The Tragedy of Z (28 page)

In her position, with the dregs as well as the better element among the seafarers patronizing her café, she heard many things which were supposed to be secrets. Men, drinking freely after weeks of abstinence at sea, often babbled tales in their cups which were better left untold. It was from the second mate of a certain tramp ship then in port that she learned a valuable secret. The man was amorously drunk, and she had managed to wheedle the story out of him. His ship was carrying a small but princely shipment of raw diamonds up the coast to Hongkong.

“It was a cinch,” she said hoarsely, leering at the memory. I looked at her with a shudder; this sodden old woman had been a beautiful girl once! “I passed the word along to the two boys, the Fawcetts, an' we made a deal. Naturally, they weren't puttin' nothing over on Fanny Kaiser. I wouldn't trust 'em as far as I could throw my barkeep. So I went along, an' the three of us shipped as passengers.”

It had been ridiculously easy. The ship's crew was wholly Chinese and Lascar—miserable, spiritless creatures for the most part, easily cowed. The Fawcetts had raided the arms-rack, murdered the master in his bed, wounded or killed the officers, shot down half the crew, pirated the vessel, scuttled it, and made off with Fanny Kaiser in the longboat. They had been certain, the Fawcetts, that none of the crew was left alive. Under cover of darkness they had landed on an arid stretch of coast, split the booty, separated, and met months later at a rendezvous thousands of miles away.

“And who was Aaron Dow?” asked Mr. Lane quickly.

She winced. “The second mate. The drunk I got the story from in the first place. God knows how he got off with his miserable life, but he did; didn't drown, damn him, and I suppose he swam ashore, wounded as he was! An' all these years he's been nursin' hate and revenge against the Fawcetts and me.”

“Why in hell didn't he inform the police of the nearest port?” muttered father.

She shrugged. “Maybe he wanted to blackmail us from the beginning. Anyway, the vessel was written down as ‘lost at sea,' we heard, and though there was a marine-insurance investigation, nothin' ever came of it. We converted our diamonds into cash with a big ‘fence' in Amsterdam. Then the Fawcetts an' me, we went to the States. An' we stuck together.” Her harsh voice became grim. “I mean I saw to it we stuck together. Never let 'em out of my sight. We spent a spell in New York, and then somehow we drifted upstate. The boys were pretty smooth, Ira especially. He always was the brains of the two—made Joe study law, and he studied medicine. We all had plenty of jack.…”

We were silent. It seemed hard to credit this gory tale of piracy, Indo-China, a scuttled ship, a rape of diamonds, a murdered crew. It was all so remote, so fantastic. Yet there was the ring of truth in her brazen voice.… I was aroused by the sound of Drury Lane's deep calm tones.

“It holds together,” he said. “All but one thing. I knew from insignificant signs—twice Dow said things which only a sailor would have phrased in just such a way—that the sea was somewhere in the background of the plot. And the miniature chest—a sea-chest, I felt sure. Then ‘Hejaz,' which might have been the name of a race-horse, or a new game, or a kind of Oriental rug—you see how far afield I went!—became, quite simply, the name of a ship. But I looked up old admiralty records and could find no trace of a ship with that name——”

“No wonder,” said Fanny Kaiser wearily. “The name of the ship was
Star of Hejaz.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Mr. Lane. “I might have searched forever.
Star of Hejaz,
eh? And the diamonds, of course, were in the captain's sea-chest, and Dow has been sending parts of a reproduction of that stolen chest to you pepole, knowing that the significance of the act would strike you at once!”

She nodded, sighing. I recalled now the old gentleman's activity of the preceding weeks; all along he had been working on the ship-sea-chest theory.… He rose and loomed over Fanny Kaiser, who crouched in her chair warily, as if she dreaded what was coming. We stood about in silent befuddlement; what
was
coming? I saw no possible ray of light.

His nostrils oscillated gently. “You said, Miss Kaiser, that you fled Leeds last week not out of fear for your own safety, but because of your conscience. Just what did you mean by that?”

The tired old Amazon made a despairing gesture with her thick red fingers. “They're goin' to give Dow the hot seat, ain't they?” she whispered hoarsely.

“He has been sentenced to death.”

“Well,” she cried, “they're executin an innocent man! Aaron Dow didn't kill the Fawcetts!”

We leaned forward, pulled by the same irresistible string.

The cords of the old gentleman's neck roped as he stooped over her. “How do you know that?” he thundered.

She sank back into the chair suddenly, and buried her face in her hands. “Because,” she sobbed, “just before Ira Fawcett died—
he told me so.”

21. THE LAST CLUE

“Ah,” said Mr. Lane, so quietly that I knew—somehow, in some incredible way known to him alone—that the miracle had taken place. And he smiled a peaceful smile, the smile of a man who had labored long and not unsuccessfully. He said nothing more.

“He told me so himself,” repeated Fanny Kaiser with a trace of animation in her deep voice; the sob had disappeared; she stared at the wall without seeing it, as if memory of that incident had sounded a remote abyss within her that was rarely plumbed. “I always kept in touch with the boys. Under cover, y'understand; business … When I walked into the house that night Joe Fawcett was stabbed, an' Hume showed me the letter Joe'd been writing me before he died, I knew we were in hot water. We'd had our eye on Carmichael—Ira an' me. When that first hunk of chest came to Joe, he an' Ira an' I—we got together on it. It was the first we knew that Aaron Dow was alive. Well, we decided to lay low. Joe—the Senator!” she sniffed—“he was a little yellow. Wanted to buy the rat off, an' Ira an' me had to stiffen him up.” She was silent, and then said rapidly: “The night Joe was killed, I came there to scare Dow off. I knew he was comin', an' I knew too that Joe Fawcett would get cold feet and give Dow the fifty grand.”

The woman was lying. Her eyes were shifty, mercurial. This creature was capable of anything; and I had no doubt that she had come to Senator Fawcett's house on the night of his murder with a fixed purpose in mind: to kill Aaron Dow if he should prove intractable. And I had no doubt that the Senator also had some such plan in mind.

“On the night of Ira Fawcett's murder,” she went on in a husky voice, “it was my tough luck to go to the house again. Ira'd told me that Dow had sent him the second section of chest, an' had called him up that afternoon to make the appointment for that night. Ira, with all his brass, was shaky; he'd taken the dough out o' the bank the day before an' he wasn't sure whether he'd pay or not. Well—I went there to see what would happen.” And again I knew that she was lying, that the money had been withdrawn to provide a case of “intention to pay,” and that Ira Fawcett and Fanny Kaiser had meant to kill Aaron Dow that night.

Her eyes flamed. “I got there an' found Ira deader'n a mackerel, layin' on the floor of his office with a sticker in his chest.”

The old gentleman, his face magically concerned, said: “But I thought you said he was——”

“Yeah, I know what I said,” she muttered. “I
thought
he was dead. I didn't like it for a cent, either. Creepy as—as hell.” She shivered, and her mammoth bulk quivered like a heaving sea. “So I turned partways to take it on the lam. An' then—then I saw out of the corner of my eye one of his fingers move.… Well, I went back, and plopped on my knees beside him, an' I said: ‘Ira, Ira, was it Dow who stabbed you?' an' his mouth opened an' I heard him gurglin' 'way down deep in his throat, so low I could hardly hear him: ‘No, no, it wasn't Dow. Not Dow. It was—'” She paused, and clenched her big fists. “Then he kind of shook all over, an' died.”

“Damn!” muttered father. “That's happened to me more times than I can count. They pop off just before they can tell you who bumped 'em. You're sure you didn't hear him say——”

“He kicked in, I tell you, an' I beat it from that damn' house so fast you couldn't see me for dust.” Her voice died away, then rose again. “I was in one tough spot. If I talked, Hume would try to pin the killin' on me.… So I scrammed. But all this time, up there in the mountains, I knew Dow was innocent, an' I couldn't, I couldn't let them—Some devil is usin' that poor rat, I tell you,
usin'
him!” Her voice rose to a scream.

Father Muir pattered forward and took her beefy hands in his pale tiny ones. “Fanny Kaiser,” he said softly, “you've been a sinner for all the years of your life. But this day you are restored to grace in the eyes of God. You have saved an innocent man from death. God bless you.” He turned, his faded eyes shining behind his thick lenses, to Drury Lane. “Let's hurry to the prison at once,” he said. “There isn't a moment to spare!”

“Gently, Father,” said the old gentleman with a faint smile. “We have hours.” His voice was calm and assured; then he bit his lower lip. “There is one problem,” he murmured, “a very tender …”

His manner amazed me. Something in Fanny Kaiser's story had apparently given him the last important clue. But what? I could see nothing in what she had related that was of the least significance to the solution; except, of course, insofar as it exonerated Aaron Dow. Yet he was transformed.…

He said quietly: “Miss Kaiser, what you have just told us solves the case. An hour ago I knew the murderer of the Fawcetts to be one of three possibilities. Your story has eliminated two of them.” He squared his shoulders. “Excuse me. There's work to be done!”

22. THE LAST ACT

Mr. Lane crooked his finger at me. “Patience, you can do me a great service.” I went to his side quickly, breathing hard. “Get Governor Bruno on the wire, please. My infirmity …” He touched his ear and smiled; he was, of course, stone-deaf, and only his facility in reading lips kept him in touch with his surroundings.

I put in a long-distance call to the Executive Mansion at Albany, and waited with a rapidly beating heart.

The old gentleman looked thoughtful. “Miss Kaiser. While you were in the doctor's office with the body—you didn't touch his wrist, did you?”

“No.”

“Did you notice the bloody smudges on his wrist?”

“Yeah.”

“And you touched nothing at any time—either before Dr. Fawcett's death or afterward?”

“For Gawd's sake, no!”

He nodded, smiling, as the operator called. “Governor Bruno?” I said, drawing a deep breath. Then I was forced to wait while half a dozen secretaries relayed my name. Finally—“This is Patience Thumm, speaking for Mr. Drury Lane! Just a moment, please.… What do you want to tell the Governor, Mr. Lane?”

“Tell him that the case is solved, and that he must come to Leeds at once. Tell him that we have new and unimpeachable evidence that completely exonerates Aaron Dow.”

I transmitted this message—Pat Thumm, instrument of the immortals!—and was rewarded by a gasp from the other end of the wire. It isn't everyone who can be on the receiving end of a gubernatorial gasp, I suppose. “I'll come at once! Where are you?”

“At Father Muir's house, just outside the walls of Algonquin, Governor Bruno.”

As I hung up, I saw Mr. Lane drop into a chair. “Patience, you might be a good girl and see that Miss Kaiser gets a bit of rest. You don't mind, Father?” Then he closed his eyes and smiled peacefully. “Now all we have to do is—wait.”

And wait we did, for eight hours.

It was nine o'clock, two hours before the appointed time of execution, when a large black limousine, flanked by four state troopers on motorcycles, stopped outside Father Muir's; and the Governor, tired-faced, grim, worried, stepped out and hurried up the steps. We were waiting for him on the porch, which was illuminated eerily by two feeble lamps.

Father Muir, cautioned again and again by Mr. Lane to betray nothing of impending events by his manner, had left hours before; his presence, of course, was required in the condemned cells. I gathered, from something that passed between the two old men just before the little priest left the house, that Aaron Dow would be told to hope.

Fanny Kaiser—washed, rested, and fed—sat silently on the porch, a lonely old woman with red haunted eyes. We witnessed that historic meeting with mingled emotions. The Governor was nervous, abrupt, springy as a colt. Fanny Kaiser was frightened and subdued. And Mr. Lane watched quietly.

We heard something of the conversation. The woman told her story again. At one point—Dr. Fawcett's dying statement—the Governor questioned her very carefully; but she stuck steadfastly to her former statement.

When it was over, Mr. Bruno swabbed his forehead and sat down. “Well, Mr. Lane, you've done it again. A modern Merlin working miracles.… Let's go over to Algonquin and stop this hideous business at once.”

‘Oh, no,” said the old gentleman softly. “Oh, no, Bruno! This is one case in which the psychology of the unexpected must be employed to break down the murderer's morale. For I have no evidential proof, you know.”

“Then you know who's behind the two murders?” asked the Governor slowly.

“Yes.” And then, with an apology, the old gentleman retired to a corner of the porch with Governor Bruno and spoke steadily for some time. Mr. Bruno kept nodding. When they rejoined us, they were both grim.

“Miss Kaiser,” said the Governor crisply, “you will please remain here in the charge of my trooper-escort. Inspector, Miss Thumm, I suppose you will want to be in on this. Mr. Lane and I have agreed on a course of action. It is remotely risky, but quite necessary. And now—we'll wait.”