1,99 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
Rufus Gillmore's "The Alster Case" masterfully weaves a complex narrative that delves into the intricacies of crime, morality, and human psychology. Set against a backdrop of mid-20th century societal norms, the novel employs a rich, layered prose style that invites readers to explore the darker corners of the human psyche. As the narrative unfolds, Gillmore intricately constructs a suspenseful plot that blends elements of detective fiction with philosophical interrogations of right and wrong, ultimately encouraging readers to question their own moral compass. Rufus Gillmore, a noted figure in contemporary literature, draws upon his own experiences in law enforcement and academia to craft this intriguing tale. His background in sociology and criminology informs the depth of character development and the psychological nuances portrayed within the narrative. Gillmore's keen observations of human behavior, coupled with a fascination for unresolved criminal cases, propel the unfolding of the Alster investigation, making it as much a reflection of societal issues as a gripping crime story. Readers seeking a thought-provoking and suspenseful literary experience will find "The Alster Case" indispensable. It transcends typical genre boundaries, offering not just a page-turner but an insightful exploration of justice and human emotion. This compelling narrative not only captivates but also prompts critical reflection, making it a must-read for enthusiasts of both fiction and philosophy.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
Ähnliche
The Alster Case
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
On the morning after the murder I arrived at the office late. Having been outrageously overworked and, having gone through more of late than is given to many men to endure, I had barely closed my eyes the night before, and was in a highly overwrought and nervous condition. I remember that I went straight to my desk, forgetting my customary “Good morning” to the office boy, neglecting even that welcoming smile from pretty Miss Walsh with which my day’s work ordinarily began.
Miss Walsh, let it be known, was not only an exceedingly pretty stenographer, but the one human being in that outer office of Avery, Avery & Avery who made any endeavor to lessen my burden. The two surviving members of the firm thrust work upon me daily which I never could have pretended to complete without her voluntary aid. Moreover, she not only relieved me, or assisted me in my tasks, in that inordinately successful law office, but in many delicate ways she conveyed to me the impression that I had both her sympathy and appreciation for all I endured there.
Barely had I seated myself at my desk in the outer office this morning before Miss Walsh stole quietly over to me. Pretending to be in search of something among the piled up papers on my desk, yet with a woman’s eye out for interruptions, she whispered:
“Lim, Junior, has been running in and out after you like a chipmunk.”
Limousine, Junior, the younger of the Averys, was secretly called this because he dashed about in the family limousine whenever his father was out of town or could not contrive another use for it. He was also my particular slave-driver, and, being in the middle twenties, and hence a year or two younger than I, he took great delight in making an ostentation of his authority over me. I already bore three-quarters of the burden of his work—without complaint or protest, because there was no escape. My father had given up the struggle and committed suicide; I was the only one of the family yet started on a career; my mother, way out in that little town in Ohio, needed what I earned merely to feed and clothe and house herself and my younger brothers and sisters. I had given hostages. I was dependent, in its lowest, clerkly form. And the Averys made the most of it.
“Does he want anything except—” I reached for the clutter of law books at the back of my desk. I did not finish. It wasn’t necessary with Miss Walsh.
“No, I think—” Miss Walsh stopped abruptly. She picked up a slip of blank paper, and scurried away to her own desk, just as the younger of the Averys flung open the door of his private office and headed furiously toward me.
“Where are those references on the Hawley case you were to have ready for me this morning?” he demanded nippingly.
“I’m sorry—”
“Not ready?” There was a snarl in his voice, and his young, immature face gathered in an insulting look.
“All but two,” I murmured, opening one of the books and burying my face in it.
“ ‘All but two!’ ” he mocked. “What’s the use? Court opens at ten. It’s after nine now and me here sitting waiting for you to condescend to come to work. What’s the matter with you lately, Swan?”
“Nothing—unless it’s too much work for one man. I worked until after six on these references last night.”
“Well—couldn’t you work later?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I had an engagement,” I answered with a meekness which was loaded.
“Engagement! Engagement with whom?”
“Must I tell you?” I was even meeker.
“ ‘Must you tell me!’ ” Never was there a man who could mock one more insolently. “Far be it from me to inquire into the hidden and private adventures of one of you quiet ones. Still waters run deep and—” he made an odious gesture. “But there’s one thing I’ve had on my mind to tell you for a long time and now appears to be the occasion. I’m wise to a great deal more of what’s happening about this office than you’re aware of. I can’t stop you from swelling out to dinners and shows, but if you want to save your bacon you’ll quit trying to curry favor with those about this office by taking them along.” His eyes shifted from mine, carrying the leer of an insinuation in the direction of Miss Walsh.
“It’s lucky for you that she didn’t see you,” I predicted, flushing.
“Oh! So it wasn’t she!” His delight in his discovery was sophomoric, disgusting.
“No.”
“Well—of course—if you choose to tamper with the affections of the young ladies in any of the other offices in this building—”
I chose to leave his curiosity still unsatisfied. I knew the nature of the little beast.
“Whom was your engagement with?” he was forced to ask at last.
“With Miss Cornelia Alster,” I answered quietly.
The news was the bomb to him that I expected. He stood for a moment regarding me blankly, his mouth agape, not the will power for a word left to his tongue. He was as one stunned with the magnificence of his blunder, the uncalculated possibilities of the news I had imparted. “Well—get out the rest of those references for me just as soon as you can,” he ordered in a voice that he tried vainly to make sound natural.
But though he retired at once so that his astonishment might not make more of a spectacle of him, sounds told me that he had borne the news straight to his father in the private office next to his. And even before I could complete the work for which he had been so insistent, word came that I was wanted by the senior and ruling member of the firm.
The younger of the Averys had evidently been told to leave further words and action to his father. At least he was not present, and the door between their private offices was tightly closed when I came upon my summons. The elder Avery was one of those bearded, squarely hewed, ponderous lawyers, without juice, as massive of body and weighty of manner as if he were one of the pillars in the Supreme Court of Justice. He was a superb, overbearing advocate of whatever cause he happened to take; he never appeared to hear the other side. He motioned me to a chair at his side.
“My son has just informed me,” he stated, “that unknown to us you had an engagement with Miss Alster last night. Am I correctly informed?”
I nodded.
“It was with Miss Cornelia Alster—not with either of her charming nieces?”
“Yes. With Miss Cornelia Alster.”
“Hem!” He coughed, apparently for importance rather than need. “Mr. Swan,” he began after a moment, “you’re a nice, clean-looking, well-set-up young man, a credit to us, I hope. But I’m obliged to ask you one question. Was your engagement with Miss Alster last night a business or a social one?”
“Why do you ask me that, Mr. Avery?”
“For a number of reasons.” He smithed his beard. “For a number of reasons.” He regarded me heavily with a baleful look that he intended to be subtle. “We won’t go into them all. But I think I may go so far as to say—or rather to intimate—that we shall be guided by your answer as to whether we ought to make a charge to her for your services or not.”
“She invited me to accompany her to the opera. You surely can’t think of making any charge against her for that,” I exclaimed.
“Ah, to the opera! Yes, yes; purely social. As you say, we should not think of making any charge for that. And now that this little question is so satisfactorily disposed of, I think I will take occasion to go into another matter that concerns you. How long have you known Miss Cornelia Alster?”
“Two or three weeks—a month at the outside.” His question annoyed me; he knew very well how long I had known her.
“A month. Yes, let us call it a month. And she appears to have taken quite a fancy to you, has she?”
In spite of myself I blushed a little at the insinuation I suspected to be lurking behind his words. My gorge rose, as it was always rising in my dealings with the Averys, father or son. But I had sense enough to realize that he had said nothing as yet upon which to fasten offense. “Yes, she appears to like me,” I responded guardedly. And then as his calm silence and scrutiny seemed to require more of me, I went on: “You may remember that her affairs were turned over to me several weeks ago because your son found it impossible to get along with her. I took the task with reluctance. I have had occasion to see her perhaps half a dozen times since, always at her own home, always on business connected with the estate. I found her eccentric, singularly intolerant of all advice, but as soon as I realized this we got along swimmingly. Yes, though I may be flattering myself, I think I may say that she seemed to like me. Last night’s invitation to the opera proves that.”
“Right, but do you know how little that means?” The senior Avery’s voice rose a little.
“I trust I haven’t appeared conceited over it.”
“Hem!” His silence indicted me on that score all right. “We won’t go into that. It isn’t necessary. But I feel it my duty to counsel you on what leads up to that. If you have known Miss Alster for only a few weeks, you know little or nothing about her. We have handled her estate now for perhaps three years and we are the only lawyers in the city who have been able to retain it for more than a few months at a time. This must prove to you of itself that we understand Miss Alster—understand her thoroughly. And now, to give you the benefit of our experience, I want to tell you something about Miss Alster. She’s a very fickle woman to do business with, to have any dealings with, social or otherwise. She’s a woman of fine, strong, generous impulses, but they’re not lasting. I feel it my duty to warn you. Her highly inflamed generosity is not to be counted on. Just as soon as she begins to show favor toward people, to do anything for them, they are lost. She begins to think they’re ungrateful, she—”
“But I don’t see why you take all this trouble to warn me when I have nothing to lose,” I broke out. “I have only—”
“Nevertheless,” he silenced me with a broad, sweeping gesture, “nevertheless, I feel it my duty to do so. Now to prove my contention. You have doubtless met the two very beautiful and cultivated young women who live with her. They are understood to be her nieces. They are not.” He paused merely to enjoy my astonishment. “Linda, the elder, is not related to her in any way. She was adopted in a generous impulse as a baby from what institution or person nobody knows. Beatrice, the younger, is the offspring of some distant connection, how remote or near, no one knows because Miss Alster by her eccentricities long ago alienated all her relations and friends.”
I murmured my surprise.
“Now!” He brought his fist down ponderously on his desk but with care not to injure himself. “Now, to prove how fickle are her impulses. Twenty-two years ago she adopted Linda to be her heir. Fifteen years ago she discarded Linda from her affections, and brought Beatrice into her household to be educated as her heir. On her also she in time turned. Less than one year ago we made a new will in which she left all her estate, except a bare competence for each, to a certain specified list of charities.”
I no longer murmured. I expressed my surprise.
“Whether it was fair to these two young women to bring them up accustomed to the luxuries she provided, whether either of them knows the emergencies they must later face, I don’t say, likewise that is beside the question. All I feel the burden of to-day is to convince you that she is fickle and dangerous in the extreme to all young people who experience her favor and grow to rely upon it. To make quite sure that you shall not be misled in this way in spite of my words, I shall take steps to take over from you her affairs beginning with to-day. From now on, when she asks for you, you are to tell us. Either my son or I will attend to her business.”
I stood and looked at him like any dolt. “But—but—” at last I sputtered.
“There are no buts about it. You are to do as I say or—or you have but one recourse—you can leave our employment.”
I still stood looking at him emptily, my indignation slowly rising to the surface.
“Do you agree to this?” he demanded severely.
My angry reply was ready, on the tip of my tongue, but, before I could answer, there came first a careless knock on his door and then his son swaggered into the room.
“Sorry, father,” he said curtly, “but some lady just insists upon having Mr. Robert Swan come to the telephone.”
I stood for the insult of his emphasis on the word “lady,” likewise the censure of his father’s look and gesture. I hurried out to the telephone booth in the outer office, and after a brief conversation I ran back with a haste that caused me to trip on the rug at the door and all but spill myself on the floor before the Averys.
“I do not agree,” I yelled excitedly.
“What do you mean?” The elder Avery rose to his feet.
I endeavored to check my agitation. “I mean—I mean that I am no longer a slave that you can tell just what to do in hours and out of hours. I’m a free man and I shall do what I please.”
My agitation seemed to pass from me to them.
Harold Avery turned restively toward his father. “Going to stand for this?” he demanded sneeringly. And his father’s cheeks grew red until they seemed as fire above his beard. He took a threatening step toward me, one hand clutching the edge of his desk as if he intended to hurl it at me. “Very well, go then,” he yelled.
I turned to take him at his word. He leaped forward and seized me by the arm. “No. Wait!” he commanded. He had to pause a long time to regain control of his feelings. We stood and glared at each other. “What do you intend to do?” he demanded at last.
I was a little white, but I know I smiled. Our situations were quite reversed now. “There is no reason why I shouldn’t tell you,” I agreed. “From now on I am to have complete charge of Miss Alster’s estate, the portion she has looked after herself as well as the small part you have had charge of. As this estate figures well up into the millions, I shall require virtually all my time. So you can discharge me or I resign—I don’t much care which.”
“We shall see about that.” The elder Avery was regarding me with a smile. “We shall see about that,” he repeated menacingly.
I in turn smiled, smiled back at him, heedless for the first time in the three years of my servitude under him. Then I could not forbear making the most of my triumph. “You don’t know,” I stated, “but at Miss Alster’s direction I drew up a new will for her last week,” I shot.
He continued to smile. “Yes, yes—perhaps—what does that matter?” he rejoined. “There will be another will to-morrow and perchance another one next week, but that account will never leave our office for more than a few hours after I pull certain strings.”
His assurance irritated me. “It’s a trifle late for you to begin to pull any strings,” I ventured.
“What do you mean?” They both asked it together.
“I mean that in the present will I am nominated to serve as sole executor of her entire estate and I expect to qualify under nominal bonds within the next few days.”
“You expect to—what?” gasped the son.
His father stopped him with a look of thick serenity which he afterward visited upon me. “We know that Miss Alster is suffering from an incurable disease,” he stated, “but you appear far too confident that she won’t live long enough to make another will. I shall attend to that.” He signed to his son to bring him his hat.
“You can save yourself all this trouble,” I announced. “Miss Alster will never make another will.”
“What!” he demanded, facing me, and then, unwillingly: “Why?”
I could keep the news no longer. “I have just been telephoned,” I cried in a voice louder than I wanted it to be. “Miss Alster was found murdered in her room this morning.”
And before either of them could think of a word to say, I walked triumphantly from the office.
Chapter 2
I secured my hat and coat and hurried through the outer office without responding even to Miss Walsh’s questioning look. Too late, I realized how she would have rejoiced at the news. But on me now was the additional agitation of one suddenly thrust into new authorities and the hope that in these I might so conduct myself as to secure the favor of Miss Beatrice Alster. It was she—and she alone—who occupied my mind to the exclusion of all others; and I hastened to her side with a nervousness that I was greatly put to it to subdue.
Miss Alster’s late residence was on one of the streets in the seventies, just away from Madison and Fifth Avenues, a four-story brownstone front, not to be remarked from the twenty similar in the block except by its number. As I turned into the street I looked for a crowd before the door. There was no crowd. On the opposite side of the street were one or two groups of men engaged in conversation; as I approached the steps two men, idling there, looked me over, but apparently Miss Alster’s death had not provoked the sensation I expected.
A policeman in uniform opened the door and stopped me rudely as I attempted to pass him.
“Reporter? Here, you! This don’t go. See!” He stopped me with one arm while the other held to the door.
I explained, giving my name, my business, and the purpose of my visit, but he obstinately refused to permit me to pass until I identified myself by my card, by letters, by the initials in my hat and by the name tag in my clothes. Evidently he had been given strict orders to keep reporters at bay; and this—my first fury at my own delay gone—pleased me mightily.
A deathly silence reigned over the house. I could not make up my mind whether the slow, muffled footsteps that seemed to start up, stop, and start up again, now on this floor, now on the floor above, now at an indeterminable distance or nearness—I could not decide whether they were real or a fiction of my over-excited imagination. I stood dumbly in the front hall for a long time, hesitating, the dread of the house of the dead upon me, a great fear of making some blunder or not showing sufficient control and authority acting like paralysis upon me. A slight stir behind me broke the spell. I turned. The policeman stationed at the door was staring at me questioningly. After a hasty glance into the reception room at the right, which proved to be unoccupied, I went quietly upstairs.
Miss Alster had occupied that entire second floor and, doubtless, her body now lay in one of its rooms. I took a long breath as I observed that all the doors were closed. Softly, quickly over the padded carpet, past all these doors, I slipped, never stopping until my foot was on the next staircase and I had taken a firm hold of its banister.
Thud! Thud! Thud! As I paused to glance apprehensively back one of the doors opened. A pair of eyes fell straight and searchingly upon me. With a loosening of the heart I recognized that they were gray, that they were a man’s eyes, that was all, then the door was closed.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Was it the muffled footsteps of this man that I heard without being able to locate? How could he have heard my quick, soft movements along that hall so as to open the door and look straight at me? With a shudder I slipped up the stairs.
Here, as below, all the doors were closed. I had never been on this floor before. I stood undecided as to which room to turn. I listened and could make out nothing except that occasional thud, thud, thud, which seemed to seek me out through the dead silence and to beat on my head as on a muffled drum. I stood there in that upper hall waiting, listening, hoping for other sounds until my heart seemed to stop beating, then the door of the front room on the left opened and Agnes, Miss Alster’s Irish maidservant, stepped out.
Her usually calm face was flushed; she was so flustered that she failed to observe me; she closed the door and stood holding its handle as against some one chasing her, or at least as if against one whom she did not wish to follow her. And, when she finally looked up and noted my presence, she did so with a smothered exclamation of relief. Before I could speak she put a cautioning finger to her lips, listened a moment, and then led me to the room farthest away, closed the door and turned agitatedly toward me.
“ ’Tis a madhouse, a madhouse, a madhouse here to-day!” she exclaimed, hysterically wringing her hands. “The old fiend dead, God rest her soul, and the young fiend loose and carrying on till we’re all at our wits’ ends, and not a man about to lean on! Oh, Mr. Swan, if you’d been through what I have this lovely morning!” She put her hand on my arm and seemed about to cry. “Not a friend in the world—for all their riches, not a friend in the world—it’s a lesson to us—not a soul has been near them—everyone gone except me and Alice—could you blame me for leaving? Not a man around these two hours, except the policeman at the door, and me standing the brunt of it all—and me—” she choked off.
I took her by the arm and led her to a chair. I gave her a little time to control herself. Then I thought of the butler. “But where’s Keith?” I asked her.
“The blackguard!” She forgot her woe in her resentment. “Where would he be the once we need him? Gone, like the bad rubbish I said he was. From the minute I first set eyes on that man I knew him for what he was, a villain if ever I saw one. If the old fiend had ever seen his carryings on with the young fiend as I have!”
“You mean with Miss Linda?” I asked amazed.
“Sure, ’twas scandalous! A butler making signs to her whenever he wanted to talk with her, whispering soft nothings into her silly young ears in this hall upstairs when he thought no one was watching, and then leaving like the sneak and the coward he is just when the young fiend needed him! What would you think of just the scrapings of a man like that?”
Keith, the butler, carrying on a surreptitious flirtation with Linda Alster! Headstrong as that pretty young woman was, I could not believe it. I set it down to Agnes’s prejudice. I led her away from the subject by inquiring as to just how and at what time Miss Alster’s body had been discovered.
“Sure, Mr. Swan, I’ve told that so many times already ’tis dead on my tongue. There was the doctor, the police, the man that’s to buy the house, the—”
“The man that’s to buy the house!”
“Either that or else he’s a friend of the family or else—but didn’t he tell me he had been sent for to look over the house, and haven’t I run into him everywhere looking it over, counting the closets and trying the windows and the doors as if to cheapen it when we came to sell. And yet I liked the old duck; he acted like he knew his business, I’ll say that for him, and he—”
“But Miss Alster never said anything about wanting to sell the house.”
“The old fiend! Sure, and don’t you know her? She was always surprising them she took close to her, not to say disappointing them. Take Miss Linda, see what she’s made out of her. Taking one up like a nurse and dropping one like—like an empty tin can! Sure, I knew she would never come to any good end, God rest her soul!”
Gradually I got from her the details of how and when the body was discovered, though with many digressions not necessary to this story. It appeared that Miss Alster had been a martinet for having breakfast served at eight-thirty every morning and was always down herself a few minutes before that hour, making sure that her nieces and servants alike should be on time. At eight this morning Keith, the butler, not having appeared to prepare the table, Alice, the cook, went up to call him, Agnes refusing to do it. Alice came back with the news that his bed was empty and had not been slept in. The two maids debated the matter and agreed that neither cared to break the news to Miss Alster, because Keith was one of her latest proteges and she would be furious. Eight-thirty arrived and Miss Alster had not come down. There had been some gossip between the maids as to how Miss Alster would take his absence, stopped suddenly by the entrance of the two nieces. They appeared as astonished at Keith’s disappearance as the servants were. There were questions; the four women grew more and more alarmed as the minutes passed and Miss Alster also failed to come down. At last all four went up together and knocked at her door. There was no answer. They listened and could not hear her stirring. They tried the door and found it locked. Then they all fled downstairs.
Here they talked over in hushed whispers what might have happened until not one of them dared to go upstairs again. Finally Miss Beatrice telephoned for the family physician. He came with a locksmith and the women trooped upstairs behind them, Miss Beatrice in the lead. The locksmith opened the door, discovering the lights still to be burning wanly. He and the doctor led the way in, followed by all four women. Miss Alster was in her living-room, fully dressed, lying back in a chair as if she had fallen asleep. They spoke to her and she neither answered nor moved. The men went over to her, waving the women back, and screening her from their sight with their bodies. Then Miss Linda screamed. She had seen the pool of blood lying behind her aunt’s chair.
According to Agnes, Linda had rushed screeching from the room, refusing to allow Beatrice to comfort or to come near her. Agnes followed her upstairs to her room, where Linda locked the door and declared that she never wanted to see Beatrice again. Beatrice knocked at the door and Linda called to her to go away, flew into one of those dry, hysterical tantrums that caused the servants to call her “the young fiend.” She attempted to get her hat and coat and leave the house, but Agnes managed to prevent her by telling her that she would be arrested if she left before the coroner gave permission. Not until her passion wore itself out had Agnes been able to bring Beatrice and her together. And ever since—
“But I thought that Beatrice was the only one that could do anything with Linda when she had one of these fits,” I objected.
“Sure, the devil in the old one has found a lodging in the young one. Since this morning she has that hate for Miss Beatrice that would do credit to the old fiend herself.”
“Don’t expect me to believe that Miss Alster really hated Beatrice!” I protested scornfully, rushing to Beatrice’s defense.
“And what do outsiders like you know about the people of the house and how they feel toward each other?” Agnes crossed off my scorn with her own. “Have you never seen that Miss Linda has her fits and tantrums, but that Miss Beatrice is the one with a will of her own? Maylike you have never heard of all the attempts of the old fiend to break it? How would you, being new to the family and yet under the old fiend’s spell?”
I had nothing to say. I thought better of my attempt to change her opinion.
Agnes rose from her chair, her anger that of a good servant whose word has been questioned. “Maylike you’ll be saying those two girls is friends,” she derided with a roused servant’s contempt. “Maylike you’ll be dreaming that this trouble has brought them together. Maylike you’ll be denying that Miss Linda threw a book at my head, that she threatened to kill me if I stayed in the room.” She flung open the door.
In the hall outside stood a short, square-shouldered, slightly corpulent yet athletic-looking man of about forty-five. He had a massive, powerful-looking head with a good thatch of wavy hair and a short-cropped sandy mustache. He looked like a business man, a broker, or the executive of some big business downtown, who, having steered it to a prosperous destiny, was now concerned in finding a fitting home or investment for his money, and his eyes were fixed upon the ventilator high on the wall as if appraising its use and value. He completed his inspection before acknowledging our presence with a slow, negligent glance from his gray eyes.
Agnes nodded toward him to indicate that he was the man whom she had mentioned and appeared quite unconcerned that he should have been near while she was revealing family secrets. She turned back toward me and went on with the burden of her argument.
“Sure, sir, go in. Go in and see for yourself, if you don’t believe me,” she exclaimed. She pointed toward the room at the front of the hall and ran downstairs.
I hesitated. Agnes had convinced me that there was trouble between the two nieces. I had known them only a few weeks, had seen neither more than a half a dozen times, and gravely doubted my capacity for serving as a peacemaker. And yet if Beatrice needed aid! If I could only believe that my presence would not be an intrusion!
I heard Linda’s voice raised in anger, and this prosperous-looking business man seemed interested neither in that nor in me, nor in anything except the mopboard and the doorframes in the hall.
“There’s a closet and an open fireplace in that room, I presume?” he said finally, acknowledging me with a smile that I found peculiarly ingratiating; and then, with a good nature quite as winning, “Don’t you think it would be better if you went in as the maid suggested?”
Before I could protest he took me by the arm, led me to the door, knocked, and, upon receiving permission, ushered me quietly into the room. I had a short view of him, smiling beneficently after me as he closed the door between us, and then I faced the dreaded duty before me.
It was as Agnes had declared. One glance sufficed to settle that. In chairs on opposite sides of the room sat Miss Alster’s two pseudo nieces, their eyes avoiding each other. It was Beatrice who greeted me, holding out her hand without rising from her seat, and with a slight lightening of her lovely dark face that made my heart catch. Linda, her pretty blonde head supported by one hand, continued staring at the window, oblivious of me, conscious apparently only of some hot difference of which she still nursed the grievance.
“I—I don’t intrude?” I couldn’t help asking, looking, however, not at Linda but at Beatrice.
She shook her head. After a moment Linda turned around toward me as if I had addressed her, her blue eyes snapping.
“Not as long as you don’t attempt to tell me what I ought to do,” she said with a petulant toss of her head. She seemed about to say more, but stopped at a look from Beatrice.
“Remember, Linda! Remember your promise to me,” warned Beatrice in a voice that trembled a little.
“I can be trusted quite as much as one I’m not naming,” retorted Linda, and I saw Beatrice take the affront to herself, blush and become silent as if fearing to provoke her further.
I stood there, attempting to divert them from their difference by making some inane lead about the weather.
Suddenly Linda interrupted me in the midst of a sentence. “Beatrice says it is necessary for me to remain here to preserve appearances for her—is it?”
“Yes, but quite as much to preserve appearances for yourself.” I stared at her in amazement
“I don’t care anything about appearances. I want to go. I want to leave this house and all its terrible people forever. I never want to see any of them again.” She rose and ran to the window, pulled the drawn curtain aside and peeked out.
“You can’t. You can’t go until the coroner has given you permission without laying yourself open to suspicion.”
“Suspicion? Suspicion of what?” She dropped the curtain and turned angrily toward me.
What could I say? I made a gesture threatening more than I cared to put in words and saw her eyes slowly leave me, travel to Beatrice and dwell upon her coldly. “Is that why you’re staying, Beatrice, dear?” I heard her ask scornfully.
“Linda! Remember!” was Beatrice’s only reply.
Linda seemed thoroughly to enjoy her discomfiture. She returned to her chair and her manner relaxed. “Do you know anything about the will?” she suddenly asked me.
“Linda, what does that matter?” interposed Beatrice.
“Everything to me, if you do pretend it doesn’t to you,” retorted Linda. “Oh, I’ll keep my agreement with you now, no matter how the will reads, but there’s one thing I must know. Oh, what a fool I am!” She whipped suddenly toward me. “Mr. Swan, you’re a lawyer, tell me. If Beatrice solemnly promises to give me half what she inher—”
But that question was never finished. Beatrice had risen from her seat, crossed the room and stood glaring down into Linda’s eyes with an intensity before which she quailed. Linda stopped talking, stared boldly back for a few moments, then shuddered and changed her seat. There was real fear in her action, though she sought to cover it with a hollow, ineffective laugh. And then came a knock on the door.
