The Mystery of the Sycamore

“And you didn’t find it there!”

“No. What are you doing? Stringing me?”

“Oh, no, sir; oh, no! Now, once again. If they chanced to fling said revolver far to the left, where would it land?”

“Why – in that big bed of ferns – if they threw it far enough.”

“Looked there?”

“No; I haven’t.”

“C’mon, let’s take a squint.”

Fibsy rose and lounged over toward the fern bed, Burdon following, almost certain he was being made game of.

CHAPTER XII

THE GARAGE FIRE

“Now, watch me,” he said, and with a quick thrust of his arm down among the ferns, he drew forth a revolver, which he turned over to Burdon.

“Land o’ goodness!” exclaimed that worthy. “Howja know it was there?”

“Knew it must be – looked for it – saw it,” returned the boy, nonchalantly, and then, hearing a short, sharp whistle, he looked up at the house to see Fleming Stone regarding him from an upper window.

“Found the weapon, Fibs?” he inquired.

“Yes, Mr. Stone.”

“All right. Bring it up here, and ask Mr. Burdon to come along.”

Delighted at the summons, Burdon followed the boy’s flying feet and they went up to Stone’s rooms. A small and pleasant sitting-room had been given over to the detective, and he admitted his two visitors, then closed the door.

“Doing the spectacular, Terence?” Stone said, smiling a little.

“Just one grandstand play,” the boy confessed. As a matter of fact, he had located the pistol sometime earlier, but waited to make the discovery seem sensational.

“All right; let’s take a look at it.”

Without hesitation, Burdon pronounced the revolver Mr. Wheeler’s. It had no initials on it, but from Wheeler’s minute description, Burdon recognized it beyond reasonable doubt. One bullet had been fired from it, and the calibre corresponded to the shot that had killed Samuel Appleby.

“Oh, it’s the right gun, all right,” Burdon said, “but I never thought of looking over that way for it. Must have been thrown by a left-handed man.”

“Oh, not necessarily,” said Stone. “But it was thrown with a conscious desire to hide it, and not flung away in a careless or preoccupied moment.”

“And what do you deduce from that?” asked Burdon, quite prepared to hear the description of the murderer’s physical appearance and mental attainments.

“Nothing very definite,” Stone mused. “We might say it looked more like the act of a strong-willed man such as Mr. Wheeler, than of a frightened and nervously agitated woman.”

“If either of those two women did it,” Burdon offered, “she wasn’t nervous or agitated. They’re not that sort. They may go to pieces afterward, but whatever Mrs. Wheeler or Maida undertake to do, they put it over all right. I’ve known ’em for years, and I never knew either of them to show the white feather.”

“Well, it was not much of an indication, anyway,” Stone admitted, “but it does prove a steady nerve and a planning brain that would realize the advisability of flinging the weapon where it would not be probably sought. Now, as this is Mr. Wheeler’s revolver, there’s no use asking the three suspects anything about it. For each has declared he or she used it and flung it away. That in itself is odd – I mean that they should all tell the same story. It suggests not collusion so much as the idea that whoever did the shooting was seen by one or both of the others.”

“Then you believe it was one of the three Wheelers?” asked Burdon.

“I don’t say that, yet,” returned Stone. “But they must be reckoned with. I want to eliminate the innocent two and put the guilt on the third – if that is where it belongs.”

“And if not, which way are you looking?”

“Toward the fire. That most opportune fire in the garage seems to me indicative of a criminal who wanted to create a panic so he could carry out his murderous design with neatness and despatch.”

“And that lets out the women?”

“Not if, as you say, they’re of the daring and capable sort.”

“Oh, they are! If Maida Wheeler did this thing, she could stage the fire easily enough. Or Mrs. Wheeler could, either. They’re hummers when it comes to efficiency and actually doing things!”

“You surprise me. Mrs. Wheeler seems such a gentle, delicate personality.”

“Yep; till she’s roused. Then she’s full of tiger! Oh, I know Sara Wheeler. You ask my wife what Mrs. Wheeler can do!”

“Tell me a little more of this conditional pardon matter. Is it possible that for fifteen years Mr. Wheeler has never stepped over to the forbidden side of his own house?”

“Perfectly true. But it isn’t his house, it’s Mrs. Wheeler’s. Her folks are connected with the Applebys and it was the work of old Appleby that the property came to Sara with that tag attached, that she must live in Massachusetts. Also, Appleby pardoned Wheeler on condition that he never stepped foot into Massachusetts. And there they were. It was Sara Wheeler’s ingenuity and determination that planned the house on the state line, and she has seen to it that Dan Wheeler never broke parole. It’s second nature to him now, of course.”

“But I’m told that he did step over the night of the murder. That he went into the sitting-room of his wife – or maybe into the forbidden end of that long living-room – to see the fire. It would be a most natural thing for him to do.”

“Not natural, no, sir.” Burdon rubbed his brow thoughtfully. “Yet he might ’a’ done it. But one misstep like that ought to be overlooked, I think.”

“And would be by his friends – but suppose there’s an enemy at work. Suppose, just as a theory, that somebody is ready to take advantage of the peculiar situation, that seems to prove Dan Wheeler was either outside his prescribed territory – or he was the murderer. To my way of thinking, at present, that man’s alibi is his absence from the scene of the crime. And, if he was absent, he must have been over the line. I know this from talks I’ve had with the servants and the family and guests, and I’m pretty confident that Wheeler was either in the den or in the forbidden north part of the house at the moment of the murder.”

“Why don’t you know which it was?” asked Burdon, bluntly.

“Because,” said Stone, not resenting the question, “because I can’t place any dependence on the truth of the family’s statements. For three respectable, God-fearing citizens, they are most astonishingly willing, even eager, to perjure themselves. Of course, I know they do it for one another’s sake. They have a strange conscience that allows them to lie outright for the sake of a loved one. And, it may be, commit murder for the sake of a loved one! But all this I shall straighten out when I get further along. The case is so widespread, so full of ramifications and possible side issues, I have to go carefully at first, and not get entangled in false clues.”

“Got any clue, sir? Any real ones?”

“Meaning dropped handkerchiefs and broken cuff-links?” Stone chaffed him. “Well, there’s the pistol. That’s a material clue. But, no, I can’t produce anything else – at present. Well, Terence, what luck?”

Fibsy, who had slipped from the room at the very beginning of this interview, now returned.

“It’s puzzlin’ – that’s what it is, puzzlin’,” he declared, throwing himself astride of a chair. “I’ve raked that old garage fore and aft, but I can’t track down the startings of that fire. You see, the place is stucco and all that, and besides the discipline of this whole layout is along the lines of p’ison neatness! Everybody that works at Sycamore Ridge has to be a very old maid for keeping things clean! So, there’s no chance for accumulated rubbish or old rags or spontaneous combustion or anything of the sort. Nextly, none of the three men who have any call to go into the garage ever smoke in there. That’s a Mede and Persian law. Gee, Mr. Wheeler is some efficient boss! Well, anyway, after the fire, though they tried every way to find out what started it, they couldn’t find a thing! There was no explanation but a brand dropped from the skies, or a stroke of lightning! And there was no storm on. It wouldn’t all be so sure, but the morning after, it seems, Mr. Allen and Mr. Keefe were doin’ some sleuthin’ on their own, and they couldn’t find out how the fire started. So, they put it up to the garage men, and they hunted, too. It seems nothing was burnt but some things in Mr. Appleby’s car, which, of course, lets out his chauffeur, who had no call to burn up his own duds. And a coat of his was burned and also a coat of Mr. Keefe’s.”

“What were those coats doing in an unused car?” asked Stone.

“Oh, they were extra motor coats, or raincoats, or something like that, and they always staid in the car.”

“Where, in the car?”