"No Clue!". Hay James
and daughter were strikingly alike—hair piled high in a wide wave above the forehead; black eyes too restless, but of that gleaming brilliance which heralds a refusal to grow old. So far, however, the daughter's features had not assumed an aspect of sharpness, like the mother's. One would have appraised the older woman vindictive—malevolent, possibly.
But in the younger face the mouth greatly softened, almost concealed, this effect of calculating hardness. Mildred Brace's lips had a softness of line, a vividness of colouring that indicated emotional depths utterly foreign to her mother.
They bore themselves now as if they commented on a decision already reached, a momentous step to which they had given immense consideration.
"I didn't mail it," Mrs. Brace answered her daughter's query, "because I knew, if you mailed it, you'd do as you'd said you wanted to do."
There was frank emphasis on the "said."
"Your feet don't always follow your intelligence, you know."
"I've been thinking about the thing," Mildred retorted, looking over her mother's shoulder into the summer night. "What's the use?"
"What's the use!" Mrs. Brace echoed, incredulous.
"Just that."
"We've been all over it! You know what it means to you—to both of us."
They spoke in low tones, careful that the man in the living room should not hear.
"My dear mother," Mildred said, with a return of her cool insolence, "you display a confidence hardly warranted by your—and our—man-experience."
She yawned slightly.
There was a harsher note in her mother's reply.
"He can't refuse. He can't!"
Mildred stared at the grey envelope a full three minutes. Mrs. Brace, wordless, showing no uneasiness as to the outcome, waited for her to speak.
"It's no use, mother," she said at last. "We can't manage it—him—this thing. It's too late."
The flat finality, the dreariness, of that announcement angered the older woman. Calmness fell from her. She came away from the window slowly, her hands clasped tightly at her back, the upper part of her body bending forward a little, her thin nostrils expanding and contracting to the force of her hurried breathing like leaves shaken in the wind. The curl of her thin lips added a curious ferocity to the words that passed them. She spoke, only when her face was within a few inches of Mildred's.
"No use!" she said contemptuously, her lowered voice explosive with passion. "Why? And why too late? Have you no self-respect, no will, no firmness? Are you all jelly and——"
She got hold of herself with remarkable effectiveness, throwing off the signs of her wrath as suddenly as they had appeared. She retreated a step and laughed, without mirth.
"Oh, well," she said, "it's your party, not mine, after all. But, in future, my dear, don't waste your time and mine in school-girl heroics."
She completed her retreat and stood again at the window. Her self-restraint was, in a way, fiercer than her rage—and it affected her daughter.
"You see," she concluded, "why I didn't mail it. I knew you wouldn't do the very thing you'd outlined."
Mildred looked at the envelope again. The pause that followed was broken by the man in the other room.
"Mildred," he called.
Mrs. Brace laughed silently. Mildred, seeing that ridicule, recoiled.
"What are you laughing at?" she demanded.
Her mother pointed to the communicating door.
"I was thinking of that," she said, "for life—and," she looked toward the grey envelope, "the other thing."
"I don't see——" Mildred began, and checked herself, gazing again at the envelope.
Her mother turned swiftly and stood looking into the night. The man called again and was not answered. The two women were motionless. There was no sound in the room, save the ticking of the clock on the mantel. Two minutes passed—three.
Mildred went toward the mantel, put out her hand, withdrew it. She became conscious of the excessive heat and touched her forehead with her handkerchief. She glanced at her mother's motionless figure, started to speak, closed her parted lips. Indecision shook her. She put out her hand again, picked up the envelope and stood tapping it against her left palm.
Mrs. Brace, without moving, spoke at last:
"It's a few minutes of twelve. If you catch the midnight collection, he'll get it, out there, by five o'clock tomorrow afternoon."
There was another pause.
Mildred went slowly to the door leading into the living room, and once more she was on the point of speaking.
Mrs. Brace was drumming her fingers on the window ledge. The action announced plainly that she had finished with the situation. Mildred put her hand on the knob, pulled the door half-open, closed it again.
"I've changed my mind," she said, dreariness still in her voice. "He can't refuse."
Her mother made no comment.
Mildred went into the living room.
"Gene," she said, with that indifference of tone which a woman employs toward a man she despises, "I'm going down to mail this."
"Well, I'll swear!" he quarrelled sullenly. "Been in there all this time writing to him!"
"Yes! Look at it!" she taunted viciously, and waved the envelope before his eyes. "Sloanehurst!"
Taking up his hat, he went with her to the elevator.
II
THE WOMAN ON THE LAWN
Mr. Jefferson Hastings, unsuspecting that he was about to be confronted with the most brutal crime in all his experience, regretted having come to "Sloanehurst." He disapproved of himself unreservedly. Clad in an ample, antique night-shirt, he stood at a window of the guest-room assigned to him and gazed over the steel rims of his spectacles into the hot, rainy night. His real vision, however, made no attempt to pierce the outer darkness. His eyes were turned inward, upon himself, in derision of his behaviour during the past three hours.
A kindly, reticent gentleman, who looked much older than his fifty-three years, he made it his habit to listen rather than talk. His wide fame as a criminologist and consulting detective had implanted no egotism in him. He abhorred the spotlight.
But tonight Judge Wilton, by skilful use of query, suggestion and reminder, had tempted him into talking "shop." He had been lured into the rôle of monologuist for the benefit of his host, Arthur Sloane. He had talked brilliantly, at length, in detail, holding his three hearers in spellbound and fascinated interest while he discoursed on crimes which he had probed and criminals whom he had known.
Not that he thought he had talked brilliantly! By no means! He was convinced that nine-tenths of the interest manifested in his remarks had been dictated by politeness. Old Hastings was just that sort of person; he discounted himself. He was in earnest, therefore, in his present self-denunciation. He sighed, remembering the volume of his discourse, the awful length of time in which he had monopolized the conversation.
But his modesty was not his only admirable characteristic. He had, also, a dependable sense of humour. It came to his relief now—he