The Affair Next Door (29 page)

"Perhaps; but we were engaged in an open field. I could not expect the
police to stand aside for me."

"Exactly! Especially when you have the secret satisfaction of having put
the police on the track of these jewels."

"How?"

"We were simply fortunate in laying our hands on them first. You, or
your maid rather, showed us where to look for them."

Lena again.

I was so dumfounded by this last assertion, I did not attempt to reply.
Fortunately, he misinterpreted my silence and the "stony glare" with
which it was accompanied.

"I know that it must seem to you altogether too bad, to be tripped up at
the moment of your anticipated triumph. But if apologies will suffice to
express our sense of presumption, then I pray you to accept them, Miss
Butterworth, both on my own part and on that of the Superintendent of
Police."

I did not understand in the least what he was talking about, but I
recognized the sarcasm of his final expression, and had spirit enough to
reply:

"The subject is too important for any more nonsense. Whereabouts in
Franklin Van Burnam's desk were these rings found, and how do you know
that his brother did not put them there?"

"Your ignorance is refreshing, Miss Butterworth. If you will ask a
certain young girl dressed in gray, upon what object connected with Mr.
Van Burnam's desk she laid her hands yesterday morning, you will have
an answer to your first question. The second one is still more easily
answered. Mr. Howard Van Burnam did not conceal the rings in the Duane
Street office for the reason that he has not been in that office since
his wife was killed. Regarding this fact we are as well advised as
yourself. Now you change color, Miss Butterworth. But there is no
necessity. For an amateur you have made less trouble and fewer mistakes
than were to be expected."

Worse and worse! He was patronizing me now, and for results I had done
nothing to bring about. I surveyed him in absolute amazement. Was he
amusing himself with me, or was he himself deceived as to the nature and
trend of my late investigations. This was a question to settle, and at
once; and as duplicity had hitherto proved my best weapon in dealing
with Mr. Gryce, I concluded to resort to it in this emergency. Clearing
my brow, I regarded with a more amenable air the little Hungarian vase
he had taken up on entering the room, and into which he had been talking
ever since he thought it worth while to compliment its owner.

"I do not wish," said I, "to be published to the world as the discoverer
of Franklin Van Burnam's guilt. But I do want credit with the police, if
only because one of their number has chosen to look upon my efforts with
disdain. I mean you, Mr. Gryce; so, if you are in earnest"—he smiled at
the vase most genially—"I will accept your apologies just so far as you
honor me with your confidence. I know you are anxious to hear what
evidence I have collected, or you would not be wasting time on me this
busy morning."

"Shrewd!" was the short ejaculation he shot into the mouth of the vase
he was handling.

"If that term of admiration is intended for me," I remarked, "I am sure
I am only too sensible of the honor. But flattery has never succeeded in
making me talk against my better judgment. I may be shrewd, but a fool
could see what you are after this morning. Compliment me when I have
deserved it. I can wait."

"I begin to think that what you withhold so resolutely has more than
common value, Miss Butterworth. If this is so, I must not be the only
one to listen to your explanations. Is not that a carriage I hear
stopping? I am expecting Inspector Z—. If that is he you have been
wise to delay your communications till he came."

A carriage
was
stopping, and it was the Inspector who alighted from
it. I began to feel my importance in a way that was truly gratifying,
and cast my eyes up at the portrait of my father with a secret longing
that its original stood by to witness the verification of his prophecy.

But I was not so distracted by these thoughts as not to make one attempt
to get something from Mr. Gryce before the Inspector joined us.

"Why do you speak to me of my maid in one breath and of a girl in gray
in another? Did you think Lena—"

"Hush!" he enjoined, "we will have ample opportunities to discuss this
subject later."

"Will we?" thought I. "We will discuss nothing till I know more
positively what you are aiming at."

But I showed nothing of this determination in my face. On the contrary,
I became all affability as the Inspector entered, and I did the honors
of the house in a way I hope my father would have approved of, had he
been alive and present.

Mr. Gryce continued to stare into the vase.

"Miss Butterworth,"—it was the Inspector who was speaking,—"I have
been told that you take great interest in the Van Burnam murder, and
that you have even gone so far as to collect some facts in connection
with it which you have not as yet given to the police."

"You have heard correctly," I returned. "I have taken a deep interest in
this tragedy, and have come into possession of some facts in reference
to it which as yet I have imparted to no living soul."

Mr. Gryce's interest in my poor little vase increased marvellously.
Seeing this, I complacently continued:

"I could not have accomplished so much had I indulged in a confidant.
Such work as I have attempted depends for its success upon the secrecy
with which it is carried on. That is why amateur work is sometimes more
effective than professional. No one suspected me of making inquiries,
unless it was this gentleman, and he was forewarned of my possible
interference. I told him that in case Howard Van Burnam was put under
arrest, I should take it upon myself to stir up matters; and I have."

"Then you do not believe in Mr. Van Burnam's guilt? Not even in his
complicity, I suppose?" ventured the Inspector.

"I do not know anything about his complicity; but I do not believe the
stroke given to his wife came from his hand."

"I 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."

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 inquiries having proceeded from Franklin, it was only
natural for me to suspect that he was trying to mislead us by some
hocus-pocus story. So
I
visited the girls. That I had difficulty in
getting to the root of the matter is to their credit, Miss Butterworth,
seeing that you had made them promise secrecy."