VII THE CROOK DETECTIVE

We were interrupted by the arrival of Doyle at the door. With him was a stranger whom he seemed to be virtually forcing along ahead of him.

As they entered, I regarded the man carefully. He seemed to have a sort of hangdog look.

Doyle led him over beside the laboratory table, near which Kennedy was standing, and Kennedy glanced at Doyle questioningly.

"This is Mr. Rascon, a private detective," growled Doyle, stressing the Mister insultingly, and continuing to push the man forward. "Meet Mr. Kennedy, Rascon."

Doyle had evidently the official contempt for the very breed of private detectives. The man bowed stiffly and nervously to Craig, who extended his hand, which the man took rather spiritlessly. Altogether I thought it a very peculiar circumstance.

"Meet Mr. Jameson, of The Star," added Doyle. "It might be well for you to have a few newspaper friends. They might come in handy some day. They tell me a press agent's job is to keep things out of the papers as well as to get them in."
[94]

Rascon smiled weakly as he shook my hand, and by the clammy touch of his hand I knew that he was either very nervous or very ill—perhaps both.

"Tell Mr. Kennedy what you've been doing, Rascon," commanded Doyle in his best gruff manner.

Rascon hesitated, but Doyle repeated his command, and in the repetition there was a thinly veiled threat that at once aroused the interest of both of us. What could be the purpose of bringing the stranger to us now?

Rascon cleared his throat.

"I've been employed by Mr. Wilford," he remarked a bit huskily, "to watch Mrs. Wilford."

"What—to trail her?" asked Kennedy with increased interest.

"Yes," admitted the man, reluctantly.

As I watched him I could see that he was of the type that is all too common. His shifty eye, never meeting yours for any considerable length of time, made a very unfavorable impression on me. It is not that all private detectives, or perhaps even a considerable number, in view of the many in the profession, are of this class. But there are altogether too many of his type and they are a decided menace to their branch of the profession and to society in general. I refer to the type that euphoniously "furnishes" evidence—but unscrupulously goes to the length, if necessary, of actually manufacturing it. They are to their profession what the [95] yellow journalist is to mine, the quack doctor to the medical profession—pariahs.

"Well," prodded Doyle, "tell us what you found."

Again there was no answer.

"Come—speak up. Tell us. You might as well tell now as to do it later."

Still he said nothing. Slowly Rascon drew from his breast pocket a tissue-paper flimsy sheet, a carbon copy of some typewriting, such as some agencies frequently use on which to make their reports to their clients.

"Read it!" demanded Doyle.

Slowly Rascon read:

"June 20. Wilford case. Operative No. 1.

"I picked up Mrs. Wilford at the door of the apartment at 11:15 A.M. She took a taxi to the Piccadilly Hotel.

"There she went in and I followed her to the telephone. I got into the next booth and tried to listen through the partition, but I was too late. She left immediately.

"From the Piccadilly I trailed her to the Plaza, just above Fifty-ninth Street, on Fifth Avenue. There was a touring-car waiting by the curb. In it she met Mr. Shattuck.

"I had time to hail a taxi as they were preparing to drive away and followed. They turned and went down-town. I followed through traffic across the Bridge and through Brooklyn. On the Parkway the touring-car pulled away from me, but not before I was convinced it was headed for the Beach. I had the number, 97531, and the description.

"At the Beach House I picked the car up again. Located the parties at luncheon. I waited about. They did not start back until four o'clock. I followed and he left her at the Subway at the Grand Central.

"She returned to the apartment, about quarter to six.

"I waited outside until relieved by operative No. 6."
[96]

"Was that all that happened?" I asked quickly. "They merely rode down to the beach and had lunch together?"

Rascon again did not reply. I could not even catch his eye as I asked the question.

"Just a moment, Jameson," interrupted Doyle. Then, leading the detective on, "Now, Rascon, what did your employer, Mr. Wilford, say when that report was presented to him?"

Rascon colored at the question, as Doyle had evidently intended that he should.

"He never saw it."

Doyle glowed with satisfaction, as though he were a lawyer bringing out the facts by cross-examination. He nodded to Kennedy and me as if we were a jury. Doyle was merely getting his facts into the record, as it were. Already he had quizzed Rascon into a state of anger and resentment out of which the truth might be expected to slip unaware.

"Never saw it?" thundered Doyle. "What do you mean?"

There was only silence from Rascon. Then, as Doyle threatened, he answered, surlily, "Mrs. Wilford paid me for the report—that is, for the copy of it."

A moment Doyle regarded him, then his virtuous ire rose into towering wrath, even as though he had just heard the thing now for the first time.

"She paid you for it! You dirty hound—that's blackmail!"
[97]

Kennedy interrupted. "Is it true?" he demanded, tapping the sheet of paper which he had taken and read hastily to make sure that nothing had been omitted in the first reading. "Did she meet Shattuck?"

The detective scowled to himself.

"Is it true—tell him," shouted Doyle, brandishing a menacing fist in Rascon's face.

The detective, himself a bulldozer when he had the chance, was bulldozed, even as a German might be frightened by a taste of his own frightfulness.

"N-no," he stammered.

"But had you made similar reports to Mr. Wilford?" persisted Kennedy, with some purpose.

"Oh yes—but not this one. She paid me for this. I played fair—I did," he almost whined.

"Hm! I see," measured Kennedy. "Mr. Wilford got similar reports—and believed them?"

Rascon nodded a deprecating acquiescence. "I suppose so. He never kicked or asked questions. I guess it was what he wanted to know—eh?"

It was not the flash of the detective's cynical lying that surprised me, but Craig's remark and what might be implied in it by the narrowing of Craig's eyes as he asked it and received the answer that he had apparently expected.

I glanced at Craig hastily. What did he mean by the inflection of his voice and by the look?

Hastily I tried to make it out. If the report of this Rascon had been true, did it not seem to explain and motivate Honora? But, I reasoned [98] immediately, even if it were untrue and if Wilford believed those reports he received and wanted to believe, was there not just as compelling a situation?

The thing was important and dangerous for her, either way one looked at it.

A few more questions and it was evident that Rascon, in spite of the baiting that Doyle had given him, was pretty well on guard and in control of himself and would admit nothing unless Doyle had documentary proof or something just as good. Doyle, not wishing to disclose the limit of his information, turned the interview short.

"That'll do," dismissed Doyle. "You may go, Rascon. I'll have more from you later."

Rascon backed out, sheepishly, eager to get away.

"I'll have his license revoked," muttered Doyle, calming down after the stormy quizzing.

Doyle's contempt for Rascon knew no bounds. As for Rascon, I knew the method he had adopted. Once Rascon, or any of that breed, had a case involving clients with money, he proceeded to nurse the case along, to play one party to the case against the other. But I had not often run across cases where the crooked detective, who is a pest despised by all honest detectives even more than by other people, had been so brazen about collecting all the traffic would bear from each side, indiscriminately.

"Why not ask Mrs. Wilford herself about it?" I suggested, as neither Kennedy nor Doyle said anything.
[99]

"Better not—yet," objected Doyle, hastily. "I want to watch her a little herself. I particularly bluffed Rascon into not telling her a word of this."

"Oh, that's all right," acquiesced Craig.

I understood. It was Doyle's clue. He had been honest about it. He had not held back the information from us. But it was his to pursue, he figured. As for Craig, I knew that he would gladly keep his hands off the thing. Besides, there was plenty for us to do in carrying out the line of action which Kennedy had adopted, leaving the less subtle things to Doyle.

"How did you find out about this fellow?" asked Craig, after a little while.

"You remember Celeste?" answered Doyle, as though he had not yet finished telling us what he had come to tell.

"The maid? Yes?"

"I saw Rascon hanging about the apartment—trying to see Celeste. I watched. The dirty dog was trying to sell some more of the stuff to Mrs. Wilford, the whole thing—make a final clean-up under threat of handing it over to me if she didn't come across. Well," he laughed, "I got it, anyhow. She ought to thank me. I saved her some money."

I did not like his tone toward Honora.

"Well," he went on, "as soon as I got the lead I investigated. Now I'm convinced that Celeste was the go-between in the transactions. I've made Celeste confess. She paid him the money for Mrs. Wilford. He handed her copies of the fake reports [100] which he agreed to 'kill' if enough was paid for them. Oh, it was a slick game, taking advantage of a situation."

I glanced at Kennedy. "Do you think Celeste can be relied on?" I asked.

He saw that I meant the test of her susceptibility to suggestion and her inaccuracy.

"Ah, very true, Walter," he remarked. "But the reports themselves are incontrovertible. True or false—they were made. Some of them Wilford must have seen. Others she must have paid for. But the fact remains, no matter what Celeste may be."

Doyle had been waiting impatiently for us to finish. Finally he nodded mysteriously, then stepped to the door. He opened it, and there in the hall I saw Celeste herself, with McCabe. The detective and the girl entered. Celeste stared about, not quite knowing what to make of the whole affair.

"Celeste," began Doyle, with an easy familiarity which I knew the French maid resented deeply, "you saw that man who was here and went away?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you know him?"

"I have met the gentleman—two or three times."

"What happened on one of these occasions?"

Celeste paused. But Doyle was a forceful persuader to those who hesitated. Celeste evidently considered that she had best say something. That I knew was the danger—her readiness to say something, no matter what, to follow out some purpose [101] in her own mind. However, knowing her attachment to Honora, I felt sure, as she went on, that what she was telling us was wrung from her by compulsion and was not said merely as so many words.

"Madame she asked me to hand him an envelope."

"And what then?"

"In return I was to get one."

"Did you get one?"

"Yes, sir."

Celeste was saying no more than necessary.

"What was in it?"

The girl shrugged in her best Parisian. I may have been convinced that she did know what was in the return envelope. But there was clearly no way to prove it. We were forced to take her word on the matter. Doyle himself realized that handicap.

"Now, Celeste," began Doyle again, passing over that uncompleted phase, as though there was much he could have said, only refrained from doing so to go on to the next point, "what about the belladonna?"

"She used it to brighten her eyes," returned the maid, as glibly as if she had practised the reply.

"I mean—when did she use it last? Be careful. I know more than you think."

"Yesterday," she replied, in a low voice, somewhat startled at Doyle's assumption of omniscience.

"Why?"

"Her eyes were dull."
[102]

"She had been crying the night before—eh?"

There was no answer.

"Ah—then there had been a quarrel between Mrs. Wilford and her husband the day before?"

Doyle's assurance, like a clairvoyant having struck a profitable lead, overwhelmed Celeste. She said nothing, but it was evident that Doyle had hit upon something at least approximating the truth.

"Did she threaten again to leave him?" persisted Doyle, now taking further advantage.

"Oh—no—no—no! Madame would not quarrel. She would not leave monsieur—I know it."

I glanced again at Kennedy. I saw that he placed no great reliance on what Celeste said, unless it were substantiated in some outside manner.

It seemed to be about all we could get out of her, at least at this time. Moreover, following Doyle's wishes, we decided to let him handle both the Rascon affair and such watching and questioning of Celeste as may seem necessary. Kennedy was not unwilling. To tell the truth, the Rascon affair was indeed unsavory and a mess we could afford to let alone.

"That's all, my girl, for the present," concluded Doyle. "Oh—by the way—not one syllable of this to Mrs. Wilford. And if you breathe a word I shall know it. It will go hard with you, you understand?"

She bowed and McCabe took her away. It had been all right while she was with us. But the [103] moment McCabe loomed up on the scene, it was different. She tossed her head with offended dignity and marched off.

For some moments longer Doyle and we discussed the new phase of the case. It was greatly to Doyle's satisfaction that we allowed him to be unhampered in what he had unearthed. It had evidently worried him to think of having us two amateurs dragging across the trail he had uncovered.

Finally he left us, satisfied that he had done a great stroke of work. For some moments after he was gone Kennedy was silent and in deep study.

"What do you make of it all?" I asked, breaking in on his thoughts, for fear something might interrupt before I could obtain Craig's personal impression.

"Very important, perhaps—not for any evidence it may furnish in itself regarding what happened, for Rascon confessed that it was all faked, but important for its effect upon the minds of those concerned."

Somehow I was not pleased at Doyle's discovery. In my heart I was hoping for anything that would relieve the load of suspicion on Honora. This did not.

"You see," went on Kennedy, "it's not always what people know, the facts, that are important. Quite as important, oftentimes, are the things that they think they know, what they believe. People act on beliefs, you know."
[104]

Much as I hated to admit it in this instance, I was forced to grant that it was true.

"That may be," I confessed, "but why did she pay? Isn't it likely that it was a frame-up against her?"

Kennedy smiled as he realized I was defending her. "Quite the case," he argued. "I suppose you know that some of these private detectives are really scandalous in their operations?"

"Indeed I do."

"Then can't you understand how a woman who knows might be driven desperate by it? Honora was well informed in the ways of the world. She knew that people would say, 'Where there's so much smoke, there's fire.' I'll wager that you've said the same thing, yourself, about articles in your own paper."

I nodded reluctantly. It was a fact.

"Why, this private-detective evil is so bad," he went on, vehemently, "that judges ordinarily won't take the testimony of a private detective in this kind of case unless it is corroborated. And yet, in spite of that fact, you can always find some one to believe anything, especially in society, provided the tale is told circumstantially. She knew that, as I say. And it must have been exasperating. It must have preyed on her mind. No doubt, if you sift the matter down you'll find that it was just this move on the part of her husband that killed whatever spark of love there might have been glowing in her heart. Suspicion does that."
[105]

I decided not to pursue my own argument. I felt that the more I attempted to defend or excuse Honora, the more Kennedy bent and twisted the thing to some other purpose of his own. I could only trust that something would come to the surface that would set things in a different light.

Doyle had been gone some time and Kennedy was beginning to get a little nervous over what was delaying Doctor Leslie with the materials from the autopsy from which he expected to discover much that would straighten out the tangle of what it really was that had occurred in Wilford's office on that fatal night.

We had about decided to take a run over to the city laboratories to find out, when the door opened and a hearty voice greeted us.

It was no other than Doctor Leslie himself, with an assistant carrying the materials from the autopsy, as he had promised. The fact was that he had not been so very long. Events had crowded on one another so fast that we had not appreciated the passage of time.

As the attendant laid the jars down on Craig's laboratory table, Leslie seemed to have almost forgotten about them himself.

"I've made a discovery—I think," he announced, eagerly. "Perhaps it's gossip—but at any rate, it's interesting."

"Fire away," encouraged Kennedy, listening, but at the same time preparing impatiently to plunge into the deferred analysis might now be made.
[106]

"I stopped at the Medical Society," hastened Leslie. "Do you know, it seems to be the gossip of the profession, under cover, about Lathrop and his wife. News spreads fast—especially scandal, like the talk of her knowing Wilford, which, thanks to some of Mr. Jameson's enterprising fraternity, the papers have already printed. Well, from what I hear, I don't believe that she really cared for Vail Wilford at all. It seems that she was using him just because he was a clever lawyer. As nearly as I can make it out, she had set herself to secure the divorce and capture Shattuck—wealthy, fascinating, and all that, you know."

"Shattuck—she!" I exclaimed.

Kennedy, however, said nothing, but shot a quick glance at me, recalling by it our still fresh meeting with both Vina and Shattuck, as well as the visit from Rascon. I remembered also that it had been evident at our first meeting with Doctor Lathrop that he had shown a keen interest in what his wife was doing. Had it been really jealousy—or was it merely wounded pride?

Kennedy still did not venture to comment, but I saw that he was very thoughtful and that his eyes were resting on the book of Freud which we had been discussing some time before. What was passing in his mind I could not guess, but would have hazarded that it had something to do with Honora's dreams. At least the recollection of them flashed over me. Had Doctor Lathrop been the lion in her path, in some way? What [107] had that dream meant? So far it had not been explained.

Little more was said, but after a few moments' chat with Doctor Leslie, Craig set determinedly to work, making up for the time that had passed without any laboratory addition to his knowledge of the case.

Leslie waited awhile, then excused himself. He had hardly gone when Craig looked up from his work at me.

"Walter," he said, briskly, "I wish that you would try to find out more about that story of Leslie's."

Seeing that I was merely in the way, as he worked, now, I was delighted at the commission. I left him as he returned to the work of analyzing the materials Leslie had brought. For, I reasoned, here was a new angle of the case—Vina as the cause of all the trouble—and I was determined to find something bearing on it to add as my contribution to the ultimate solution.