CHAPTER IV.

THE INDEX FINGER POINTS.

John Davidson, the marshal, was officially supposed to be endowed with insight into the origin of fires. In fact, he drew a comfortable salary for pursuing no other occupation than this. A swift horse and a buggy enabled him to be among the first to arrive and a uniform of dark blue cloth, such as old sailors cling to, but with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons for insignia in place of the little woven anchor that serves to remind the old salt of his element, ent.i.tled him to salutes from fire captains as well as from the rank and file. His written reports were read by insurance underwriters, and his wise shake of the head went a great way with those who knew little about fires and less about John Davidson.

For "old John Davidson," as he was generally known, had one failing which sadly impaired his official usefulness. He was an innate and inveterate optimist. The mild-blue eyes which beamed from behind his spectacles--old eyes, too, that no longer saw things as vividly as they used to--were meant to train fatherly glances on winsome children or dart gleams of approval at heroic hos.e.m.e.n whose sacrifices were rewarded by medal or purse. Indeed, he was very popular in both these functions, for old John Davidson had himself served his country and was comrade John of Sherman post, No. 5. But these kindly orbs were not those of the hawk, the lynx or the ferret, like Inspector McCausland's, of whose small gray pair, eyelets rather than eyes, rumor said that the off one contained a microscopic lens and its nigh fellow never went to sleep.

"John Davidson will never set the world on fire himself," Inspector McCausland had said when the veteran's nomination was first reported. Yet "old John" went his way cheerfully poohpoohing suspicion and really diffusing a globe of good feeling by his presence such as no fox in the police ranks could pretend to radiate.

However, the wisdom of the serpent is called for at times, as well as the meekness of the dove. When Marshal Davidson, against all proof and persuasion, gave out his intention to report the Arnold fire as accidental, originating in some unknown manner, or by spontaneous combustion, owing to the extreme heat of the day (the thermometer having registered 97), it was felt by his best friends that he allowed his optimism to blind him too far. He had made the same report in the Low street fire, the authors of which, an organized gang of blackmailers, trapped on another charge by McCausland, had just confessed their crime. Such laxity could only embolden the firebugs and encourage an epidemic of burnings. Something must be done, the police department thought, and when they selected Inspector McCausland to work up the case there was a general faith that something would be done.

By Sunday noon the inspector had gathered an array of data, sufficient to give a start to his active faculty of divination. Critics said that his one failing was a slight impatience in feeling his way to a conclusion, or, as his brother detectives expressed it, a tendency to "get away before the pistol shot."

"Going to hang some one, d.i.c.k?" asked Smith, whose specialty was counterfeiters.

"Well, we are sowing the hemp," answered McCausland, always ready with a jovial answer.

The first person upon whom suspicion rested was the Swedish housemaid, Bertha Lund. But it did not linger long, or with more than a moth-like pressure, on that robust and straightforward individual. Her story, thrice repeated in response to questions by the marshal, Chief Federhen, Inspector McCausland and the district attorney, had not varied a hair, although each time new details were added, as the questions of the different examiners opened new aspects of the affair.

"Prime proof of her honesty," said McCausland. "The rote story shrinks and varies, but never expands."

So the only fruit yielded by the ordeal which Bertha underwent was a thorough description of the house and household, pieced together from her replies, and McCausland had soon left her far behind in his search for a tenable theory.

The cook, Ellen Greeley, had not yet made her appearance. Bertha professed to have seen her dressing herself in her chamber and gave a clear description of her clothing, for the benefit of McCausland's note-book--green plaid skirt, brown waist, straw hat with red, purple and yellow pompons. Ellen was dressing "uncommonly rich" of late, they said. Bertha had talked with her upstairs and had heard the back door slam about the time when Ellen might be supposed to be departing. It had been the cook's holiday afternoon, and she was going to run over to her sister's, as she generally did, and return for supper, leaving Bertha to keep house.

But her sister had not seen her and she had not returned. A slow, heavy girl, rather apt to take the color of her mood from those around her, she seemed a creature who might be influenced to wrongdoing, but hardly the one to instigate it. So far as could be learned, the plain truth was romantic enough for Ellen Greeley, and she was not accustomed to embellish it with flowers of her own imagination. Nevertheless, after exhausting this subject, McCausland checked her name with the mental note "an accomplice, if anything," and the woman's prolonged absence, together with those "uncommonly rich" dresses she wore of late, the more he dwelt on them, prompted him the more to erase the modifying clause and let his mental comment stand "an accomplice."

But of whom? Ellen's sister and Bertha had both mentioned one Dennis Mungovan, the cook's sweetheart, who, until three weeks ago, had been coachman at the Arnold's. Some repartee, or insolence, when reprimanded for smoking (he was described as a tonguey lout) had provoked his discharge and he had been heard to threaten vengeance behind the professor's back, though at the time his words were muttered they were ignored as a braggart's empty vaporing. Twice he had called to see Ellen at the house, but he had not shown his face since the week before the professor died; and even at his favorite haunt, a certain Charles street stable, all trace of him had been lost. As he was a resident of this country for less than a year he may have crossed the water again to his home, but if this were so Bertha felt sure Ellen would have manifested her lonesomeness. "She had a great heart to the man," said the Swedish housemaid.

"Well, what have you collected against him?" said the district attorney, to whom McCausland had just been exhibiting these results of his investigation. They were alone, save for a bloodhound, in the inspector's office at police headquarters.

"Opportunity, motive and circ.u.mstances. I don't rule out the other two as accessories, you understand." The "other two" were Mungovan and Ellen Greeley, who with Robert had been arranged in a triangle by the detective.

"That remains to be fitted into the developments, I presume?"

"First, as to circ.u.mstances. The young man turns up about 11 o'clock at a fire which started at 3:30, which destroyed his own home, and which was advertised all over the country within a radius of thirty miles before sunset."

"In itself not a very damaging circ.u.mstance. It might be explained. You have questioned him on his movements?"

"In two interviews," replied the inspector, puffing his cigar leisurely and watching the smoke curl as though it were the most fascinating study in the world just then.

"Account not satisfactory?"

"He has none to give." (Puff.) "What does he mean by that?"

"Memory a blank between 3:30 and 7:30." (Puff.) "Up to some mischief, then."

"A curiously opportune lapse," said the inspector, his eye twinkling humorously. "So much for circ.u.mstances after the fact. And now for opportunity."

"Of course the evidence for opportunity will depend upon the inmates of the house. You are convinced of Bertha's candor?"

"On my reputation as an adept in mendacity. You have not found me overcredulous, as a rule?"

"Quite the contrary."

"Bertha was upstairs, Floyd in the study, Ellen, the cook, had just gone out. After awhile the barking of the St. Bernard in the study aroused the girl. Something was wrong. She ran down, opened the study door and fell back before a live crater of smoke and flame. Accident, we agree, is out of the question. The front door was locked. There was no approach to the study (up one flight, remember) from the street, unless you raised a ladder to the window, and half the neighborhood would have seen this. At least I'm sure the bake-shop girl, Senda Wesner, would have seen it. The previous actions of Floyd were those of a criminal meditating crime; his subsequent course until 7:30 he refuses to explain."

"But the motive, McCausland?" said the district attorney gravely. McCausland contracted his beady eyelets till they shone like two pin punctures in a lighted jack-o'-lantern. But a knock at the door delayed his answer. The bloodhound promptly arose, grasped the k.n.o.b in his forepaws, and turning it skillfully, admitted a mulatto attendant in fatigue uniform, the bloodhound's master patting him approvingly for the performance.

"Officer Costa to see the inspector," said the attendant.

"Send him in," answered McCausland. "One of my fetch-and-carry dogs--willing enough, but no hawk."

"I've looked the matter up," said Officer Costa, saluting, and glancing from McCausland to the district attorney.

"With what result?"

"Dennis Mungovan and Ellen Greeley were privately married on June 18, before Justice of the Peace Gustavus Schwab, at 126 Harlow street," said Costa, as if proud of his morsel of information and its precision of detail.

"Is this our Mungovan?" asked the district attorney, evincing keen interest.

"What was his description, Costa?" said McCausland.

"Native of Ireland, aged 29; a coachman by occupation. The bride a cook, born in New Brunswick."

"Very well done. Will you look over the steerage list of the European steamers for a fortnight back and ahead? We want that couple, if possible."

"I will," answered Costa, in a manner which showed that the compliment was not wasted. Once more McCausland rose and looked out before shutting the door. Evidently this was another of his mannerisms, and perhaps not the least useful, since one never knows what interlopers may be harking about.

"We have connected numbers two and three of the triangle," he resumed as soon as he was fairly seated, "the interests of Mr. and Mrs. Mungovan being presumably identical."

"I cannot; seriously I cannot credit the charge against Floyd," said the district attorney, "in face of the tender relations known to have subsisted between the young man and his uncle."

"Tender"--McCausland's fat face creased all over into dimples of merriment. "Do young men elope with their grandmothers?"

"Not often," answered the district attorney.

"Neither do they dote madly on their crotchety uncles in the slippers and dressing-gowns of 78."

"Even at 78 I should expect consideration from a nephew whom I had taken in as an orphan and raised to wealth and position."

"Wealth and position! Perhaps that's the rub."

"Just what do you mean?"

"I mean that all was not smooth in the Arnold household; that nephew and uncle were cut too near together from the same block of granite to match; that they wrangled constantly and that one of their wrangles led to this very crisis of the will."

"A will?" echoed the district attorney.

"A will" (puff), smiled McCausland, relapsing into silence.

"Prof. Arnold left a will?" repeated the district attorney, slowly, but McCausland only nodded mysteriously and puffed.

"And--and disinherited the nephew?"

"Exactly--cut him down to $20,000."

"Where is this will?"

"This will was burned. It was the cause of the burning." McCausland had lowered his voice, if anything, but the district attorney stood up in horror.

"More wealth changed hands by the destruction of that doc.u.ment," continued the inspector, "than was converted into smoke and ashes by the fire."

"You mean that young Floyd planned to burn up the will which left him a pauper, so that he might obtain his interest as heir-at-law?"

"That's the motive you were asking for when Costa interrupted us. It was clumsily done, wasn't it? But not so clumsily, when you look at it further. The professor kept his valuables in an iron lock-box which he called a safe. To blow it open was dangerous, unless"--McCausland paused to drive his meaning home--"unless the sound of the explosion could be smothered in the general confusion of a fire."

"You attribute the explosions to----"

"Placed the charge himself in a wooden box under the safe. Told Bertha a plausible story to provide against discovery."

"Six human lives to pay for a few paltry dollars."

"Five million dollars! The professor must have left nearly ten and Floyd would have shared them equally with the other nephew. Hardly a paltry figure, $5,000,000! I've seen murder committed for a 10-cent piece."

"But that was manslaughter in the heat of a quarrel."

"To be sure; and by expert Sicilian carvers, with magnifying-gla.s.s eyes and tempers formed between Etna and Vesuvius. But $5,000,000 is a fortune, Bigelow."

The district attorney paced up and down, meditating. At last he turned and brought his fist down on the table so hard that the bloodhound bayed.

"This is murder as well as arson. I want that understood."

"I understood it," smiled the inspector.

"Who saw this will?"

"There's no secret there. Its contents are common property, I should say. It was Mrs. Arnold, the sister-in-law, who dropped me the first hint; and Floyd himself has owned that his uncle made a will three weeks ago, cutting him down to $20,000."

"How did the professor come to postpone his will-making so long?"

"Satisfied, I suppose, with the laws of intestate descent."

"The other heir gets it all?"

"Harry Arnold? No. I believe some goes to charity, the servants and so on. A $10,000,000 cake will cut up into several neat slices, you know." But the thoughts of the district attorney seemed to move habitually on a higher plane.

"Floyd was a sister's son. Perhaps that is why the professor preferred him to his cousin," he said.

"A life-long preference which does not appear in his testament, however."

"But why did he cast him off at the eleventh hour?"

"The boy didn't know enough to groom and currycomb the old gentleman properly. Only 21, you know, and self-willed. That's in the Arnold blood. Besides, he's a socialist or anarchist, I'm told, and keeps company with a photographic retoucher as poor as Job. Something of the sort. Who knows? A straw will turn a man's mind at fourscore."

"And how about Mungovan and the Greeley woman?"

"Accomplices," said McCausland, but added more cautiously, "from present appearances, at least."

There was a knock on the door and the bloodhound again performed the duties of sentinel, receiving his master's praise with such marks of dignified gratification as became his enormous size.

"Miss Wesner," announced the mulatto.

"Presently," answered the inspector. "Well, action or inaction?" he said, presenting an alternative of two fingers to the district attorney.

"I must go over this evidence in detail. Will you send the Swedish girl to my office again to-morrow?"

"I think I can lay my hands on her."

At that very moment, in another part of the city Robert Floyd was walking down to the electric car between a squad of policemen, followed by a motley crowd that profaned the Sabbath with its clamor. Once aboard the swift vehicle, he was safe from pursuit, but his liberty was short-lived. For, as a result of Noah Bigelow's second interview with Bertha and his review of McCausland's reasoning, a warrant was made out and he was arrested Monday noon on the charge of arson and homicide.

CHAPTER V.

HE IS TRIED IN THE BALANCE.

There was a pause in the little court-room when the formal proclamations of the crier and clerk were ended.

"Are you guilty or not guilty, Robert Floyd?"

He bore the scrutiny of many hundred eyes calmly. Earnestness must have been the usual expression of his face, but today its flashing eyes and curled upper lip controlled the aquiline features and made their dominant aspect one of defiance.

He was olive-skinned, as his uncle may have been in his youth. His hair was dark. Spots of dark red were burning in his cheek, and his voice, when he spoke, of a rich contralto quality, had some subtle affiliation with darkness, too. Altogether a Roman soul, the unprejudiced observer would have said, but somewhat lacking in the blitheness which is proper to youth.

"Not guilty," the answer was recorded.

The spectators listened in a strained and oppressive silence. Within the bar sat old John Davidson, looking very sympathetic and not a little perplexed as he reared his chair back against the railing. Through the open door of an ante-room peeped the chubby form of Inspector McCausland, cordially shaking hands with acquaintances and answering to the sobriquet of "d.i.c.k." For professional reasons the inspector avoided making his person known to the mult.i.tude, but once or twice he sent in messages to the district attorney, and finally stepping to the door, caught his eye and beckoned him outside. Noah Bigelow had been sitting silently at the prosecutor's desk, his prodigious black beard sweeping his breast and his tufted eyebrows leveled steadily at the prisoner, as if to read his soul. When he rose at McCausland's signal the entire court-room followed his broad back receding through the door of the chamber.

"The prisoner," said the judge, "declines the advice of counsel and offers himself for examination unaided. He is hereby warned of his right under the law to challenge any question which may incriminate or tend to incriminate him. The court will see that this right is protected. We are ready for the evidence."