CHAPTER XIII

THE INITIAL

THE inspector’s announcement gave Jim Barrison food for thought.

Then why had Lowry let Sybil go with no further examination? They would have to establish next her possession of a weapon, and the fact that she was sufficiently practiced in the use of firearms to have hers marked with her initial, and——

But just then he discovered that it had begun to rain at last; big drops heralded the storm that had been threatening all the evening. Under the circumstances, his library at home would be a pleasanter place for speculation than the corner of a street. He turned up his coat collar and ran for a Sixth Avenue car. As he passed the clock outside a jeweler’s shop, he saw that it was ten minutes past one o’clock, and suddenly he was conscious that he was tired. The evening had been a long one, and hard on the nerves.

He stood on the back platform, and let the rainy winds blow about him. His dinner coat was getting noticeably wet, but he wanted to think and breathe. How hot the theater had been! The smell of a singularly vile cigarette close beside him made him turn in a disgusted sort of curiosity to see what manner of man could smoke it. It turned out to be Willie Coster, who had boarded the car when he did.

“Hello!” said Jim. “Didn’t see you before. I thought you left the theater before we did.”

“I had,” said Willie, puffing deeply on his rank weed. “I stopped at the corner to get this.”

Unblushingly he indicated an object done up in brown paper, which he carried under his arm. There was not the slightest doubt that it was a bottle of quart dimensions. Barrison recalled the legend that Coster always got drunk after a first night. He could not help smiling at the serious deliberation with which he was going about it.

“I see!” he said. “Well, it’s been a pretty trying time for you, a thing like this, coming on top of all your hard work on the piece. I dare say you feel the need of something to brace you.”

Willie shook his head. “That’s a nice way of putting it,” he said soberly; “but it won’t wash. No, sir; the fact is, I mean to get drunk to-night. I never touch anything while I’m working, and when my work’s done, I consider I’m entitled to a little pleasure.”

“I see,” Barrison said again. “And does getting drunk give you a great deal of pleasure?”

“Oh, yes!” said Coster gravely. “I’m not a drunkard, understand. I don’t go off on bats; that wouldn’t give me pleasure. And I can always sober up in time for anything special. But I like to go quietly home like this and drink—well, say, about this bottle to-night, and another to-morrow. Then I’ll taper off and quit again. See?”

“Perfectly. If you have to do it, it seems a very sensible method. Look here; is there any particular hurry about this systematic debauch of yours?”

“Hurry? Oh, no, there’s no hurry. Any time will do. Why?”

“Then,” said Barrison, who had an idea, “why not come over to my rooms—we’re almost there—and have a couple of drinks with me and a bite to eat, first? You can go home and get drunk later, you know, just as well.”

“Just as well,” said Willie, with surprising acquiescence. “I don’t want any drinks, thanks, for I only drink alone. But now you mention it, I’m hungry.”

Barrison knew that he himself was far too tired already to lengthen out this night so preposterously, but that idea which had so suddenly come to him drove all consideration of fatigue from his mind. He was a detective, and thought that in the dim distance he could see a shadowy trail. In a weird case of this sort, anything was worth a chance.

At Barrison’s rooms they found a cold supper waiting, and Tara asleep in a chair, contriving somehow to look dignified even in slumber. There is no dignity like that of a superior Japanese servant. He even woke up in a dignified manner, and prepared to serve supper. But Barrison sent him to bed, and sat down to talk to Willie over cold chicken and ham, and macedoine salad. The little stage manager ate hungrily, but stubbornly refused to drink. He also scorned his host’s expensive smokes, preferring his own obnoxious brand.

“Coster,” said Barrison at last, “I want you to tell me what you know of Alan Mortimer.”

“What I know! He was the yellowest guy in some things that ever——”

“That isn’t just what I meant. I mean—you’ve been with Dukane a long time, haven’t you?”

“Sure thing. I’ve been with the gov’nor five—no, six—years.”

“Then you must know how he came to take up Mortimer. Where did he discover him first? He’s a stranger on Broadway.”

“Why don’t you ask the gov’nor about it?” demanded Willie shrewdly.

“Well,” Jim was obliged to admit, rather uncomfortably, “he’s not the sort of man you feel like pumping. Of course, Lowry will get it all out of him sooner or later, but I’m curious. And I can’t see what objection he could have to your——”

“Being pumped,” finished Willie. “Maybe not, but I don’t really know much about it, anyway.” His eyes strayed wistfully to his brown paper package. “See here,” he said, “I’m much obliged for the eats, but I guess I’ll be trotting along. I’ve got a very pressing engagement!”

“With John Barleycorn?” laughed Barrison. “Oh, see here, Willie, what’s the difference? If you prefer your whisky to mine, I’ll get you a corkscrew, and you can just as well start here. Eh? Make an exception and have a couple of drinks with me, like a good sport.”

He felt slightly ashamed of himself, but he prodded his conscience out of the way by telling himself that as long as the man was going to get drunk anyway, he might just as well——

Willie hesitated and was lost. The first drink he poured out made his host gasp; it nearly filled the tumbler.

“Will you take it straight, man?” he asked, in a tone of awe.

“Certainly I will. I don’t take it for the taste, I take it for the effect. The more you take at a time, the quicker you get results. What’s the good of little dabs of drinks like yours, drowned in soda water? When I drink, I drink.”

“I perceive that you do!” murmured Barrison, and watched him swallow the entire contents of the glass in three gulps. He choked a bit, and accepted a drink of water, then leaned back with an expression of pure bliss stealing over his face.

“Gee, that was good!” he whispered joyously. “Now I’ll have one more in a minute; that will start me off comfortably. Then I’ll go home. You know,” he added, with that shrewd glance of his, “I’m on to your getting me to tank up here; you know I’ll talk more. But I’m blessed if I can make out what it is you want to know. If there’s any dark mystery going, I’m not in it. But you just pump ahead.”

He poured out another enormous draft.

“Mortimer used to be in a sort of circus, a wild West show, didn’t he?”

Willie grunted assent between swallows. “It was a sort of punk third-class show,” he said. “Never played big time, just ordinary tanks and wood piles out West. They had a string of horses and a few cowboys who could do fancy riding; Mortimer was one of them. His real name was Morton. The gov’nor was waiting to make connections somewhere on his way to the coast, and dropped in to see one or two of the stunts. This chap was a sort of matinée idol wherever he went, and the gov’nor spotted him as a drawing card if he ever happened on the right part. You know the gov’nor never forgets anything, and never overlooks a bet. He took the guy’s name and address, and put him away in the back of his head somewhere, the way he always does. When Carlton came to him with this war-play proposition, the gov’nor thought of Morton, and wrote him. That’s all I know about it.”

“Was Mortimer married?”

“Not that I know of. Not likely—or, rather, it’s likely he had half a dozen wives!”

Barrison was disappointed; he had thought it just possible—there was the pistol, marked with M, and the unknown woman who had been in the dressing room that night. However, Willie was not proving much of a help. Barrison yawned and thought of bed.

“One more question,” he asked suddenly. “What was the name of the show?”

“I don’t remember. Blinkey’s or Blankey’s, or something like that. Blinkey’s Daredevils, I think, but I’m not sure. Say, you’d better let me go home while I can walk.”

“All right; you go, Willie. Were there any women in the show?”

“A couple, I think—yes, I’m sure there were, because I remember the gov’nor speaking about a sort of riding-and-shooting stunt Mortimer did with some girl, a crack shot.”

Barrison started. Was that the trail, then?

“Much obliged to you, Willie,” he said carelessly. “There wasn’t much to tell, though, was there? Why did Dukane keep it all so dark, I wonder? I should have thought that would have been good advertising, all that cowboy stuff, and the traveling show, and the rest of it.”

“I don’t know why the gov’nor does some things; no one does,” said Willie, getting to his feet with surprising steadiness, and carefully corking his precious bottle. “But he’s never given any of that stuff to the press agent, and I’ve a notion he doesn’t want it made public. I don’t know why, but I’m pretty sure he has some reason for keeping it dark. Now you know as much about it as I do, and I’d never have told you as much as that if I hadn’t started in here!”

While he was wrapping up his bottle, with a painstaking deliberation which was, as yet, almost the only sign of what he had drunk, Barrison drew the little pistol from his pocket and laid it on the table. It was almost a toy, and mounted in silver gilt, a foolish-looking thing to have done such deadly harm. The letter was in heavy raised gold, a thick, squarely printed M. In the rays of the student lamp it glittered merrily, like the decoration on some frivolous trinket.

“Hello!” said Willie Coster, looking dully at it from the other side of the table. “So that’s the gun that did it? Let’s see the letter.” He swayed forward to look closer.

“It’s an M,” said Barrison.

“You’re looking at it upside down,” said Willie; “or else it’s you that’s drunk and not me. That’s a W, man, a W! Good night!”

He ambled toward the door, bearing his package clasped to his breast, and disappeared.

Barrison seized the pistol and turned it around. Willie was right. The initial, seen so, was W!