The Luminous Face

Phyllis left the room, and his business over, Lane went away from the house.

As he walked along the street, he mused deeply on the matter.

Of course, Phyllis was in no way concerned in the crime – but Lane couldn’t help thinking she knew something about it – or something bearing on it. What could it be? How could that delicate, exclusive girl be in any way mixed up with the deed done down in Washington Square?

Lane made his way to the Club. He knew he’d find a lot of his friends there at this hour, and he wanted to hear their talk.

He was not surprised to find a group of his intimates discussing the Gleason case.

“Now the funeral’s over,” Dean Monroe was saying, “the detectives can get busy, and do some real work.”

“They can get busy,” Manning Pollard agreed, “but can they do any real work? I mean, any successful, decisive work?”

“You mean, discover the murderer,” Lane said, joining in the talk at once, as he took his seat among them.

“Not a hard job, to my mind,” Dean Monroe said, slowing inhaling his cigarette’s smoke. “Cherchez la chorus girl.”

“Oh, I don’t know – ” said Pollard.

“Well, I know!” Monroe came back quickly. “Oh, I don’t mean I know – but who else could it have been? You may say Pollard, here, because he announced his intention of killing Gleason. But we all know Pol’s little smarty ways. He didn’t even defend himself, because, secure in his innocence, he let the old detectives themselves find and prove his alibi! A silly grandstand play, I call it!”

Pollard smiled. “It was silly, I daresay, but if I had eagerly defended myself, they might have thought me guilty. So, why not let them find out the truth for themselves? But, as to the chorus kiddies – I doubt if the bravest of them would have the nerve to shoot a man. Remember they’re only babies.”

“Not all of them,” offered Barry.

“Oh, well, those who have arrived at years of wisdom are not the ones Gleason favored,” Pollard said. “However, there’s a possibility that some man – some bold, bad man may have done it for the sake of a girl.”

“Then he must be found through the discovery of the girl,” declared Lane. “And with that fur piece to work on, it’s a funny thing if they can’t get the lady.”

“It would be coincidence, I think,” Pollard said, seriously. “I don’t know much about real detective work, but it seems to me, if I found a fur collar at the scene of the crime, the owner of that would be the last person I’d look for.”

“You give the collar too much importance, Monroe, and you, Pollard, give it too little,” Lane spoke in his most judicial manner. “I’m no detective myself, but I am a lawyer, and I modestly claim a sort of knowledge of criminal doings. The fur collar is a clew. It must be investigated. It may lead to the truth and it may not.”

“Hear, hear!” cried Barry. “What wisdom! Oh, what sagacity! It may and it may not! Lane, you’re a wizard at deduction!”

They all laughed, but Fred Lane was in no way dismayed.

“All right, you fellows,” he said; “but which of you can make any better prognostication? Come now, here are four of us; let’s make a bet – or, no, that’s hardly decent – let’s each express an opinion regarding the murderer of Robert Gleason, and see who comes nearest to the truth.”

“Sure we’ll ever know the truth?” asked Monroe.

“Well, if we don’t there’s no harm done. Go ahead, and let it be understood that these are merely thoughts – private opinions and absolutely confidential.”

“All right,” agreed Dean Monroe, “I’ll speak my mind first. I’m all for the chorus girl – and when I say chorus girl, I use the term generically. She may be a Movie Star or a Vaudeville artist. But some chicken of the stage, is my vote. Yet I don’t claim but she did the deed herself – it may well have been her stalwart gentleman friend, who was jealous of the rich man’s friendship with his girl. There’s my opinion.”

“Good enough, too,” appraised Lane. “Moreover, you’ve got the fur collar in evidence. You may be right. You next, Pollard?”

“I’m inclined to think it was somebody from Gleason’s Seattle home. Seems to me there must have been people out there who felt as I did about the man – who really wanted him out of the world; and, too, they may have had some definite grievance – some conventional motive – what are they? Love, hate, money?”

“Revenge is one.”

“All the same, revenge and hate. Well, doesn’t it seem more like a wild Westerner to come there and shoot up his man than for a New Yorker to do it? I don’t take much stock in the chorus girl theory.”

“Wait a bit, Pol,” put in Barry. “Seattle isn’t wild and woolly and cowboyish and bandittish! It’s as civilized as our own fair city, and as little given to deeds of violence as New York itself!”

“Your logic is overwhelming,” Pollard laughed. “Ought to have been a lawyer instead of an artist, Barry! But I stick to my guns – which are the guns of the Westerners who knew Gleason – the inhabitants of Seattle and environs. I may be all wrong, but it seems the most plausible theory to me. Perhaps I’m prejudiced, but I think Seattle is mighty well rid of its leading citizen.”

“Hush up, Manning,” reproved Monroe; “your foolish threat was bad enough when the man was alive, it’s horrid to knock him now he’s dead.”

“That’s so – I’ll shut up. But Lane asked for my opinion, and now he’s got it.”

“Yours, Barry?” asked Lane, without comment on Pollard’s.

“I don’t want to express mine,” said Philip Barry, with such a serious look that nobody smiled. “You see, I have a dreadful suspicion of – of some one I know – we all know.”

“Me?” asked Pollard, cheerfully.

“No”; Barry grinned at him. “You’re just plain idiot! But, truly, haven’t any of you thought of some one in – in our set?”

Apparently no one had, for each man present looked blankly inquiring.

“Oh, I’m not going to put it into words,” and Barry gave a shrug of his shoulders. Slightly built, his dark, intense face showing his artistic temperament, Philip Barry had a strong will and a high temper.

Moreover, unlike his type, he had a desperate tenacity of opinion, and once convinced of a thing would stick to it through thick and thin.

“Just because an idea came into my head,” he went on, “is no reason I should give it voice. I might do an innocent man a desperate injustice.”

“As you like, Barry,” Lane said, “but to my way of thinking, if you have such an idea it’s your duty to give it voice. If your man’s innocent it can’t harm him. If he’s guilty he ought to be suspected. And, among us four, your views are an inviolable secret, unless justice requires them to be told.”

“Well,” Barry began, reluctantly, “who first heard of this murder?”

“Doctor Davenport,” said Monroe, quickly. “His nurse telephoned from the office – ”

“Did the nurse tell you that?” Barry shot at him.

“Why, no, of course not. I haven’t seen the nurse.”

“Has anybody?”

“I don’t know. I suppose the police have.”

“You suppose! Well, they haven’t. I found that out. No, the police have not thought it worth while to check up Doctor Davenport’s story of his nurse’s message to him. They take it as he told it. It was nine chances out of ten they would do so. I say, fellows, don’t you remember that conversation we had about murder that afternoon – last Tuesday afternoon?”

“I do,” answered Pollard. “It was then that I made my famous speech.”

“Yes; and that was remembered because it was unconventional and damn-foolishness besides. But Doctor Davenport’s speeches, though of far greater importance, are all forgotten.”

“I haven’t forgotten them,” said Pollard, thoughtfully. “He said the detection of crime depended largely on chance.”