Who Killed the Husband E-Book

Hulbert Footner

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Mappin is a wealthy New York criminologist and author who is highly valued by the police and high society. He participates only in those crimes that really interest him. And in ’Who Killed the Husband’ he investigates solely because all the people around him beg him to take action. In this story, a detective investigates the murder of a banker. The killer who, according to the police have already found.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

POSTSCRIPT

A LETTER

CHAPTER I

MR. AMOS LEE MAPPIN was breakfasting by the fire in the immense living room of his apartment. With the steam heat, a fire was not in the least necessary, but he enjoyed it. The date was November 4th. During the pleasant fall days it was Lee’s habit to turn off the steam, open the windows and toast himself in front of the cheerful blaze. “I am a primitive creature,” he would say, which was one of his innocent affectations. Nothing could have been farther from the truth.

He was wearing a crimson damask dressing gown with a blue silk scarf around his throat and blue morocco slippers. His taste in dress ran to such flamboyant effects but, conscious that they sat rather comically on his little, roly-poly figure, he sported them only in the privacy of the home. He nibbled his grilled kidney and sipped his coffee in great peace of mind. His big book, “The Psychology of Murder,” was progressing well. He was revolving the day’s work in his mind while he ate, and occasionally put down his knife and fork to make a note in his little pocketbook.

Since he had become famous, somebody was always trying to engage his services in this case or that. Being as fastidious as a cat, he hated to soil his paws with the actual investigation of crime; his job, as he told himself over and over, was to study crime in the privacy of the library a long time after it had been committed. So he refused all offers, however tempting the fee; he didn’t need the money; nevertheless, every now and then such pressure was brought upon him that he was forced to take a case. When he had solved the mystery he always drew a sigh of relief and vowed that it should be the last. At the moment there was no important criminal case to agitate the public mind and he envisioned a long succession of serene days to be devoted to his philosophical treatise.

His servant, Jermyn, tall, lean, leathery and correct, entered bringing the Herald Tribune, which he placed folded upon the table beside the breakfast tray. Jermyn did not speak, but he had been working for Mr. Mappin for a long time, and his master could read him like a printed page. It was evident from Jermyn’s overcasual air that there was something in the morning’s paper that he considered it important his master should see. He left the room.

Opening the paper, Mr. Mappin saw at once what it was. Jules Gartrey, the prominent banker, president of the famous Hasbrouck firm, had been found shot dead in his apartment and the police were looking for young Alastair Yohe, society’s pet photographer. Mrs. Gartrey, whom they called “the most beautiful woman in New York,” was said to be “prostrated.”

Mr. Mappin threw the paper aside pettishly. The vulgarest of crimes! He was annoyed that Jermyn should have supposed he would be interested. Of course, it would cause a terrific sensation because of the conspicuousness of the principals. Mappin hated empty sensationalism. He disdained to read the details.

Putting it out of mind, he finished eating and went out on the balcony to bask in the morning sun while he smoked a cigarette. The East River sparkled far below; it was pleasant to think of the fascinating, baffling problems of human conduct that formed the subject matter of his book. Not this commonplace killing. Afterwards he went to his room to dress. For the street he affected a modified early nineteenth-century style. With his bald head, his polished glasses, his round belly under a white waistcoat, his neat legs encased in tightish pants, he looked like Mr. Pickwick as Cruikshank drew him, and gloried in it. He couldn’t go all the way with Mr. Pickwick’s costume; that would have made him too conspicuous. He hated to be stared at.

When he arrived at his office on Murray Hill the heads of both his assistants, blonde Fanny Parran and brunette Judy Bowles, were bent over newspapers, and that annoyed him afresh. No need to ask what they were reading. The girls were so absorbed that their greeting was perfunctory; “Morning, Pop,” they said without looking up. He went on into his private office.

Presently Fanny came in bearing the newspaper. “Have you read this?” she asked.

“The headlines,” he answered.

“This is the biggest case since Cain killed Abel!” said Fanny solemnly. “Fancy, Jules Gartrey shot in his own house!”

“Humph!” snorted Mr. Mappin. “Husband comes home unexpectedly; finds a younger man there; probably attacks him and gets shot for his pains. It happens every day somewhere.”

“Not to the Jules Gartreys of this world,” said Fanny. “We’ve got to get in this case, Pop.”

“Get in it!” cried Mr. Mappin, now thoroughly exasperated. “For heaven’s sake, what is there in it for us?”

“Useless for you to talk that way,” said Fanny coolly. “A man as prominent as you simply can’t be left out of a case as big as this. You’ll see.”

“All the police have got to do is catch the killer.”

She shook her head. “Not so simple as all that. There’s a lot that’s unexplained. Sure, Al Yohe and Mrs. Gartrey have been running around together, but that doesn’t prove anything. You’re thinking in the terms of mellerdrammer, Pop. Modern people don’t act like that–not that lot, anyhow. There’s something back of it...Do you know Al Yohe?” she asked suddenly.

“Haven’t that pleasure,” said Lee stiffly. “I’ve seen him, of course. Couldn’t very well avoid it.”

“He’s not the type,” said Fanny. “If he was caught by a husband he would laugh.”

“You seem to know him pretty well!”

“Oh, I’ve met him at the Sourabaya; it’s his job to greet everybody who comes there. If you were to judge by what the newspapers say, he is just a common sort of Casanova who goes around rolling his eyes at women and trying to hypnotize them. But that’s not the truth, Pop. He’s an American boy, full of jokes, laughing all the time. It’s true that women fall for him right and left–Mrs. Gartrey is mad about him; I’ve seen it–but that’s because he tells them the truth about themselves. No woman can resist it, Pop–not when the man is so darned good-looking.”

With that she left him. Lee was sufficiently impressed by her earnestness to pick up the newspaper and read the Gartrey story from beginning to end. It was meager as to fact and voluminous in innuendo.

The Gartreys lived in a magnificent apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking the Park. Gartrey had had two wives before marrying the present Mrs. Gartrey, one dead, one divorced, and this one was thirty years younger than her husband. Alastair Yohe had called at three o’clock on the previous afternoon and was still there when the husband came home half an hour or so later. This was earlier than his usual hour, the house elevator boy testified. Gartrey had let himself in with a key instead of ringing; consequently nobody was aware of his return until the shot was heard. He was found lying in the entrance foyer, shot through the temple. The butler, Robert Hawkins, found him.

Oddly enough, the gun was lying on the floor near by. But the absence of powder burns in the dead man’s flesh precluded the idea of suicide. There were no fingerprints on the gun. Mr. Gartrey was still holding his latchkey between thumb and forefinger, proving that he must have been shot down at the moment of entering. There could be no question of the killer’s having acted in self-defense. Mr. Gartrey was not armed. The elevator boy and the boys on duty in the hall of the apartment house, all testified that, saving Alastair Yohe, no other person had been taken to the Gartrey apartment previous to the shooting.

The stories told by the inmates of the apartment were contradictory. Mrs. Gartrey, upon the advice of her husband’s principal business associate, George Coler, talked fully to the police. Both she and her maid Eliza Young asserted that Mr. Yohe had taken his departure five minutes or more before the shot was heard. The maid added that she had opened the front door for him herself. Both women, of course, were anxious to divert any suspicion of scandal and were obviously desirous of clearing the young man. The maid’s story was seriously damaged by the front elevator boy, who swore that he had not taken Mr. Yohe down in his car. Whereupon the maid pointed out that Yohe had several other friends in the apartment house and might have gone to call on one of them by the stairs. After the murder, so many people came and went that the elevator boy could give no account of them.

However, the maid’s story was altogether destroyed by the butler, Hawkins, who testified very reluctantly that immediately after the shot was fired Mr. Yohe had come back into the rear entry of the apartment and had left by the service door. He had not said anything. He looked very disturbed. The other servants were in their rooms and had not seen him. The boy on the service elevator testified that he had not carried Yohe down, but there was a service stairway. The maid Eliza intimated that the butler had a grudge against Mr. Yohe and was lying. The most damning fact, however, was that Yohe had run away. The police promised an arrest within twenty-four hours.

Having digested the facts, Lee skimmed over the columns and columns of fluff that were considered due the occasion. In the minds of the newspaper writers, Yohe was already convicted of murder. They played up the romance of his career for all there was in it. The poor boy who had come to New York with nothing to recommend him but a certain skill in camera portraiture, plus remarkable good looks and charm of manner. It had been sufficient. Within five years he found himself publicity agent, official photographer and all-round hurrah boy at La Sourabaya, the smartest and most popular night club of the time. Al Yohe had made the place what it was. Not to be a friend of Al’s was to argue yourself unknown around town.

In this short space of time, Yohe had become one of the most conspicuous social figures in New York. Men and women alike courted him–millionaires, actresses, authors, even scientists–not for himself but for the publicity that his wicked camera commanded. Not only was he the lord of La Sourabaya (the Oriental proprietors kept themselves discreetly in the background); gifts were showered on him by the smartest shops in town; he was never expected to pay for anything anywhere; he was besieged with invitations to the best houses. In respect to his amatory adventures, the writers had to be a little more careful. They managed, however, to convey very clearly that Don Juan of Sevila was a piker compared to Al Yohe of New York.

In order to build up Al, it was necessary to suggest that the unfortunate Jules Gartrey was an unpleasant sort of man, hard and unrelenting, unpopular alike in business and society. All the lush adjectives in the reportorial vocabulary were used in referring to Agnes Gartrey’s beauty. The newspaper story actually managed to suggest, without laying itself open to libel, that she had had lovers before Al Yohe. The name of Rulon Innes, a well-known glamour boy, was brought in.

Lee Mappin tossed the newspaper aside. “Vicious!” he muttered; “this attempt to make a hero out of a common murderer!”

Fanny, who had been watching him through the open door out of the tail of her eye, came in with the morning’s mail. “Well, what do you think of it, Pop?” she asked casually.

“I think no different from what I did before,” he answered sharply. “Certainly there’s nothing in the newspaper that would induce a sensible man to change his opinion.”

“You’re wrong, Pop. Al Yohe is not the type.”

“So you said before. How can you possibly know? Murderers belong to no type. All kinds of people commit murder when the provocation is strong enough.”

“That’s just it,” said Fanny. “There is no reason in the world why Al should have killed Mr. Gartrey.”

“Please, Fanny,” said Lee with heavy self-control, “don’t let me hear you falling into the vulgar habit of referring to a criminal as if he were an intimate friend. Call him Yohe.”

Fanny smiled with great sweetness. “All right, Pop, dear...Look, somebody obviously was lying in wait for Mr. Gartrey. That, at least would be impossible for a man like Al...Yohe.”

“I don’t know,” said Lee, “and neither do you. Al...”

“Yohe,” whispered Fanny wickedly.

“Al Yohe was how old? Twenty-five. Twenty-five is too soon for a comely young face to reveal the real character of its wearer. Only the old look wicked.”

“There were no fingerprints on the gun,” said Fanny. “Yet they all say, that is, Mrs. Gartrey, Eliza Young, the elevator boy, even the lying butler, that Al Yohe’s hands were bare.”

“He had gloves in his pocket,” said Lee. “It takes no time at all to pull on a loose glove and pull it off again.”

CHAPTER II

DURING the following three days, the sensation caused by the murder of Jules Gartrey rose to monstrous proportions. Extra editions of the newspapers were issued every half hour; nothing else could be talked about. Great crowds stood dumbly in the street gazing up at the windows of the Gartrey apartment and midtown Fifth Avenue was choked in front of the Stieff Building where Al Yohe lived. They even stood all day long packed front and rear at Police Headquarters, on the chance that Yohe might be brought in. Disgraceful scenes attended the funeral of Mr. Gartrey. To avoid the crowds, he was carried to his country place in Westchester and buried from there. Word of it got around, and thousands besieged the place. Finding the gates locked, they swarmed over the fence and trampled down all the shrubbery and flowers.

Mrs. Gartrey remained in close seclusion, but was not, however, averse to being interviewed. She had a case to put before the world, and she presented it with skill, though nobody believed a word of her story. She had frequently met Mr. Yohe in society, she said, but he was not in any sense a close friend. It was the first time he had come to her house except when there was a party. She had sent for him to discuss the plans for a ball that was to be held at the Waldorf-Astoria in December in aid of Polish Relief. St. Bartholomew’s Guild, of which she was secretary, was getting up the affair. At a meeting of the Guild it had been decided to ask Mr. Yohe to manage the ball because he was such a good organizer. In sending for him to talk the matter over, she was merely acting for the Guild. He was out of the apartment a good five minutes before Mr. Gartrey came home. “My husband,” said Mrs. Gartrey, “like all successful men, had bitter enemies. There were people who believed that they had lost money through him.” She could not, however, furnish the police with names.

Mrs. Gartrey promptly discharged the butler, Robert Hawkins, whose story did not agree with hers. Hawkins could have made a small fortune by selling stories of the Gartrey household to the newspapers, but he proved to be a man of very unusual decency; he moved into a modest furnished room and declined to add a word to his first statement. When the pestering of the reporters became unbearable, he quietly left town without advertising his new address.

The maid, Eliza Young, loyally supported her mistress’ story. She, of course, could let herself go more than the grand and dignified Mrs. Gartrey. Eliza was always available for an interview, and proved to be a passionate partisan of Alastair Yohe’s. This reacted against him. A plain woman, no longer young, Eliza’s lot in life had been singularly unexciting and, as was natural, all this notoriety began to go to her head. She talked too much. It was obvious to those who read her statements with attention that she was better acquainted with Yohe than would have been possible if he had made only one visit to the Gartrey home.

On the third day, Alan Barry Deane, a rich young man about town who lived on the second floor of the house where the Gartreys had an apartment, came forward to say that shortly before four o’clock on Monday (the afternoon of the murder), Alastair Yohe had called on him with the object of persuading him to serve on the floor committee of the Polish Relief Ball. He had consented to serve on the committee. They had talked together for a few minutes and had then gone out to discover the cause of the excitement that was filling the house. Deane said he did not know what became of Yohe after that, but insisted that up until then Yohe had appeared quite his usual self. This story, which was calculated to destroy that of the butler, was not, however, generally believed. The public felt that Deane had delayed too long before telling it, and that he was merely trying to recommend himself to the beautiful Agnes Gartrey.

Various new pieces of evidence were brought out. Upon the news of Gartrey’s death, the securities of all the companies he was interested in had broken sharply. There was a heavy short interest which had taken the opportunity to cover at an enormous profit. The police had not been able to trace this interest to its source. It came out, moreover, that Gartrey’s life had been threatened mysteriously and that about a month before, he had asked for police protection. About the same time he had taken out a permit and purchased a gun. Apparently he believed the threatened danger had passed, for at the time of his murder the gun was lying in a drawer of his bureau. The police at the same time were endeavoring to trace ownership of the gun found on the scene from which one shot had been fired. When they established that this gun had been sold to Alastair Yohe during the previous year, it was admitted that the case against Yohe was complete.

Meanwhile, that much-wanted young man succeeded in keeping out of the hands of the police. Though he had thousands of “friends,” though he was the most be-photographed young man in the country, and his smiling, handsome face must have been familiar to every reader of newspapers from the Atlantic to the Pacific, he was not found. Trainmen, bus conductors, airplane stewardesses, ticket agents everywhere were looking for him. There were innumerable clues which came to nothing. Arrests were made by the local police of Philadelphia, Hanover, New Hampshire, Milledgeville, Georgia, and as far away as Fargo, North Dakota, and New York detectives sent out to bring him in, only to find themselves fooled. A bitter note crept into the communiques issued from Headquarters. It was obvious that somebody must be concealing the wanted man. Each day the police promised results within twenty-four hours.

It turned out that Yohe had proceeded directly from the scene of the murder to his own small bachelor apartment in the Stieff Building near the Plaza. The elevator man testified that he had looked “very upset.” After a few minutes he had gone out again with a different suit on and was swallowed up by the unknown. He kept no personal servant. A maid employed by the management of the building said significantly that Mr. Yohe seldom slept at home. The public loved it. Upon searching his rooms the police had found nothing that pertained to the case. He was a discreet young man; he left no scrap of writing from any of the many women with whom his name had been connected. There were thousands of photographs of the great, the near-great and the would-be-great, some of which had a great potential value. They were so unflattering that the subjects might have been willing to pay anything to keep them out of print. But it was never charged that Yohe had taken money for such a purpose. A few of the photographs found their way into the newspapers, affording the town a series of laughs. The Commissioner of Police then cracked down on the press and impounded the lot.

These three days were full of little irritations for Lee Mappin. He was not allowed to forget the vulgar affair for long and his work suffered. Even the discreet, the correct Jermyn permitted himself to suggest that his master ought to take a hand in the case. At the office little Fanny Parran, usually so sensible, displayed a prejudice on behalf of the handsome young murderer as passionate and unreasonable as that of Eliza Young in the press. When the police finally identified the murder gun as Yohe’s, Lee fetched a sigh of relief. Now, please God, they’ll leave me alone! he thought.

When he got to the office there was no sign of grief or disappointment in Fanny’s pretty face, no change of any sort. When she brought in the mail she said with a beguiling air–Lee had never seen her looking sweeter:

“Pop, why don’t you talk to Inspector Loasby about the Gartrey case?”

“What is there to talk about?” said Lee, keeping a careful hold on his rising temper. “I am not a bloodhound. It is no part of my job to track down fugitives from justice.”

“Of course not, Pop. That’s not what I had in mind. Everybody in the world believes that Al Yohe is guilty. In the interests of justice you ought to examine the evidence that the police have against him and point out the flaws in it.”

“My dear girl, have you the face to pretend you still believe that man to be innocent?”

“I’m not your dear girl when you talk to me like a stuffy schoolmaster,” said Fanny with spirit. “And I am not pretending.”

“After the police have established that Gartrey was shot with Yohe’s gun!”

“How can you be so wrongheaded ?” cried Fanny. “That is the best proof of Al’s innocence that has come out! Can you conceive of a man so stupid as to leave his gun at the scene of the killing? That gun was planted there!”

“Maybe so,” cried Lee waving his hands. “It’s no business of mine. I’m sick of hearing the fellow’s name! If he’s innocent why does he choose to live like a hunted creature? Let him come back like a man and face the music, and if he needs help I’ll help him!”

“Now, Pop,” said Fanny soothingly, “honestly, after taking everything into consideration, would you come back if you were in his place?”

Lee disdained to answer.

“If he came back there would be a hundred thousand yelling people around Police Headquarters. And what would the authorities do? Rush him to trial in order to quiet the mob; obtain a snap verdict–no jury would dare go against the mob–and rush him to execution. Would that be justice?”

“I cannot fight for a man in hiding,” said Lee. Fanny gave him a level look. “Well, I’m disappointed in you,” she said, marching out.

Lee was left to nurse an unreasonable feeling of soreness and frustration. Fanny was not to be drawn into any further discussion and he was forced to argue it out with himself. Very unsatisfactory. He was satisfied that his attitude was the correct one, but how could you convince a woman when she wouldn’t listen?

He spent a part of the afternoon in dictating to Judy. She was of an entirely different character from Fanny, more serene and placid, not so liable to fly off the handle, in a word more feminine, Lee told himself. Judy was of the tall and statuesque type with big brown eyes and hair like a raven’s wing. Lee’s eyes dwelt with pleasure on her graceful, bent head.

“You are very beautiful,” he said.

“Thanks, Pop,” she said calmly. She had heard it so often before. And went on all in the same breath: “Pop, why are you so prejudiced against poor Al Yohe?”

It was like a dash of cold water on Lee. “You too!” he said in the same tone that Caesar must have used to Brutus.

“Well, you are not usually so influenced by the newspapers,” Judy went on. “How often have you told us that we should think for ourselves.”

“Fanny’s been getting at you!” said Lee.

“Of course we’ve talked the case over,” said Judy; “how could we avoid it? But I don’t take all my ideas from Fanny. I have a mind of my own, I hope.”

“Will you please tell me what sources of information you possess besides the newspapers?” asked Lee.

His sarcasm never touched her. “None,” she said in her calm and gentle manner. “I read the newspapers and form my own conclusions.”

“And what are they, may I ask?”

“Why can’t you talk about it reasonably, Pop? Why do you get sore whenever Al’s name is mentioned? According to your own rule, that proves your case is weak.”

It did not make Lee feel any less sore to have his own words turned against him.

Judy went on in her calm way: “It all sounds too cut and dried, Pop. Something important is omitted. They say that Mr. Gartrey came home unexpectedly and surprised them. They also say that the shot was not fired in the heat of passion but that Al was laying for him. They can’t have it both ways, Pop. If he came home before he was expected, how could Al have been laying for him at the door?”

Lee looked at her in surprise. “That’s rather neatly argued,” he said.

Judy blushed with pleasure. “You think I’m beautiful but dumb,” she said.

“That’s not so,” insisted Lee, “or I couldn’t afford to keep you here.”

Judy made haste to follow up her advantage. “That woman is certainly lying, Pop!”

“Why, she’s Al’s only friend!” In spite of himself Lee was falling into the habit of referring thus familiarly to the celebrity.

“If she’s really his friend she’s a fool,” said Judy. “She’s not going the right way about it to clear him. I often have to lie myself and I can tell when another woman is lying.”

“What is your idea of what really happened, my dear?” asked Lee quite mildly.

Judy spread out her hands. “Ah, I haven’t any,” she said. “That’s where we must depend on you, Pop. If you delved into the case you would find out the truth about it.”

Lee said judicially: “In the apartment at the time of the shooting were Mrs. Gartrey and Al Yohe; Hawkins, the butler; Eliza Young, the lady’s maid, and four other maids. There is a second manservant but he was out on an errand. How could it have been any of these excepting Yohe? How could I even start an investigation without having an opportunity to hear Yohe’s own story?”

“That’s so,” said Judy rising. “It hadn’t occurred to me.” She went out thoughtfully. A moment later he saw her in deep confabulation with Fanny.

A man from the World-Telegram came in to see him. He was followed by a Daily News reporter and a whole group of others, including redheaded Tom Cot-tar from the Herald Tribune. Tom had been sweet on Fanny Parran for a long time. Lee noted that her greeting today was somewhat cool. Tom was a prime favorite with Lee, and the others, knowing it, let Tom do the talking.

“Mr. Mappin, we want an opinion from you on the Gartrey case.”

“Now, Tom,” warned Lee, “you know that I have made it a rule not to discuss a crime before it comes to trial.”

“You don’t need to express an opinion as to Al Yohe’s guilt,” said Tom. “That’s established. Just discuss the case generally. Tell us what it suggests to you from a social point of view, or any such tripe.”

“Tripe?” said Lee, running up his eyebrows.

“You know what I mean,” said Tom, grinning. “This case has reached such proportions that the public is demanding an expression of views from their favorite criminologist.”

“Poppycock!” said Lee. “The truth is, the public is ravenous for news about the case; you haven’t any for them today and so you come to me for a filler.”

“Well, you have never let us down yet,” said Tom cajolingly.

“I’m going to now. I have nothing to say.”

“Now, Mr. Mappin...”

“By Gad! if I’m pestered any further about this damned case I’ll leave town!” cried Lee.

“Pestered?” asked the Daily News man, scenting a story. “By whom?”

“By all of you! Not another word!”

When they saw that he meant it, they filed out. Lee detained Tom. “I want to speak to you about a personal matter.”

Tom looked at him inquiringly.

“Who tipped you off to come to me today?” asked Lee.

Tom shrugged innocently–too innocently. “The assignment came to me in the usual way.”

“Tom, there appears to be a kind of conspiracy afoot with the object of forcing me into this case. You and I must make a stand against it.”

Tom, after glancing uneasily over his shoulder, mutely put out a hand.

Lee grasped it. “What’s behind it, Tom?”

“I’m with you, Pop,” mumbled Tom, “but I can’t say anything when she’s just outside the door.”

Lee glanced at his watch. “I’ll be leaving here in half an hour. Meet me in the Vanderbilt bar at five-ten.”

“Okay, Pop.”

Sitting at a little table in the Vanderbilt bar with Scotch and soda before them, Lee and Tom compared notes. Said Tom:

“This guy is as guilty as hell, Lee. That was nothing in my life until Fanny felt that she had received a call to save him. Since then I have had no peace. She is threatening to ship me because I can’t change the policy of the Herald Tribune toward the case. Damn him anyhow! By God! how I would like to flatten his Grecian nose with my fist! All handsome men are so-and-sos!” Tom had no pretensions to good looks, though there was a pleasing masculinity about his strongly marked features.

“I sympathize with you,” said Lee. “What started Fanny off at this tangent?”

“Don’t ask me. She is mysterious.”

“Is it possible she could have seen Al Yohe since the murder?”

“No.”

“Before this happened, had you any reason to suppose that Fanny had fallen in love with him?”

“She’s not in love with him,” said Tom coolly. “I would know how to deal with that. This is worse, Pop. God help a man when his girl embarks on a moral crusade! He is helpless!”

“Well, we’ve got to stand out against this foolishness until it blows over,” said Lee firmly. “To give in to it would only be to make ourselves ridiculous!” They shook hands on it again.

CHAPTER III

LEE was engaged to dine this night with the Curt Wintergrenns. He had been looking forward to the occasion because Carol Wintergrenn had snapped up a French refugee chef who was a master of his profession. This was his first performance and he would certainly be on his mettle. Lee loved masterly cooking. However, when he reflected that the table talk would inevitably concentrate on the Gartrey case, his heart sank. He called up Mrs. Wintergrenn to beg off.

She wouldn’t hear of it. “Lee!” she screamed. “At the eleventh hour! The dinner of the season! I am depending on you to hold it together; to give the affair a cachet! How could I replace you now? My party will be ruined. I don’t believe you’ve got a headache. Tell me the real reason you want to stay away.”

Answered Lee: “You’re entitled to the truth, my darling. I am so fed up with this nasty Gartrey affair that it nauseates me. I know, people being what they are, nothing else will be talked about tonight, and I can’t face it.”

“Is that all?” she said in a voice of relief. “Well, I haven’t been giving dinners for ten years for nothing. You sit beside me and I shall keep the conversation in my own hands. I promise you you shan’t be annoyed.”

So Lee agreed to be there.

Unfortunately for Carol Wintergrenn’s promise, there were two men at her table whose names had been connected with the Gartrey case, George Coler and Rulon Innes, and she found herself helpless. She would no sooner get the talk steered away from the all-absorbing topic than somebody would ask Coler or Innes a question. The whole table would wait in silence for the answer, and off they would go again. However, Lee did not mind it as much as he had expected; the limelight was beating on the two men in the know, and little Lee was allowed to savor the marvelous salmi de caneton in peace.

Coler, who was Gartrey’s principal lieutenant in business, was a handsome bachelor in the middle forties with a reputation for wit and savoir-faire that caused him to be much in demand for dinners. Lee had never cared for him, simply because he had himself under such perfect control. Lee himself was not accustomed to wearing his heart on his sleeve, and he freely granted the necessity of keeping a guard on yourself in the great world, but such people did not interest him; for him in woman or man it was the native wood-note wild that charmed.

A woman asked: “Mr. Coler, honestly, how is dear Agnes bearing up under the strain?” The affected solicitude did not conceal the purr of satisfaction in her voice. Older and plainer women naturally were delighted to see Agnes Gartrey catching it.

“Magnificently!” said Coler smoothly. “Like all your sex, when faced by something really big, she has risen out of herself.”

“Is she in love with Al Yohe?”

“Honestly,” said Coler, spreading out his hands, “I don’t know. I am the watchdog of her business affairs, not her heart.”

“Of course she is!” cried another woman. “Look how she stands up for him!”

“That proves nothing. She has to stand up for him in order to clear her own skirts.”

“Strange as it may seem, I think she was attached to her hard-boiled old husband,” said Coler. “At least, they got along pretty well together, considering.”

“Impossible!” exclaimed all the women together.

“A man thirty years older!”

“If she is in love with Yohe,” Coler went on, “so much the worse for her. Even in the unlikely event of his clearing himself, they could never come together now.”

Young Rulon Innes, feeling that he had been left out of the conversation long enough, now delivered his opinion authoritatively: “None of you are being fair to Agnes. Nobody understands her. She has the heart of a child!”

Hearing this, the women kept their lips decorous, but their eyes were frankly derisive. Lee, glancing around the table, enjoyed the comedy. Innes was a handsome young man in a somewhat luscious style. He was so filled with the consciousness of his beauty that he appeared to be about to choke on it. Lee wondered how a woman could fall for him, yet many had; perhaps it was because he, after Al Yohe, was the fashion.

“Is she in love with Al Yohe?” persisted the first woman.

“Nothing to it,” said Innes languidly, regarding his finger nails. “Al’s methods with women were those of a truck driver. No finesse.” He paused to point the contrast between Al and himself. Some of the women bit their lips. “Agnes would never fall for that sort of thing,” he went on. “She is too fastidious...Does it not occur to any of you that she may be telling the simple truth?”

Carol Wintergrenn was provoked. “The truth is never simple,” she said, “and nobody nowadays ever tells it...For heaven’s sake, let us talk about something else.”

They paid no attention to her. Everybody at the table had a contribution to make to the Gartrey case and sat bouncing in impatience to get a word in. There was Miss Delphine Harley, the actress, perennially lovely and smiling. She said:

“I must take exception to truck driver. Poor Al’s manners were free but never coarse. He despised the sultry innuendo that passes for love-making in the night clubs. Al never ‘made love.’ He captivated women by making them laugh. His apparent sexlessness was a challenge to us. His naturalness, his honesty were as refreshing as a breeze off the sea.”

This produced a little babel of assent and dissent around the table. Miss Harley popped a forkful of the salmi into her mouth and murmured: “Delicious!” Rulon Innes laughed a thought too loudly and was heard to say:

“Al Yohe sexless! That’s good!”