MRS3 The Velvet Hand (24 page)

"You will wish first to go over everything," said Bristed. "I will explain it as well as I can."

Mme Storey humorously held up her hand. "I doubt if I am capable of understanding it even with your explanations," she said. "Let me ask a few general questions first."

We all sat down on the plain deal chairs with which the place was furnished. "It wouldn't cause an explosion, would it, if I lighted a cigarette?" asked my mistress, looking around her in mock alarm.

Bristed laughed heartily. "Not at all! Mr. Hendrie forbade smoking, but now there is no reason..."

Bristed and his wife both accepted cigarettes from my mistress's case. The man's hand trembled slightly as he lighted his. He called attention to it, laughing.

"My nerves have gone to pieces over this business."

"It's not surprising," said Mme Storey.

His wife's hand did not shake. She deeply and gratefully inhaled the smoke, letting it slowly escape through her nostrils. A strange girl, having beautiful dark eyes without any expression whatever.

"How many assistants did Mr. Hendrie employ?" asked Mme Storey.

"Only myself and my wife," said Bristed. "My wife is also a chemist."

"Did he ever have visitors at the laboratory?"

"Never! Such a thing would have been unheard of!"

"Then nobody but you three ever entered it?"

"And the charwoman, a Mrs. Freese, who came twice a week to clean."

"What was the nature of the work Mr. Hendrie was engaged on at the time of his death?"

Bristed spread out his hands. "I don't know," he said.

"You don't know!" echoed Mme Storey in surprise.

"I know it sounds incredible," he said apologetically, "but that is the sort of man he was. Suspicious. Not an easy man to work for. He never trusted my wife and me—never trusted anyone. He gave us merely the journeyman work to do, simple formulae to work out. What he did with the results we never knew. We never possessed any key to the whole."

"But surely you must know in a general way."

"Oh, yes, from the apparatus he used and the drugs he bought, I inferred that he was working on a new poison gas to be used in warfare."

"But Sir Egerton Pulford said he had a hatred of that sort of thing."

"He was pulling Sir Egerton's leg," put in Mrs. Bristed.

"Mr. Hendrie was fond of concealing his real aims," remarked her husband drily.

"Isn't such work excessively dangerous to the experimenter?"

"Mr. Hendrie was an old hand. He knew how to protect himself."

"Didn't he leave any written notes?"

"Not a line. Whatever notes he made, he destroyed at the end of the day or carried them away in his wallet. Nothing was ever left lying about."

"I suppose he used animals in his experiments—guinea pigs, rats, rabbits?"

"No, Madame, he did not experiment on animals."

"Then the secret of his last work, whatever it may have been, died with him?"

"Either it died with him or was in his wallet."

"And that has been lost," remarked Mme Storey.

There was a silence. A superb tiger cat came strolling grandly out from behind some carboys in the corner. After stretching himself luxuriously, he rubbed himself condescendingly against my mistress's knee.

"What a beauty!" she said, rubbing his head. "Is he yours?"

Mrs. Bristed made a move as if to take the cat out, then thought better of it. "No," she said indifferently, "as a matter of fact, he belongs to the charwoman."

Her husband, always more voluble, more eager, added, with a laugh: "He's been hanging around the laboratory lately. We were troubled by mice. Mr. Hendrie took quite a fancy to him."

My mistress took a new line. "Has Mr. Hendrie's will been read?"

"Yes," said Bristed. "He was a wealthier man than any of us suspected. He left everything to his wife, of course, except this laboratory with its contents, and the cottage adjoining. That he left jointly to my wife and me. It was more than we expected."

"Yes," added Mrs. Bristed. "We were sorry then for some of the hard thoughts we had cherished against him."

Her husband glanced at her as if this speech had startled him. Then he laughed in his nervous way. "Yes," he said, "he kept us in hot water while he lived."

"I quite understand," said Mme Storey sympathetically. "And shall you carry on here?"

"No," said Bristed modestly. "I am scarcely qualified yet to do research work. We shall have to sell out for what we can get and find jobs."

"What were the relations between Mr. Hendrie and the charwoman?" Mme Storey asked unexpectedly.

Bristed looked at her as if at a loss how to answer. Mrs. Bristed put in quickly, with her cold smile: "Not very good. They were continually at loggerheads. He only kept her on because she rarely broke anything. She was never allowed in his room unless he were present."

"When did you last see Mr. Hendrie?" was the next question.

"Day before yesterday, in the afternoon," said Bristed. "He had not expected to come to the laboratory that day, but we had a fire, and I felt it my duty to telephone him."

"A fire?" exclaimed Mme Storey, looking around.

"Oh, a trifling affair. We soon cleared away the mess. But Mr. Hendrie insisted on coming down. He gave me a great rating for my carelessness." Bristed laughed heartily.

"And that is how he came to miss the afternoon train for London?"

"Yes, Madame.... It is terrible to think of it now!" he added with sudden gravity.

Later Mme Storey expressed a wish to be shown around the laboratory and especially the inner room. Bristed conducted us, and Mrs. Bristed brought up the rear of the procession, seldom speaking, but never ceasing to watch us with her cold eyes. Bristed was most anxious to make everything clear—too anxious, if anything. It occurred to me that there must have been a careful cleaning up since Mr. Hendrie's death. It did not seem possible that a man could have been cut off in the middle of his work like that and leave not a trace of it behind.

When we had completed our round Mme Storey said carelessly: "Where does the charwoman live?"

Husband and wife exchanged a quick glance and both started to make objections, voice answering voice in a sort of antiphony. "Such an ignorant woman! ... You couldn't get anything out of her! ... And absolutely unreliable.... Yes, what she didn't know she'd invent.... Lives in the worst quarter of town...."

"I am not afraid of a poor quarter," said Mme Storey with a smile. "The car I have waiting can take me there."

"In that case I had better accompany you," said Bristed.

"As you will," said Mme Storey pleasantly. I could see, though, that she had no intention of allowing him to be present at the interview.

We were driven to a mean little street lined by grimy two-story tenements, and with a swarm of filthy children in the gutters. There is a squalor, a hopelessness about the British poor that we do not see in America, thank God! From the house before which he stopped, however, issued the sound of a loud and unmelodious singing.

"That's her," said Bristed with a bleak smile. "Second floor front."

As we got out, Mme Storey appeared to be struck by a sudden recollection. "I have forgotten the station master!" she exclaimed. "Mr. Bristed, I wonder if you would attend to that for me, while I speak to this woman."

He looked sour but was obliged to consent, of course.

"Take the car," said Mme Storey. "The railway carriage in which the murder was committed goes up to London at eight to-night, on the same train. I want to reserve the compartment in which Mr. Hendrie travelled."

His face offered a study in chagrin and baulked curiosity. However, with an outward appearance of courteous willingness, he hurried away.

Mme Storey and I exchanged a look as we turned into the house. "It isn't possible," said I, "that he should be so ignorant of his master's work."

"Scarcely," she answered; "but you mustn't infer too much from that. He is probably in possession of the secret of Sims Hendrie's last work; but that doesn't connect him with the murder."

I must confine my account of the exuberant Mrs. Freese within strict limits. If I gave her her head she would fill the balance of my pages. Talk foamed out of her in billows and cascades. There was no stopping her, no controlling her, we simply had to let her talk, and fish out what scraps of interesting matter the flood brought down. In ten minutes, I suppose, we were in possession of her entire life's history from her early love affairs to her latest quarrels with her neighbours. She was not in the least abashed by Mme Storey, but treated her immediately as an old friend. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Freese was not English but Irish, which explains a good deal.

Picture an elvish little woman with a wide mouth—only a whole tooth or two left—big ears, and a tight little twist of mouse-coloured hair. What she had to be cheerful about I don't know, but cheerful she was. The sordid room, no doubt her only room, was full of steam. She had her washtub on a chair, and she stood on a low box, bending over it. Having placed us on two other chairs, she returned to her tub and continued to scrub during our visit. And while she scrubbed she talked. Astonishing energy!

"Me and Mr. Hendrie, we understood each other. We got along good. My motter is: Never take people serious. Lor' bless you, nobody don't mean the half of what they say! He was a testy old gent, a temper like cayenne pepper, he had. He'd go off like a pack of firecrackers when you hang it up and light the bottom one. Lor', how he'd storm around that place when he mislaid anything, and it right under his nose all the time. If't had been a little yaller dog 'twould have bit him, I uster say. Ev'ybody was scairt stiff of him but me. But I seed he didn't mean nothin' by all his hullabaloo, an' I never let myself be put about by it. And he liked me because he seed that I seed that he didn't mean nothin' by it. It made the couple over there sore because he liked me; they wanted to run him theirselves. And you wouldn't believe all the dodges they put up to get me sacked—why, Mis' Bristed offered to clean up herself, but the old man wouldn't. Ah, he was an old bear, he was, but I miss 'im now 'e's gone! I'll look long before I find me another such a good place!"

"That was a fine cat of yours that I saw in the laboratory," remarked Mme Storey, apparently at random.

"Yes'm, Ruddy. Short for Rudyard Kipling. My young uns called him that because he looked like a tiger from India. I brung him home this morning when I got the sack, but he went right back again. They fed him too good over there for the likes of me to compete with."

"So you were sacked this morning?"

"Yes'm. Of course, I expected it."

"Were you there yesterday?"

"No'm. Yestiddy was my day home."

"Then you haven't been inside the laboratory since Mr. Hendrie's death?"

"No'm."

"How did you happen to take the cat over there in the first place?"

"Mr. Hendrie ast me if I had a cat, 'm. Said he was troubled with mice in the laboratory."

Mrs. Freese said this with so comical an air, primming up her lips and looking virtuous, that anybody not blind could have seen that she was holding something back. Repression was very difficult to one of her temperament.

"Come now, Mrs. Freese," said Mme Storey indulgently. "That's not the whole truth."

She shook her head and scrubbed hard. "I promised," she said.

"Promised whom?"

"Mr. Hendrie, 'm."

"But Mr. Hendrie is dead, and by foul play. I am trying to solve the crime."

Mrs. Freese looked greatly relieved. "Well, now, that do let me off my promise, don't it?" she said, and forthwith launched on her tale. "He said mice, 'm, and I had no reason to disbelieve him. But one morning, when I was cleaning, he called me in to do his room, forgetting that he was experimenting with Ruddy, and on the table I seed a box like, with a glass front to it, and alongside the box a little kittle sort of, with a pipe into the box; and inside the box my Ruddy stretched out flat with his toes curled so pretty. Dead as a door nail, 'm! Or so I thought at the time. Lor', but it give me a turn: I'm that tender-hearted!

"I let a screech out of me, and Mr. Hendrie began to storm something awful. We had it hammer and tongs there for a while. I wasn't a-scairt of him. I says: 'You brutal torturer!' I says; and he says: 'There isn't anything the matter with your cat! He's just having a nice sleep! I do this to him half a dozen times a day,' he says, 'and he waxes fat on it!' 'The more shame to you, then!' I hollers. Well, the upshot was, Mr. Hendrie says if I'd go in the other room, he'd restore my cat to me.

"So I went out, and pretty soon he calls me in again, and there was Ruddy outside of the box, sitting up and washing his face large as life and twicet as natural. Only he was sleepy yet, 'cause he yawned once or twice. I could have hugged him to my bosom, only I was afraid he might have gas on him still that would lay me out, so I just stroked him gingerly at arm's length, and Mr. Hendrie told me to take my cat home and be damned to me, but he didn't mean nothing by it, and when I see how good Ruddy looked I told Mr. Hendrie he could keep him for his experiments, and he gave me a pun note and told me to keep it to myself, and that's all."

"Did Mr. and Mrs. Bristed know about this?" asked Mme Storey.

"No, 'm, they wasn't in the laboratory at the time. They never knew that I took any particular notice of the box with the glass front. There was so many queer gadgets about that I didn't know the use of."

"You say there was a sort of kettle outside it."

"A glass kettle, 'm. I could see inside it. There was a brown powder in the bottom of it, and water in the top part, I think, but I didn't take very good notice, I was that flustered."

"Any fire under it?"

"No, 'm, no fire, as I recollect."

"Now, think well. Did Mr. Hendrie say anything else about the gas?"

"Well, 'm, he kept saying as how it was good for both man and beast; and he offered to put both me and him under the influence to prove to me that it wouldn't hurt. But I declined with thanks."

"What became of the box?"