show you. You’ve lived in Crockford since January—three months—and during that period you have returned to New York several times. How many times?”
“Five or six.”
“On those occasions you saw friends, visited restaurants, theaters, attended parties. You talked. What did you talk about? Let me guess. You talked about your life in the country; you mentioned your landlady. No doubt you described her, spoke of her eccentricities, the small differences of opinion between you. By and large, many people heard you were living in this cottage, just as many people saw you driving about in the gray roadster.”
I became alarmed. “Our friends have nothing to do with this. It is entirely out of the question.”
“I haven’t finished yet. These friends, also, talked. Don’t you see that idle gossip, started by yourself, may have traveled far and fast as gossip does, may have reached the ears of people who are not your friends and whom we cannot locate, until, at last, perhaps, it came to the notice of someone who had a use for it? Aren’t you willing to admit that Elmer Lewis, a stranger, might still have known a great deal about you and Mrs. Coatesnash? Enough to make, or delegate someone to make, the phone call?”
Fascinated, as I