The Winning Clue.

by James Hay, Jr.

CHAPTER I

STRANGLED

When a woman's voice, pitched to the high note of utter terror, rang out on the late morning quiet of Manniston Road, Lawrence Bristow looked up from his newspaper quickly but vaguely, as if he doubted his own ears. He was reading an account of a murder committed in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and the shrieks he had just heard fitted in so well with the paragraph then before his eyes that his imagination might have been playing him tricks.

He was allowed, however, little time for speculation or doubt.

"Murder! Help!" cried the woman in a staccato sharpness that carried the length of many blocks.

Bristow sprang to his feet and started down the short flight of stairs leading from his porch to the street. Before he had taken three steps, he saw the frightened girl standing on the porch of No. 5, two doors to his left. Although he was lame, he displayed surprising agility. His left leg, two inches shorter than the right and supported by a steel brace from foot to thigh, did not prevent his being the first to reach the young woman's side.

Late as it was, half-past ten, she was not fully dressed. She wore a kimono of light, sheer material which, clutched spasmodically about her, revealed the slightness and grace of her figure. Her fair hair hung down her back in a long, thick braid.

Neighbours across the street and further up Manniston Road were out on their porches now or starting toward No. 5. All of them were women.

The girl--she was barely past twenty, he thought--stopped screaming, and, her hands pressed to her throat and cheeks, stared wildly from him toward the front door, which was standing open. He entered the living room of the one-story bungalow. A foot within the doorway, he stood stock still.

On the sofa against the opposite wall he saw another woman. He knew at first glance that she was dead.

The body was in a curious position. Apparently, before death had come, the victim had been sitting on the sofa, and, in dying, her body had crumpled over from the waist toward the right, so that now the lower part of her occupied the att.i.tude of sitting while the upper half reclined as if in the posture of natural sleep. One thing which, perhaps, added to the gruesomeness of the sight was that she had on evening dress, a gown of pale blue satin embellished in unerring taste with real old Irish lace.

Although the face had been beautiful under its crown of luxuriant black hair, it now was distorted. While the eyes were closed, the mouth was open, very wide--an ugly, repulsive gape.

He was aware that the woman in the kimono was just behind him--he could feel her hot breath against the back of his neck--and that behind her pressed the neighbours, their number augmented by the arrival of two men.

He turned and faced them.

"Call a doctor--and the police, somebody, will you?" he said sharply.

"They have a telephone back there in the dining room," volunteered one of the women on the porch.

Another, a Mrs. Allen who lived in No. 6, had put her arms around the terrified girl and was forcing her into an armchair on the porch.

The others started into the living room.

"Wait a moment," cautioned Bristow. "Don't come in here yet. The police will want to find things undisturbed. It looks like murder."

They obeyed him without question. He was about forty years old, of medium height and with good shoulders, but his chest was too flat, and his face showed an unnatural flush. His mere physique was not one to force obedience from others. It was in his eyes, dark-brown and lit with a peculiar flaming intensity, that they read his right to command.

"Please go through this room to the telephone and call a doctor," he said, singling out the woman who had spoken.

His voice, a deep barytone with a pleasant note, was perfectly steady. He seemed to hold their excitement easily within bounds.

The woman he had addressed complied with his suggestion. While she was doing so, he crossed over to the sofa and put his hand to the wrist of the murdered woman. In order to do that, he had to move a fold of the gown which partially concealed it. The flesh was cold, and he shivered slightly, readjusting the satin to exactly the fold in which he had found it.

"Too late for a doctor to help now," he threw back over his shoulder.

They watched him silently. Low moans were coming constantly from the woman in the chair on the porch.

Bristow took the telephone in his turn and called up police headquarters.

The chief of police, whom he knew, answered the call.

"h.e.l.lo! Captain Greenleaf?" asked the lame man.

"Yes."

"There's been a murder at Number Five, Manniston Road. This is Lawrence Bristow, of Number Nine."

"Aw, quit your kiddin'," laughed Greenleaf. "What do you want to do, get me up there to hear another of your theories about----"

"This is no joke," snapped Bristow. "I tell you one of the women in Number Five has been murdered. Come----"

But the chief, recognizing the urgency in the summons, had left the telephone and was on his way.

As Bristow turned toward the living room, Mrs. Allen and another woman were carrying the hysterical, moaning girl from the front porch to one of the two bedrooms in the bungalow. Some of the others again started into the living room.

"Let's wait," he cautioned once more. "If we get to moving around in here we may destroy any clues that could be used later."

When they fell back a little, he joined them on the porch, standing always so that he could watch the body and see that no one changed its att.i.tude or even approached it. His eyes studied keenly all the furniture in the room. Save for one overturned stiff-backed chair, it apparently had not been disturbed.

The doctor arrived and, waiting for no information, approached the murdered woman. As Bristow had done, he touched her wrist, and then slipped his hand beneath her corsage so that it rested above her heart.

He straightened up almost immediately.

"Dead," he said to Bristow; "dead for hours."

The physician became conscious of the hysterical girl's moans, took a step toward the bedrooms and paused.

"That's right, doctor," Bristow told him. "They need you back there."

The doctor hurried out.

"That is--that was Mrs. Withers, wasn't it?" Bristow, looking at the dead body, asked of the group.

"Yes; and the other is her sister, Miss Fulton," one of them answered.

Bristow had seemed to all of them a peculiar man--too quiet and reserved--ever since he had come to No. 9 four months before. They remembered this now, when he seemed scarcely conscious of the ident.i.ty of the two girls who had lived almost next door to him during all that time.

Different members of the crowd gave him information: Miss Maria Fulton, like nearly everybody else on Manniston Road, had tuberculosis, and Mrs.

Withers had been living with her. They had plenty of money--not rich, perhaps, but able to have all the comforts and most of the luxuries of life. They were here in the hope that Furmville's climate would restore Miss Fulton's health.

Their coloured cook-and-maid had not come to work that morning, it seemed, and Miss Fulton, who was the younger of the two sisters, was on the "rest" cure, ordered by the doctor to stay in bed day and night.

Perhaps that was why she had not discovered Mrs. Withers' body earlier in the day.

They gossiped on.