The account of Molly's dinner with Tony Ford1 was given Sunday morning by Molly herself to George and the chief in the Whitney home. I went there in the afternoon—dread of possible developments drew me like a magnet—and heard the news. It was more ominous2 than even I, steeled and primed for ill tidings, had expected. I didn't say much. There was no use in showing my disbelief; besides if they suspected its strength there was a possibility of their confidence being withheld3 from me. I had to hear everything, be familiar with every strand4 in the net they were weaving round the woman of whose guilt5 they were now certain.
George was going to call somewhere on Fifth Avenue, and I walked up with him, for the pleasure of his company he supposed, in reality to hear in detail how he and the chief had pieced into logical sequence the broken bits of information.
"Roughly speaking," he said, "it's this way: Barker was the brains of the combination, Ford and Miss Whitehall the instruments he used. Ford did the killing6 and was paid. Miss Whitehall's part, which was puzzling before, is now clear. She takes her place as The Woman in the Case, the spider that decoyed the fly into the web."
He paused for me to answer, but I could say nothing.
"It was one of the most ingenious plots I've ever come up against. A master mind conceived it and must have been days perfecting it. Think of the skill with which every detail was developed, and those two alibis—Ford's and Barker's. How carefully they were carried out. That afternoon visit of Harland to Miss Whitehall was planned. Barker followed it and heard that all was ready—the trap set and the quarry8 coming. Then he went up to the floor above establishing his presence there, and knowing, when Harland left, that the girl was waiting below to meet and hold him in the front room.
"Then comes Tony Ford, finds Harland and Miss Whitehall, apologizes and goes through to the private office where Barker is lying low. That the murder was committed there is proved by the two blood spots. Ford established his alibi7 by leaving; Barker's is already established—he is in the room above unable to get out without being seen. Even if a crime had been discovered, they were both as safe from suspicion as if they'd been in their own homes.
"Miss Whitehall and Barker stay in the Azalea Woods Estates office till the excitement in the street subsides9. They're perfectly10 safe there; the police, when they come, are going to go to the floor above. When the crowd disperses11 they leave by the service stairs, she first, Barker a short while afterward12. The building and the street are deserted13, but even if he is seen, nobody knows enough at that time to question his movements. After that it all goes without a hitch14, even the arrest of the chauffeur15 was all to the good, as it delayed the search for two days.
"When it's known that he has voluntarily disappeared, what's the explanation? He's welched on his associates and found it best to take to the tall timber. At this moment he's probably congratulating himself on his success. There's just one thing that, so far, he hasn't been able to accomplish—get his girl."
I walked along, not answering. It was pretty sickening to hear how straight they had it. But there was one weak spot; at least I thought it was weak.
"Just why do you think a girl like Miss Whitehall—a woman without a spot or stain on her—would lend herself to an affair like that?"
"Perfectly simple," he answered. "She expects to marry Barker. Whether she loves him or his money, her actions prove that she is ready to join him whenever he sends for her—ready to do what he tells her. He's a tremendous personality, stronger than she, and he's bent16 her to his will."
"Oh, rot!" I said. "You can't bend a perfectly straight woman to help in such a crime unless she's bent that way by nature, and she isn't."
He grinned in a complacent17, maddening way.
"I guess Barker could. He's as subtle as the serpent in Eden. Besides, how can you be so sure what kind of a girl she is? Who knows anything of these Whitehalls? They came from the West two years ago and settled on a farm—quiet, ladylike women—but not a soul has any real information about them or their antecedents. And they haven't given out much. They've been curiously18 secretive all along the line. I'm not saying the girl's a natural born criminal—she doesn't look the part—but you'll have to admit her speech and her actions are not those of a simple-minded rustic19 beauty. In my opinion she's fallen under Barker's spell, and he's molded her to his purpose. He's the one, he's the brain. She and Ford were only the two hands."
We'd reached the place he was bound for, and I was glad to break away. I wanted to think, and the more I thought the more wild and fantastic and incredible it seemed. A week ago a girl like any other girl, and today suspected of complicity in a primitively20 savage21 crime. I thought of the case they were building up against her and I thought of her in her room that morning, and it seemed the maddest nightmare. Then her face that day in the Whitney office rose on my memory, the stealthily watching eyes with their leaping fires, the equivocations, the lies! I walked for the rest of the afternoon, miles, somewhere out in the country. My brain was dried like a sponge in the sun as I came home—I couldn't get anywhere, couldn't get beyond that fundamental conviction that it wasn't true. I think if she'd confessed it with her own lips I'd have gone on persisting she was innocent.
Two days after that a chain of events began that put an end to all inaction and plunged22 the Harland case deeper than ever into sinister23 mystery. I will write them down in the order in which they occurred.
The first was on Tuesday—the Tuesday night following Molly's dinner with Tony Ford. That night an unknown man attacked Ford in his room, leaving him for dead.
For some years Ford had lived in a lodging24 house on the East Side near Stuyvesant Park. The place was decent and quiet, run by a widow and her daughter, the inmates25 of a shabby-genteel class—rather an odd place for a man of Ford's proclivities26 to house himself. It was one of those old-fashioned, brown-stone fronts, set back from the street behind a little square of garden, a short flagged path leading to the front door.
On the evening of the attack Ford had come in about half-past eight, and, after a few words with his landlady27, who was sitting in the reception room, had gone upstairs. A little after ten, as they were closing up for the night, there was a ring at the bell and the door was opened by the servant, a Swede. The widow was as economical with her gas as lodging-house keepers usually are, and the Swede said she could only dimly see the figure of a man in the vestibule. He asked for Mr. Anthony Ford, and she told him Mr. Ford was in and directed him to a room on the third floor back. Without more words he entered and went up the stairs. After locking the door she followed him, being on her way to bed. When she reached the third floor he was standing28 at Ford's door, and, as she ascended29 to the fourth, she heard his knock and Ford's voice from the inside call out, "Hello, who's that?"
When the police asked her about the man's appearance her description was meager30. He had worn the collar of his overcoat turned up and kept on his hat. All that she could make out in the brief moment when he crossed the hall to the stairs was that his eyes looked bright and dark, that he wore glasses, and that he had a large aquiline31 nose. She thought he had a white mustache, but on this point was uncertain, as the upturned collar hid the lower part of his face.
Babbitts, who reported the affair for the Dispatch and for the Whitney office on the side, questioned the girl carefully. She was stupid, not long landed, and could only be sure of the nose and the glasses. But one thing he elicited32 from her was an important touch in this impressionist picture—the man was small. When he passed her in the hall she noticed that he was not so tall as she was, and he moved quickly and lightly as he went up the stairs.
On the third floor front were two rooms, one vacant, one occupied by a boy named Salinger, a clerk in a near-by publishing house. Salinger came in at half-past ten, and as he passed Ford's door heard in the room men's voices, one loud, one low. A sentence in the raised voice—it did not sound like Ford's—caught his ear. The tone denoted anger, likewise the words: "I've come for something more than talk. I've had enough of that."
Knowing Ford was out of work he supposed he was having a row with a dun, and passed on to his own room, where he went to bed and read a novel. He was so engrossed33 in this that he said he would not have heard anyone come or go in the hall, but the landlady, who with her daughter occupied the parlor34 on the ground floor, at a little before eleven heard steps descending35 the stairs and the front door open and close.
It wasn't till nearly two in the morning that Salinger was wakened by a feeble knocking. He jumped up, and before he could reach the door heard a heavy fall in the passage. There, prostrate36 by the sill, lay Ford, unconscious, his head laid open by a deep wound.
Salinger dragged him back to his room, then roused the landlady, who sent for a doctor. He told Babbitts that the place gave no evidence of a struggle, the droplight was burning, a chair drawn37 close to it, and a book lying face down on the table as if Ford had been reading when the stranger interrupted him. On the floor near a desk standing between the two windows, a trickle38 of blood showed where Ford had fallen, suggesting that the attack had been made from behind as he stood over the desk. The doctor pronounced the injury serious. The blow had been delivered on the back of the head, and Ford's condition was critical.
When the police turned up they could find nothing to give them a clue to the assailant—no finger prints, no foot marks, no weapon or implement39. Ford had been stricken down by one violent blow, falling on him suddenly and evidently unexpectedly. He was taken to the hospital, unconscious, no one knowing whether he would die before they could get a statement out of him.
The cause of the assault was at first puzzling. Robbery seemed improbable, as a man in Ford's position was not likely to have much money and as his gold watch and chain were found in full view on the table. But when the first excitement quieted down one of the women in the house came forward with the story that a few days before Ford had told her he had recently been left a legacy40 by an uncle up-state, and in proof of his newly acquired wealth had shown her two fifty-dollar bills. This put a di............