Chapter 11

Fresh as the early morning dew that hung, a gentle, swaying silver mantle above the ceaseless currents of the North River, Britz awoke and for a long time permitted his eyes to feast on the restful picture offered by the now deserted Riverside Drive. Reluctantly he withdrew his gaze from the alluring vista that spread from his window--the graveled walks, the well-kept lawns sloping down to the stream, the wide stretch of shimmering water sending slanting shafts of silver against the rocky base of the opposite Palisades, and, in the dim distance, the softly undulating Jersey hills meeting the sky line in a wavy gray thread indistinctly outlined in the clearing mist.

Britz's salary was inadequate for an entire apartment on the Drive. But he could afford a large square room overlooking the Hudson in the apartment of a small family that understood the ways of their lodger and ministered to his comfort.

A cold shower shook the last vestige of lassitude out of the detective's system, and, after an ample breakfast prepared and served by the single servant of the house, Britz devoted himself to the reports which Manning had delivered to him the previous night.

For three hours he sat absorbed in silent study of the documents, occasionally jotting down a brief note on a pad of paper or inter-lining a paragraph which he regarded as having especial significance.

When he finished reading, he indulged in an additional hour of thoughtful contemplation, arranging in their proper sequence the meager facts which his men had discovered, and trying to draw from each bit of new evidence its true relation to the crime.

Meager, indeed, was the helpful knowledge contained in the voluminous reports of the men. Mrs. Collins had remained secluded in her home most of the time; Collins had forsaken his customary haunts and also clung desperately to the solitude of his Delmore Park mansion. Ward spent his days at his business and his nights at his home. But around Beard things were transpiring, although the detectives spying on him in the Tombs had been unable to acquaint themselves with the precise nature of the moves he was making to accomplish his release from prison.

No trace had been obtained of the butler who vanished with the documents which Britz had gathered in Beard's home. But of the servant's eventual capture Britz had not the slightest doubt. It was a safe guess that he would endeavor soon to communicate with Beard either in person or by letter, and the moment he did so he would reveal himself to the authorities.

Of the utmost importance, however, was the report of the Coroner's physician. The autopsy on Whitmore's body disclosed that the bullet which killed the merchant had entered the abdomen at the right side, traveled upward through the abdominal cavity, escaping the vital organs in its path until it reached the spleen, which it perforated. The bullet did not pass out of the body and was held by the Coroner as a gruesome exhibit, to be used against whomever might be accused of Whitmore's murder.

It was the path which the bullet had traveled that interested Britz. The absence of powder marks, the disappearance of the pistol with which the mortal shot was fired, effectually eliminated the theory of suicide. Yet, a man seated in a chair, and bent on self-destruction, might easily have inflicted the wound described by the Coroner's physician. Before arriving at any definite conclusion, however, as to the position of the assassin when he sent the bullet into Whitmore's body, the detective decided to study the enlarged photograph of the wound which he had ordered the official photographer to make.

He found the picture on his desk at Police Headquarters. Greig had preceded him by two hours to the building in Mulberry street, and was deep in the intricacies of the case when Britz summoned him. He entered the room, followed a moment or two later, by Manning.

"What do you make of it?" asked Britz, holding up the picture.

"Pretty jagged wound," commented Manning.

Britz produced a magnifying glass through which the three men examined the wound more critically.

"There are two perforations of the skin where the bullet entered," Britz pointed out. "Undoubtedly they were made by the needle which I picked off the floor of Whitmore's office."

"Well, what of that?" asked the chief.

"It confirms my belief that I have solved the mystery of how Whitmore was killed."

"I don't see it," snapped the chief. "If you do, why don't you enlighten us?"

"Because I can't be positive until I have more evidence," answered Britz, unmoved by the other's irritation. "However, I believe that before many days we shall have solved the entire case."

The conversation was interrupted at this juncture by the telephone bell. Britz lifted the receiver to his ear, made several replies in monosyllables, then returned the receiver to the hook.

"That was Watson up at Delmore Park," he informed the chief. "Says Josephine Burden is on her way to the Tombs to visit Beard."

"Josephine Burden!" echoed Manning in undisguised surprise. "The cotton king's daughter! Why, she's engaged to Lester Ward."

"She may be a messenger for Mrs. Collins, Ward's sister," suggested Greig.

"Whatever her mission, I'll soon know all about it," asserted Britz. "I'm going to the Tombs."

On the way to the big, gray City Prison, the detective tried vainly to account for Josephine Burden's appearance in the case. That only the most urgent reason would bring her to the Tombs at this critical stage of the case, was self-evident. The newspapers were devoting columns to it. The more enterprising yellow journals, whose investigations were conducted independent of the police, were hinting openly that George Collins ought to exchange places with Beard in prison. Every new figure in the mystery, every new development, was being exploited frantically in the press. Surely Josephine Burden was not braving the danger of unwelcome notoriety merely to deliver a message from Mrs. Collins, or Collins, or Ward. A less conspicuous messenger would have served them equally well. No. Josephine Burden was on her way to the prison for a reason intimately associated with herself, a compelling reason, one that conquered her innate dislike for the newspaper prominence which she was braving.

At the Tombs Britz held a brief conversation with the warden, after which he was conducted to a cell at the end of a tier, behind the barred door of which Beard must receive all his visitors save his lawyer. The detective seated himself on a small, round wooden stool, hidden from view by the heavy iron door of the cell. But every word of what was said by anyone standing in the corridor, would come to Britz's ears through the grating.

Half an hour after Britz was locked in the cell, an automobile drew up at the curb on the Center street side of the prison and a young woman alighted. Her slim figure was concealed beneath a long fur coat, her face shielded by a heavy automobile veil. She approached the guard behind the barred entrance to the jail with the timorous manner of persons making their first visit to such an institution.

"May I see Mr. Horace Beard?" she inquired weakly.

"Sure, if he'll see you," answered the doorman, unlocking and swinging open the broad portal.

She entered with a feeling of dread, as if the atmosphere of the place chilled and repelled her. It is always thus with persons visiting a jail for the first time. There is something sinister in the suggestions conveyed by the long, silent tiers of grated iron doors, something that strikes terror into the stoutest hearts.

A trusty carried her name to Beard and returned at the end of five minutes with the information that the prisoner was willing to see her.

As if further to rasp her refined sensibilities and shock her, she was escorted into a little side room and subjected to a thorough search at the hands of a stout, impassive matron. To Josephine Burden it seemed an unnecessary humiliation and she shrank inwardly from contact with those rough, though nimble hands.

Being unaccustomed to the peculiar etiquette of prisons, she was unable to appreciate how necessary is the precaution of searching all visitors. Even with the exercise of the utmost care, it is impossible to prevent the smuggling of weapons and other contraband to the prisoners.

Nothing to arouse the suspicion of the matron was found on Miss Burden and she was escorted to the tier on which Beard was confined. As she passed up the winding iron stairs and down the long corridors, catching glimpses of human faces peering anxiously through the grating of their cells, she could not help a feeling of pity for the poor wretches confined like wild animals in their iron cages.

To the ordinary curiosity seeker the spectacle is one which leaves a feeling of depression that abides with one like a frightful nightmare prolonged through the hours of wakefulness. What then must be the emotions of those, who, visiting the prison for the first time, behold one who is near and dear to them peering helplessly, with that look of mute appeal that is ever present in the eyes of unfortunate humans deprived of liberty, from behind the interposing bars of a gloomy cell?

The first flash which Josephine Burden obtained of the man she had come to visit, produced a feeling of horror not unmixed with revolt at the relentless cruelty of the steel bars through which she discerned his haggard face. Beard's form, dimly outlined against the steel door at the end of a long corridor, seemed to have gathered to itself the wan light that filtered through a narrow window at the right of the aisle, and taken on a gray, misty aspect, wraith-like and terrifying. She had come upon him abruptly, at the turn of the stairs, and for a moment she stood silent, overcome by a chaos of emotions.

If she expected the door to open she was disappointed, for the trusty simply withdrew half a dozen paces leaving the prisoner and his visitor to face each other and converse through the narrow space between the bars.

"I received your note," Beard broke the embarrassing silence, "and I can't tell you how much it cheered me."

She advanced nearer the door, and extending a gloved hand through the bars, permitted it to repose an instant in the prisoner's grateful palm.

"I had to come," she murmured, "although father went into a fury when I told him."

"And you came to cheer me--to tell me you believe in me?"

Something far deeper than mere gratitude shone in his eyes, and was reflected in the agitated countenance of the girl.

"I came to tell you that I broke my engagement to Lester Ward," she said in quivering voice.

Cautiously Britz peered at the couple through the iron grating of his cell. He noted the tremor which passed down Beard's form and the furtive caress which he bestowed on the visitor's hand. At the same time the girl lifted her veil, disclosing a finely molded face of flawless features, with a skin of exquisite paleness, and flashing brown eyes shaded by long, dark lashes. As she stood with fingers encircling the bars that interposed between her and Beard, her beautiful face took on a purposeful aspect, as of one suddenly possessed of a new and consuming interest in life.

The news which she had brought the prisoner cheered him perceptibly. But he regarded her as if even now he found it difficult to credit her with the courage she must have displayed in discarding the man whom she had promised to wed.

"How did it happen?" inquired Beard in a voice that betrayed his bewildered state of mind.

"You must have known, your instinct must have told you that I accepted him because of father's urging," she said. "Now that you are in trouble I don't fear to tell you that I wanted you all the time. When I read of your arrest I wanted to fly to you, to be near you, to sustain you. This morning I told father of my intention to break the engagement. And, do you know, he assented at once. But he went into a rage when I told him I was coming here, although he seemed perfectly pleased to have me break with Lester."

A person of duller intellect than Britz, from overhearing the conversation between Beard and the girl, would have discerned the romance in the lives of the couple. Had they revealed it in its most intimate detail, they could not have conveyed a better understanding of it than through the words uttered in this murky prison corridor. It was plain to Britz that Beard and Ward had been suitors for the girl's hand; that Ward's suit was successful through the favor which he found in the eyes of the girl's father. But now, when the man with whom she really was in love was in desperate straits, that love could no longer be diverted from its true channel, and, like an irresistible current that sweeps everything before it, it had carried her to the side of her endangered lover.

Materialists may find it difficult to distinguish between love and passion--may deny to their hearts' content the existence of any line of demarcation between them. But the true lover has no doubt on the subject. Love distinguishes itself from passion, through sacrifice. Passion is invariably selfish. Love never is.

Britz, recognizing instinctively the genuineness of the woman's love, passed over its ennobling aspect, to find therein a potent influence for the solution of the crime with which he was engaged. The girl had unconsciously revealed herself to him as a means to an end--that end being the discovery and punishment of the murderer of Herbert Whitmore.

Had Beard been an experienced criminal, he would have known that no walls have more ears, nor more delicately attuned ears, than prison walls. And that knowledge would have inspired a suspicion of the very bars against which he pressed his fevered face. But being without previous jail experience, he said in a voice as distinctly audible to Britz as if he had been talking directly to the detective,--

"Then you don't believe for a single instant the terrible accusation they have lodged against me?"

"No one who knows you can possibly believe it," she answered in a tone of conviction.

"Dearest," he said, adopting a confidential air, "I could leave this prison to-morrow were I so inclined. They haven't the least particle of evidence against me--they cannot have. Were I to force the issue they could not make out a case sufficient to justify my being held for the grand jury. I am staying here because I want to, because it is best that they should direct their efforts toward trying to prove me the murderer."

Britz, in the darkness of his cell, indulged in an amused smile. So this man was endeavoring to draw the fire of the police in order to save the guilty person! Here was a pretty drama of cross-purposes. Had Beard been sufficiently shrewd to see through the purpose of his detention, he would have submitted to his imprisonment with less complacency.

"You mean that you are offering yourself as a target in order to shield the guilty person?" she inquired incredulously.

"Precisely."

"But why?" she demanded.

"Because I conceive it to be Mr. Whitmore's wish."

"Mr. Whitmore!" exclaimed she, obviously puzzled. "You mean he asked you to?"

"No," acknowledged he. "But I know what must have been in his mind when he died. I know what he would have done, had he lived to do it. Dearest, I shouldn't have hesitated to sacrifice my own life for him. I was more like a son to him than a secretary. And had I been with him when he died, I know he would have imposed silence on me."

"Then the men in his office--they know the murderer and he asked them not to tell?" An expression of astonishment overspread her face.

"No," he answered. "They don't know. They've told the truth."

"Horace,"--her voice grew persuasive--"Horace, you mustn't think of yourself alone now. I can't bear to think of you imprisoned in this place. For my sake you must leave it and clear yourself of this accusation."

He shook his head sadly.

"If you knew all the circumstances you'd approve my course."

"But I don't know them--and it's torturing me." For the first time her features showed the anguish she was suffering. He saw and was moved.

"Listen!" His eyes searched the corridor and the adjoining cells. Seeing no one but the indifferent trusty who was too far away to overhear, Beard continued: "Mr. Whitmore loved Mrs. Collins, as you already know. Were scandal to break over her head--if I did not sacrifice myself to prevent it--it would be the vilest ingratitude to an employer whose memory I venerate."

"Then you are protecting Mrs. Collins?" Her frame throbbed with the conflict of agonized emotions. "Mrs. Collins!" she repeated, as if afraid that he had misunderstood.

"Yes," he answered resignedly. "I know I am doing precisely what Mr. Whitmore would have asked, me to do. And now, dear, please don't press me farther. I can't tell you more--not at this time. When all this shall have been forgotten, when Mr. Whitmore's death ceases to occupy the public and the police, then I'll tell you everything."

When two hearts charged with love begin to exchange confidences, it is impossible to foretell what revelations will be forthcoming. And the chances are that had Beard been allowed sufficient time, he would have unburdened himself of the heavy load that was pressing on his heart. But unfortunately for Britz, the hour for exercising the prisoners confined on the tier had arrived, and a deputy warden cut short the interview between Beard and Miss Burden. She was escorted to the street, while Beard joined the other inmates for a half hour of exercise and fresh air in the courtyard.

With Beard's intimation of Mrs. Collins's complicity in the murder reiterating itself in his mind, Britz left the Tombs and proceeded toward the Federal Building. The detective had seen, had interviewed Mrs. Collins. It was impossible to reconcile her artless, engaging personality with an impulse so base as to lead to murder.

Besides, Beard's remarks were open to more than one interpretation. It was entirely possible that he was endeavoring to shield her name from the befouling suspicion of having yielded to Whitmore, a suspicion which the general public would be quick to convert into an unalterable belief, once it learned that she had transferred her love from her husband to the slain merchant. Should the murderer be discovered and brought to trial the dissensions in the Collins household would be paraded unsparingly in the public press. Innocent as the relations between Whitmore and Mrs. Collins were, they would take on a guilty aspect in the eyes of a world that is ever ready to discern its own debasing impulses reflected in the conduct of one who has been regarded hitherto as unstained.

Reviewing all the circumstances of the case, Britz concluded that Beard's statement was not to be accepted as an intimation of Mrs. Collins's guilt. For, had he not accused Collins in even stronger terms in the very presence of his murdered employer?

It was not to be forgotten, too, that a favorite dodge of guilty persons is to adopt the pose of a martyr. And, in lieu of an adequate defense, to create a favorable doubt by insinuating that they are accepting punishment in order to shield a woman. When artfully worked, this deceit may always be relied upon to create undeserved sympathy.

Were there nothing else to absolve Mrs. Collins from the suspicion that she was responsible for Whitmore's death, the absence of motive would have proclaimed her innocence. She loved him. She was ready to discard her husband for him. She and her brother were looking to him to save them from financial ruin. No, she had nothing to gain and everything to lose by the merchant's death.

With this conclusion fixed in his mind, Britz arrived at the office of the United States District Attorney.

"Where is the deputy who took the convict, Arthur Travis, to Atlanta?" he inquired.

Wells, the district attorney, smiled musingly.

"Resigned day before yesterday," he replied. "Said a relative had left him a fortune and he was going on a long trip for his health."

Britz proceeded to enlighten the district attorney as to the real reason for the deputy's departure. He related all the circumstances that led up to the substitution of prisoners, Wells listening with growing amazement. When Britz finished, the district attorney regarded him an instant, incredulity engraved on his face.

"I can't believe it," he said. "And yet, lieutenant, I don't doubt your word an instant."

"You'll be able to ascertain the facts for yourself," pursued Britz. "What I am here for is to ask your help in solving the Whitmore case. Of course, you'll prosecute the deputy if you ever find him. But I want you to arrange things so that I can promise immunity to the substitute. His real name is Timson. I'm going to wire a lawyer in Atlanta to get him out of jail on a writ of habeas corpus. Now, it is more important that we land the murderer of Herbert Whitmore than that you should send Timson to jail for aiding in the escape of a man who was killed within a day after obtaining his freedom. As for Beard who engineered the deal, I doubt whether you can convict him. It will be a case of Timson's word against Beard's and, since it is impossible to obtain corroborating evidence, the judge will have to charge the jury to acquit Beard. But with Timson up here to be used as a club, I think I can force Beard to tell what he knows of the killing of his employer."

"Well, go ahead and obtain your writ of habeas corpus for the substitute. I'll communicate with the Attorney-General in Washington and see whether he'll agree to the immunity proposition," said Wells.

From the Federal Building Britz went to the financial district to look up Ward. A plan of action was forming in his brain, shaping itself as molten lead shapes itself to the mold. If Horace Beard was stained with Whitmore's blood, there was one man who could be made to direct the finger of accusation against him. One man there was in whose heart bitterness and rancor could be aroused against the merchant's secretary.

Beset by financial difficulties, deserted by the girl to whom he was engaged, Lester Ward would be an easy prey to the acute mind and provoking methods of the experienced detective. If jealousy can inspire hatred, then Ward must feel toward his successful rival all the ferocious hatred of a man resenting a great deprivation. And that vengeful passion must not be permitted to expend itself in profitless inward torture. It was a potent force for Britz's dexterous hands to manipulate, a destructive fury that should annihilate Beard--if Beard was the slayer of Herbert Whitmore.