"I judged," was his calm reply, as he laid down the injured toy with an apologetic grunt3, "that the clearing of Howard from suspicion meant the establishment of another man's guilt4; and so far as we can see there has been no other party in the case besides these two brothers."
"No? Then I fear a great surprise awaits you, Mr. Gryce. This crime, which you have fixed5 with such care and seeming probability upon Franklin Van Burnam, was not, in my judgment6, perpetrated either by him or any other man. It was the act of a woman."
"A woman?"
Both men spoke7: the Inspector, as if he thought me demented; Mr. Gryce, as if he would like to have considered me a fool but dared not.[Pg 312]
"Yes, a woman," I repeated, dropping a quiet curtsey. It was a proper expression of respect when I was young, and I see no reason why it should not be a proper expression of respect now, except that we have lost our manners in gaining our independence, something which is to be regretted perhaps. "A woman whom I know; a woman whom I can lay my hands on at a half-hour's notice; a young woman, sirs; a pretty woman, the owner of one of the two hats found in the Van Burnam parlors8."
Had I exploded a bomb-shell the Inspector could not have looked more astounded9. The detective, who was a man of greater self-command, did not betray his feelings so plainly, though he was not entirely10 without them, for, as I made this statement, he turned and looked at me; Mr. Gryce looked at me.
"Both of those hats belonged to Mrs. Van Burnam," he protested; "the one she wore from Haddam; the other was in the order from Altman's."
"She never ordered anything from Altman's," was my uncompromising reply. "The woman whom I saw enter next door, and who was the same who left the Hotel D—— with the man in the linen11 duster, was not Louise Van Burnam. She was that lady's rival, and let me say it, for I dare to think it, not only her rival but the prospective12 taker of her life. O you need not shake your heads at each other so significantly, gentlemen. I have been collecting evidence as well as yourselves, and what I have learned is very much to the point; very much, indeed."
"The deuce you have!" muttered the Inspector, turning away from me; but Mr. Gryce continued to eye me like a man fascinated.[Pg 313]
"Upon what," said he, "do you base these extraordinary assertions? I should like to hear what that evidence is."
"But first," said I, "I must take a few exceptions to certain points you consider yourself to have made against Franklin Van Burnam. You believe him to have committed this crime because you found in a secret drawer of his desk a letter known to have been in Mrs. Van Burnam's hands the day she was murdered, and which you, naturally enough, I acknowledge, conceive he could only have regained13 by murdering her. But have you not thought of another way in which he could have obtained it, a perfectly14 harmless way, involving no one either in deceit or crime? May it not have been in the little hand-bag returned by Mrs. Parker on the morning of the discovery, and may not its crumpled15 condition be accounted for by the haste with which Franklin might have thrust it into his secret drawer at the untoward16 entrance of some one into his office?"
"I acknowledge that I have not thought of such a possibility," growled17 the detective, below his breath, but I saw that his self-satisfaction had been shaken.
"As for any proof of complicity being given by the presence of the rings on the hook attached to his desk, I grieve for your sake to be obliged to dispel18 that illusion also. Those rings, Mr. Gryce and Mr. Inspector, were not discovered there by the girl in gray, but taken there; and hung there at the very moment your spy saw her hand fumbling19 with the papers."
"Taken there, and hung there by your maid! By the girl Lena, who has so evidently been working in[Pg 314] your interests! What sort of a confession20 are you making, Miss Butterworth?"
"Ah, Mr. Gryce," I gently remonstrated21, for I actually pitied the old man in his hour of humiliation22, "other girls wear gray besides Lena. It was the woman of the Hotel D—— who played this trick in Mr. Van Burnam's office. Lena was not out of my house that day."
I had never thought Mr. Gryce feeble, though I knew he was over seventy if not very near the octogenarian age. But he drew up a chair at this and hastily sat down.
"Tell me about this other girl," said he.
But before I repeat what I said to him, I must explain by what reasoning I had arrived at the conclusion I have just mentioned. That Ruth Oliver was the visitor in Mr. Van Burnam's office there was but little reason to doubt; that her errand was one in connection with the rings was equally plain. What else would have driven her from her bed when she was hardly able to stand, and sent her in a state of fever, if not delirium23, down town to this office?
She feared having these rings found in her possession, and she also cherished a desire to throw whatever suspicion was attached to them upon the man who was already compromised. She may have thought it was Howard's desk she approached, and she may have known it to be Franklin's. On that point I was in doubt, but the rest was clear to me from the moment Mr. Gryce mentioned the girl in gray; and even the spot where she had kept them in the interim24 since the murder was no longer an unsolved mystery to me. Her emotion when I touched her knitting-work and[Pg 315] the shreds25 of unravelled26 wool I had found lying about after her departure, had set my wits working, and I comprehended now that they had been wound up in the ball of yarn27 I had so carelessly handled.
But what had I to say to Mr. Gryce in answer to his question. Much; and seeing that further delay was injudicious, I began my story then and there. Prefacing my tale with the suspicions I had always had of Mrs. Boppert, I told them of my interview with that woman and of the valuable clue she had given me by confessing that she had let Mrs. Van Burnam into the house prior to the visit of the couple who entered there at midnight. Knowing what an effect this must produce upon Mr. Gryce, utterly
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31. SOME FINE WORK.
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33. "KNOWN, KNOWN, ALL KNOWN."
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