The Mark of Cain

“Come in, Groot,” said the lawyer. “What’s up now?”

“Where’s the man, Stryker?” asked Groot, in lowered tones. “Is he in?”

“I think so,” said Avice, “he always is, at this hour. Do you want to see him?”

“Yes, mighty bad, he’s the murderer!”

“What!” exclaimed both his hearers together.

“Yes, no doubt about it,” and Groot told the story of the handkerchief.

Avice looked simply amazed, but Judge Hoyt said, “I’ve looked for this all along.”

“Whyn’t you give us a hint, Judge?”

“I hadn’t enough to base my idea on, to call it a suspicion. I never thought of the handkerchief being his. As a matter of fact, I rather thought it was Mr. Trowbridge’s own, and that the murderer, whoever he was, had used it and left it without fear of its incriminating himself. Surely no one would leave his own handkerchief on the scene of his crime! Are you sure it’s Stryker’s?”

“Positive. But all that can be proved and investigated later. Now we want to nail our bird and jail him. Will you send for him, Miss Trowbridge?”

“Certainly,” and Avice rang a bell, a sorrowful look coming into her eyes at thought of suspecting the old servant.

A parlor-maid appeared, and Avice asked her to send the butler to them.

“Won’t he bolt?” asked Groot, fearing to lose his quarry at the last moment.

“Why should he?” said Avice, “any more than yesterday? He doesn’t know he’s suspected, does he?”

“Oh, no, he couldn’t know it.”

“Then he’ll be here in a minute.”

While waiting, Groot told them, in low tones, about Stryker’s insurance matter.

“Time up next week!” repeated Judge Hoyt. “That looks bad, very bad. I’ve heard Stryker speak of insuring, several times, but I thought nothing about it. He wasn’t asking my advice, merely discussing it as a business proposition. When I’ve been here of an evening with Mr. Trowbridge, we often spoke with Stryker almost as to a friend. He’s an old and trusted servant. I’m desperately sorry to learn all this.”

“So am I,” said Avice. “I do want to track down uncle’s murderer, – but I don’t want it to be Stryker!”

The parlor-maid returned. “Miss Avice,” she said, “Stryker isn’t in the house.”

“Isn’t?” cried Groot, starting up; “where is he?”

“I don’t know, sir, but he can’t be far away. The second man says that Stryker was in his pantry and he answered a telephone call there, and then he just flung on his hat and coat and went out.”

“He’s escaped!” shouted Groot, dashing out of the room and downstairs, two at a time.

And he had. Search of the house showed no trace of the vanished butler, save his belongings in his room. And among these were several handkerchiefs, indisputably from the same lot as the one found at the place of the crime. And a further search of the rooms of every inmate of the household showed no other such handkerchief.

CHAPTER XI

DUANE THE DETECTIVE

Having learned from Avice of Stryker’s relatives, Groot sought the butler at the home of his daughter.

“No,” said Mrs. Adler, a scared-looking young woman, “I don’t know where father is. I haven’t seen him for a day or two. But he can’t be lost.”

“He’s in hiding, madam,” said Groot, “and he must be found. Are you sure he’s not here?”

“Of course, I’m sure. What do you want of him, anyway? My husband is very ill, and I wish you wouldn’t bother me about it. I don’t believe anything has happened to my father, but if there has, I don’t know anything of it. You’ll have to excuse me now, I’m very busy.” She didn’t exactly shut the door in his face, but she came near it, and Groot went away uncertain as to whether she was telling the truth or not.

“I wish I’d searched the house,” he thought. “If Stryker doesn’t turn up soon, I will.”

Stryker didn’t turn up soon, and Groot and his men did search the house of Mrs. Adler and her sick husband, but with no result.

The daughter was apathetic. “Poor father,” she said, “I wonder where he is. But I’m so worried about Mr. Adler, I can think of nothing else.”

There was cause, indeed, for the wife’s anxiety, for Adler was in the late stages of galloping consumption. And the harassed woman, none too well fixed with this world’s goods, was alone, caring for him. Groot’s humanity was touched and he forbore to trouble her further.

“Stryker’s decamped, that’s all,” Groot said; “and flight is confession. It’s clear enough. He wanted this insurance of his for his daughter, the agent told me the policy is payable to her, and he had to take it out before his age limit was reached. He knew of the legacy coming to him, and in order to get his insurance, he hastened the realization of his fortune.”

It did look that way, for Avice and Mrs. Black agreed that Stryker was devoted to his daughter, and they knew of her husband’s desperate illness. Knew too, that she would be left penniless, and was herself delicate and unfit for hard work. Stryker could support her while he lived, but to leave her an income from his life insurance was his great desire. Judge Hoyt, too, said that he knew of this from conversations he had himself had with Stryker. But he had supposed the butler had saved up funds for his insurance premium. He now learned that the support and care of the sick man had made this impossible.

So Stryker was strongly suspected of the crime, and every effort was made to find the missing man.

Meantime Alvin Duane came. Though alleged to be a clever detective, he admitted he found little to work upon.

“It is too late,” he said, “to look for clues on the scene of the crime. Had I been called in earlier, I might have found something, but after nearly a fortnight of damp, rainy weather, one can expect nothing in the way of footprints or other traces, though, of course, I shall look carefully.”

Duane was a middle-aged, grizzled man, and though earnest and serious, was not a brilliant member of his profession. He had, he said himself, no use for the hair-trigger deductions of imaginative brains which, oftener than not, were false. Give him good, material clues, and attested evidence, and he would hunt down a criminal as quickly as anybody, but not from a shred of cloth or a missing cuff-link.

Eleanor Black, with her dislike of detectives of all sorts, was openly rude to Duane. He was in and out of the house at all hours; he was continually wanting to intrude in the individual rooms, look over Mr. Trowbridge’s papers, quiz the servants, or hold long confabs with Avice or Kane Landon or herself, until she declared she was sick of the very sight of him.

“I don’t care,” Avice would say; “if he can find the murderer, he can go about it any way he chooses. He isn’t as sure that Stryker’s guilty as Mr. Groot is. Mr. Duane says if Stryker did it, it was because somebody else hired him or forced him to do it.”

“Well, what if it was? I can’t see, Avice, why you want to keep at it. What difference does it make who killed Rowland? He is dead, and to find his murderer won’t restore him to life. For my part, I’d like to forget all the unpleasant details as soon as possible. I think you are morbid on the subject.”

“Not at all! It’s common justice and common sense to want to punish a criminal, most of all a murderer! Judge Hoyt agrees with me, and so does Kane – ”

“Mr. Landon didn’t want you to get Mr. Duane, you know that.”

“I do know it, but only because Kane thought the mystery too deep ever to be solved. But I am willing to spend a lot of money on it, and Judge Hoyt is willing to share the expense if it becomes too heavy for me alone.”

“The judge would do anything you say, of course. I think you treat him abominably, Avice. You’re everlastingly flirting with Mr. Landon, and it grieves Judge Hoyt terribly.”

“Don’t bother about my love affairs, Eleanor. I can manage them.”

“First thing you know, you’ll go too far, and Judge Hoyt will give you up. He won’t stand everything. And where will your fortune be then?”

“You alarm me!” said Avice, sarcastically. “But when I really need advice, my dear Eleanor, I’ll ask you for it.”