Chapter XXXII: The Woman in the Case

Having read the short note, the detective passed it to his assistant, Patsy.

“What do you make of it, Patsy?” he asked.

“Just what it says; no more,” was the reply.

“Madge has usually been a woman of her word, particularly when that word contained the suggestion of a threat,” said the detective.

“That is precisely what I was thinking, chief.”

“This is her handwriting, too; there is no doubt of that?”

“Yes.”

“So it is more than likely that she came; that she kept the engagement; at least, that is what I would suppose if it were not for the statements of Thomas to the contrary.”

“Possibly that footman at the door was bribed,” suggested Patsy; but Thomas immediately interrupted:

“No, sir. He isn’t smart enough to have dissembled about it afterward--and besides, I was personally within sight and sound of the door all the time. The woman did not appear.”

Nick, who had been looking about him within the room, and with more interest since he had read the note, now stepped suddenly forward, and, stooping, picked something up from the floor beside one of the huge leather rockers--one that faced the big chair in which the servant said that Lynne was seated when last he saw his master.

It was a dainty lace handkerchief, redolent with a perfume that the detective knew to be much affected by Mrs. Babbington. He had noticed it particularly on the several occasions when he had been in her company.

But, as if that were not sufficient testimony to satisfy him, although it was, quite, the initials M. H. and B. were embroidered upon it. Plainly the handkerchief had once been the property of Madge Babbington.

He gazed at the handkerchief for a moment, then passed it to Thomas.

“How do you account for the presence here of this?” he demanded. “You say that the woman has not been here; this handkerchief says just as plainly that she has been here. How do you explain the discrepancy?”

“I cannot even attempt to do that, Mr. Carter,” was the decided reply.

“That handkerchief says as plainly as words that Mrs. Babbington has been in this room, Thomas--unless you can account for it in some other manner.”

“I cannot do that, sir. It was not here--at least it was not on the floor where you found it, when I brushed up the room and rearranged the chairs, this morning.”

“Then how did it get here?”

“I will not attempt to say, Mr. Carter.”

“It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that the handkerchief was brought here by some person--probably by the woman herself?”

“Yes, sir; it would seem so.”

“Then how did she get here--without your knowledge?”

Thomas was plainly dismayed, but he was none the less insistent for all that.

“Unless she flew in through the open window, or came down the chimney and through the fireplace, there is absolutely no way that I know about by which she could have gained admission to this room without being seen by me, or by the footman,” he said calmly.

“Or by the gardener,” suggested Patsy.

“Unless you are purposely deceiving us,” said the detective.

“I am not deceiving you, Mr. Carter,” Thomas replied, not without an assumption of dignity at being thus accused.

Patsy, without saying what his intention was, left them and passed out of the room. Nick steadily studied the face of the servant for some time; then he said:

“I believe you, Thomas. You are not deceiving me, or attempting to do so. This is a very strange circumstance.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you account for every moment of your time between half-past twelve o’clock, and the time when you telephoned to me?”

“Yes, sir. I have already done that. I have no desire to change anything that I have said about it.”

“When Mr. Lynne rang for you, and you assisted him to dress, in part, it was approximately half-past twelve, you say?”

“It was between that time, and one o’clock; yes, sir.”

“It was four o’clock when you telephoned to me. Had you only just missed Mr. Lynne?”

“No, sir. It was a quarter to three when I missed him.”

“What happened in the interval between then and four o’clock?”

“I was searching through the house, and making the inquiries I told you about.”

“It required three-quarters of an hour to do all that?”

“That is the time I took for it, before I convinced myself that it would be wise to communicate with you, Mr. Carter.”

“What brought you to this room at a quarter to three?”

“It was the hour for Mr. Lynne’s tonic. He takes it every four hours.”

As Thomas made this statement he half turned toward a table across the room; then he gave a start, and uttered a quick exclamation.

“What is it?” asked the detective.

“The tonic is not here,” was the reply.

“The tonic? Gone, you say?”

“Yes, sir. It was in a bottle on that table, with a small graduate beside it. Both are missing. Neither one is there now.”

“Humph!” said the detective. “Evidently Lynne--or the lady who called upon him--had an eye to his continued improvement when he went away, or was taken away from here. Now, look here, Thomas.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We will say that you last saw your master in this room at a quarter to one o’clock. You were back here again, to administer his medicine, at a quarter to three.”

“That is correct, Mr. Carter.”

“So, if he went away, or was taken away from this room by others, it must have happened within those two hours.”

“Without any question, Mr. Carter.”

“Where were you during those two hours?”

“I spent the entire time, during those two hours, in a small reception room that is at the right of the front door, as you come into the hall, Mr. Carter. I sat at the window from which I could see any person who might come up the steps to the door, without effort, and merely by raising my eyes from the morning paper which I was reading during most of that time.”

“And you did not leave your post at all?”

“No, sir.”

“Not to get your luncheon?”

“No, sir. I directed Christopher, the footman, to bring me some tea and toast and marmalade, which I ate there, at the window.”

“Is that your general habit?”

“Not at all; but Mr. Lynne had directed me to watch out for the lady he expected to call upon him. I thought it best to be at the door to receive her myself, rather than to permit Christopher to do it. I thought--well, to tell you the truth, I thought from the manner in which Mr. Lynne mentioned the subject to me, that the lady might be a particular friend.”

“I see. It was merely your intention to be discreet?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And when you left your post at the window of the reception room--what then?”

“I did not leave it till the hour for Mr. Lynne’s medicine. I came directly here to this room to discover that Mr. Lynne was not here.”

The door opened again at that moment, and Patsy entered the room. He was followed by the gardener, whom he had evidently sought in the meantime, and he said, as he entered:

“Chief, this man has some interesting information. I have been talking with him.”

“What is it?”

The Lynne mansion was one of those modern palaces which during the last ten years have been erected in many localities in the city of New York. It occupied the half of a block fronting on the avenue, and was inclosed on the street and avenue sides--the south and west--by a high, wrought-iron fence of artistic design. The entrance to the grounds surrounding the mansion was through a wide gate on the avenue, one-half of which was usually kept open during the day. A concreted driveway led to the front entrance which was thirty feet back from the fence. It also extended to the garage at the rear, two hundred feet away. There was a concreted pathway around the west side of the house.

Patsy replied to the detective’s question:

“He says that a woman, who wore a veil so that he could not see her features, entered at the gate and passed around the house shortly after he had had his dinner, which he eats in the servants’ quarters, after the other servants have had theirs; that is, he eats at one o’clock.”

“All right. I’ll question him for myself. Now, my man, what time was it when you saw the woman we are talking about?”

“I should say, sir, that it was soon after half-past one o’clock. It was half-past one when I went out of the house after atin’, sir, and she came along soon after that.”

“She came around by the path from the gate?”

“She did, sor.”

“Did she speak to you?”

“I spoke to her, sor. We don’t allow no strangers that we don’t know to git past us, sor.”

“You say ‘we.’ Whom else do you mean besides yourself?”

“Nobody else now, sor. There used to be three of us, in the old days of Mr. Cephas Lynne, sor.”

“Oh, you were here then, were you?”

“I was, sor.”

“Well, what was said between you and the woman?”

“I axed her where she was goin’ and who she wanted to see, sor, and she said she was after takin’ the bundle she carried, to Mrs. Maguire, who is the cook; and wid that I let her go on about her business.”

“What time did she go out again?”

“She didn’t go out ag’in, at all, at all, sor; leastwise I didn’t see her if she did, and I was working forninst that path all the afternoon, at that. And just now, sor, after this gentleman had been axin’ me about it, I stopped and axed Mrs. Maguire what had become of the woman who took the bundle to her, and sure, sor, Mrs. Maguire says that there wasn’t any such woman at all, at all, and that she hadn’t got no bundle, and she wanted to know what I was talkin’ about, so she did. Sure, the woman didn’t go into the house at all, and didn’t see Mrs. Maguire, and it’s my belief that she just walked around the house on the other side of it where there is no cemented path, and went out again by the same way she came in. She had a swate voice, so she did, and I’d guess her to be young, and purty, too; but more than that, divil a bit do I know, sor.”