We had no weapons. I am aware that the traditional hero is always armed, and that Hotchkiss as the low comedian should have had a revolver that missed fire. As a fact, we had nothing of the sort. Hotchkiss carried the fire tongs, but my sense of humor was too strong for me; I declined the poker.
"All we want is a little peaceable conversation with him," I demurred. "We can't brain him first and converse with him afterward. And anyhow, while I can't put my finger on the place, I think your theory is weak. If he wouldn't run a hundred miles through fire and water to get away from us, then he is not the man we want."
Hotchkiss, however, was certain. He had found the room and listened outside the door to the sleeper's heavy breathing, and so we climbed past luxurious suites, revealed in the deepening daylight, past long vistas of hall and boudoir. And we were both badly winded when we got there. It was a tower room, reached by narrow stairs, and well above the roof level. Hotchkiss was glowing.
"It is partly good luck, but not all," he panted in a whisper. "If we had persisted in the search last night, he would have taken alarm and fled. Now - we have him. Are you ready?"
He gave a mighty rap at the door with the fire tongs, and stood expectant. Certainly he was right; some one moved within.
"Hello! Hello there!" Hotchkiss bawled. "You might as well come out. We won't hurt you, if you'll come peaceably."
"Tell him we represent the law," I prompted. "That's the customary thing, you know."
But at that moment a bullet came squarely through the door and flattened itself with a sharp pst against the wall of the tower staircase. We ducked unanimously, dropped back out of range, and Hotchkiss retaliated with a spirited bang at the door with the tongs. This brought another bullet. It was a ridiculous situation. Under the circumstances, no doubt, we should have retired, at least until we had armed ourselves, but Hotchkiss had no end of fighting spirit, and as for me, my blood was up.
"Break the lock," I suggested, and Hotchkiss, standing at the side, out of range, retaliated for every bullet by a smashing blow with the tongs. The shots ceased after a half dozen, and the door was giving, slowly. One of us on each side of the door, we were ready for almost any kind of desperate resistance. As it swung open Hotchkiss poised the tongs; I stood, bent forward, my arm drawn back for a blow.
Nothing happened.
There was not a sound. Finally, at the risk of losing an eye which I justly value, I peered around and into the room. There was no desperado there: only a fresh-faced, trembling-lipped servant, sitting on the edge of her bed, with a quilt around her shoulders and the empty revolver at her feet.
We were victorious, but no conquered army ever beat such a retreat as ours down the tower stairs and into the refuge of the living-room. There, with the door closed, sprawled on the divan, I went from one spasm of mirth into another, becoming sane at intervals, and suffering relapse again every time I saw Hotchkiss' disgruntled countenance. He was pacing the room, the tongs still in his hand, his mouth pursed with irritation. Finally he stopped in front of me and compelled my attention.
"When you have finished cackling," he said with dignity, "I wish to justify my position. Do you think the - er - young woman up-stairs put a pair of number eight boots to dry in the library last night? Do you think she poured the whisky out of that decanter?"
"They have been known to do it," I put in, but his eye silenced me.
"Moreover, if she had been the person who peered at you over the gallery railing last night, don't you suppose, with her - er - belligerent disposition, she could have filled you as full of lead as a window weight?"
"I do," I assented. "It wasn't Alice-sit-by-the-fire. I grant you that. Then who was it?"
Hotchkiss felt certain that it had been Sullivan, but I was not so sure. Why would he have crawled like a thief into his own house? If he had crossed the park, as seemed probable, when we did, he had not made any attempt to use the knocker. I gave it up finally, and made an effort to conciliate the young woman in the tower.
We had heard no sound since our spectacular entrance into her room. I was distinctly uncomfortable as, alone this time, I climbed to the tower staircase. Reasoning from before, she would probably throw a chair at me. I stopped at the foot of the staircase and called.
"Hello up there," I said, in as debonair a manner as I could summon. "Good morning. Wie geht es bei ihen?"
No reply.
"Bon jour, mademoiselle," I tried again. This time there was a movement of some sort from above, but nothing fell on me.
"I - we want to apologize for rousing you so - er - unexpectedly this morning," I went on. "The fact is, we wanted to talk to you, and you - you were hard to waken. We are travelers, lost in your mountains, and we crave a breakfast and an audience."
She came to the door then. I could feel that she was investigating the top of my head from above. "Is Mr. Sullivan with you?" she asked. It was the first word from her, and she was not sure of her voice.
"No. We are alone. If you will come down and look at us you will find us two perfectly harmless people, whose horse - curses on him - departed without leave last night and left us at your gate."
She relaxed somewhat then and came down a step or two. "I was afraid I had killed somebody," she said. "The housekeeper left yesterday, and the other maids went with her."
When she saw that I was comparatively young and lacked the earmarks of the highwayman, she was greatly relieved. She was inclined to fight shy of Hotchkiss, however, for some reason. She gave us a breakfast of a sort, for there was little in the house, and afterward we telephoned to the town for a vehicle. While Hotchkiss examined scratches and replaced the Bokhara rug, I engaged Jennie in conversation.
"Can you tell me," I asked, "who is managing the estate since Mrs. Curtis was killed?"
"No one," she returned shortly.
"Has - any member of the family been here since the accident?"
"No, sir. There was only the two, and some think Mr. Sullivan was killed as well as his sister."
"You don't?"
"No," with conviction.
"Why?"
She wheeled on me with quick suspicion.
"Are you a detective?" she demanded.
"No."
"You told him to say you represented the law."
"I am a lawyer. Some of them misrepresent the law, but I - "
She broke in impatiently.
"A sheriff's officer?"
"No. Look here, Jennie; I am all that I should be. You'll have to believe that. And I'm in a bad position through no fault of my own. I want you to answer some questions. If you will help me, I will do what I can for you. Do you live near here?"
Her chin quivered. It was the first sign of weakness she had shown.
"My home is in Pittsburg," she said, "and I haven't enough money to get there. They hadn't paid any wages for two months. They didn't pay anybody."
"Very well," I returned. "I'll send you back to Pittsburg, Pullman included, if you will tell me some things I want to know."
She agreed eagerly. Outside the window Hotchkiss was bending over, examining footprints in the drive.
"Now," I began, "there has been a Miss West staying here?"
"Yes."
"Mr. Sullivan was attentive to her?"
"Yes. She was the granddaughter of a wealthy man in Pittsburg. My aunt has been in his family for twenty years. Mrs. Curtis wanted her brother to marry Miss West."
"Do you think he did marry her?" I could not keep the excitement out of my voice.
"No. There were reasons" - she stopped abruptly.
"Do you know anything of the family? Are they - were they New Yorkers?"
"They came from somewhere in the south. I have heard Mrs. Curtis say her mother was a Cuban. I don't know much about them, but Mr. Sullivan had a wicked temper, though he didn't look it. Folks say big, light-haired people are easy going, but I don't believe it, sir."
"How long was Miss West here?"
"Two weeks."
I hesitated about further questioning. Critical as my position was, I could not pry deeper into Alison West's affairs. If she had got into the hands of adventurers, as Sullivan and his sister appeared to have been, she was safely away from them again. But something of the situation in the car Ontario was forming itself in my mind: the incident at the farmhouse lacked only motive to be complete. Was Sullivan, after all, a rascal or a criminal? Was the murderer Sullivan or Mrs. Conway? The lady or the tiger again.
Jennie was speaking.
"I hope Miss West was not hurt?" she asked. "We liked her, all of us. She was not like Mrs. Curtis."
I wanted to say that she was not like anybody in the world. Instead - "She escaped with some bruises," I said.
She glanced at my arm. "You were on the train?"
"Yes."
She waited for more questions, but none coming, she went to the door. Then she closed it softly and came back.
"Mrs. Curtis is dead? You are sure of it?" she asked.
"She was killed instantly, I believe. The body was not recovered. But I have reasons for believing that Mr. Sullivan is living."
"I knew it," she said. "I - I think he was here the night before last. That is why I went to the tower room. I believe he would kill me if he could." As nearly as her round and comely face could express it, Jennie's expression was tragic at that moment. I made a quick resolution, and acted on it at once.
"You are not entirely frank with me, Jennie," I protested. "And I am going to tell you more than I have. We are talking at cross purposes."
"I was on the wrecked train, in the same car with Mrs. Curtis, Miss West and Mr. Sullivan. During the night there was a crime committed in that car and Mr. Sullivan disappeared. But he left behind him a chain of circumstantial evidence that involved me completely, so that I may, at any time, be arrested."
Apparently she did not comprehend for a moment. Then, as if the meaning of my words had just dawned on her, she looked up and gasped:
"You mean - Mr. Sullivan committed the crime himself?"
"I think he did."
"What was it?"
"It was murder," I said deliberately.
Her hands clenched involuntarily, and she shrank back. "A woman?" She could scarcely form her words.
"No, a man; a Mr. Simon Harrington, of Pittsburg."
Her effort to retain her self-control was pitiful. Then she broke down and cried, her head on the back of a tall chair.
"It was my fault," she said wretchedly, "my fault, I should not have sent them the word."
After a few minutes she grew quiet. She seemed to hesitate over something, and finally determined to say it.
"You will understand better, sir, when I say that I was raised in the Harrington family. Mr. Harrington was Mr. Sullivan's wife's father!"
CHAPTER XXV AT THE STATION
So it had been the tiger, not the lady! Well, I had held to that theory all through. Jennie suddenly became a valuable person; if necessary she could prove the connection between Sullivan and the murdered man, and show a motive for the crime. I was triumphant when Hotchkiss came in. When the girl had produced a photograph of Mrs. Sullivan, and I had recognized the bronze-haired girl of the train, we were both well satisfied - which goes to prove the ephemeral nature of most human contentments.
Jennie either had nothing more to say, or feared she had said too much. She was evidently uneasy before Hotchkiss. I told her that Mrs. Sullivan was recovering in a Baltimore hospital, but she already knew it, from some source, and merely nodded. She made a few preparations for leaving, while Hotchkiss and I compared notes, and then, with the cat in her arms, she climbed into the trap from the town. I sat with her, and on the way down she told me a little, not much.
"If you see Mrs. Sullivan," she advised, "and she is conscious, she probably thinks that both her husband and her father were killed in the wreck. She will be in a bad way, sir."
"You mean that she - still cares about her husband?"
The cat crawled over on to my knee, and rubbed its bead against my hand invitingly. Jennie stared at the undulating line of the mountain crests, a colossal sun against a blue ocean of sky. "Yes, she cares," she said softly. "Women are made like that. They say they are cats, but Peter there in your lap wouldn't come back and lick your hand if you kicked him. If - if you have to tell her the truth, be as gentle as you can, sir. She has been good to me - that's why I have played the spy here all summer. It's a thankless thing, spying on people."
"It is that," I agreed soberly.
Hotchkiss and I arrived in Washington late that evening, and, rather than arouse the household, I went to the club. I was at the office early the next morning and admitted myself. McKnight rarely appeared before half after ten, and our modest office force some time after nine. I looked over my previous day's mail and waited, with such patience as I possessed, for McKnight. In the interval I called up Mrs. Klopton and announced that I would dine at home that night. What my household subsists on during my numerous absences I have never discovered. Tea, probably, and crackers. Diligent search when I have made a midnight arrival, never reveals anything more substantial. Possibly I imagine it, but the announcement that I am about to make a journey always seems to create a general atmosphere of depression throughout the house, as though Euphemia and Eliza, and Thomas, the stableman, were already subsisting, in imagination, on Mrs. Klopton's meager fare.