The Deep Lake Mystery

I thought a minute and then I said:

“Lora, you’re a dear, and I can scarce refuse you anything at all. But this thing I know, which may mean something or nothing, is so trivial, so insignificant that I do not feel guilty in keeping it quiet, at least for a little time longer. Moreover, its weight, if it has any, would be against Alma’s interests, so please think I am justified in keeping still.”

“You are, Gray,” Keeley said, heartily. “The more so, that I do not ask for evidence against the girl. If she is implicated at all, we have enough evidence, what we want is admission on her part. So, keep your bit of information and should it become really necessary I’ll demand it.”

He nodded his head so understandingly that I saw we were reëstablished on the old footing, and I rejoice that I had not told my secret.

For, whatever they said, I felt sure that a statement that I had seen Alma go to Pleasure Dome that fatal night at about one-thirty and had probably heard her return about two-thirty, would be something like a match to a trail of gunpowder.

“Now,” Keeley went on, “I must do some real Sherlocking. First, as to Harper Ames. I’m inclined to scratch his name from my list of suspects because of his frankly expressed desire that I should take the case for him. Either he has the knowledge of his own absolute innocence, or else he is the very most clever devil I have ever chanced to run across.”

“He’s innocent all right,” Lora said. “He couldn’t act out all that. He really wants you to take the case, Kee, and that proves his innocence.”

“But does it?” Moore argued. “May it not be that he is the guilty man and he is bold enough to think that by taking such a course he can steer suspicion away from himself?”

“Seems to me,” I put in, “that for a real Sherlock you are doing a lot of theorizing and surmising. Why not get down to shreds of wool, missing cuff-links and dropped handkerchiefs?”

“Keeley isn’t a fictional detective,” Lora exclaimed. “He doesn’t work on conventional lines – ”

“There are two kinds of fictional detectives, my dear girl,” Keeley told her. “The detective of fiction, and the story-book sleuth who declares that he is not the detective of fiction. The original detective of fiction was the hound-on-the-scent sort. The man who could put two and two together. The wizard who could tell the height, weight, and colouring of the unknown criminal from a flick of cigar ash. Then, as this superman palled a bit on the reader, came then his successor, the man who scorned all these tricks of the trade and announced himself as not the detective of fiction.”

“And which sort are you?” asked Lora, brightly, with a hint of veiled chaffing.

“I’m a mixture of both,” Kee stated calmly. “But I do think one should consider the bent and inclination of a suspect as well as the material clues he leaves about.”

“For instance?” I asked.

“All that stuff left on the bed. Your old Sherlock type would say: ‘These flowers were placed here by an ex-gardener, with red hair and a missing little finger.’ But to my mind, the deduction would be that the flowers were put there by a man the farthest possible remove from an ex-gardener, rather, a man of keen, sharp wits and decided ingenuity.”

“Merely as a blind, or, rather as a misleading clue?” I suggested.

“Yes. Now, the superfluity of those things on the bed, I mean the multiplicity of them, betokens a nature inclined to overdo. Like a man who, getting on a steam-boat, ties himself on.”

“Or,” put in Lora, “if a man compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.”

“Yes, something of that sort. Yet it may be that he started on his mad career of bed decorating and went on and on, sort of absent-mindedly.”

“Got started and couldn’t stop.”

“Exactly. Say he placed the flowers first, then, seeing the orange and crackers, added those, then, noticing the crucifix, used that; then the handkerchief, and finally draped the scarf round them all, just because it was handy by.”

“And the watch in the pitcher?”

“Oh, that dratted thing! That throws the whole matter into another category. That watch is my hope and my stumbling block, both.”

“You’ve been mysterious before, Kee, about that watch. Now out with it. What’s the separate mystery of the watch in the pitcher?”

“Quid pro quo,” said Kee, smiling at me. “You tell me what you’re concealing up your sleeve and I’ll divulge the dark hint suggested to me by the watch.”

I hesitated, but my disinclination to tell of the canoe incident was too strong. I couldn’t bring myself to let loose a torrent of suspicion that might engulf Alma.

“Can’t do it,” I said, honestly. “I would, if I thought it my duty as a citizen or as your friend, Kee. But, as I see it, it’s better left untold.”

“You remind me,” Kee said, smiling, “of Jurgen, who said, ‘I do my duty as I see it. But there is a tendency in my family toward defective vision.’ That isn’t quoted verbatim, but nearly so. All right, old son, keep your guilty secret and I’ll keep mine.”

“Do. What’s next on your sleuthing program?”

“I’m going to interview Mrs. Dallas.”

“How will she like that?”

“I daresay she won’t be any too well pleased. But, unless she refuses to see us, we can’t help learning something. Will you go with me?”

“Of course,” I returned, glad he wanted me. I truly desired to help, so long as the work didn’t touch on the girl I cared for.

The talk with them about her had, in a way, crystallized my feelings, and I knew now I loved her, a fact of which I had before been only vaguely aware.

Also, I was prepared to fight for her. And if the fight could be helped on by incriminating some one else, so much the better.

We started for Mrs. Dallas’s home, which was only a short walk along the lake shore.

Keeley was quiet as usual, and gave me fully to understand that he bore no ill will over my refusal to confide in him more fully.

“You see, Gray,” he said, talking things over with me in the old, friendly fashion, “there’s no use blinking the accepted fact that those who benefit most by the death of a rich man are the ones to be suspected. I know how you feel about Alma, but as you care for her, you, of course, deem her innocent. Therefore you can’t feel that she is in any danger from an investigation by detectives. If I were you I should welcome all possible questioning of her, feeling sure that she would have satisfactory explanation for anything that might seem suspicious.”

“That’s all very well, Kee, if the detectives were not such dunderheaded idiots. You know I don’t mean you, but that March Hare and that Hart that panted at the inquest, have it in for the girl, and they are ready to turn anything she may say against her.”

“Oh, not so bad as that. But it complicates things, your having gone dotty over her.”

“Sorry for the complications, but not sorry for the rest of it. I say, old man, do you suppose she’d look at me?”

“She might do worse,” said Kee, as he eyed me appraisingly.

Although he spoke lightly I welcomed his words as a good omen and turned in at the Dallas place, determined to do all I could to help him.

It was a pleasant cottage, unpretentious and homelike, and we were admitted by a trim-looking maid, and conducted to a small reception room.

“Come over here,” said a voice, a moment later, and we saw Katherine Dallas smiling at us from the door of the big living room opposite.

She was charming, both in appearance and manner, and greeted us with courtesy if not warmth.

But she clearly showed she considered it an interview rather than a social call and waited for Kee to state his errand.

“Mr. Ames has asked me to look into the matter of Mr. Tracy’s death,” Moore began, shamelessly hiding behind Ames’s skirts. “And though I regret the necessity, I feel I must ask you a few questions which I hope you will be gracious enough to answer.”

“Yes,” she returned, not at all helpfully, though in no way forbidding.

I saw by the play of Keeley’s features that he had sized her up and had concluded to carry on the interview in strictly business fashion.