The Craig Kennedy Scientific Detective MEGAPACK ®. Brander Matthews
“Tell us. I’ll arrest you if you don’t.”
“Nothing about the murder, on my honour,” protested Downey.
Kennedy leaned over suddenly and shot a remark at him, “Then it was about the note.”
Downey was surprised, but not quickly enough. Still he seemed to be considering something, and in a moment he said:
“I don’t know what it was about, but I feel it is my duty, after all, to tell you. I heard her say, ‘I wonder if he knew.’”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing else.”
“What happened after you came back?”
“We entered the ladies’ department. No one was there. A woman’s automobile-coat was thrown over a chair in a heap. Mr. Bruce picked it up. ‘It’s Mrs. Parker’s,’ he said. He wrapped it up hastily, and rang for a messenger.”
“Where did he send it?”
“To Mrs. Parker, I suppose. I didn’t hear the address.”
We next went over the whole suite of offices, conducted by Mr. Downey. I noted how carefully Kennedy looked into the directors’ room through the open door from the ladies’ department. He stood at such an angle that had he been the assassin he could scarcely have been seen except by those sitting immediately next Mr. Parker at the directors’ table. The street windows were directly in front of him, and back of him was the chair on which the motorcoat had been found.
In Parker’s own office we spent some time, as well as in Bruce’s. Kennedy made a search for the note, but finding nothing in either office, turned out the contents of Bruce’s scrap-basket. There didn’t seem to be anything in it to interest him, however, even after he had pieced several torn bits of scraps together with much difficulty, and he was about to turn the papers back again, when he noticed something sticking to the side of the basket. It looked like a mass of wet paper, and that was precisely what it was.
“That’s queer,” said Kennedy, picking it loose. Then he wrapped it up carefully and put it in his pocket. “Inspector, can you lend me one of your men for a couple of days?” he asked, as we were preparing to leave. “I shall want to send him out of town tonight, and shall probably need his services when he gets back.”
“Very well. Riley will be just the fellow. We’ll go back to headquarters, and I’ll put him under your orders.”
It was not until late in the following day that I saw Kennedy again. It had been a busy day at the Star. We had gone to work that morning expecting to see the very financial heavens fall. But just about five minutes to ten, before the Stock Exchange opened, the news came in over the wire from our financial man on Broad Street: “‘The System’ has forced James Bruce, partner of Kerr Parker, the dead banker; to sell his railroad, steamship, and rubber holdings to it. On this condition it promises unlimited support to the market.”
“Forced!” muttered the managing editor, as he waited on the office phone to get the composing-room, so as to hurry up the few lines in red ink on the first page and beat our rivals on the streets with the first extras. “Why, he’s been working to bring that about for the past two weeks. What that System doesn’t control isn’t worth having—it edits the news before our men get it, and as for grist for the divorce courts, and tragedies, well—Hello, Jenkins, yes, a special extra. Change the big heads—copy is on the way up—rush it.”
“So you think this Parker case is a mess?” I asked.
“I know it. That’s a pretty swift bunch of females that have been speculating at Kerr Parker & Co.’s. I understand there’s one Titian-haired young lady—who, by the way, has at least one husband who hasn’t yet been divorced—who is a sort of ringleader, though she rarely goes personally to her brokers’ offices. She’s one of those uptown plungers, and the story is that she has a whole string of scalps of alleged Sunday-school superintendents at her belt. She can make Bruce do pretty nearly anything, they say. He’s the latest conquest. I got the story on pretty good authority, but until I verified the names, dates, and places, of course I wouldn’t dare print a line of it. The story goes that her husband is a hanger-on of the System, and that she’s been working in their interest, too. That was why he was so complacent over the whole affair. They put her up to capturing Bruce, and after she had acquired an influence over him they worked it so that she made him make love to Mrs. Parker. It’s a long story, but that isn’t all of it. The point was, you see, that by this devious route they hoped to worm out of Mrs. Parker some inside information about Parker’s rubber schemes, which he hadn’t divulged even to his partners in business. It was a deep and carefully planned plot, and some of the conspirators were pretty deeply in the mire, I guess. I wish I’d had all the facts about who this red-haired female Machiavelli was—what a piece of muckraking it would have made! Oh, here comes the rest of the news story over the wire. By Jove, it is said on good authority that Bruce will be taken in as one of the board of directors. What do you think of that?”
So that was how the wind lay—Bruce making love to Mrs. Parker and she presumably betraying her husband’s secrets. I thought I saw it all: the note from somebody exposing the scheme, Parker’s incredulity, Bruce sitting by him and catching sight of the note, his hurrying out into the ladies’ department, and then the shot. But who fired it? After all, I had only picked up another clue.
Kennedy was not at the apartment at dinner, and an inquiry at the laboratory was fruitless also. So I sat down to fidget for a while. Pretty soon the buzzer on the door sounded, and I opened it to find a messenger-boy with a large brown paper parcel.
“Is Mr. Bruce here?” he asked.
“Why, no, he doesn’t—” then I checked myself and added “He will be here presently. You can leave the bundle.”
“Well, this is the parcel he telephoned for. His valet told me to tell him that they had a hard time to find it, but he guesses it’s all right. The charges are forty cents. Sign here.”
I signed the book, feeling like a thief, and the boy departed. What it all meant I could not guess.
Just then I heard a key in the lock, and Kennedy came in.
“Is your name Bruce?” I asked.
“Why?” he replied eagerly. “Has anything come?”
I pointed to the package. Kennedy made a dive for it and unwrapped it. It was a woman’s pongee automobile-coat. He held it up to the light. The pocket on the right-hand side was scorched and burned, and a hole was torn clean through it. I gasped when the full significance of it dawned on me.
“How did you get it?” I exclaimed at last in surprise.
“That’s where organisation comes in,” said Kennedy. “The police at my request went over every messenger call from Parker’s office that afternoon, and traced every one of them up. At last they found one that led to Bruce’s apartment. None of them led to Mrs. Parker’s home. The rest were all business calls and satisfactorily accounted for. I reasoned that this was the one that involved the disappearance of the automobile-coat. It was a chance worth taking, so I got Downey to call up Bruce’s valet. The valet of course recognised Downey’s voice and suspected nothing. Downey assumed to know all about the coat in the package received yesterday. He asked to have it sent up here. I see the scheme worked.”
“But, Kennedy, do you think she—” I stopped, speechless, looking at the scorched coat.
“Nothing to say—yet,” he replied laconically. “But if you could tell me anything about that note Parker received I’d thank you.”
I related what our managing editor had said that morning. Kennedy only raised his eyebrows a fraction of an inch.
“I had guessed something of that sort,” he said merely. “I’m glad to find it confirmed even by hearsay evidence. This red-haired young lady interests me. Not a very definite description,