The Crevice Part 33

"I do!" A clear, flute-like voice, resonant in its firmness, rang out from behind him as he spoke, and he wheeled abruptly, to find Anita standing with her slender form outlined against the dark, rich velvet of the curtains. Her head was thrown back, her eyes blazing; and as she faced him, she slowly raised her arm and pointed a steady finger at the recoiling figure. "I accuse you, Bertrand Rockamore, of the murder of my father! It was I who heard your conversation here in this room; it was I who found the vial which contained the poison you used when your arguments and threats failed! I am not mistaken--I knew that I could never be mistaken if I heard that voice again, shaken, as it was that night, with rage and defiance--and fear! I knew that I should hear it again some time, and all these weeks I have listened for it, until this moment. Mr. Blaine, this is the man!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Her head was thrown back, her eyes blazing: and as she faced him, she slowly raised her arm and pointed a steady finger at the recoiling figure.]

"Anita, you have lost your mind!" With the shock of the girl's appearance, a steely calm had come to the Englishman, and although a tremor ran through his tones, he held them well in leash. "My poor child, you do not know what you are saying.

"As for you,"--he turned and looked levelly into Blaine's eyes,--"I am amazed that a man of your perception and experience should for a moment entertain the idea that he could make out a case of capital crime against a person of my standing, solely upon the hysterical pseudo-testimony of a girl whose brain is overwrought. This midnight conference, which you so glibly quote, is a figment of her distraught mind--or, if it actually occurred (a fact of which you have no proof), Miss Lawton admits, by the words she has just uttered, that she did not see the mysterious visitor, but is attempting to identify me as that person merely by the tones of my voice. She has made no accusation against me until this moment, yet since her father's death she has heard my voice almost daily for several weeks. Come, Blaine, listen to reason! Your case has tumbled about your ears! You can only avoid serious trouble for both Miss Lawton and yourself by dropping this absurd matter here and now."

"It is true that I did not recognize your voice before, but I have not until now heard it raised in anger as it was that night--" began Anita, but Blaine silenced her with a gesture.

"And the bottle of prussic acid which was found yesterday hidden in the chair where just now you searched for it?" he demanded, sternly.

"The incontrovertible evidence, proved late last night by an autopsy upon the body of Pennington Lawton, which shows that he came to his death by means of that poison--how do you account for these facts, Rockamore?"

"I do not propose to account for them, whether they are facts or not," returned the other man, coolly. "Since I know nothing whatever about them, they are beyond my province. Unless you wish to bring ruin upon yourself, and unwelcome notoriety and possibly an official inquiry into her sanity upon Miss Lawton, you will not repeat this incredible accusation. Only my very real sympathy for her has enabled me to listen with what patience I have to the unparalleled insolence of this charge, but you are going too far. I see no necessity for further prolonging this interview, and with your permission I will withdraw--unless, of course," he added, sneeringly, "you have a warrant for my arrest?"

To Anita's astonishment, Henry Blaine stepped back with a slight shrug and Rockamore, still with that sarcastic leer upon his lips, bowed low to her and strode from the room.

"You--you let him go, Mr. Blaine?" she gasped, incredulously. "You let him escape!"

"He cannot escape." Blaine smiled a trifle grimly. "I'm giving him just a little more rope, that is all, to see if he will help us secure the others. His every move is under strict surveillance--for him there is no way out, save one."

"And that way?" asked Anita.

The detective made no reply. In a few minutes he took leave of her and proceeded to his office, where he spent a busy day, sending cables in cipher, detailing operatives to many new a.s.signments and receiving reports.

Late in the afternoon replies began to come in to his cablegrams of the morning. Whatever their import, they quite evidently afforded him immense satisfaction, and as the early dusk settled down, his eyes began to glow with the light of battle, which those closest to him in his marvelous work had learned to recognize when victory was in sight.

Suraci noted it when he entered to make his report, and the glint of enthusiasm in his own eyes brightened like burnished steel.

"I relieved Ross at noon, as you instructed me, sir," he began, "in the vestibule of Mr. Rockamore's apartment house. It was a good thing that I had the six-cylinder car handy, for he surely led me a chase!

Ten minutes after I went on duty, Rockamore came out, jumped into his automobile, and after circling the park, he turned south, zig-zagging through side streets as if to cut off pursuit. He reached South-end Ferry, but hovered about until the gates were on the point of closing.

Then his chauffeur shot the car forward, but before I could reach him, Creghan stepped up with your warrant.

"'I'm sorry, sir,' I heard him say as I came up. 'I'm to use this only in case you insist on attempting to leave the city, sir. Mr. Blaine's orders.'

"Rockamore turned on him in a fury, but thought better of it, and after a minute he leaned forward with a shrug, and directed the chauffeur north again. This time he tried the Great Western Station, but Liebler was there, waiting for him; then the North Illington branch depot--Schmidt was on hand. As a forlorn hope he tried the Tropic and Oriental steams.h.i.+p line,--one of their s.h.i.+ps goes out to-night,--but Norris intercepted him; at last he speeded down the boulevard and out on the eastern post-road, but Kearney was on the job at the toll-gate.

"He gave it up then, and went back to his rooms, and Ross relieved me there, just now. The lights are flaring in the windows of his rooms, and you can see his shadow--he's pacing up and down like a caged animal!"

"All right, Suraci. Go back and tell Ross to have one of his men telephone to me at once if Rockamore leaves his rooms before nine.

That will be all for you to-night. I've got to do the rest of the work myself."

At nine o'clock precisely, Henry Blaine presented himself at Rockamore's door. As he had antic.i.p.ated he was admitted at once and ushered into the Englishman's presence as if his coming had been expected.

"I say, Blaine, what the devil do you mean by this game you're playing?" Rockamore demanded, as he stood erect and perfectly poised upon the hearth, and faced the detective. A faint, sarcastic smile curved his lips, and in his pale eyes there was no hint of trouble or fear--merely a look of tolerant, half-contemptuous amus.e.m.e.nt.

Immaculate in his dinner-coat and fresh boutonniere, his bearing superb in his ease and condescension, he presented a picture of elegance. Blaine glanced about the rich, somber den before he replied.

"I'm not playing any game, Mr. Rockamore. Why did you try so desperately to leave the city?"

The Englishman shrugged.

"A sudden whim, I suppose. Would it be divulging a secret of your profession if you informed me why one of your men did not arrest me, since all had warrants on the ridiculous charge you brought against me this morning, of murdering my oldest and closest friend?"

"I merely wanted to a.s.sure myself that you would not leave the city until I had obtained sufficient data with which to approach you," the detective responded, imperturbably. "I have come to-night for a little talk with you, Mr. Rockamore. I trust I am not intruding?"

"Not at all. As a matter of fact, after to-day's incidents I was rather expecting you." Rockamore waved his unbidden guest to a chair, and produced a gold cigarette-case. "Smoke? You perhaps prefer cigars--no? A brandy and soda?"

"Thank you, no. With your permission, I will get right down to business. It will simplify matters for both of us if you are willing to answer some questions I wish to put to you; but, of course, there is no compulsion about it. On the other hand, it is my duty to warn you that anything you say may be used against you."

"Fire away, Mr. Blaine!" Rockamore seated himself and stretched out his legs luxuriously to the open wood-fire. "I don't fancy that anything I shall say will militate against me. I was an idiot to lose my temper this morning, but I hate being made game of. Now the whole situation merely amuses me, but it may become tiresome. Let's get it over."

"Mr. Rockamore, you were born in Staffords.h.i.+re, England, were you not?

Near a place called Handsworth?"

The unexpected question brought a meditative frown to the other man's brow, but he replied readily enough:

"Yes, at Handsworth Castle, to be exact. But I can't quite gather what bearing that insignificant fact has upon your amazing charge this morning."

"You are the only son of Gerald Cecil Rockamore, third son of the Earl of Stafford?" The detective did not appear to have heard the protest of the man he was interrogating.

"Precisely. But what--"

"There were, then, four lives between you and the t.i.tle," Blaine interrupted, tersely. "But two remain, your father and grandfather.

Your uncles died, both of sudden attacks of heart-disease, and curiously enough, both deaths occurred while they were visiting at Handsworth Castle."

"That is quite true." The cynical banter was gone from Rockamore's tones, and he spoke with a peculiar, hushed evenness, as if he waited, on guard, for the next thrust.

"Lord Ashfrith, your father's oldest brother, and next in line to the old Earl, was seated in the gun-room of the castle, sipping a brandy and soda, and carving a peach-stone. Twenty minutes before, you had brought the peaches in from the garden, and eaten them with him. He was showing you how, in his boyhood, he had carved a watch-charm from a peach-stone, and you were close at his side when he suddenly fell over dead. Two years later, your Uncle Alaric, heir to the earldom since his older brother was out of the way, dropped dead at a hunt breakfast. You were seated next him."

"Are you trying to insinuate that I had anything to do with these deaths?" Rockamore still spoke quietly, but there was a slight tremor in his tones, and his face looked suddenly gray and leaden in the glow of the leaping flames.

"I am recalling certain facts in your family history. When your Uncle Alaric died, he had just set down his cordial gla.s.s, which had contained peach brandy. An odd coincidence, wasn't it, that both of these men died with the odor of peaches about them, an odor which incidentally you had provided in both cases, for it was you who suggested the peach brandy as a cordial at the hunt breakfast, and induced your uncle to partake of it."

"It was a coincidence, as you say. I had not thought of it before."

The Englishman moistened his lips nervously, as if they suddenly felt dry. "Uncle Alaric was a heavy, full-blooded man, and he had ridden hard that morning, contrary to the doctor's orders. I suggested the brandy as a bracer, I remember."

"An unfortunate suggestion, wasn't it?" Blaine asked, significantly.

The other man made no reply.

"There was another coincidence." The detective pursued relentlessly.

"The brandy-and-soda, which Lord Ashfrith was drinking at the moment of his death, was naturally a pale amber color. So was the brandy which your Uncle Alaric drank as he died. And prussic acid is amber-colored, too, Mr. Rockamore! Lord Ashfrith was carving a peach-stone when the end came, and the odor of peaches clung to his body. Your Uncle Alaric partook of peach brandy, and the same odor hovered about him in death. Prussic acid is redolent of the odor of peaches!"

Rockamore started from his chair.

"I understand what you are attempting to establish by the flimsiest of circ.u.mstantial evidence!" he sneered. "But you are away beyond your depth, my man! May I ask where you obtained this interesting but scarcely valuable information?"

"From Scotland Yard, by cable, to-day." Blaine rose also and faced the other man. "An investigation was started into the second death, upon the Earl's request, but it was dropped for lack of evidence. About that time, Mr. Rockamore, you decided rather suddenly, and for no apparent reason, to come to America, where you have remained ever since."

"Mr. Blaine, if I were in the mood to be facetious, I might employ your American vernacular and ask that you tell me something I don't know! Come to the point, man; you try my patience."