The nervous wreck made himself more understandable.

"Perhaps, Jarvis," he said, shrinking to one side like a man in sudden pain, "the gentleman can't see how to reach that large door. A little more light, half an inch-not a fraction more!"

"Don't bother," Hastings told Jarvis. "I'm not going quite yet."

"Leaping crime!" moaned Mr. Sloane, digging deeper into the pillows, "Frantic imps!"

"I hope I won't distress you too much," the detective apologized grimly, "if I ask you a few questions. Fact is, I must. I'm investigating the circ.u.mstances surrounding what may turn out to be a baffling crime, and, irrespective of your personal wishes, Mr. Sloane, I can't let go of it.

This is a serious business----"

The sick man sat up in bed with surprising abruptness.

"Serious business! Serious saints!--Jarvis, the eau de cologne!--You think I don't know it? They make a slaughter-house of my lawn. They make a morgue of my house. They hold a coroner's inquest in my parlour.

They're in there now--live people like ravens, and one dead one. They cheat the undertaker to plague me. They wreck me all over again. They give me a new exhaustion of the nerves. They frighten my daughter to death.--Jarvis, the smelling salts. Shattered saints, Jarvis! Hurry!

Thanks.--They rig up lies which, Tom Wilton, my old and trusted friend, tells me, will incriminate Berne Webster. They sit around a corpse in my house and chatter by the hour. You come in here and make Jarvis nearly blind me.

"And, then, then, by the holy, agile angels! you think you have to persuade me it's a serious business! Never fear! I know it!--Jarvis, the bromide, quick! Before I know it, they'll drive me to opiates.--Serious business! Shrivelled and shrinking saints!"

Arms clasped around his legs, knees pressed against his chin, Mr. Sloane trembled and shook until Jarvis, more agile than the angels of whom his employer had spoken, gave him the dose of bromides.

Still, Mr. Hastings did not retire.

"I was going to say," he resumed, in a tone devoid of compa.s.sion, "I couldn't drop this thing now. I may be able to find the murderer; and you may be able to help me."

"I?"

"Yes."

"Isn't it Russell? He's among the ravens now, in my parlour. Wilton told me the sheriff was certain Russell was the man. Murdered martyrs!

Sacrificed saints! Can't you let a guilty man hang when he comes forward and puts the rope around his own worthless neck?"

"If Russell's guilty," Hastings said, glad of the information that the accused man was then at Sloanehurst, "I hope we can develop the necessary evidence against him. But----"

"The necessary----"

"Let me finish, Mr. Sloane, if you please!" The old man was determined to disregard the other's signs of suffering. He did not believe that they were anything but a.s.sumed, the exaggerated camouflage which he usually employed as an excuse for idleness. "But, if Russell isn't guilty, there are facts which may help me to find the murderer. And you may have valuable information concerning them."

"Sobbing, sorrowing saints!" lamented Mr. Sloane, but his trembling ceased; he was closely attentive. "A cigarette, Jarvis, a cigarette!

Nerves will be served.--I suppose the easiest way is to submit. Go on."

"I shall ask you only two or three questions," Hastings said.

The jackknife-like figure in the bed shuddered its repugnance.

"I've been told, Mr. Sloane, that Mr. Webster has been in great need of money, as much as sixty-five thousand dollars. In fact, according to my information, he needs it now."

"Well, did he kill the woman, expecting to find it in her stocking?"

"The significance of his being hard-pressed, for so large an amount,"

the old man went on, ignoring the sarcasm, "is in the further charge that Miss Brace was trying to make him marry her, that he should have married her, that he killed her in order to be free to marry your daughter--for money."

"My daughter! For money!" shrilled Sloane, neck elongated, head thrust forward, eyes bulging. "Leaping and whistling cherubim!" For all his outward agitation, he seemed to Hastings in thorough command of his logical faculties; it was more than possible, the detective thought, that the expletives were time-killers, until he could decide what to say. "It's ridiculous, absurd! Why, sir, you reason as loosely as you dress! Are you trying to prostrate me further with impossible theories?

Webster marry my daughter for money, for sixty-five thousand dollars? He knows I'd let him have any amount he wanted. I'd give him the money if it meant his peace of mind and Lucille's happiness.--Dumb and dancing devils! Jarvis, a little whiskey! I'm worn out, worn out!"

"Did you ever tell Mr. Webster of the extent of your generous feeling toward him, Mr. Sloane--in dollars and cents?"

"No; it wasn't necessary. He knows how fond of him I am."

"And you would let him have sixty-five thousand dollars--if he had to have it?"

"I would, sir!--today, this morning."

"Now, one other thing, Mr. Sloane, and I'm through. It's barely possible that there was some connection between this murder and a letter which came to Sloanehurst yesterday afternoon, a letter in an oblong grey envelope. Did----"

The nervous man went to pieces again, beat with his open palms on the bed covering.

"Starved and stoned evangels, Jarvis! Quit balling your feet! You stand there and see me hara.s.sed to the point of extinction by a lot of crazy queries, and you indulge yourself in that infernal weakness of yours of balling your feet! Leaping angels! You know how acute my hearing is; you know the noise of your sock against the sole of your shoe when you ball your feet is the most exquisite torture to me! A little whiskey, Jarvis!

Quick!" He spoke now in a weak, almost inaudible voice to Hastings: "No; I got no such letter. I saw no such letter." He sank slowly back to a p.r.o.ne posture.

"I was going to remind you," the detective continued, "that I brought the five o'clock mail in. Getting off the car, I met the rural carrier; he asked me to bring in the mail, saving him the few steps to your box.

All there was consisted of a newspaper and one letter. I recall the shape and colour of the envelope--oblong, grey. I did not, of course, look at the address. I handed the mail to you when you met me on the porch."

Mr. Sloane, raising himself on one elbow to take the restoring drink from Jarvis, looked across the gla.s.s at his cross-examiner.

"I put the mail in the basket on the hall table," he said in high-keyed endeavour to express withering contempt. "If it had been for me, Jarvis would have brought it to me later. I seldom carry my reading gla.s.ses about the house with me."

Hastings, subjecting the pallid Jarvis to severe scrutiny, asked him:

"Was that grey letter addressed to--whom?"

"I didn't see it," replied Jarvis, scarcely polite.

"And yet, it's your business to inspect and deliver the household's mail?"

"Yes, sir."

"What became of it, then--the grey envelope?"

"I'm sure I can't say, sir, unless some one got it before I reached the mail basket."

Hastings stood up. Interrogation of both master and man had given him nothing save the inescapable conviction that both of them resented his questioning and would do nothing to help him. The reason for this opposition he could not grasp, but it was a fact, challenging his a.n.a.lysis. Arthur Sloane rejected his proffered help in the pursuit of the man who had brought murder to the doors of Sloanehurst. Why? Was this his method of hiding facts in his possession?

Hastings questioned him again:

"Your waking up at that unusual hour last night--was it because of a noise outside?"

The neurasthenic, once more rec.u.mbent, succeeded in voicing faint denial of having heard any noises, outside or inside. Nor had he been aware of the murder until called by Judge Wilton. He had turned on his light to find the smelling-salts which, for the first time in six years, Jarvis had failed to leave on his bed-table,--terrible and ill-trained apes!

Couldn't he be left in peace?