CHAPTER VII CHIEFLY GOSSIP

I went accordingly to Mrs. Whyte's that very same evening. On the way I stopped at Mr. Ellison's to interview Minnie, the maid. I didn't expect any very important evidence from her, but as she was the only one who could have seen Benbow after he left the banquet, and would know whether or not he was alone, I wanted to hear what she had to say.

She came into the library at Mr. Ellison's summons,--a very pretty girl, but also evidently a very timid girl. At each question I asked, she glanced mutely at Mr. Ellison, as if trying to read his wishes before venturing to answer. I guessed that Mr. Ellison might perhaps be somewhat severe with his servants, and that the timid Minnie would far rather lie than encounter his displeasure.

"This is nothing to frighten you, Miss Doty," I said gently, trying to draw her eyes to me from Mr. Ellison,--and without complete success. "I am not a policeman. I just want to ask a few questions that will help me to understand things myself. You were the only person in the house last night, I believe. Is that so?"

"Yes," she said, drawing a quick breath, and with a darting glance at Mr. Ellison.

"Yes, Gene and I were both dining out," Mr. Ellison put in, "and Mrs. Crosswell, the housekeeper, is away for the week. So Minnie was left in charge of the house."

"You weren't afraid?" I said smilingly, trying to ease her nervous tension. But the obtuse Ellison again took the word from her mouth.

"Why should she be afraid? I told her to lock up the house and let no one in."

"Can you hear the door-bell from your room?" I asked, remembering Jean Benbow's vain efforts to make herself heard at the front door. Minnie had evidently been gossiping in the neighborhood, instead of guarding the house!

"Yes--not always," she stammered, nervously.

"You didn't hear Miss Benbow ring."

"Not at first," she said in a low voice. I guessed she was afraid of a scolding for being out of the house, and shaped my next question so as to spare her an explicit statement.

"It was you who let Miss Benbow in, wasn't it?"

"Yes," she murmured, hardly above a breath. Her eyes fell, and the color came and went in her face.

"Did you leave the house at all after letting her in?"

"No," she said quickly, lifting her eyes. I was sure she spoke the truth that time.

"Then can you tell me when Mr. Benbow came in?"

"No, sir. I--I don't know."

"Could he get in without your knowing?"

"He has a latch-key to the side door,--the library door," said Mr. Ellison. "He uses the library for his study."

"Then you wouldn't know whether he came in at all last night?" I said to Minnie.

"Oh, yes, he came in," she said quickly.

"How do you know?"

"I--I saw him--go out," she stammered, with sudden confusion.

"When?"

"I--didn't notice."

"But you saw him leave the house?"

"Yes, sir. He came down--he went down the steps from the library, and went off."

"Off to the street, you mean?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did he speak to you?"

"Oh, no, sir. He didn't see me."

"Where were you?"

She hesitated and stammered. "In the dining room." I felt sure that this time she was not telling the truth, but Mr. Ellison unconsciously came to her support.

"There is a bay window in the dining room which overlooks the library entrance," he volunteered.

"Was Mr. Benbow alone?"

"Yes, sir."

"You are sure about that?"

"Oh, yes, he was quite alone," she said positively.

"You didn't see any stranger here during the evening, either with Mr. Benbow or otherwise?"

"No, sir, there wasn't anybody here at all," she said with a definiteness that was convincing.

I let her go at that,--to her evident relief. I had seen the trepidation of perfectly innocent witnesses too often to attach any great weight to her nervousness, but at the same time I had a feeling that she had not been perfectly frank. But probably the fact that she had been out of the house when she was supposed to be in it was enough to give her that atmosphere of something concealed.

"That confirms Mr. Benbow's statement that he came home for his revolver," I said to Ellison, who, I was sure, had listened carefully, though he had made a show of indifference and inattention. "I thought possibly someone might have seen him and talked with him who could throw some light on the matter, but it seems not. How is Miss Benbow?"

"Jean? Oh, she's all right. No business to be here, mixing up in things that concern men, but what can you expect nowadays? Of course she had to come interfering."

"If you think she would care to see me,--"

He shook his head impatiently. "Miss Thurston is with her. They are talking things over for all they are worth."

I rose to depart. Then the thought which had been in the background of my mind all along came forward. After all, I might as well be the one to tell him.

"Mr. Ellison, they found a check signed by you in Barker's pocket. You will probably hear of it, if you didn't already know."

He puckered his eyelids and looked at me narrowly.

"Where did you get that bit of information?"

"I saw the check."

"A check payable to Barker?"

"No, it was made payable to bearer."

"Indeed?" He laughed a little maliciously. "I wonder how Barker got hold of it!"

"Barker had ways of getting money," I said drily. There was no reason why he should take me into his confidence, of course--and, judging from what I knew of Barker, probably there was every reason why he should not,--but his reserve was somewhat tantalizing! It would have been natural for him to mention the fact of his own acquaintance or business dealings with Barker when he first interviewed me,--unless they were of the nature that people don't discuss. Had Barker been levying blackmail on him also? In spite of his inscrutability, I was sure my information had disturbed him, though he was not surprised. Had he been nerving himself for the discovery? I reflected that ease, long continued, makes people soft. Mr. Ellison was probably less fit to meet trouble than Jean.

I went down the street to the next house, where Mr. Whyte and my dear white-haired friend were sitting on the front porch, taking in the pleasant evening air. (It was early in October.) They appeared to have been sitting quiet in the sympathetic silence of the long married, but from the way in which Whyte wrung my hand I could see that the quiet covered a good deal of emotional strain.

"What can be done for the poor boy?" was Mrs. Whyte's first question.

"I don't know yet. I am simply gathering the facts at present."

"It's a terrible business," said Mr. Whyte. "Ellison tells me that he has asked you to defend Gene, but I don't see that the boy has left you much legal ammunition. He confesses the shooting."

"The law will have to take cognizance of the facts attending the shooting,--his youth, the provocation, the circumstances. I don't despair. But I want to know everything possible,--his temperament, his associations, his friends. You can help me here, Mrs. Whyte."

"How? Dear knows I'll be glad to."

"Has he ever talked about avenging his father's death? Has that been on his mind?"

"He never spoke of it. I don't believe it was on his mind. You see, he was only ten years old at the time, and though it must, of course, have been a great shock, he was really nothing but a child, and a child soon forgets. Senator Benbow's death killed his wife, but I don't think Gene realizes that. Mr. Ellison took Eugene to live with him and put Jean into a good boarding-school, and they both have been happy enough. Eugene has grown up just like other boys, except that he has been more alone. I have made a point of having him over here a good deal, just because he was growing up with no women about, over at Mr. Ellison's. Of course his sister has been here a good deal, holidays and so on, but that's different."

"Did he go anywhere else, so far as you know?"

"I know that he did not. He is too shy and reserved to care much for society. He loves to read and dream, and aside from his college mates, I don't believe that he has any friends that you could call intimate. In fact, I can't flatter myself that he really cared to come over here to see me, except when Katherine Thurston was here visiting me."

"He had the good taste then to admire Miss Thurston?"

Mr. Whyte chuckled across the gloom. "He has been her devoted slave for a year past."

"Now, Carroll," Mrs. Whyte began in protest, but before she could give it further expression we were interrupted by an approaching visitor. Clyde came swinging up the walk with an eager stride.

"Good evening!" he called cheerily, lifting his hat. "What a perfect evening it is! I don't wonder you are all out of doors. Evening, Hilton." His vigorous, even happy, manner, was most alien to our mood. It struck us like laughter at a funeral.

"We were just speaking of poor Gene Benbow," said Mrs. Whyte, with delicate reproof in her voice.

"Oh, yes, of course. He was a friend of yours, wasn't he?" he said, toning his manner down to a different key from that in which he had come.

"Was and is," said Whyte simply.

"Yes, of course," said Clyde, hastily, trying to right himself with the current. "Poor fellow, as you say. He must have brooded over his father's death a great deal to have such a purpose develop in his mind. But Barker richly deserved his fate, for that matter."

"Oh, I'm not wasting any sympathy on Barker," said Mrs. Whyte, and something in her crisp tones told me that Clyde was not wholly persona grata with the warm-hearted lady. "It's Gene I'm thinking about."

"Of course. Naturally," he said, quickly. Then, as the pause was beginning to be awkward, he asked tentatively, "I wonder if I might see Miss Thurston."

"She isn't at home," said Mrs. Whyte (and I was sure from her voice that she found a certain satisfaction in denying his request). "She has gone to spend the night with Jean."

"With whom?" he asked sharply.

"With Jean Benbow,--Eugene's sister, you know. She is here at Mr. Ellison's,--came up home last night to celebrate their birthday, poor child."

"This thing has been an awful blow to Katherine," said Mr. Whyte, taking his cigar from his mouth, and dropping his voice. "I didn't know she had it in her to feel so deeply for a friend's trouble. She is always so self-possessed and calm that I suppose I thought she had no feelings. But, by Jove, she was crushed. I never saw anyone look so overwhelmed with grief. She couldn't have felt it more if she had been Eugene's mother."

"Heavens, Carroll, Katherine isn't as old as that!" said Mrs. Whyte impatiently.

"Well, then, his sweetheart!" said Whyte, half-laughing. "I won't say as his sister. His sister was twice as plucky and sensible about it as Katherine was, for that matter. She didn't go all to pieces."

"Miss Thurston is very sympathetic," said Clyde, in a tone which did not wholly match his words. He rose and stood for a moment, hesitating, as though he had not yet said what he came to say.

"They have been to see me again to-day about running for mayor on the citizens' ticket," he said at last, half-deprecatingly. "I--I almost think I will let them put my name up." (He glanced at me with a smile as he spoke, knowing that I would understand his new attitude in the matter.) "That is,--unless my friends dissuade me."

"Good enough!" cried Whyte. "Go ahead! We'll work for you to a man."

"I wondered what you and Mrs. Whyte would say about it,--and Miss Thurston," he added, haltingly.

"I can tell you that," said Mrs. Whyte, in her most decisive tones. "Katherine won't care a pin who is mayor of Saintsbury until she knows what is to come to Gene Benbow."

"Yes, of course," said Clyde, uncomfortably. "I'm awfully sorry about all this distress. If there is anything at all that I can do,--"

"Thank you," said Mrs. Whyte, somewhat loftily. "I'll tell Katherine."

And Clyde departed, knowing that in this quarter at least he was not quite forgiven for being alive and free and ambitious while Gene Benbow was lying in prison. I think that I, though his newest friend, was the one most sympathetic toward him that evening. I could understand how the relief, the new feeling of security, which had followed Barker's death, had made the whole world seem new-made for him. Besides, he had no such feeling of personal friendship for Gene as the rest of the group had.

"I'll tell Katherine all right," said Mrs. Whyte, somewhat maliciously, I thought. "Oh, yes, I'll tell Katherine that he came around to talk about the political situation, this evening of all times."

"Now, Clara," said her husband pacifically. "The nomination is an important matter, and we can't stop living just because Gene Benbow is in trouble."

"He has never liked Gene," said Mrs. Whyte, defensively. "Whenever he finds Gene here with Katherine, or finds that he has taken her out walking, or anything like that, he just stands and glowers."

"Perhaps he is jealous," said Whyte, with a subdued chuckle.

"He has no right to be jealous. If Katherine enjoys Gene's society, she has a perfect right to choose it. Not that there is anything of that sort between them! Katherine is not old enough to be Gene's mother, but she is older, and she would never allow anything of that sort to happen. Besides, if she had wanted Kenneth Clyde, she could have had him years ago."

"I wonder why she has never married," said Whyte, blowing smoke rings into the air.

"Too much sense," said Mrs. Whyte crisply. Then, quite obviously recollecting that this was not the view to present to me, she added, significantly, "When Mr. Right comes, it will be a different matter."

"She wouldn't have a word to throw to the rightest Mr. Right in the world just now," said Mr. Whyte. "She is taking Gene's trouble pretty hard. But that little Jean is a wonder! She will be a heart-wrecker all right."

"Now, Carroll, don't put any such ideas into her head. She is a mere child."

"She is Gene's twin," said Mr. Whyte, shrewdly. "If his devotion to Katherine is to be treated respectfully, you can't act as though Jean were just out of the kindergarten. I'll bet she has had a broader experience with love-affairs than Katherine has."

"You don't know anything about it," was Mrs. Whyte's crushing response, and after that the conversation became more general.

I had listened with the greatest interest, not only because of the light which the conversation threw on the character of the boy whom I wished to understand, but because of the vivid interest in Jean Benbow which my brief encounter with her had aroused. She was, as Mrs. Whyte said, merely a child, and even youthful for her years, but a sure instinct told me that she would be past mistress of the game where hearts are trumps. I was soon to prove this surmise correct! Young Garney, Gene's Latin tutor, fell a victim at sight. By chance (if there be chance, which I sometimes doubt,) that affair began in my own office--and ended where none of us would have guessed. I had asked Garney to come to my office, to see if he could tell me anything helpful about Gene, when Jean stumbled in,--or ricochetted in, rather. Jean never did anything that suggested stumbling. But that interview was too important to be dismissed in a few words. I shall have to tell it in detail, later on. But before I come to that, there was a strange event which I must record. It befell that same evening, after I left the Whytes.