Part 9

"Good for you, Miss Morganthau," said Mr. Whitney, and he put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a shake. "Only I'll bet a hat you didn't need any teaching."

He turned to his son and said something about "the car being there," and then back to me:

"Now for a few days, Miss Morganthau, I'll expect you to be off duty in a place accessible by telephone."

"Off duty!" I exclaimed. "How can I do that?"

He smiled in his easy way and said:

"We'll attend to that, don't you worry about it. Go home and stay there till you get a call from me. If anyone asks what's the matter say you're ill and laid off for a few days. Don't bother about reporting at the office; that'll be arranged. And I need hardly tell you not to speak a word of what you've discovered or of this interview here to-night."

"She won't," said Babbitts. "I'll go bail for that."

He gave Mr. George Whitney Mrs. Galway's telephone number and then we shook hands all round. I was just wondering what was the quickest way to the Ferry when Mr. Whitney said:

"The motor's waiting for you and I'm sure Mr. Babbitts will escort you to the boat. Good night and remember--hold yourself ready for a call to come to my office."

The car waiting outside was Mr. Whitney's own. Gee, it was swell! A footwarmer and a fur rug and a clock and a bottle of salts for me to sniff at. I didn't tell Babbitts I'd had no dinner, for I was ashamed to have the chauffeur stop at the kind of joints we patronize, and so I bore the ache in my insides and tried to believe the footwarmer and the salts made up for it.

XIII

At noon the next day--Friday--I was called to Mrs. Galway's phone. It was Mr. George Whitney telling me to come over to the city at once. I wasn't to bother about addresses or finding my way. I'd be met at the Ferry and taken to Mr. Whitney's office in Broad Street--all I was to do was to say nothing to anybody and come.

I did both.

At the Ferry a fine-looking chap came up to me, with his hat in his hand, and asked me if I was Miss Morganthau. For a moment I was uneasy, thinking maybe he was a masher, when he turned to a kind-faced elderly woman beside him and said:

"This is Mrs. Cresset, who's come over on the boat with you and is going to Mr. Whitney's office, too."

Then I knew it was all right and we three got into a taxi. On the way across to Broad Street he told us what we were to do. It was nothing much. All Mr. Whitney wanted of us was that we'd sit in the inner office and listen to some gentleman talking in the next room. If we heard the voice I'd got on the wire and Mrs. Cresset had heard the night of the murder we were to say nothing, but sit perfectly still till we were called.

"If you recognize the voice make no sign or sound. All we ask of you is, if you're not certain of the identification, to say so."

The office was a great big place, rooms opening out of rooms, and a switchboard with a girl at it, dressed very neat and not noticing us as we passed her. Mr. George Whitney met us and took us into a room furnished fine with leather armchairs and books all up the walls and a wide window looking out over the roofs and skyscrapers. There was a door at one side, and this he opened a crack and told Mrs. Cresset to sit down close to it with me opposite. He cautioned us to be quiet and not to move or even whisper till we were called.

We sat there for a while with nothing happening. We could hear voices, and now and then people walking and doors shutting, and once a bell tinkled far off in the distance. Then suddenly I heard someone--Mr. George Whitney, I think--say, "Show him in, the private office," and heavy steps coming up the passage, past our door and into the next room, then old Mr. Whitney's voice, very loud and cheerful.

"Ah, Mr. Cokesbury, this is truly kind of you. I have to apologize for taking up your time, just as you're leaving, too, but we hoped you might help us in some minor points of this curious case."

The voice that answered was Cokesbury's; I knew it well now. At the sound of it Mrs. Cresset gave a start and leaned forward, her ear close to the door.

He was as cordial and hearty as if he was at a pink tea.

"Only too glad to be of service, Mr. Whitney. If I had thought I could be of any help I would have offered before. Fortunately for me--as you probably know--I was held up in my place on the day of the murder. If my car had been in working order I suppose I'd have been quite a prominent figure in the case by now."

He laughed out, a deep, rich sort of laugh, and it made my flesh creep to think he could do it with that girl's death at his door.

The talk went on for a bit, back and forth between them, Mr. Whitney asking him some questions about the roads, the distances, and Miss Hesketh's friends; he answering as calm and fluent as if he'd hardly known her at all.

In the middle of it the clerk who had met us at the Ferry came softly in, and without a word, beckoned us to follow him through a door that led into another room. We rose up as stealthily as burglars and stole across the carpet without making so much as a creak or a rustle. When we were in he shut the door, told us to wait there, and left us. We sat, afraid to speak, staring at each other and wondering what was going to happen next. In a few minutes the door opened and Mr. Whitney came in.

"Well?" he said, turning to me, "are you as sure as you were over the phone?"

"Certain," I answered. "It's the man."

He looked at Mrs. Cresset.

"How about you, Mrs. Cresset? Remember, a mistake in a matter like this is a pretty serious thing."

Mrs. Cresset was as sure as I was.

"I couldn't tell the man from Adam," she said, "but I knew his voice the minute I heard it."

"Very well. Now I want you to come into the private office. Don't be frightened; nothing disagreeable's going to happen. All you have to do is to answer simply and truthfully any questions I may put to you. Come along."

We followed him up the passage to the room where he'd been talking. Sitting in a large chair by the desk was the man I'd seen that day in the woods with Sylvia Hesketh. He didn't look so robust and hearty as he had then; his skin was paler and his forehead lined; but I noticed his large coarse hands with the hair on them--a murderer's hands--_they_ were the same.

When he saw us, walking in solemn behind Mr. Whitney, his face changed. It's hard to explain how it looked, but it was as if the muscles tightened up and the eyes got a fixed startled expression like you see in the eyes of an animal you've come on sudden and scared. He rose to his feet and I saw one of his hands close till the knuckles turned white. Mr. George Whitney, who was standing near by, watched him like a cat watching a mouse.

Old Mr. Whitney spoke up as genial as if he was introducing us at a party.

"These ladies, Mr. Cokesbury, come from Longwood and its vicinity. Miss Morganthau is one of the operators in the Telephone Exchange, and Mrs. Cresset you've met before, I think, one night at Cresset's Farm."

Mrs. Cresset bowed very polite and made as if she was going to shake hands. But Cokesbury didn't meet her half or a quarter way. He turned to the men and--I guess he did it without knowing--looked like lightning from one to the other--a sort of wild glance. They never took their eyes off him, and there was something awful about their stare, for all both of them were behaving so pleasant. Under that stare he got as white as a sheet, but he tried to put up a bluff.

"Cresset," he said, "Cresset? There's some mistake. I never saw her before in my life."

"That's quite true," said Mr. Whitney, "you didn't see her nor she you. If you remember it was very dark. But you spoke to her and she's willing to swear that yours was the voice she heard. Aren't you, Mrs. Cresset?"

"Yes, sir," said Mrs. Cresset, as solid and sure as the Bartholdi statue. "This is the gentleman that asked me the way that night. I'd know his voice among a thousand."

"What night?" said Cokesbury. "I don't know what she's talking about."

It was pitiful to see him trying to keep it up with his face gray and his hands trembling.

Mr. Whitney went on as if he didn't notice anything.

"And Miss Morganthau here is also ready to swear to your voice as the one she overheard on the phone Saturday, November the twentieth, in a conversation with the late Miss Hesketh--a message you've probably seen a good deal about in the papers."

I saw one of those big, hairy hands make a grip at the back of the armchair. I thought he was going to fall and couldn't take my eyes off him till Mr. Whitney turned to me and said in that bland society way:

"Perhaps you'll be so good, Miss Morganthau, as to tell Mr. Cokesbury of your efforts during the past week to get him on the phone."

I told him the whole thing and ended up with the story of how I fooled him about the key. And, honest to God, though I thought I was talking to a murderer, I was sorry for him.

All the life seemed to leave him and he got as haggard as an old man, with his lips shaking and the perspiration in beads on his forehead. When I got through he suddenly gave a sort of groan, dropped back into his chair and put his hands over his face. I was glad it was hidden, and I was glad when Mr. Whitney turned to me and Mrs. Cresset and said quick and commanding:

"That'll do. You can go into the other room. Ring the bell, George."

We huddled out into the passage where we met that spry clerk coming up on the jump. He went into the office and shut the door, and we could hear a murmur of voices, we standing up against the wall not knowing what to do next.

Presently the clerk came out again, rounded us up and sent us into the room down the hall where Mr. Whitney had talked to us. He told us to wait there for a minute, then lit out as if he was in a great hurry. We stood stiff in the middle of the floor, expecting to hear the tramp of policemen and then Cokesbury being dragged off to jail. But it was all very still. I never supposed when you caught a criminal the proceedings would be so natural and dignified.

After a while the clerk came back. He said Mr. Whitney'd sent us his thanks for our kindness in coming--I never saw people waste so many words on politeness--and hoped we'd excuse him from thanking us in person, but he was just now very busy. He warned us not to say a word to anyone of what had transpired, and then a boy coming to the door and saying, "It's here," he told us a taxi was waiting below to take us to the Ferry.

If we couldn't talk to anyone else we could to each other and I guess we did more gabbing going down in the taxi and across in the boat than Mrs. Cresset had done for years. She told me about the night when Cokesbury had come to her house. It was wonderful to see how luck was with him--the way it sometimes is with sinners. Usually at that hour she was round in the kitchen and when he knocked would have opened the door and seen his face in the lamplight. But she'd gone upstairs early as her little daughter had a cold.

To go back over the small things that happened would make you sure some evil power was protecting him. That morning the little girl's cold wasn't bad and she'd gone to school as usual. But at the schoolhouse she heard that the dancing bear--the one I saw in Longwood which had been performing along the pike on its way back to Bloomington--had been at Jaycock's farm and might be round by Cresset's that afternoon. Like all children, she was crazy about the bear, and after school hours she and a chum slipped off and stood around in the damp, waiting. But the bear did not show up and when she came home, crying with disappointment, the cold was heavy on her. Her mother bundled her off to bed and went up early to sit with her. Only for that, Cokesbury would probably have been landed in jail weeks before, the State saved money and two innocent men saved shame and suffering.

"That's the way it is with the Devil's own," I said. "I guess he takes care of them for a while; jollies them along the downward path."

"It looks like that was the case," said Mrs. Cresset, her kind, rosy face very solemn. "But the power of evil gets broke in the end. 'Murder will out'--that's true if anything is. Think of that man feeling so safe and every hour the cords tightening round him."

"And _we_ did it," said I, awful proud. "We found the cords and then pulled on them."

"We did," says she. "I never thought to be the one to put a fellow-creature behind bars, but I have and my conscience tells me I've done right."

My, but we both felt chesty!

The next morning Babbitts phoned me to say he'd be over Sunday evening. The information of "Our Suspect" would be given to the press Sunday morning for the Monday papers and after it was in he'd come across and tell me about it.

Mr. Whitney had arranged for me not to go back to work till Tuesday and though I suppose the rest was good for me, the strain of waiting wore on me something dreadful. I kept wondering how Cokesbury had done it, and how he was going to explain this and account for that. Most of Sunday I lay on the bed trying to read a novel, but a great deal more interested in the hands of the clock than I was in the printed pages.

When it began to darken up for evening I told Mrs. Galway I was expecting a gentleman caller and asked for the loan of the parlor. She's a great one for love affairs and it always discouraged her that I had no regular company. Now she thought I'd got a steady at last and wanted to lend me her cameo pin, and decked up the parlor as if the minister was coming to call, with the hand-painted leather cushion and the punch-work tablecloth.

Long before Babbitts was due I was sitting by the stove, burning bright and clear, with the drop light throwing a glow over the center table. Upstairs I could hear Mrs. Galway tramping round as she went to bed, which was considerate of her as she was something of a night bird. When I heard his knock at the side door, I gave a sort of squeal of excitement and ran to let him in.

"Well?" I said, grabbing his arm, too worked up to say good evening, "has he confessed?"

"Yes," he said, "he has and he's told an uncommon queer story."

"He killed her?"

"That's the queerest part of it," said Babbitts slowly, "he didn't."

XIV

Now I don't believe if I gave you twenty guesses you'd know what I did when I heard those words--burst out crying.

It wasn't because I wanted Cokesbury to be executed; it wasn't because I wanted the reward; it wasn't even that I was so crazy to have Jack Reddy exonerated--it was just because I was so disappointed--so _foiled_--that I couldn't seem to bear it.

I cried so hard I didn't know what I was doing, and I suppose that's the reason I leaned on Babbitts' shoulder, it being the nearest thing handy. He brought me to my senses, patting me on the arm and saying sort of soothing as if he was comforting a child who'd broken her doll:

"There, there--don't cry--it'll be all right soon. We'll get the right man. Don't take it to heart that way."

Then I began to laugh, for it did seem so comical--me crying because Cokesbury wasn't a murderer, and Babbitts telling me not to take it to heart as if I'd been disappointed in not seeing the electrocution. The laughter and tears got mixed up together and I don't know where I'd have landed if I hadn't seen he was getting frightened and wanted to call Mrs. Galway. That pulled me up, and I got a hold on myself. In a few minutes we were sitting side by side in front of the stove, the storm over, all but a little hiccupy kind of sob, that came upon me unexpected at intervals.

For the next hour we sat there without moving while Babbitts told me Cokesbury's story.

I'll put down what he said as near his words as I can remember it. The way he told it was better than any of the newspaper accounts, even his, though he got a raise of salary for the way he'd handled it:

"Cokesbury says he didn't kill Sylvia Hesketh and I believe him and so do the Whitneys. Besides the corroborative evidence is absolutely convincing. He's not a murderer but he's a coward--no good at all--and that explains why he didn't come out after the crime and tell what he knew. Instead he got in a panic, lost what little nerve he had, and was skipping out to Europe when you nabbed him.

"He was in love with Sylvia Hesketh, if you call that sort of thing love. Anyway, instead of being simply what you might describe as a beau of hers, he was mad about her. I fancy even she, poor girl, didn't realize the passion she'd kindled, but was like a child playing with a dynamite bomb. It appears she saw more of him than anybody guessed. After the first flirtation at Bar Harbor, he came down to Cokesbury Lodge nearly every Sunday and used to meet her in the woods and on the side roads, and make dates with her for theaters and concerts in town. He kept it quiet for he knew without being told that the Doctor wouldn't stand for it. His hope was that, willful and unstable as he knew her to be, he'd eventually win her by his persistence and devotion.

"It was one of those situations that may end in nothing or may end as this one did in a tragedy. The girl was foolhardy and flirtatious; the man infatuated. Very quickly he got on to the fact that he was not the only victim of her beauty and her wiles. He watched and questioned and found out about the other men. Of them he soon saw that Reddy was the favored one and a deadly jealousy seized him, for Reddy might have attracted any woman.

"When he tried to find out from her how she stood with Reddy he could get no satisfaction. She'd tell him one thing one day and another the next. She kept them all guessing, but it didn't mean to any of the others what it meant to Cokesbury. All through October he spied and queried, and learnt that she was meeting Reddy in his car and going off for long jaunts with him. He says he was half mad with jealousy and fear, but he hid it from her.

"That's the way things were when he sent the phone message that you caught. You sized him up just right. When she told him she had a date that was a secret, he got a premonition of the truth, the way a man does when his reason is under the dominion of his emotions. He felt certain she was going off with Reddy, and the brakes that he'd kept down till then were lifted. He determined he'd find out and if it was true stop them if the skies fell.

"And now here comes the queer part of the story. If anybody'd guessed it a lot of things that were dark would have been as clear as daylight. He _did_ keep the date you heard him make on the phone."

"How could he? He had no car, or horse, or anything."

"Only part of that's true--he had no car, or horse, but he _did_ have something."

"What?"

"An aeroplane."

I fell back staring at him.

"An aeroplane--in Cokesbury Lodge?"

"In the garage there. _That's_ why he wouldn't rent the house; _that's_ why he kept going down over Sunday all summer. The year he was in France he'd done a lot of flying and was fascinated by it. Before he left there he was an expert aviator, but his wife hated it and it was one of their grounds of dissension. After she died he had a machine brought down in sections, set it up himself, and kept it in the garage. Not a soul knew it. He only flew at night for he wanted it kept a secret."

"Why--what for?"

"Because--here's the best thing I've heard about him--he carried a heavy life insurance policy secured to his children. Cokesbury's not a rich man, though he has a good business, and if he died his children would have had to live on what their mother left them, which wasn't much. If it was known that he was aviating the policy would have been invalidated, so he indulged his secret passion at night. The isolated position of the house made it easy to escape detection and his machine was equipped with a very silent muffler. No one had a glimmering of it, not even Sylvia.

"The phone message you heard was sent from the station at Jersey City and when he sent it he _did_ intend coming to Mapleshade in his motor. When he got to Azalea and found the car unmended in the garage he flew into a rage, as he thought his plans were blocked. Alone in the Lodge, ravaged by jealousy, he lost all caution and decided to take out the aeroplane.

"You remember that there was a moon that night, but that in the evening the skies were clouded and the air breathless. The darkness and the weather were on his side and he came down in a field about ten minutes walk from the house, closing the cut-out as he descended. He was early and hid himself among some trees where he could watch the front door. He says it was while he was waiting there for her that the idea came to him of frustrating an elopement by carrying her off.

"He was laying round in his mind how he would get the truth from her, when he saw her come out and gave a low whistle. She heard it and came toward him. It was not till she was close to him and he could see the outlines of her figure through the dark, that he made out a bag in her hand. _Then_ he knew for certain she was going and decided on his course.

"In all his other dealings with her he had found her subtle and evasive. Now, perhaps because for the first time in her life she had decided on a positive action, she went straight to the point. Without any preamble she told him what she was going to do and that within a half-hour Reddy would be waiting for her in the Lane.

"He showed no anger or surprise, apparently accepting the situation in the most friendly spirit. He says he thought she was relieved, having expected a scene with him. When he had disarmed her of her suspicions, he told her of the airship and asked her if she wouldn't like to come up for a spin before Reddy arrived. They had over half an hour and he could take her for a short flight and would bring her down in ten or fifteen minutes.

"Everybody agrees that she was a bold, venturesome girl, and the idea appealed to her, as she had never been up. They walked quickly through the fields and bit of woodland to the aeroplane. She was in high spirits as she tucked herself in; he could hear her laughter as he took his seat, and then, closing the cut-out, they soared up.

"They rose high--about two thousand feet, he thought--and then he headed East. They were winging their way over Cokesbury Lodge on toward the hills in the distance when Reddy must have sighted the lights of Longwood as he came down the Firehill Road.

"Cokesbury swears he had no intention of kidnapping her. He says he had no definite idea of where he was going, that his plan was simply to get her away from Reddy and put an end to the marriage. Personally, I don't believe him. I think he had a perfectly clear idea of carrying her off to Cokesbury Lodge, and that his chivalrous scheme was to put her into such a compromising position she would be willing to marry him. Maybe I'm wrong--I don't know. Anyway, he very soon saw you can't abduct a high-spirited, hot-tempered girl against her will.

"After about fifteen or twenty minutes he was conscious of her getting uneasy and speaking to him--words that he couldn't hear but that he knew to be at first startled questions, then angry commands. He shouted replies, but the great machine kept steadily on its way, neither turning nor dipping downward. Then she realized and broke into a fury, turning upon him in the dark, putting her face close to his and screaming for him to bring her down. The noise made it impossible to argue with her, and fearful of what she might do, he held her off with his elbow, the delicately balanced machine swaying as she seized his arm and shook it, lunging up against him, her cries of rage rising above the thunder of the screw.