“If you will look carefully at this chart, and note where the various persons then in the museum were standing at the moment Correy shouted his alarm, you will see that of all upon whom suspicion can with any probability be attached there is but one who could have fulfilled the conditions of escape as just explained to you.”
Stretching forth an impressive finger, Mr. Gryce pointed to a certain number on the chart outspread between him and the Chief Inspector.
He looked — saw the number “3” and glanced anxiously down at the name it prefigured.
“Roberts — the director! Impossible! Not to be considered for a moment. I’m afraid you’re getting old, Gryce.” And he looked about to be sure that the door was quite shut.
Mr. Gryce smiled, a little drearily perhaps, as he acknowledged this self-evident fact.
“You are right, Chief: I am getting old — but not so old as to venture upon so shocking an insinuation against a man of Mr. Roberts’ repute and seeming honor, if I had not some very substantial proofs to offer in its support.”
“No doubt, no doubt; but it won’t do. I tell you, Gryce, it won’t do. There cannot be any such far-fetched and ridiculous explanation to the crime you talk about. Why, he’s next to being the Republican nominee for Senator. An attack upon him, especially of this monstrous character, would be looked upon as a clear case of political persecution. And such it would be, and nothing less; and it would be all to no purpose, I am sure. I hope you are alone in these conclusions — that you have not seen fit to share your ideas on this subject with any of the boys?”
“Only with Sweetwater, who did some of the work for me.”
“And Joyce? How about him?”
“He had the same opportunities as myself, but we have not reached the point of mentioning names. I thought it best to consult with you first.”
“Good! Then we’ll drop it.”
It was decisively said, but Gryce gave no signs of yielding.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” said he. Then with the dignity of long experience, he added with quiet impressiveness:
“I have, as you know, faced crime these many years in all its aspects. I have tracked the ignorant, almost imbecile, murderer of the slums, and laid my hand in arrest on the shoulder of so-called gentlemen hiding their criminal instincts under a show of culture and sometimes of wide education. Human nature is not so very different in high and low; and what may lead an irresponsible dago into unsheathing his knife against his fellow may work a like effect upon his high-bred brother if circumstances lend their aid to make discovery appear impossible.
“Mr. Roberts is the friend of many a good man who would swear to his integrity with a clear conscience. I would have sworn to it myself, a month ago, had I heard it questioned in the slightest manner; and I may live to swear to it again, notwithstanding the doubts which have been raised in my mind by certain strange discoveries which link him to this unhappy affair by what we are pleased to call circumstantial evidence. For, as I am obliged to acknowledge, the one great thing we rely upon, in accusations of this kind, is so far lacking in his case: I mean, the motive.
“I know of none — can, in fact, conceive of none — which would cause a gentleman of even life and ambitious projects to turn a deadly weapon upon an innocent child with whom he is not, so far as we can discover, even acquainted. Dementia only can account for such a freak, and to dementia we must ascribe this crime, if it is necessary for us to find cause before proceeding to lay our evidence before the District Attorney. All I propose to do at present is to show you my reasons for thinking that the arrow which slew Angeline Willetts — or, as we have been assured by unimpeachable authority, Angeline Duclos masquerading under the name of Angeline Willetts — was set to bow and loosed across the court by the gentleman we have just mentioned.”
Here Mr. Gryce stopped for a look of encouragement from the severely silent man he was endeavoring to impress. But he did not get it. With a full sense of his years weighing upon him as never before, he sighed, but continued with little change of tone:
“In the first day or two of keen surprise following an event of so many complicated mysteries, I drew up in my own mind a list of questions which I felt should be properly answered before I would consider it my duty to submit to you a report to the disadvantage of any one suspect. This was Question One:
“‘Whose was the hand to bring up into the museum gallery the bow recognized by Correy as the one which had been lying by for an indefinite length of time in the cellar?’
“Not till yesterday did I get any really definite answer to this. Correy would not talk; nor would the Curator; and I dared not press either of them beyond a certain point, for equally with yourself, I felt it most undesirable to allow anyone to suspect the nature of my theory or whom it especially involved.
“The Curator had nothing to hide on this or any other point connected with the tragedy. But it was different with Correy. He had some very strong ideas about that visit to the cellar — only he would not acknowledge them. So yesterday, after the satisfactory settlement of another puzzling question, I made up my mind to trap him — which I did after this manner. He has, as most men have, in fact, a great love for the Curator. In discussing with him the mysterious fetching up of the bow and its subsequent concealment in the Curator’s office, I remarked, with a smile I did not mean to have him take as real, that only the Curator himself would do such a thing and then forget it; that it must have been his shadow he saw; and I begged him, in a way half jocose, half earnest, to say so and have done with it.
“It worked, sir. He flushed like a man who had been struck; then he grew white with indignation and blurted forth that it was no more his shadow than it was Mr. Roberts’— that indeed it was much more like Mr. Roberts’ than the Curator’s. At which I simply remarked: ‘You think so, Correy?’ To which he replied: ‘I do not think anything. But I know that Curator Jewett never brought up that bow from the cellar, or he would have said so the minute he saw it. There’s no better man in the world than he.’ ‘Nor than Mr. Roberts either,’ I put in, and left him comforted if not quite reassured.
“So much for Question One —
“Number Two is of a similar nature. ‘Was the transference of the arrow from one gallery to the other due to the same person who brought up the bow?’ Now, in answer to that, I have a curious thing to show you.” And lifting into view a bundle of goodly size, wrapped in heavy brown paper, he opened it up and disclosed a gentleman’s coat. Spreading this out between them lining side out, and pointing out two marks an inch or so apart showing the remains of stitches for which there seemed to have been no practical use, he took from his own vest-pocket what looked like a bit of narrow black tape. This he laid down on the upturned lining in the space bounded by the two lines of marks I have mentioned, and drawing the Chief’s attention to it, observed in quiet explanation:
“The one fits the other — stitch for stitch. Look closely at them both, I beg, and tell me if in your judgment it is not evident that this strap or loop, or whatever we may call it, has been cut away from this coat to which it had been previously sewed — and by no woman either.”
Anyone could see that this had been so. There could be but one reply:
“This coat I bought from an old man to whom it had been given by Mr. Roberts’ housekeeper on their arrival at his new home on Long Island. The strip was picked up at the museum in the room where Mrs. Taylor spent an hour or so immediately upon leaving the scene of crime. With her at the time was the young lady who had kindly offered to look after her and two or three men directly associated with the museum, of whom Mr. Roberts was one. These and these only. Now, this strap or let us say loop, since we are beginning to see for what purpose it was used, was not on the floor previous to the entrance of these few persons into this room — or, indeed, for some little time afterward. Otherwise this young lady, who was the one to open my eyes to this clue, surely would have seen it in the half-hour she stood at Mrs. Taylor’s side with no one to talk to and quite free to look about her. But it was there after that lady had revived from her fainting-fit — dropped, as you see — cut from its owner’s coat and dropped! Chief, let me ask why this should have been done in a time of such suspense if it had had nothing to do with the crime then occupying everybody’s attention — a good coat too, almost new, as you will observe?”
The Chief, possibly with a shade less of irony in his manner, answered this direct question with one equally direct:
“And what connection have you succeeded in establishing between this abominable crime and the coat with or without a loop worn by the museum’s leading director? One as straight and indisputable, no doubt, as that you have just attempted to make between this same gentleman and the museum bow,” he added with biting incredulity.
“Yes,” returned the other in calm disregard of the sarcasm, “straighter and more indisputable, if anything. We are asking, as you will remember, how an arrow could have been carried from the southern to the northern gallery without attracting anyone’s attention. I will show you how.”
With a rap on the table which brought Sweetwater into the room, he proceeded to pin again into its old place on the lining of Mr. Roberts’ coat the so-called tag. Then, taking the arrow which Sweetwater proceeded to hand him, he slipped it into the loop thus made and showed how securely it could be held there by its feather end.
“A man of Mr. Roberts’ upright carriage might, with his coat well buttoned up, walk the length of Broadway without disclosing the presence of this stick,” remarked Mr. Gryce as, at his look, Sweetwater doffed his own coat and put on the one thus discreetly weighted.
The Chief stared, paling slightly as he noted the result. Mr. Gryce, who never overemphasised his effects, motioned Sweetwater to leave and proceeded to the next question.
“Number Three,” he now observed, “should have come first, as it has already been answered. It asks if it is possible to hit the mark in Section II of the museum’s gallery, from behind the pedestal in Section VIII. From the pedestal nearest the front, no; but from the one further back — upon which, by the way, Stevens found the print of a gloved finger —yes.
“Who wore gloves that day — kid gloves, mind you, for the mark of the stitching is exact, as you can see in this print of the same made by Stevens? All the ladies, except a young copyist who was leaving in a hurry and had not stopped to put hers on. But of the men, only one — Mr. Roberts, the careful dresser, who was never known to enter the street without this last touch to his toilet. How do I know this? Look at the chart, Chief — this one which shows the court and the persons in it at the precise minute of first alarm. You see how near the exit Mr. Roberts was, and who was closest to him. I had a little talk — the most guarded one imaginable — with this lady, who............