The Mark of Cain

But Avice, despite her quick anger, was of a nature born to make sacrifices. She could do anything to help those she loved, and she had suddenly realized that she did love Landon. So without thought of reward, she began to plan how she could help him.

She turned from the window without even wondering where they were going; only conscious of a vague, dull longing, that she felt now, would never be gratified.

And then, Harry Pinckney came, for one of his rather frequent calls. Avice was glad Eleanor was out as she so objected to the sight of a detective, and the young reporter had added that line of work to his own.

“I know where Stryker is,” were his first words, after they had exchanged greetings.

“You do! Where?”

“At his daughter’s. Been there all the time. That Mrs. Adler is a splendid actress, but she was a little too unconcerned about her father’s disappearance to fool me. I pinned her down, and I’m practically sure he’s in her house, or she knows where he is. But I’ve told the police and they’ll rout him out. I’m to have the scoop. I hope they find him soon.”

“And,” Avice held herself together, “who will be the next suspect?”

“Dunno. Old Groot has his eye on Kane Landon, but he’s got no evidence to speak of. I don’t care two cents for that ‘Cain’ remark. I mean I don’t for a minute think it implicates Kane Landon.”

“Bless you for that!” Avice said, but not aloud.

“However,” Pinckney went on, “they’ve got something new up their sleeves. They wouldn’t tell me what, – I’ve just come from headquarters, – but they’re excited over some recent evidence or clue.”

“Have you any reason to think it refers to Mr. Landon?”

Pinckney looked at her narrowly. “I hate to reply to that,” he said, “for I know it would hurt you if I said yes.”

“And you’d have to say yes, if you were truthful?”

“I’m afraid I should, Miss Trowbridge. Honest, now, isn’t there a chance that he is the one?”

“Oh, no, no! But, Mr. Pinckney, tell me something. Supposing, just supposing for a minute, that it might be Kane, – you know he’s been out West for five years, and out there they don’t look on killing as we do here, do they?”

“What have you in mind? A sheriff rounding up a posse of bad men, or a desperado fighting his captor, or just a friendly shooting over a card game – have you been reading dime novels?”

“No. It’s just a vague impression. I thought they didn’t call killing people murder – ”

“Yes, they do, if it’s murder in cold blood. Westerners only kill in avenging justice or in righteous indignation.”

“Really? I’m glad you told me that. Do you know, Mr. Pinckney, I’m not going to sit quietly down and let Kane be accused of this thing. I don’t know whether he did it or not, but he’s going to have his chance. I know him pretty well, and he’s so stubborn that he won’t take pains to appear innocent even when he is. That sounds queer, I know, but you see, I know Kane. He is queer. If that boy is innocent, and I believe he is, he would be so sure of it himself that he’d make no effort to convince others; and he’d let himself be misjudged, perhaps, even arrested through sheer carelessness.”

“It is, indeed, a careless nature that will go as far as that!”

“It isn’t only carelessness; it’s a kind of pig-headed stubbornness. He’s always been like that.”

“And if he should be guilty?”

“Then, – ” and Avice hesitated, “then, I think he’d act just exactly the same.”

“H’m, a difficult nature to understand.”

“Yes, it is. But I’m going to see that he is understood, and, – Mr. Pinckney, you’re going to help me, aren’t you?”

“To the last ditch!” and Harry Pinckney then and there, silently, but none the less earnestly, devoted his time, talent and energies to upholding the opinions of Avice Trowbridge, whatever they might be, and to helping her convince the world of their truth.

CHAPTER XIII

FIBSY FIBS

As the district attorney had surmised, Stryker was in hiding, under the protection of his daughter. Mrs. Adler was a clever young woman, and having undertaken to keep her father safe from the police investigation, she did so remarkably well.

But being assured that there was no reason for apprehension if he had not committed the murder, Stryker decided to face the music. He had feared being railroaded to jail because of his handkerchief having been found in the wood, but a certainty of fair play gave him courage, and he emerged from the house of his daughter’s neighbor, with a trembling step, but an expression of face that showed plainly relief at the cessation of strain.

“Yes, I kept father over to Mrs. Gedney’s,” said Mrs. Adler, “’cause I wasn’t going to have him all pestered up with an everlastin’ troop o’ p’licemen, when he handn’t done nothin’. I have my sick husband to nurse and wait on, and I can’t have detectives traipsin’ in here all the time. Oh, don’t talk to me about the law. I ain’t afraid. My father is as innercent as a babe, but he flusters awful easy, and a policeman after him makes him that put about, he don’ know where he’s at. So, I says, I’ll jest put him out o’ harm’s way fer a while till I see how the cat jumps.”

“But as an intelligent woman, Mrs. Adler,” began Mr. Groot, “you must know – ”

“I know what I know; and I’m a wife and a daughter long ’fore I’m an intellergent woman. Don’t you come none o’ that kind of talk over me. You want my father, there he is. Now talk to him, if you can do so peaceably, but don’t give him no third degree, nor don’t fuss him all up with a lot o’ law terms what he don’t understand. Talk nice to him an’ he’ll tell you a heap more’n if you ballyrag him all to pieces!”

Groot realized the force of this argument, “talked nice” to Stryker, he learned the old man’s story.

He had been anxious to take out an insurance policy for his daughter before it became too late for him to do so; but, he affirmed, he did not kill his master for the purpose. The agent had been after him frequently, of late, to urge him to borrow the money for the premium. But this, Mrs. Adler did not want him to do, for, she argued, the interest on the loan and the premiums would counterbalance the value of the policy. They had had many discussions of the subject, for Mr. Adler, a very sick man, had wanted to die knowing that his wife had some provision for her old age. His illness precluded any insurance on his own life.

Not interested in these minute details, Groot questioned Stryker closely about the handkerchief.

“I don’t know,” Stryker said. “I don’t know, I’m sure, how my kerchief got into those woods, but I do know I didn’t take it there.”

“Could it have been taken from your room?”

“It must ’a’ been. Leastways, unless it was taken from the clothes line on a wash day, – or mebbe it blew off and was picked up by somebody passin’.”

Though not extremely probable, these were possibilities, and they had not been thought of before by Groot or his colleagues.

“There’s something in that,” he agreed, “now, Mr. Stryker, don’t get excited, but where were you Tuesday afternoon, the day that Mr. Trowbridge was killed?”

“I know all where I was, but it’s sort o’ confused in my mind. I was to the insurance agent’s; and I was to the doctor’s to be sized up for that same insurance, if I did decide to take it out; and then I dropped in to see my daughter, and her man was so sick I thought his last hour had come, and I ran over for a neighbor, and somehow I was so upset and bothered with one thing and another that the more I try to straighten out in my mind the order of those things, the more mixed up I get. You see, it was my day out, and that always flusters me anyhow. I’m not so young as I was, and the onusualness of getting into street clothes and going out into the world, as it were, makes me all trembly and I can’t remember it afterward, like I can my routine days. And then when I did go home that night, first thing I knew master didn’t come home to dinner! That never had happened before, unless we knew beforehand. Well, then Mis’ Black she ate alone, and Miss Avice, she didn’t eat at all, and there was whisperin’ and goin’s on, and next thing I knew they told me master was dead. After that nothing is clear in my mind. No, sir, everything is a blur and a mist from that time on. That there inquest, now, that’s just like a dream, – a bad dream.”

“Then,” and Groot egged him gently on, “then, about the night you left the Trowbridge house. Why did you do that?”

Stryker looked sly, and put his finger to his lips. “Ah, that night! Well, if you’ll believe me, I heard them talking in the library. You know, sir, I’ve a right anywhere on the two floors. I ain’t like the other servants, I’ve a right, – so as I was a passin’, I overheard Mr. Duane say as how I was the murderer! Me, sir! Me, as loved my master more than I can tell you. Sir, I didn’t know what I was doing then, I just got out. I heard ’em say they had pos’tive proof, and somethin’ about a handkerchief, and I remembered the sight of that handkerchief I’d seen – oh, well, oh, Lord – oh, Lord! I didn’t do it!” The old man’s voice rose to a shriek and Mrs. Adler exclaimed. “There now, you’ve set him off! I knew you would! Now, he’ll have hystrics, and it’ll take me all night to get him ca’med down, and me with Mr. Adler on my hands and him always worse at night – ”

“Wait a minute,” commanded Groot. “I’m nearly through, and then I’ll go away and he can have his hysterics in peace. Go on, Stryker, finish up this yarn. What did you do when you heard Mr. Duane accuse you?”

Stryker looked at him solemnly and blinked in an effort to concentrate. Then he said, “Why, I pretended I’d had a telephone call from Molly, and I ran around here as fast as I could, and Molly she says, they’ll be after you, go over to Mrs. Gedney’s and stay there. And I did, till you spied me out.”

“All right,” and Groot rose to go. “Your father is all right, Mrs. Adler. Don’t coddle him too much. It makes him childish. Keep him here with you, and my word for it, no suspicion will rest on him. I had his alibi pretty well fixed up anyway, between the insurance agent and the doctor, and his story just about completes it. There isn’t one chance in a thousand that he’ll be accused, so keep him here and keep him quiet, and I’ll see you again in a day or two. But if your father tries to run away or to hide again, then he will find himself in trouble.”

Mrs. Adler proved amenable to these orders and Groot went away to begin his hunt for the purloiner of Stryker’s handkerchief.

“You won’t have to look far,” Whiting said, when he heard the detective’s story. “If you wanted one more thread in the strand of the rope for young Landon’s neck, that’s it. Of course, he got the handkerchief some way, whether from the housekeeper or not. Go to it and find out how.”

Indirectly and by bits, Avice learned of Groot’s discoveries, and keeping her own counsel, she worked on a side line of her own devising.