CHAPTER XIV

A TIP—AND AN INVITATION

JIM BARRISON had scarcely grasped this fact when the telephone rang. In the dead silence of that hour, half after two in the morning, the shrill tinkle had a startling effect. Barrison, his fatigue forgotten, sprang to the instrument.

It was Tony Clay’s voice that came to him. “I want to come up for a minute.”

“Oh, confound you!” ejaculated the detective irritably. “What do you want at this hour? I’ll have to come down and let you in; the place is closed.”

“I know it is. That’s why I’m calling up. I’m in the drug store at the corner, and I’ll be there as soon as you can get downstairs. All right?”

“I suppose so. But I’d like to wring your neck!”

“Welcome to try, old man, just a bit later. So long!”

Barrison hung up, and tramped downstairs with suppressed profanity on his tongue, to let Tony in at the front door of the apartment house where he roomed. The younger man was already waiting on the steps, dripping wet, but whistling softly, rather off the key.

“Come in, you blamed night owl!” growled Barrison, under his breath. “Don’t slam the door. And if you haven’t something worth while to tell me, after routing me out like this, I’ll wake Tara and give him full permission to jujutsu you into Bellevue! Come on, and stop whistling.”

Upstairs, Tony demanded Scotch and cigarettes, and took off his wet coat.

“Heavens! Does that mean you’re intending to stay?”

“Not permanently,” Tony reassured him soothingly. “I do manage to arrive at inconvenient times, don’t I?”

“You do, you do! Now what is it?”

“Well,” said Tony, settling himself in the chair recently vacated by Willie Coster. “I’ve been calling on Miss Templeton.”

Barrison was conscious of a queer little thrill, not entirely unpleasant. Truth to tell, he had not been able to dismiss a certain vision from his mind, through all his practice and professional occupations. He could see it now, all in a moment, gold hair, dark-fringed eyes, marble-white throat and arms, and a mouth that could soften and droop like a child’s at the most unexpected moments.

“She’s out of the case, I suppose you know,” he said shortly. “Go ahead, though.”

“You see,” said Tony, “when you pitched into me like that about her giving me the slip, I was sort of sore, but I knew you were right, too. So I gave you the slip, in my turn, and chased over to her hotel. I wasn’t at all sure she’d see me, but I thought I’d try it on anyhow, and she sent down word I was to come up. She wore a kimono thing, and looked like an angel——” He paused in fatuous reflection.

“Get on, you young fool!”

Barrison’s tone was the sharper because he himself admired Miss Templeton rather more than was wholly consistent with the traditions of a cold-blooded detective.

So Tony went on: “She seemed to know that there had been something wrong at the theater; that impressed me at once. The moment I came into the room, she said: ‘Something has happened to him?’ I told her about it, and she just sat for a moment or two looking straight in front of her. She looked—strange, and awfully white and tired and—sort of young. After a while she said: ‘Thank Heaven it wasn’t I’—just that way. Then she asked some questions——”

“What sort of questions?” interrupted Barrison, who was looking at the floor, and had let his cigarette go out.

“Oh, the usual thing: Who was behind at the time, and whether any one was suspected, and—she made rather a point of this—where Miss Legaye was when it happened.”

“I know; she’s always harped on that.” Barrison frowned impatiently, yet he was thinking as hard as he knew how to think. “Anything else, Tony?”

“Yes; she asked me to give you this.”

Tony took a small unsealed envelope out of his waistcoat pocket and handed it over. “She said it was important,” he added; “that’s why I insisted on coming in to-night.”

Barrison read his note, and then looked up. “Do you know what this is?” he said.

The boy flushed indignantly. “Good heavens, Jim!” he exclaimed. “You don’t suppose I read other people’s letters? She just gave it to me to bring, and I brought it, that’s all.”

Barrison smiled at him, with a warm feeling round his heart. “That’s all right, Tony,” he said kindly, “and you’re all right, too! You’d better look at it.” He held it out.

Tony shook his head. “If there’s anything in it you want to tell me, fire ahead!” he said stoutly. “I—I haven’t any particular reason for seeing it, you know.”

Barrison understood him, and smiled again. “I’ll read it to you, then,” he said, and read:

“My Dear Mr. Barrison: I have just heard, though scarcely with surprise, I admit, of Mr. Mortimer’s death. It has shocked me very much, I find, even though it was the sort of tragedy that was bound to come sooner or later. I cannot pretend complete indifference to it, nor yet indifference to the conviction of his murderer. I am going to assume that you really want any sort of help, from any source, in solving this mystery. Though you refused to help me once, I am ready to help you now in whatever way I can, and I believe that my help may be worth more than you are now prepared to see. I knew Alan Mortimer rather well; it is possible that I can throw light upon certain phases in his life of which you are still ignorant. I promise nothing, for I do not yet know how valuable my testimony may prove. But—will you lunch with me at one o’clock to-morrow—or, rather, to-day—at my hotel? And meanwhile, if you will forgive me for reiterating the suspicion I once suggested to you, you can hardly do better than look up Miss Kitty Legaye, and get her views on the murder. Far be it for me to suggest a course of action to an expert detective like yourself, but—if Miss Legaye left the theater early, she would hardly be likely to learn of the tragedy until she got the morning papers. Don’t you think that it would be interesting to forestall them, and yourself be the one to break the news to her? Just suppose that you found it was not precisely ‘news’ after all!

“If I do not hear from you, I shall expect you for luncheon at one. Sincerely yours,

“Grace Templeton.”

Jim Barrison automatically registered the fact that the writing was not that of the threatening letters, and sat still staring at the sheet after he had read it aloud. His brain was in a whirl of excitement. The words which he had just read seemed, in the very utterance of them, to have taken on a vitality, a meaning, that they had not had in the first place.

One could read such a communication in more ways than one; at present he could read it only as a curious and inscrutable message, or inspiration. He could not have said just why it seemed to him so important, so imperative. He only knew that the phrases of it, simple as they were, seemed to fill the room and echo from wall to wall. Miss Templeton herself might have stood before him; he might have been listening to her voice.

Tony Clay, poor lad, was looking troubled, huddled there in the big chair on the other side of the table. He had forgotten to finish his whisky and soda, and was staring at Barrison in a queer, uncomfortable way.

“I say, Jim!” he burst out at last, desperate through his shyness. “You’re looking not a bit like yourself. What’s the matter? That note doesn’t sound so very important, now I hear it, and yet, to look at you, one would say you’d received a message from the tomb.”

Barrison laughed. “I haven’t!” he said lightly. “But I have received a tip. Just a plain, ordinary, every-day sort of tip! And I’m going to follow it, too! How much sleep do you need, Tony?”

Tony considered. “Four will do me,” he said judicially.

“You’ll get five. It’s three o’clock now. At eight you’ll be ready for business; at eight thirty we’ll be at Miss Kitty Legaye’s door. It may be a pipe dream, but I’ve taken kindly to the notion of announcing the news of Mortimer’s death in person! Now tumble in on that couch there, and don’t dare to speak again until eight in the morning!”

As he fell asleep, he was still repeating the pregnant words: “Just suppose that you found it was not precisely ‘news’ after all!”