The Affair Next Door (31 page)

"And now, considering his intense pride, as well as his affection for
Howard, do you not see the motive which this seemingly good man had for
putting his troublesome sister-in-law out of existence? He wanted that
letter back, and to obtain it had to resort to crime. Or such is my
present theory of this murder, Miss Butterworth. Does it correspond with
yours?"

"O perfectly!" I assented, with just the shade of irony necessary to rob
the assertion of its mendacity. "But go on, go on. You have not begun to
satisfy me yet. You did not stop with finding a motive for the crime I
am sure."

"Madam, you are a female Shylock; you will have the whole of the bond or
none."

"We are not here to draw comparisons," I retorted. "Keep to the subject,
Mr. Gryce; keep to the subject."

He laughed; laid down the little basket he held, took it up again, and
finally resumed:

"Madam, you are right; we did not stop at finding a motive. Our next
step was to collect evidence directly connecting him with the crime."

"And you succeeded in this?"

My tone was unnecessarily eager, this was all so unaccountable to me;
but he did not appear to notice it.

"We did. Indeed the evidence against him is stronger than that against
his brother. For if we ignore the latter part of Howard's testimony,
which was evidently a tissue of lies, what remains against him? Three
things: his dogged persistency in not recognizing his wife in the
murdered woman; the receiving of the house keys from his brother; and
the fact that he was seen on the stoop of his father's house at an
unusual hour in the morning following this murder. Now what have we
against Franklin? Many things.

"First:

"That he can no more account for the hours between half-past eleven on
Tuesday morning and five o'clock on the following Wednesday morning than
his brother can. In one breath he declares that he was shut up in his
rooms at the hotel, for which no corroborative evidence is forthcoming;
and in another that he was on a tramp after his brother, which seems
equally improbable and incapable of proof.

"Second:

"That he and not Howard was the man in a linen duster, and that he and
not Howard was in possession of the keys that night. As these are
serious statements to make, I will give you my reasons for them. They
are distinct from the recognition of his person by the inmates of the
Hotel D—, and added to that recognition, form a strong case against
him. The janitor who has charge of the offices in Duane Street,
happening to have a leisure moment on the morning of the day on which
Mrs. Van Burnam was murdered, was making the most of it by watching the
unloading of a huge boiler some four doors below the Van Burnam
warehouse. He was consequently looking intently in that direction when
Howard passed him, coming from the interview with his brother in which
he had been given the keys. Mr. Van Burnam was walking briskly, but
finding the sidewalk blocked by the boiler to which I have alluded,
paused for a moment to let it pass, and being greatly heated, took out
his handkerchief to wipe his forehead. This done, he moved on, just as a
man dressed in a long duster came up behind him, stopping where he
stopped and picking up from the ground something which the first
gentleman had evidently dropped. This last man's figure looked more or
less familiar to the janitor, so did the duster, and later he discovered
that the latter was the one which he had seen hanging for so long a time
in the little disused closet under the warehouse stairs. Its wearer was
Franklin Van Burnam, who, as I took pains to learn, had left the office
immediately in the wake of his brother, and the object he picked up was
the bunch of keys which the latter had inadvertently dropped. He may
have thought he lost them later, but it was then and there they slipped
from his pocket. I will here add that the duster found by the hackman in
his coach has been identified as the one missing from the closet just
mentioned.

"Third:

"The keys with which Mr. Van Burnam's house was unlocked were found
hanging in their usual place by noon of the next day. They could not
have been taken there by Howard, for he was not seen at the office after
the murder. By whom then were they returned, if not by Franklin?

"Fourth:

"The letter, for the possession of which I believe this crime to have
been perpetrated, was found by us in a supposedly secret drawer of this
gentleman's desk. It was much crumpled, and bore evidences of having
been rather rudely dealt with since it was last seen in Mrs. Van
Burnam's hand in that very office.

"But the fact which is most convincing, and which will tell most heavily
against him, is the unexpected discovery of the murdered lady's rings,
also in this same desk. How
you
became aware that anything of such
importance could be found there, knowing even the exact place in which
they were secreted, I will not stop to ask at this moment. Enough that
when your maid entered the Van Burnam offices and insisted with so much
ingenuousness that she was expected by Mr. Van Burnam and would wait for
his return, the clerk most devoted to my interests became distrustful of
her intentions, having been told to be on the look-out for a girl in
gray or a lady in black with puffs on each side of two very sharp eyes.
You will pardon me, Miss Butterworth. He therefore kept his eyes on the
girl and presently espied her stretching out her hand towards a hook at
the side of Mr. Franklin Van Burnam's desk. As it is upon this hook this
gentleman strings his unanswered letters, the clerk rose from his place
as quickly as possible, and coming forward with every appearance of
polite solicitude,—did she not say he was polite, Miss
Butterworth?—inquired what she wished, thinking she was after some
letter, or possibly anxious for a specimen of some one's handwriting.
But she gave him no other reply than a blush and a confused look, for
which you must rebuke her, Miss Butterworth, if you are going to
continue to employ her as your agent in these very delicate affairs. And
she made another mistake. She should not have left so abruptly upon
detection, for that gave the clerk an opportunity to telephone for me,
which he immediately did. I was at liberty, and I came at once, and,
after hearing his story, decided that what was of interest to you must
be of interest to me, and so took a look at the letters she had handled,
and discovered, what she also must have discovered before she let them
slip from her hand, that the five missing rings we were all in search of
were hanging on this same hook amid the sheets of Franklin's
correspondence. You can imagine, madam, my satisfaction, and the
gratitude which I felt towards my agent, who by his quickness had
retained to me the honors of a discovery which it would have been
injurious to my pride to have had confined entirely to yourself."

"I can understand," I repeated, and trusted myself to say no more, hot
as my secret felt upon my lips.

"You have read Poe's story of the filigree basket?" he now suggested,
running his finger up and down the filigree work he himself held.

I nodded. I saw what he meant at once.

"Well, the principle involved in that story explains the presence of the
rings in the midst of this stack of letters. Franklin Van Burnam, if he
is the murderer of his sister-in-law, is one of the subtlest villains
this city has ever produced, and knowing that, if once suspected, every
secret drawer and professed hiding-place within his reach would be
searched, he put these dangerous evidences of his guilt in a place so
conspicuous, and yet so little likely to attract attention, that even so
old a hand as myself did not think of looking for them there."

He had finished, and the look he gave me was for myself alone.

"And now, madam," said he, "that I have stated the facts of the case
against Franklin Van Burnam, has not the moment come for you to show
your appreciation of my good nature by a corresponding show of
confidence on your part?"

I answered with a distinct negative. "There is too much that is
unexplained as yet in your case against Franklin," I objected. "You have
shown that he had motive for the murder and that he was connected more
or less intimately with the crime we are considering, but you have by no
means explained all the phenomena accompanying this tragedy. How, for
instance, do you account for Mrs. Van Burnam's whim in changing her
clothing, if her brother-in-law, instead of her husband, was her
companion at the Hotel D—?"

You see I was determined to know the whole story before introducing Miss
Oliver's name into this complication.

He who had seen through the devices of so many women in his day did not
see through mine, perhaps because he took a certain professional
pleasure in making his views on this subject clear to the attentive
Inspector. At all events, this is the way he responded to my
half-curious, half-ironical question:

"A crime planned and perpetrated for the purpose I have just mentioned,
Miss Butterworth, could not have been a simple one under any
circumstances. But conceived as this one was by a man of more than
ordinary intelligence, and carried out with a skill and precaution
little short of marvellous, the features which it presents are of such a
varying and subtle character that only by the exercise of a certain
amount of imagination can they be understood at all. Such an imagination
I possess, but how can I be sure that you do?"

"By testing it," I suggested.

"Very good, madam, I will. Not from actual knowledge, then, but from a
certain insight I have acquired in my long dealing with such matters, I
have come to the conclusion that Franklin Van Burnam did not in the
beginning plan to kill this woman in his father's house.

"On the contrary, he had fixed upon a hotel room as the scene of the
conflict he foresaw between them, and that he might carry it on without
endangering their good names, had urged her to meet him the next morning
in the semi-disguise of a gossamer over her fine dress and a heavy veil
over her striking features; making the pretence, no doubt, of this being
the more appropriate costume for her to appear in before the old
gentleman should he so far concede to her demands as to take her to the
steamer. For himself he had planned the adoption of a disfiguring duster
which had been hanging for a long time in a closet on the ground-floor
of the building in Duane Street. All this promised well, but when the
time came and he was about to leave his office, his brother unexpectedly
appeared and asked for the key to their father's house. Disconcerted no
doubt by the appearance of the very person he least wished to see, and
astonished by a request so out of keeping with all that had hitherto
passed between them, he nevertheless was in too much haste to question
him, so gave him what he wanted and Howard went away. As soon after as
he could lock his desk and don his hat, Franklin followed, and merely
stopping to cover his coat with the old duster, he went out and hastened
towards the place of meeting. Under most circumstances all this might
have happened without the brothers encountering each other again, but a
temporary obstruction on the sidewalk having, as we know, detained
Howard, Franklin was enabled to approach him sufficiently close to see
him draw his pocket-handkerchief out of his pocket, and with it the keys
which he had just given him. The latter fell, and as there was a great
pounding of iron going on in the building just over their heads, Howard
did not perceive his loss but went quickly on. Franklin coming up behind
him picked up the keys, and with a thought, or perhaps as yet with no
thought, of the use to which they might be applied, put them in his own
pocket before proceeding on his way.

"New York is a large place, and much can take place in it without
comment. Franklin Van Burnam and his sister-in-law met and went together
to the Hotel D— without being either recognized or suspected till
later developments drew attention to them. That
she
should consent to
accompany him to this place, and that after she was there should submit,
as she did, to taking all the business of the scheme upon herself, would
be inconceivable in a woman of a self-respecting character; but Louise
Van Burnam cared for little save her own aggrandisement, and rather
enjoyed, so far as we can see, this very doubtful escapade, whose real
meaning and murderous purpose she was so far from understanding.

"As the steamer, contrary to all expectation, had not yet been sighted
off Fire Island, they took a room and prepared to wait for it. That is,
she
prepared to wait. He had no intention of waiting for its arrival
or of going to it when it came; he only wanted his letter. But Louise
Van Burnam was not the woman to relinquish it till she had obtained the
price she had put on it, and he becoming very soon aware of this fact,
began to ask himself if he should not be obliged to resort to extreme
measures in order to regain it. One chance only remained for avoiding
these. He would seem to embrace her later and probably much-talked-of
scheme of presenting herself before his father in his own house rather
than at the steamer; and by urging her to make its success more certain
by a different style of dress from that she wore, induce a change of
clothing, during which he might come upon the letter he was more than
confident she carried about her person. Had this plan worked; had he
been able to seize upon this compromising bit of paper, even at the cost
of a scratch or two from her vigorous fingers, we should not be sitting
here at this moment trying to account for the most complicated crime on
record. But Louise Van Burnam, while weak and volatile enough to enjoy
the romantic features of this transformation scene, even going so far as
to write out the order herself with the same effort at disguise she had
used in registering their assumed names at the desk, was not entirely
his dupe, and having hidden the letter in her shoe—"