The Strange Case of Cavendish. Randall Parrish
his untimely end disarranged some plan of these two? What was the reason she had come in person instead of telephoning? Had her mysterious visit anything to do with the death of the elder Cavendish?
A thousand speculations entered Miss Donovan's mind.
"How long was she in the apartment?" she demanded sharply.
"Fifteen or twenty minutes, miss—until after the hall-man came back.
I had to help lay out the body, and could not remain there any longer."
"Have you told any one else what you have told me?"
"Only Josette. She's my fiancée. Miss La Baum is her last name."
"You told her nothing further that did not come out at the inquest?"
Valois hesitated.
"Maybe I did, miss," he admitted nervously. "She questioned me about losing my job, and her questions brought things into my mind that I might never have thought of otherwise. And at last I came to believe that it wasn't Mr. Frederick who was dead at all."
The valet's last remark was crashing in its effect.
Miss Donovan's eyes dilated with eagerness and amazement.
"Not Frederick Cavendish! Mr. Valois, tell me—why?"
The other's voice fell to a whisper.
"Frederick Cavendish, miss," he said hollowly, "had a scar on his chest—from football, he once told me—and the man we laid out, well, of course his body was a bit burned, but he appeared to have no scar at all!"
"You know that?" demanded the girl, frightened by the import of the revelation.
"Yes, miss. The assistant in the undertaking rooms said so, too. Doubting my own mind, I asked him. The man we laid out had no scar on his chest."
Miss Donovan sprang suddenly to her feet.
"Mr. Valois," she said breathlessly, "you come and tell that story to my city editor, and he'll see that you get a job—and a real one. You and I have started something, Mr. Valois."
And, tossing money to cover the bill on the table, she took Valois's arm, and with him in tow hurried through the restaurant to the city streets on one of which was the Star office, where Farriss, the city editor, daily damned the doings of the world.
That night when Farriss had heard the evidence his metallic eyes snapped with an unusual light. Farriss, for once, was enthusiastic.
"A great lead! By God, it is! Now to prove it, Stella"—Farriss always resorted to first names—"you drop everything else and go to this, learn what you can, spend money if you have to. I'll drag Willis off police, and you work with him. And damn me, if you two spend money, you've got to get results! I'll give you a week—when you've got something, come back!"
CHAPTER V: ON THE TRACK OF A CRIME
In the city room of the Star, Farriss, the city editor, sat back in his swivel chair smoking a farewell pipe preparatory to going home. The final edition had been put to bed, the wires were quiet, and as he sat there Farriss was thinking of plunging "muskies" in Maine streams. His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a clatter of footsteps, and, slapping his feet to the floor, he turned to confront Willis and Miss Donovan.
"Great God!" he started, at their appearance at so late an hour.
Miss Donovan smiled at him. "No; great luck!"
"Better than that, Mr. Farriss," echoed Willis. "We've got something; and we dug all week to get it."
"But it cost us real money—enough to make the business office moan, I expect, too," Miss Donovan added.
"Well, for Pete's sake, shoot!" demanded Farriss. "Cavendish, I suppose?"
The two nodded. Their eyes were alight with enthusiasm.
"In the first place," said the girl, with grave emphasis, "Frederick
Cavendish did not die intestate as supposed. He left a will."
Farriss blinked. "By God!" he exclaimed. "That's interesting. There was no evidence of that before."
"I got that from the servants of the College Club," Willis interposed. "The will was drawn the night before the murder. And the man that drew it was Patrick Enright of Enright and Dougherty. Cavendish took away a copy of it in his pocket. And, Mr. Farriss, I got something else, too—Enright and young John Cavendish are in communication further. I saw him leaving Enright's office all excited. Following my hunch, I cultivated Miss Healey, Enright's stenographer, and learned that the two had an altercation and that it was evidently over some document."
Farriss was interested.
"Enright's in this deep," he muttered thoughtfully, "but how?
Well—what else?"
Stella Donovan began speaking now:
"I fixed it with Chambers, the manager of the Fairmount, to get Josette La Baum—she's Valois's fiancée, you remember—into the hotel as a maid. Josette 'soaped the keyhole' of the drawers in John Cavendish's rooms there. I had a key made from the soap impression, and from the contents of the correspondence we found I learned that Celeste La Rue, the blonde of the Revue, had got some kind of hold on him. It isn't love, either; it's something stronger. He jumps when she holds the hoop."
"La Rue's mixed up in this deeply, too," Willis cut in. "Neither one of us could shadow her without uncovering ourselves, so we hired an International operative. They cost ten dollars a day—and expenses. What he learned was this—that while she was playing with young Cavendish and seeing him almost daily, the lovely Celeste was also in communication with—guess who!"
"Enright?" Farriss ventured.
"Exactly—Enright," he concluded, lighting his half-smoked cigarette.
"Well," the city editor tapped his desk; "you two have done pretty well, so far. You've got considerable dope. Now, what do you make of it?"
He bent an inquiring gaze on both the girl and the youth.
"You do the talking, Jerry," Miss Donovan begged Willis; "I'm very tired."
Willis was only too eager; Willis was young, enthusiastic, reliable—three reasons why the Star kept him.
"It may be a dream," he said, smiling, "but here is the way I stack it up. The night after he quarrelled with John, Frederick Cavendish called in Enright and made a will, presumably, cutting John off with practically nothing.
"Immediately after Frederick's departure, Enright calls Carbon's Café and talks to John Cavendish, who had been dining there with Celeste La Rue.
"It is reasonable to suppose that he told him of the will. Less than five hours afterward Frederick Cavendish is found dead in his apartments. Again it is reasonable to suppose that he was croaked by John Cavendish, who wanted to destroy the will so that he could claim the estate.
"These Broadway boys need money when they travel with chorines. Anyhow, the dead man is buried, and John starts spending money like water. One month later he receives a letter—Josette patched the pieces together—asking him to call at Enright's office.
"What happened there is probably this: Young Cavendish was informed of the existence of the will, and it was offered to him at a price which he couldn't afford to pay—just then.
"Perhaps he was frightened into signing a promise to pay as soon as he came into the estate—tricked by Enright. Enright, as soon as he heard no will had been found in Frederick's effects, may have figured that perhaps John killed him, or even if he did not, that, nevertheless, he could use circumstances to extract money from the youngster, who, even