CHAPTER I
I
The heavy glass and bronze door revolved, and released from its sections, out of the grizzly November mist and into the rosy and fragrant hotel lobby, malice and envy, joy and enthusiasm, vanity and greed. Fear, masked with dignity, wrapped in sealskin and topped with a charming bright red hat, came quickly and alone.
Two egg-shaped matrons glanced, lengthened and set their glances.
Purple-and-henna breathed, “Beautiful wrap.”
“I’ll tell you about her in a minute.” Brown-and-gold spoke from her throat.
Their gazes followed the sealskin down the long strip of Mosul to the mahogany desk behind which a glossy clerk suddenly discovered reverence and added it to his attitude.
“She’s one of the Quilters,” Brown-and-gold informed. “They are among the best-known families here in Oregon. They have an enormous ranch over east of the mountains in Quilter County; half of that country over there seems to be named for them. They’re millionaires. Ken says everything they touch turns into money.
“I’ve never met her—exactly; that’s why I didn’t speak. But she was at a tea where I was, two years ago; it was given for the blind. Quilters are supposed to be very charitable; but why shouldn’t they be? As I told Ken, a dollar doesn’t mean any more to them than a thin dime does to us.” She paused to sigh.
“Does she live here at this hotel?”
“No. No—she lives out at the ranch. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to live away from things, like that. The ranch is beautiful, though; quite a show place. Too bad you’re leaving so soon—we might motor over to see it. Her brother, Neal Quilter, has been stopping here for a couple of days. I suppose she is here to see him. I’ve seen him twice lately in the dining room. He is awfully handsome—a bachelor, too. Will you look at the bellhop sliding to ring the elevator bell for her? I’m always allowed to ring it for myself. I hope she has to wait as long for that elevator as I usually do. The service here seems to be getting worse and worse; and, considering the prices they ask——”
“She’s as slim as an old maid. Or is she married?”
“She’s a widow. Judith Quilter Whitefield. Has been, for years and years. Funny she’s never married again, with her money. She’s kind of sweet looking yet, don’t you think? I guess she just didn’t want to marry. I don’t blame her; why should she? She toured Europe last year with her sister, Lucy Quilter Cerini, and her husband——”
“Oh! Is that who she is? I didn’t connect the names at all. I reviewed one of Lucy Quilter Cerini’s books for our ladies’ literary society, back home, last year. I remember I found then that she was born in Oregon, but I didn’t place her at first. So she’s her sister?”
“Yes. I’ve never read any of her works. Was the book you read good?”
“Well—yes. You know she’s very highly spoken of——”
The elevator door slid open, clinked shut.
Judith looked into the panelled mirror. She was too pale. She ducked her head and pinched pink into her cheeks with trembling fingers.
“Fifth floor, madam. To your right.”
Five hundred and two—buckle my shoe. Five hundred and four—shut the door. Five hundred and——How slyly, furtively soft these felt-padded carpets were. They had turned her into a sleuth, creeping, sneaking up on Neal. She wished that her advent might have been heralded by at least the smart clicking of heels. One could not, of course, whistle down hotel corridors. Perhaps she should have asked the clerk to telephone. But no, last night and again this morning she had thought and thought of that, and had rejected it.
Five hundred and sixteen. She paused, unfastened her fur collar and set it back from her firm white throat. She unclasped her handbag, took from it a gold locket of the sort that dangled from long bead chains in the eighteen nineties, and snapped it open. In one of its circles was the picture of an old gentleman with a white, squarely cut beard, a wide brow, small sensitive nostrils, and a humorous quirk near the eyes that miraculously saved the face from the frailty of saintliness. In the opposite circle, printed in tiny letters, was, Judith had long thought, a truer portrait of her grandfather. He had called it a rule of conduct, and had given it to her during the happiest period of her life: just after she and Gregory Whitefield had announced their engagement; months before the suspicion that “Greg’s bad cold” could be serious.
“Judith Quilter,” the words read. “Achieve tranquillity.”
Greg had never fully understood. Once, during those tremulous months in Colorado, when all life’s worth hung on the slender thread of mercury in the clinical thermometer, he had asked, when she had opened the locket: “What’s the magic of it, dear? How does it make things better for you?”
“It doesn’t,” she had declared. “Not a bit. All it does is to make me better for things.”
Twenty-eight years ago; and now, still: “Judith Quilter. Achieve tranquillity.”
She closed the locket, tucked it into the perfumed silk of her bag, pulled off her glove. At any rate, her knock should not sound surreptitious.
She snatched her hand from the door and put its knuckles to her parted lips. “Oh, dear!” she whispered. How could she have done that? How could she have produced that insultingly authoritative racket, which must, because of its very quarrelsomeness, be met with the rebuke of this smothering silence?
“Judy! You doggone pesty little hound!” The kiss prickled at the sides, but it was heavily, satisfactorily, smokily Neal.
“Golly, but you’re pretty, Jude. Been pinching your cheeks, I’ll bet a dollar——”
“Look, dear. My new hat.”
“Yes, at your age! Running around buying gaudy red hats and smelling of violets—no, of one violet. Stand off; let’s have a look at you—you friendly little Jezebel, you!”
“But, Neal, don’t you like the new hat?”
“Not much. It’s too shockingly becoming. But, whither, Judy? I thought I left you at home forcing Lucy’s babies to entertain your guest?”
“I brought Ursula with me, silly. We felt the need for some shopping so we motored over yesterday evening. We got in late, and rose rather late this morning. But there’s been time for the hat, and some toys, and luncheon. Then I happened to think you might have tea with us, later; so I’ve run up to ask you.”
“Your naïveté is faultless, darling.”
“Neal! If you have to be a killjoy, you might try to be a humane one.”
Achieve tranquillity. Do not notice the shadow, dimming the splendid blondness, the averted eyes, the contracted shoulders.
“Judith, how did you know that I was here?”
“But, dear, where should you be? You have never stayed at another hotel in Portland, have you? I felt a traitor myself. But I did wish to impress Ursula with the glories of the Trensonian. I think, though, Neal, that before you left you might have stuck a note on your pincushion, or——”
“Drop it, Jude. Is Ursula going back to Q 2 with you?”
“Did she bore you? Was it she who drove you away, silly?”
“Heavy tact. You know and I know; so, what’s the use? I’m mad about her. Repellent, isn’t it? A man of my age. I’m forty-six damn years old.”
“Yes, so you say. But Ursula isn’t a young girl. She has been a widow for eight years. She loves our West, and our Q 2, and——”
“You’re as sentimental as a hammock.”
“I don’t care. She does. And she loves you, too, and has for the past three years. You’d have known it if you hadn’t been blind. Neal—— What is it?”
Merely a dream: a preposterous dream, about an absurd play in which a man, who looked like Neal, went towering, shaking blond fists at his own shoulders; went muttering, giving an amusingly over-acted performance of rage. Neal, who was always gentle and funny and kind, would laugh at such exaggerations and say, “the cross-patch,” or something of the sort. Though, if Neal were ill, he might—— Lucy said that Neal was ill, very ill. Lucy was a genius. She should be here. Judith was a simple, stupid old woman. Judith Quilter. Achieve tranquillity.
“Sorry, Neal, if I was inept. Something seems to be quite the trouble. Perhaps, if you’d care to tell me, I might understand.”
“Understand?” he accepted the word and seemed for a moment to caress it. “Understand!” he snarled it to pieces and flung it back, a shattered brutality. “Try understanding this, then. And, when you’ve finished with it, give it to the graceful Ursula, and see whether she can understand——”
“Neal, dear! Don’t!”
“Don’t! I thought not. You’ve guessed it, of course. You and Lucy guessed it years ago, together. And now you tell me—don’t. Don’t tell the truth. Keep my secret, since I’ve kept it only a lifetime. God, what I’ve lived through! Sorry. Almost began on that foxy Spartan stuff. No matter. I’ve kept my mouth shut. I promised. Or—did I? Sometimes I think my life has been pinned shut with a promise. Sometimes I think it has been fear, pride—— Take your choice. I’ve kept my secret. And I would have kept it if you’d let me alone. It’s your fault. You brought Ursula. Bent on your matchmaking mummery. I came away, didn’t I? Here you are, with Ursula in the offing. Tracking me down, sneaking—— Sorry. You’re sweet, Judy. But I tell you, you’ve forced a confidence. You’ve forced me, and I’m glad of it, into the luxury of a confession. Take it!
“I killed Father. I did, I tell you. I knew about the insurance. It seemed the only way out. I fooled them all. I cut the red mask from Olympe’s satin frock. I—— Judy, don’t look like that. Put your new hat on. Stop rumpling your hair. Lovely gray hair you have, Judy. See, dear, it needn’t matter a lot now—about the murder. We’ll never tell it—you and I? It needn’t matter at all—except for Ursula. I can’t marry her. I can’t ever marry, Jude. That needn’t matter. I’ve never cared a lot about marrying. Loathed women, mostly. All but you girls, and—Ursula.
“Think we’d better tell Ursula? Think that’s the immediate decency required? She’ll run away back to her Italy, then, and thank her stars she’s well out of this. She wouldn’t tell on me, do you think? I’d hate being hanged, you know. All the aspects—personal and public, is that the way it goes?—of hanging I’d hate——”
“Neal——”
“Wait, Judy. I want the straight of this. The low-down on it. Am I mad? Wasn’t that why Lucy had the psychiatrist visiting at Q 2? No, not what you are thinking. I committed the murder. I’m guilty—guilty as a dog. But am I mad? I might well be, having done in a member of the family. Do you remember, wasn’t Aunt Gracia a bit mad? All that bunk of her religion—that Siloamite stuff? We none of us ever admitted it, of course. And Father—— I wonder whether normal, sane people ever do kill? What I’m getting at is, there may be a strain of insanity in the family. Oh, for the Lord’s sake, Judy, won’t you stop pushing the waves all out of your hair?”
“Yes, dear, of course. I was trying to think about this madness. I’m sure that you are mistaken. Aunt Gracia was a mystic. But you must remember how sane and wise she was. There may have been something a bit bleak about her wisdom, but it was deliberate. Father killed the man exactly as he might have killed a rattlesnake coiled to strike at Mother. But you, Neal, forgive me, don’t seem entirely sane to me to-day.”
“Convenient insanity?”
“No, no, Neal. Why be cruel? You suggested it; but I did say it stupidly. I should have said that you are quite sane, but that your memory isn’t. The whole trouble is merely a question of memory. If you will remember, it is absolutely impossible that you could have killed Father. I don’t mean morally impossible—that, too, of course—but physically impossible. Remember. You were locked in your room at the time. Within two minutes after the shot was heard, Lucy came running from her room into yours, through the connecting door, and found you trying to batter down your door, that led into the hall, with a chair.”
“Lucy was only a kid at the time. She was much too frightened to know what she saw.”
“Not at all, Neal. Lucy was twelve, and unusually precocious.”
“Yes, and I was eighteen, and—unusually precocious. I tell you, I did it. But I’m not going to tell even you how I managed it. If the thing should be raked up, and come to a trial, you wouldn’t wish to know. And, in the event of a trial, I’d like my little alibi.”
“Dear me, Neal! Really, you are talking now like a book; a third-rate detective thing.”
“Third rate, nothing of the sort. They are sweeter than the sex stuff, and a pile more interesting. I’ve been going in for them lately; and pausing to thank my lucky stars that we didn’t have a French or a Thorndike at Q 2 Ranch in 1900. It wouldn’t have taken one of those birds long to see through seven doors being locked with ten keys, or the rope from our own attic being swung out of Father’s window, or Olympe’s being killed the same way Father was——”
“See, Neal, how false your memory is? Olympe was not killed that night. She lived for years after that. Since your memory has begun to play tricks of this sort, why won’t you trust our memories—my memory? I know, and all the others know, that there is no possibility of your having had anything to do with Father’s murder.”
“You weren’t there, Judy; so, naturally, you’d remember all about it. Yes, you bet. But that’s what I want you to know, just the same. You, and the others. It hasn’t mattered much, until Ursula——”
“Marry Ursula, and it won’t matter then.”
“Chris’s duplex psychology?”
“I suppose so. I’m not clever with it. Come home with us this afternoon. Tell Chris what you’ve told me. He’ll straighten it out for you.”
“For me—or for Irene?”
“Shame on you, Neal.”
“Surely. Sorry. But it has always bothered Chris a lot, you know, having that dapper honour of his sort of uncreased, as it were, by the fact that Irene was out straying around loose in the hall that night when the rest of us were locked up. If you don’t mind, that is, a lot, I think I’ll ask you not to mention this to Chris—nor to anyone.”
“I shouldn’t have, in any case.”
“Ursula?”
“I think not. Since it is unimportant and false, it couldn’t interest her particularly. I regard it, rather, as a wave you’ve done, or had done, to your memory. You know, exactly like those horrid permanent kinks that Irene had put in her hair a few years ago. It is artificial and false and ugly. But, like the hair kinks, it will grow out straight in time. Until then, the less attention we call to it the better, I should say.”
“I should say so, too; for that reason, or—another.”
“About going home, dear. We had planned to leave shortly after tea, have dinner at that delightful new place on the highway, and spend the night there. Then, with easy driving, we should be at the ranch in time for luncheon to-morrow. Would that suit you?”
“On the square, Judy, I am sick of it here. But, if I go back with you, will you ship Ursula as soon as you can?”
“Yes, Neal. If that seems fair to you, I will.”
“Damn that red hat, Jude. It is the same colour that the mask was. I hate red, anyway.”
“Sorry, but I’m afraid you’ll have to endure it. It cost too much. Will you join us for tea?”
“I think not. Thanks, all that. Did you drive over, or did you bring George?”
“We brought George. He was so avid to show off Irene’s conception of a proper uniform for a chauffeur that I hadn’t the courage to refuse him. He’s a perfect guy in it, Neal; but as happy as Hallelujah.”
“Fine. I’ll ride in front with him, then. Be sure to fix it that way, will you, honey?”
“Yes, I will. Shall we come by for you at half-past five?”
“Wait, Judy, listen. No, I mean really listen. You remember the snow the night Father was killed? Well, if anyone from the outside had done it, there’d have been bound to be footprints——”
“Neal, dear, that was twenty-eight years ago. Need we go over it all, again, right now? I’ve always believed that, by the time any of you had regained your senses enough to look for footprints, the new-falling snow had covered them.”
“It won’t go, Jude. The snow had stopped before we heard the shot. We looked within half an hour. The footprints Chris made, going to the barn, were there plain as print in the morning. That is—— Weren’t they?”
“So you wrote to me, Neal. In all your letters you made a particular point of the absence of footprints in the snow. Do you think you would have written like that if you’d been trying to hide your own guilt?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything; except that, sometimes, I think I’ve brooded over this too long. I admit that I do get hazy about it now. Only——There is this, Judy. If I didn’t do it, who did?”
“Well, Neal, I believe that is what we are going to have to find out.”
“Golly, Judy, you’re the prettiest thing I ever saw when you poke up pert like that.”
“You’d be especially fit to look at yourself, dear, if you would shave. Half-past five, then? Good-bye.”
No, she could not stop and lean against the wall. She must walk steadily, oblivious of reeling worlds. She must keep her chin high; she must point her toes out—no, straight in front; she had been mistaught about toes. She must not snatch the hideous, vivid thing from her head and throw it on the elevator’s floor. She must———What was that thing? Achieve tranquillity. But how was that possible? What did tranquillity mean?
II
If the taxicab would stop bouncing her up and down through the streaming city she could make up her mind what she must say, or, more important, what she must not say to Dr. Joe. “We are concerned about Neal.” No. “Neal, of late, hasn’t seemed quite well.” No. Neal. Neal. Neal.
The not too tall, very fat man, whose white hair crowned his pink baldness childishly like a daisy wreath, took her shivering hands into a grasp that was tight, and warm, and secure.
She said: “Dr. Joe, I’ve found Neal. I mean—Neal has been here in the city for the past two days. I mean—Neal.”
“Sure, I know, Judy. Here, let me help you with that coat. Too hot in this office for a fur coat. Pretty lining. That’s a pretty hat, too. Cheerful, but small—that’s the rule for a hat.”
Ten twirling minutes later he said: “Look, Judy. What is it you want me to do? I’ll drive over to Q 2 for the week-end, and only too glad of an excuse. But Neal will be fit as a fiddle. I guess you know that his trouble is mental, not physical.”
“But, Dr. Joe, after all, is there a difference?”
“Hello, there! Been taking up Watson?”
“He is so beautifully utilitarian. Sort of in defence, you know, against Chris’s everlasting Freud, and Jung, and the rest.”
“Now you let your cousin Christopher alone. He’s a good boy. He’s getting better all the time. How old is Chris by now?”
“In his late fifties. He doesn’t look it.”
“He couldn’t. He’s a Quilter. Judy, here’s what I’ve been thinking. You had that psychiatrist—the Vienna man—at your place for quite a while last year, didn’t you?”
“For six weeks. He was a friend of Lucy’s, you know. But we weren’t positive, then, that anything was really wrong with Neal. So we wouldn’t allow Dr. Koreth to hector him. He and Chris had a splendid time together; but, as far as Neal was concerned, Dr. Koreth’s visit was useless.”
“You can’t blame him for that, Judy. I couldn’t cut out a man’s tonsils if I wasn’t allowed to let him know that anything was the matter with him.”
“I know. But what could we do? Neal’s prejudices are so strong that he never would have submitted to an analysis, nor to any treatments along that line. That is what is going to make it so frightfully difficult now. I—I——”
“Now, now, now, Judy. Keep a stiff upper lip. There’s more than one way into the woods—and out of them. That’s what I’ve learned by being an old mutt of a general practitioner for forty-five years. We were talking about a certain Watson just now. Since then I’ve been thinking of another one—better known. Sherlock Holmes’s Dr. Watson.
“Look. What I believe is that this murder business in 1900 has just plum got the best of Neal. He was eighteen. Adolescence is a tricky time. What I’m betting is, that if we could find out who did kill Dick, and prove it to Neal, he would come through with banners flying. That’s common sense, so I guess it is good psychology.”
“But——”
“Yes, I know, Judy. But you wait a minute. There’s a woman down in ’Frisco, and from what I’ve read about her I think she’s all right. I think she’s a good woman; a real nice one. She’s a Miss Lynn MacDonald, and she calls herself a crime analyst. Now suppose we could get her to come up to Q 2? Lot of us oldsters are still hanging around who could post her up. Look, Judy. Neal doesn’t believe in psychoanalysis, but I’ll bet a cooky he believes in Craig Kennedy. Last time I saw him, about three months ago, he was down at Gill’s Bookstore buying mystery by the pound like it was bacon.
“Why not have her up to the ranch, Judy? Get her to outline a good case—you know how they do it. Getting evidence, and piling up proofs from here, there, and everywhere. Then give the result to Neal. He’ll be satisfied, and behave himself and get married, like he should have done twenty years ago, and have some babies.”
“Father was killed twenty-eight years ago last month, Dr. Joe.”
“I know it. But, look, how I mean—— In some ways that will make it easier instead of harder.”
“You mean imaginary proofs to find an imaginary culprit? No, Dr. Joe, that wouldn’t do. It is difficult to understand, but most of the time Neal is the keenest one of the family—the most clear-headed and sensible. These queernesses of his come on in flashes—and are gone. Entirely gone. One moment he will be—well, odd. And, in the next moment, he will be wholly himself again.”
“No, that isn’t hard to understand, Judy. Most of them—lots of them are like that. We couldn’t fool Neal on anything he was sane about. But I think we could fool him on something he is——”
“Finish it, Dr. Joe. Do you think that Neal is actually insane?”
“Look, my girl. We can’t say that Neal is sensible on the subject of Dick’s death, can we? Jehoshaphat, Judy, I wish we could get him straightened out pretty quick now! Jehoshaphat, but I do!”
“He’ll not get better, you think, Dr. Joe?”
“Well, look, Judy. You’re asking me. He has been getting steadily worse for two—almost three—years now. Of course, you haven’t told me what he said to you to-day. But I’ve made my living by guessing for the last forty-odd years. Man ought to be a good guesser by that time, if he’s ever going to be. So I guess I know what Neal said to-day that sent you up here in the condition you were in when you came. That’s what I’ve been getting at. I want you to bring this Lynn MacDonald woman up to the ranch, and have her prove to Neal that he didn’t murder his own father.”
“He didn’t, Dr. Joe.”
“Bless my soul to glory, Judith Quilter! What are you telling me that for? Telling me like that, I mean?”
“Dr. Koreth had much to say about a faculty called empathy. You know—putting one’s self in the place of another. Identifying, I think he called it. That is what Neal has done; has overdone. He has put himself in the place of some other member of the family.”
“Talk’s cheap. You could never make me believe that. Boy and man, I’ve known the Quilter family for the last fifty years. Of course, lots of people wouldn’t agree with me; but, you know, I think I’m a darn good man. I think I’ve poked along, slow, and done a lot of good in the world. I think I’ve led a darn decent life. Most of my goals have been pretty flat, I guess. Most of my Rubicons—ditches, maybe. But what I’m getting at is this: The reason I am any good on earth is because your grandfather, Thaddeus Quilter, took me in hand when I was a lad. It should begin a biography, or be put in a preface, or something. ‘I owe——’ You know how they do it. Well, he was in the house that night. Do you think that he killed Dick?”
“Dr. Joe!”
“That’s the worst blasphemy I ever uttered, Judith. I ask the Lord’s and your forgiveness. But, look. Your Aunt Gracia was there that night. Think that she——”
“Dr. Joe!”
“What did I tell you, Judy? It isn’t right for you to say what you said. It’s damn wicked for you to think it. It’s worse than wicked; it’s unhealthy. You’ll be getting yourself where Neal is. What makes you think like that, talk like that, my girl?”
“Because—— How well do you remember the details, Dr. Joe?”
“Well enough. Well enough.”
“Well enough to remember that the ground was covered with freshly fallen snow, and that no footprints leading away from the house were found that night, or later? That Aunt Gracia and Grandfather, with all the others, searched the house with their thoroughness, all during the night?”
“Yes, yes. I remember that footprint stuff. Fooey, for your footprints! I’m sorry to say it, Judith, but I thought better of you than this. The house at Q 2 is bigger than six barns. Couldn’t some damn scoundrel have hidden there, before and after, even if those poor souls, sick with grief and useless from shock and fear and excitement, did search the house, or try to? I don’t know what’s got hold of you. But it would take more than the absence of footprints to make me, an outsider, doubt a member of your family, or any friend of theirs.”
“It would take more than that to make me doubt, too, Dr. Joe.”
“You don’t say! Look, Judith, you’re getting me sore. I’m warning you. By Gad, I wouldn’t let another person sit there in my chair and say what you’re saying. I’d slap them over!”
“Yes, I’m sure you would, Dr. Joe. But—— No matter. I think that your suggestion about engaging this crime analyst is an excellent one. She was the woman who got to the bottom of that dreadful Hollywood affair, wasn’t she? I remember the name. Only—I’ll want the truth from her. Neal, mentally disabled, is so much keener than most mentally sound people that he’d reject a falsity. I know it.”
“Like you said just now, Judy, it was all over twenty-eight years ago. Look, we couldn’t go to anybody—not to Sherlock Holmes himself—and say, ‘There was a murder on the Q 2 Ranch back in 1900. Some few oldsters are living yet who were around at the time and could tell you something about it—what they can remember. The house is still there, though it has been remodelled and refurnished a couple of times. A good many people studied over the case in 1900, but they all had to give it up. People have been studying over it ever since, for that matter; but they can’t get any place with it at all. What we want from you, now, is for you to get the thing straightened out as soon as possible, and produce, or anyway name, the guilty wretch or wretches.’ ”
“Dr. Joe, Greg and I went to Colorado in March, 1900. Lucy, with her passion for writing, wrote long letters to me until late September. Father was killed on the eighth of October. On the tenth of October, Neal took up the letter writing. (I couldn’t leave Greg alone, and, of course, I couldn’t bring him home to the horror there.)”
“I should say you couldn’t. You were a good wife, Judy. Greg was a fine, true husband. But you should have married again—had babies.”
“Perhaps. About the letters, Dr. Joe. I have read and reread them. To me they seem tremendously significant. Significant, maybe, by omission; but significant, nevertheless. This is particularly true of Lucy’s letters. Queer things, very queer things began to happen at Q 2 long before Father was killed. The family discord—— But I won’t go into that. There were other things. The accident, in which Father narrowly escaped with his life. The absurdity of his baptism——”
“How old was Lucy when she was writing you all this truck?”
“She was twelve years old. Yes, I know—but you must remember that Lucy was a genius, even then. Dr. Koreth said, one evening, that modern criminologists are coming to value the accuracy of children’s testimony. From Lucy I may well have what may have been the motivating factor, or factors. From Neal, with a man’s intelligence and a boy’s honesty and eagerness, I have the results. A day-by-day account, for several weeks, of all the findings, the suspicions, the theories, and—well, the clues.
“Like Lucy and Chris, Neal was a born scribbler. He never had time to give to it, but he loved even the physical act of writing. He began his letters to me with the avowal that he was writing them in order that I might, with the facts placed before me, help him to discover Father’s murderer. He thought it was the truth. But the letters show that his real reason for writing to me was to have an outlet for the stuff that was torturing his mind. What I am trying to say, Dr. Joe, and am saying so stupidly, is that Neal gave me, unconsciously, more than a bare recountal of facts. It seems possible, at least, that a mind trained in criminal analysis could take these letters, and Lucy’s, and read the truth from them. I can’t decipher the most simple code. But the Rosetta stone has been deciphered.”
“Didn’t the other folks write you letters during that time, too?”
“None that I kept. They were all troubled at home, and their letters weren’t like them. I kept Lucy’s because—well, because they were Lucy’s, I suppose. At the time, it seemed more loyal to destroy the others. Then, after Father’s death, none of them told me the truth—so I destroyed them. But I have Lucy’s, and I have Neal’s. Three hours ago I wouldn’t have given them to a stranger—no, not to a friend—to read for anything in the world. But now——”
“I don’t believe you need to, Judy. Look. If we, backed up by this crime analyst, could make believe that something was the truth—why wouldn’t that do? No, you won’t have it? Well, look, I’m going to have to be pretty mean. I’m going to have to tell you that I think that will be the best we can do. I don’t believe anybody, trained analyst or not, could get at the fact of Dick’s murder at this late date; not from a packet of letters, twenty-eight years old, written by a couple of kids.”
“You wouldn’t diagnose the simplest case without seeing the patient. Those letters are here in my safety-deposit vault at the bank. I’m going now and get them and bring them to you. Will you read them? And will you come to Q 2 over the week-end, and tell me what you think of them? I’d come to the city, but I don’t like to leave Neal——”
“Look, Judy. I’d read the complete works of Ouida if you asked me to, and you know it. I’ve been dying to come to the ranch all fall. I’ve been kind of bashful, though, hanging back and waiting for an invitation. There, there, never mind about that. Run along, and be a good girl. You’ll have to hop to it to make the bank before three——”
“Thank you, Dr. Joe. Thank you, and——”
“You run along now, like I told you, or I’ll send you a bill!”
III
Judith watched the fire twisting around the oak logs in the living-room fireplace and wondered why Dr. Joe had created a niece for himself since she had seen him in his office last Wednesday.
Irene, faultlessly blonde, buoyantly obtuse, appeared in the doorway, shook an arch forefinger, chirped, “Oh, you two——” and disappeared.
Dr. Joseph Elm said: “Her legs are too fat. She ought to wear longer skirts. Old lady like her. But, as I was saying, Judy, this niece of mine has been fussing and fussing—you know how it is—to have me come down to ’Frisco to see her. Look, I think I’ll go down to-morrow or the next day; and, while I’m there, I might just as well hunt up this Miss MacDonald. Save you a trip down. You can post me up on what to say——”
“You’ve read the letters, Dr. Joe. What do you think of them?”
“Well, now, Judy—I hardly know.”
“But honestly, Dr. Joe?”
“Judy, since you want it, I believe that somebody real smart might get something or other out of the letters. They give a lot of facts, and they seem to give them pretty straight.”
“You think, as I think, Dr. Joe, that it must have been one of us?”
“Bless my soul to glory, if I do! Look, Judy. It does seem like whoever did it must have been in the house before—and quite a while afterward. But those were the days of lamps and candles out here on the ranch. Somebody might have hidden in the house for a couple of days—cellar, attic. Anyway, look! What’s the sense of amateurs like us tinkering around and worrying over this thing when we can get a professional, a specialist, to take it in hand? I don’t examine a man’s teeth; I send him to his dentist. Since I’m going to be in ’Frisco anyway, I might as well stop in and make a dicker with this crime analyst. I’ve been thinking. It might be a good plan to fetch her right up here. She could get the lay of the land then. And while she was studying over the letters she could talk to you and Lucy, and you could answer any questions for her. What do you think?”
“I’d agree, except for Neal. He has been himself since we came home on Thursday. But I am afraid that it wouldn’t do to have him know we were delving into the thing again. I’m sure it wouldn’t be safe. I fancy, though, considering her profession, that this woman would be willing to come as a friend of Lucy’s, or as—your niece.”
“Or as a hired girl, something along that line?”
“It would be much easier to explain a guest at Q 2 than it would be to explain a new servant, after all these years of Tilda, and Lily, and George, and Gee Sing.”
“Look, Judy. I’ll size her up. If she’s ornery ordinary, I’ll wire you, and you’ll have to sandwich her in as help for Tilda or something. If she’s just common ordinary, the niece racket would be all right. And if she should happen to be extraordinary, we’ll work the friend of Lucy’s stunt.
“Never mind. I’ll take it you’ve said it, and thanks. Look, Judy, you don’t need to compliment my relatives, though, because I’m going to be pretty mean about one of yours right now. Irene’s a doggone chatterbox. And, like most of that kind, she isn’t smart enough to show, either. Seems to me it would be better not to let Irene in on this. I don’t mean that she’s malicious. But she’d spill the beans, sure as fate, some place where Neal would find them.”
“I know. But I’m afraid Chris would resent it if we didn’t tell her.”
“Look. There’s no law been passed that we have to tell Chris, either. Did you mean to go tearing the lace off your silly handkerchief, Judy?”
She dropped the nervous fluff into her lap. “This is going to be hard to carry through, Dr. Joe.”
“You’re right. It is going to be hard. Hard as blazes. Are you sure you want to, my girl?”
“I haven’t any choice.”
“I hate to say this, Judy; but you know there is a chance, or half a chance that you, or even Neal, might be partly right about this: that some one of the family——”
“I know. That’s why I think we should tell Chris the truth about this woman, if she comes here. You see, Lucy and I will know who she is.”
“Lucy was a kid. You were in Colorado. Look, Judy. Chris is a good boy, and he’s getting better all the time. But he’s been married to Irene for twenty-odd years—and, bless my soul to glory, he’s been in love with her all the while, and is yet. Tell Chris, and you’ve told Irene.”
“I suppose so.”
“Here’s another thing. If there can be anything comparative about one Quilter’s feelings for another Quilter, I’d say that Neal and Chris were less partial to each other than any other members of the family. It would bust Chris all up to have Neal get worse. But he’d have that happen even before he’d haul what he calls the Quilter honour down from the flagstaff where he keeps it hoisted.”
“I’m not sure; but I believe that isn’t fair to Chris.”
“You bet it is. Look, Judy. It is a matter of taste whether you’d rather have one cousin wind up in a nice, comfortable sanitarium somewhere, or whether you’d rather have it proved that your aunt, or your uncle (by Jolly, Judy, Phineas was a great old boy, wasn’t he! Letters seemed to bring him right back to me), or another cousin, or—yourself, or your wife, maybe, killed a member of the family. I’m for you, Judy. I’m with you to the finish. Always have been. I’m in love with you, you know. If I wasn’t, I’d send you a bill. But yet you can’t blame Chris for the stand he’d be bound to take, either.”
“No.”
“Want to change your mind, my girl? We could drop this thing right here, flat as a pancake.”
“Neal is my little brother. I mean—— Well, when I was seven years old, Neal was three. He had fat little legs, and he followed me about wherever I went. I mean—I always did take good care of him. He knew I would. Forgive me, Dr. Joe. I’m naturally sentimental; but you and Neal seem to be the only people who tempt me to display it. All I was trying to say was that I have determined to go through with this. And—I wish I could think of some way to thank you. It seemed almost impossible for either Lucy or me to go to San Francisco just now.”
“Going to ’Frisco anyhow. Funny fellow if I couldn’t do a little neighbourly errand for a friend.”
“I understand about the trip, and the niece.”
“Judy, you’re flirting with me. Shame on you—an old lady like you!”
“I’m not. I’m adoring you.”
“You’re darn right. You’d better, or I’d send you a bill.”
“Do you think this crime analyst will come up to Q 2, Dr. Joe?”
“Come? She’ll jump at the chance.”