CHAPTER VI

WHAT THE PAPERS SAID

There are occasions when speech is an intrusion and sympathy an affront. An occasion of this kind coincided with Fanny's exit. On the mantel the clock still ticked. Otherwise there was silence in that room.

Orr, finishing with his glove, made for the door. "If I can be of use," he said, "let me know."

Annandale stood up. "You can," he answered. For a moment he hesitated. He seemed lost and dizzy. Then, with an effort, he got himself together. "Tell Sylvia it is not true."

Orr passed out. But instead of returning at once to Irving Place he went up the steps of an adjoining house. There he was told that Mrs. Loftus could see no one. He had not expected to be received. But he felt for her, felt, too, how she must feel.

That a Loftus should die would, he knew, be enough. But that a Loftus should be murdered, and that Loftus be her son, there was something which, Orr thought, might perhaps overwhelm her. And, as Orr afterward learned, Mrs. Loftus was then sitting, her attendants about her, absently and ceaselessly shaking her head. Nor did the motion of it ever cease. She was palsied.

Before Orr learned of that other things supervened, primarily fresh extras. These of course were indicated. The imagination of the public had been stirred. Of all things mystery affects the imagination most. Here was one agreeably heightened by subsequent editions announcing the projection of the eternal feminine.

Then those that read these sheets felt that they were getting their money's worth. But the feeling was accentuated when one of the papers gratified them with a picture of a girl who they saw was an exceedingly fetching young woman and who they were informed had vanished from her residence, the Arundel, where she was known as Miss Leroy.

Her connection with Loftus, a connection which the neighborhood generally understood, was shown with reportorial ease. With the same ease it was established that he had been with her the evening preceding the night of his death. Bag and baggage the next morning she had flown.

That fact in itself was prodigiously interesting. A young and pretty assassin, what! It was quite like fiction. It was almost too good or too bad to be true. Besides, the picture displayed a girl not merely pretty but quasi-ideal, a face infinitely delicate, disdainful yet sad.

Orr saw the picture and saw too that, while perhaps rather flattering, it did not resemble Marie in the least. As a matter of fact it was an art editor's fake. But that, of course, the public did not know and being fed on fakes would not have cared if it had known.

Then more mystery followed. What were her antecedents? Who were her people? Whence had she come? No one could say. What alone could be said was that a year previous Loftus had taken for her an apartment at the Arundel, where she had resided in a manner otherwise genteel, though with, latterly, but one servant, a negress named Blanche.

At the time the police were as much interested in the servant as the public in the girl. The latter in departing had had the forethought to leave the former behind, and, from her, information relevant and irrelevant was obtained.

To Mr. Peacock for instance, one of the district attorneys, Blanche related that at dinner her mistress liked sweetbreads and sorrel with, now and then, a chocolate souffle.

Mr. Peacock was a florid man with the face of a cupid, the guile of a fox and the voice of an ogre. "I don't care for that," he told her.

"Nor I," Blanche agreeably replied.

"I mean," said Mr. Peacock, "that I don't care about her victuals. She was in love with the dead man, wasn't she?"

"I guess so," Blanche with profound if unconscious psychology replied. "She was always scrapping with him. She----"

"Tell me," Peacock interrupted, "what happened the last night he was there."

"It was awful. He was trying to get rid of her. He wasn't much and I told him so, but he was all she had. When I first came to her she said she was an orphan, that she hadn't anybody anywhere, that they were all dead."

"She may have meant," Peacock with even profounder psychology interjected, "that she was dead to them."

But this insinuation Blanche resented. "She could be lively enough when she liked."

"Who came to see her?"

"Mr. L."

"No one else?"

Blanche shook her head.

"Whom did she write to?"

"How do I know?"

"Didn't you ever see her write to anyone?"

"Well, the last night, after he had gone, she did write a letter and gave it to me to post. When I came back----"

"Whom was it addressed to?"

Blanche shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know, I can't read. When I came back she was crying and getting a few duds together and I helped her."

"Did she tell you where she was going?"

"Sure. To Europe. I saw her off the next day. She went in the sewerage."

"In the steerage, do you mean?" asked Peacock. "But she hadn't any money? Didn't Loftus give her any?"

"She wouldn't take his money, she threw it back at him. She would not take anything he had given her. She left a room full of dresses and jewelry. They are at the Arundel now. She told me----"

"Did you see her on board?"

Blanche nodded.

"Mightn't she have left the ship before it sailed?"

"Yes, if she had wanted. I wouldn't have stopped her. But I stood there and as the ship went out she waved her little hand at me and--and----"

"Do you remember the ship's name?"

But now Blanche was weeping profusely.

"No matter," said Peacock. "I can find out."

He did. He found out, too, that when Loftus was shot Marie Leroy was on the high seas. And there he was without a clue. What is worse, there was the eager public quite as deficient.

Yet though the clue which the girl represented was necessarily abandoned, there remained a theory. There remained even two theories. The first was robbery.

Loftus, when found, had about him not so much as a five-cent piece. The wad of bills which men of means are supposed to carry, and which, having credit everywhere, they never do, was absent. Absent too was the customary watch. The precise use which a man of means and particularly of leisure can have for a watch the police and press did not stop to consider. The absence of watch and money suggested a theory. That was enough.

The theory, however, like all theories, had its defects. Loftus had been found within the park, a few feet from the fence. The shooting might have occurred from without, but unless the assassin had a key or a ladder or a balloon or wings he could not possibly have got in to go through him. Eliminating ladder, balloon and wings, a key the assassin could not have had unless he were a resident in the neighborhood, the agent of a resident, or a caretaker of the park itself. People of this order are as eliminable as balloons and wings.

The theory therefore had its defects. It had, though, this in its favor--the lock of one of the gates might have been picked. It had something else in its favor. It suited the Loftus clan.

Mrs. Loftus, though childless now, was not otherwise alone. Behind her were all the Loftuses, a contingent of relatives socially eminent, ponderable politically, super-respectable, synonymous with the best. To them the death of Royal, however dismal, was not disgraceful--not disgraceful, that is, assuming that it was a footpad's work. On their escutcheon it put a mourning band but not a blackening blot. That blot they feared. They had cause to. The dark, donjuanesque story about Marie Leroy might have been followed by other stories darker still, dirtier if possible, that would begrime them all.

The footpad theory they accepted therefore at once. Had they been able, had circumstances favored them, had the man, for instance, been shot in some way or in some place unknowable to the police, they would have arranged to have had him die decorously, if suddenly, of some genteel complaint, of appendicitis or pleuro-pneumonia. Then there would have been no stories, no extras, no pictures, no notoriety, no fear of that blot.

The fear subsisting, they accepted the footpad theory, glad to find it ready-made, declining to consider any other, desisting from further effort, hushing the matter as well as they could, refusing, though urged, to offer a reward.

Yet, though the theory suited them it did not satisfy the public. It was too tame. They demanded something else. That demand the press, as was its duty, attempted to supply. Through methods unfathomably vidocqesque, the young gentleman connected with the _Chronicle_--one of the most enterprising sheets--discovered more about Loftus dead than Loftus living could himself have known. They discovered that in the panic he had dropped a bagatelle of five millions, and announced that he had committed suicide. But while at the autopsy it was not demonstrated that Loftus could not have shot himself, at the inquest it was shown that the obligatory instrument had not been found. Even to vidocqesque young gentlemen the suicide theory ceased then to appeal.

But that only deepened the mystery. To dissipate it and, at the same time, to display an endearing pro bono publicanism, the _Chronicle_ offered a reward of five thousand dollars for such information as would lead to the arrest and conviction of the assassin.

Immediately there was a clue.

It was Harris who produced it. Under the guidance of a reporter he was led to the office of the _Chronicle_, where the young gentleman turned him over to the managing editor quite as though the clue were his own.

"Here, Mr. Digby, is a party that knows who shot Loftus."

Mr. Digby was a small man with a big beard, very well dressed, remarkably civil.

"Yes," he said. "And who did?"

"Mr. Arthur Annandale."

Mr. Digby smiled. He did not believe it. But it stirred him pleasurably. The _Chronicle_ stood for the people. Annandale represented the predatory rich. Besides, it was in front of Annandale's house that Loftus had been found. At once he saw scoops, extras, headlines. Also the possible libel. Meanwhile at a glance he had taken Harris in.

"You are in his employment?"

"Yes, sir," Harris, amazed at such perspicacity, replied. "I am the butler."

"And you saw him do it?"

"No, sir, but I heard him say he would."

"When?"

"The night Mr. Loftus was shot."

"To whom did he say it? To you?"

"To Mrs. Annandale, sir."

"Oho! How was that?"

"It was after dinner, sir. I was in the dining-room. The second man was with me cleaning up. On the floor under the table he found a necklace. I took it in through the hall to the drawing-room. Mrs. Annandale was there with Mr. Annandale. When I was just at the door I heard him say, 'I'll kill Loftus.' I went in and gave him the necklace."

"But why?" Mr. Digby interrupted. "What was he going to kill him for? What was the motive?"

"Mr. Loftus had just gone, sir. He had been dining with us. He and several others."

"Well?"

"Well, sir, when I was in the hall I heard Mrs. Annandale say as how she wanted a divorce."

"Aha!" exclaimed Mr. Digby. "The plot thickens. Was she in love with Loftus?"

"She was that, sir. Anyone could see it."

"Then what?"

"Mr. Annandale went upstairs, came down again and went out."

"Did you attach any importance to his going upstairs?"

"He went to get his pistol, sir."

"Oho! He had a pistol, had he?"

"Yes, sir. A 32-calibre. I bought it for him myself."

"That is a very good story," said Mr. Digby, who was a judge.