Could he? I was Miss Morgenthau there, and today was positively my last appearance. If I could get away from him now I was safe from his ever finding me.

The waiter brought the bill with murmurings that it was to be paid at the desk. We rose, Mr. Ford feeling in his pocket, the waiter trying to look listless, as if money was no treat to him. I moved across the room and reconnoitered. The desk, with a fat gray-haired woman sitting behind it, was close by the door that led into the hall. Several people were out there putting on coats and hats and jabbering together in a foreign lingo. I sauntered carelessly through the doorway, seeing, out of the tail of my eye, Mr. Ford put down a twenty-dollar bill on the counter.

The gray-haired woman began to pull out little drawers and make change.

One of the people in the hall opened the front door and they began filing out. I went with them, slow on their heels at first, then fast, dodging between them, then like a streak down the steps to the sidewalk and up the street.

It was an awful place to hide in-all lights and show windows; a fish might as well try to conceal itself in a parlor aquarium. There wasn't a niche that you could have squeezed a cat into and I _had_ to get somewhere. Suddenly I saw a narrow flight of stairs with a large set of teeth hanging over them and up that I went, stumbling on my skirt till I reached a landing and flattened back against the dentist's door. It was locked or I would have gone in, so scared I was of that man-gone in, and if the price of concealment had been a set of false teeth I make no doubt I'd have ordered them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _It was locked or I would have gone in._]

After a while I ventured down, took a look out and stole away, dodging along dark side streets and round corners with my m.u.f.f up against my face, till I struck a cab stand. Not a word came out of me till I was safe inside a taxi, and then I almost whispered my address to the chauffeur.

As we sped along I quieted down and began to think-going over what he'd said, connecting things up. And as I thought, bouncing round in that empty vehicle like one small pea in a pod that was too big, I saw it plainer and plainer, as if one veil after another was being lifted.

Harland was in love with her-she'd not gone down in the elevator-she'd stayed there! she'd been there! She'd-

We went over a chuck hole and I bounced up nearly to the roof, but the smothered cry that came from me wasn't because of that. It was because I _saw_-the whole thing was as clear as daylight. _She'd_ been the lure that brought him to the Azalea Woods Estates, _she'd_ been the person that kept him in the front office while Barker came down from the story above!

CHAPTER XI

JACK TELLS THE STORY

The account of Molly's dinner with Tony Ford 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 ominous 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 withheld from me. I had to hear everything, be familiar with every strand in the net they were weaving round the woman of whose guilt 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 killing 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 quarry 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 alibi 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 subsides. They're perfectly safe there; the police, when they come, are going to go to the floor above. When the crowd disperses they leave by the service stairs, she first, Barker a short while afterward. The building and the street are deserted, but even if he _is_ seen, n.o.body knows enough at that time to question his movements. After that it all goes without a hitch, even the arrest of the chauffeur 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 a.s.sociates 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 bent 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 complacent, 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 curiously 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 rustic 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 primitively savage 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 plunged the Harland case deeper than ever into sinister 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 lodging house on the East Side near Stuyvesant Park. The place was decent and quiet, run by a widow and her daughter, the inmates of a shabby-genteel cla.s.s-rather an odd place for a man of Ford's proclivities 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 landlady, 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 standing at Ford's door, and, as she ascended to the fourth, she heard his knock and Ford's voice from the inside call out, "h.e.l.lo, who's that?"

When the police asked her about the man's appearance her description was meager. 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 gla.s.ses, and that he had a large aquiline 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 gla.s.ses. But one thing he elicited from her was an important touch in this impressionist picture-the man was small. When he pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed on to his own room, where he went to bed and read a novel. He was so engrossed 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 parlor on the ground floor, at a little before eleven heard steps descending 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 pa.s.sage. There, prostrate 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 drawn 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 trickle of blood showed where Ford had fallen, suggesting that the attack had been made from behind as he stood over the desk. The doctor p.r.o.nounced 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 a.s.sailant-no finger prints, no foot marks, no weapon or implement.

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 a.s.sault 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 legacy by an uncle up-state, and in proof of his newly acquired wealth had shown her two fifty-dollar bills.

This put a different face on the matter. If Ford had carried such sums on him, it was probable the fact had become known and burglary been the motive of the attack.

The police looked over the papers in his wallet and desk but found nothing that threw any light on the mystery. Babbitts was present at this search and found three letters-tossed aside by the city detectives as having no bearing on the subject-that he knew must be seen by Whitney & Whitney. He and the precinct captain had hobn.o.bbed together over many cases, and a few sentences in the hall resulted in the transfer of the papers to Babbitts' breast pocket with a promise to return them the next day.

I'll give you these letters later on-when we pored over them in the old man's private office.

In the hospital Ford came back to consciousness long enough to make an ante-mortem statement. It was short and explicit, satisfying the authorities, who didn't know that the victim himself was a criminal with matters in his own life to hide. Here it is, copied from the evening paper:

I don't know who the man was. I never saw him before. He had some story that he knew me and asked for money. I tried to stand him off, but when he got threatening, not wanting him to make a row in the house, I went to the desk where I had a few loose bills in a drawer. It was while I was standing there with my back to him, that he struck me. I don't know what he did it with-something he had under his coat. When I came to myself later I got to Salinger's door. That's all I know. A week ago I'd had some money on me-part of a small legacy-but I'd banked it a few days before. He must have heard of it some way and was after it.

That settled the question as far as the police and the general public went. That the watch and chain were not touched nor the few dollars in the desk drawer was pointed to as positive proof that Ford's a.s.sailant was no common sneak thief or second-story man. He was not wasting his time on small change or articles difficult to dispose of. For a few days the police hunted for him, but not a trace of him was to be found. "An old hand," they had it, "dropped back into the darkness of the underworld."

There was not a detective or reporter in New York who connected that half-seen figure, stealing by night into a cheap lodging house, with the financier whose disappearance had been the nine days' wonder of the season.

On Wednesday evening Babbitts brought the letters to the Whitney office (we were all there but Molly), and we sat round the table pa.s.sing the papers from hand to hand.

One was on a sheet of Harland's business stationery and was in Harland's writing, which both George and the chief knew. It was dated January second, and ran as follows: