The Substitute Prisoner Part 11

The crowd was gathered in front of the entrance, talking excitedly, each asking the other what had happened. No one seemed to know precisely what the excitement was about, but that something extraordinary had occurred was plainly evident.

Britz and Greig plunged into the hallway and pushed the elevator b.u.t.ton, but the car did not descend. They waited impatiently a minute or two, then proceeded up the stairs.

On the third floor they found most of the tenants of the house ma.s.sed in front of the closed door of one of the rear apartments.

"We are officers," said Britz, forcing a lane through the crowd. "Who lives in there?"

"A woman named Strong," someone answered.

Britz pressed a finger firmly against a b.u.t.ton set in the jamb of the door, and, in response to the insistent clamor of the bell, the door was opened by Muldoon. On seeing Britz he breathed a sigh of relief.

"Come on into the sitting-room," he said, closing the door on the curious crowd that pressed forward.

At the threshold of the sitting-room, their forms framed in the wide, curtained doorway, the two detectives stood, amazement printed on their faces. Greig's heart was throbbing violently and his breath came in short gasps. Britz, as he gazed on the unexpected sight that met his eyes, stood as one stupefied.

On a couch at the side of the room, her pale face a chalky white, her eyes staring rigidly, a thin line of blood dropping from the corner of her mouth, the woman they had come to see was stretched--dead.

And, standing over her like a statue of dumb despair, was the figure of Horace Beard.

CHAPTER VII

Britz recovered gradually from his astonishment. Advancing to the couch he examined the lifeless form of the woman, noting that the shot which killed her had entered the mouth and probably penetrated to the base of the skull. A small pearl-handled revolver gleamed ominously from the floor, about seven or eight feet from the lounge. Britz picked it up, examined it, then deposited it on a convenient table.

As the detective moved about the apartment, his activity seemed to arouse the others from the half-stupefied state into which they had lapsed. Beard, who had remained standing as if petrified by the tragic turn of events, suddenly regained his faculties and gazed apprehensively at the officers.

With studied deliberation Britz disregarded his presence in the room and continued to busy himself with an examination of the contents of a small writing table that stood in an angle of the wall.

Evidently drawing courage from Britz's preoccupation and from the bewildered inactivity of the other officers, Beard bent forward until his hand touched the floor, and, after groping for an instant beneath the head of the couch, again drew himself to an erect posture.

"I'll take that paper!" Britz's voice broke the silence.

A tremor shook Beard's frame, while the blood drained from his face.

Then, a rebellious impulse against the detective's calm a.s.sertion of authority possessing him, he made a bold effort to destroy the paper he had picked off the floor.

But Britz was prepared to antic.i.p.ate the move. Leaping forward he seized the other's wrists in an iron grip that caused Beard to groan with pain.

"Greig, take the letter out of this man's hand!" called the detective.

It was not necessary, however, to employ further violence, for the secretary announced his willingness to relinquish the note. Evidently it had been written in a hurry, under stress of excitement, and was as follows:

"_My Dear Julia_:

"Don't permit your anger to tempt you into any rash act. There is no reconciliation. My wife's return is but a sham, designed to avoid a great deal of unpleasantness. Mr. Whitmore's death has not changed matters. Follow Mr. Beard's instructions and I shall carry out faithfully my promise to you.

"Yours in haste, GEORGE."

Britz stowed the letter in his pocket, then summoned Muldoon.

"Now tell what happened," he said.

It required some effort on the part of the policeman to gather his thoughts. The quick succession of events had woven a fog before his brain, leaving him with but a misty perception of what had occurred.

"I--I don't know exactly where to begin," he stammered.

"Did you follow her to the house?" Britz gave him an opening.

"Yes," he replied. "I got a taxicab and trailed her machine. She got out in front of the door and went upstairs. About ten minutes later this gentleman came and must have gone to her apartment. I waited downstairs.

Presently the elevator boy rushed into the street yelling 'Murder!

Police!' I asked him what happened and he said he heard a shot and a sound like a body falling to the floor. He took me upstairs and I rapped on the door. This man here opened it and let me in. He said the woman had killed herself. As I knew you were coming here, I made sure that she was dead and remained to see that nothing was disturbed."

"This man was in the room when the shot was fired?" asked Britz, as if to make Beard realize the significance of it.

"Yes," responded the policeman.

"Mr. Beard, have you anything to add to the officer's story?" curtly inquired the detective.

Beard faced his inquisitor, trying to meet his steady gaze with equal steadiness. But the consciousness that he was in a serious predicament, that he might be compelled to meet a serious charge, made him waver. He was struggling furiously to maintain his composure, but his inward excitement reacted on his outer frame, rendering him speechless. When, finally, he found his voice, he turned an appealing glance on the detective.

"She did commit suicide," he declared as if protesting his innocence before a hostile judge. "I delivered the letter which you have in your pocket. She read it, then crumpled it in her hand and threw it on the floor.

"'Mr. Beard,' she said, 'I've betrayed George to the police. I have denounced him as the murderer. They have my statement. They'll send George to the electric chair. I told them all I knew.'

"I informed her that her statement to the police was not competent evidence and that unless she repeated her testimony in court, it could not be used against Collins.

"'They'll never make me repeat it!' she exclaimed. Opening a drawer of the writing table she produced a pistol and before I was able to interfere, the weapon exploded and she was dead. My account of the suicide is absolutely true," he declared impressively,--"I swear it is true."

His face now was as solemn as the tone in which he had uttered the last sentence. Beard recognized that he was facing a grave moment in his life, that it was within the power of the man to whom he had spoken, irretrievably to mar his future, to stain him with an accusation which, even though disproved before a jury, he could never hope to live down entirely.

The harrowing fear and uncertainty written in the secretary's face, produced no quiver of compa.s.sion in the detective. Britz was measuring the man with cool, calculating eyes, that shone in their sockets like b.a.l.l.s of chilled steel. Long ago he had learned to turn an indifferent ear to protestations of innocence. Such pleas drop with equal fervor from the lips of the innocent and the guilty. And the shrewdest judge of human nature is incapable of judging between them.

"I am innocent--before G.o.d I swear it!" cries the guilty wretch in a voice calculated to wring tears from the Accusing Spirit itself.

"I am innocent--before G.o.d I swear it!" protests the wrongfully accused person despairingly.

The experienced detective, or prosecutor, or judge, places as much faith in the protestation of the one as in the other. He reserves judgment until sufficient evidence shall have been developed to establish which of the accused is telling the truth. For, he knows that while the guilty man's lie may sound entirely plausible, it will collapse like a perforated gas-bag in the end. Likewise, truth coming from the innocent man's lips may be utterly lacking in plausibility. Yet, it will establish itself by reason of its own indestructible qualities.

Regardless of the statement so solemnly delivered by the secretary, Britz believed that the woman had committed suicide. Not because Beard said she had, but because of the convincing nature of the attendant circ.u.mstances. It was obvious that between the woman's death and the murder of Herbert Whitmore was an intimate connection, a chain whose links were undoubtedly forged by those involved in the Whitmore crime.

Beard's conduct proclaimed him antagonistic to the police investigation of his employer's death. To place him behind bars would mean the end of his immediate activities. Apparently he was bent on destroying evidence.

Nor was it beyond the range of probability that he was the a.s.sa.s.sin and was busy erecting safeguards for himself.

Yet Britz was reluctant to order his arrest, for he believed implicitly in the theory of giving a guilty man sufficient rope wherewith to hang himself. The activities of a man in jail are necessarily circ.u.mscribed.

Moreover, his vigilance is never relaxed. Permitted to roam at will, however, he is invariably his own most relentless enemy, working unconsciously to encompa.s.s his own destruction.

For some minutes Britz debated with himself as to the most profitable course to pursue with regard to the secretary. Finally an idea flashed across his mind, and he resolved to carry it into effect.