CHAPTER XXXII

THE LOST CLEW

FERRATI was the selfsame man who had first induced Kitty to run away from her home, her father, and her sister. As she had progressed, she had grown away from him and his evil influences; but, as often happens in a situation of this sort, when she found herself in trouble of a criminal nature, she had gravitated most naturally back to the man who, she was sure, could help her out of her problem.

Face to face with each other in the inspector’s own office, neither Kitty nor Ferrati had the nerve to hold out; between them, as a matter of fact, they cleared up sundry police mysteries which had worried the heads and irritated the underlings for months past.

The trap set for Jim Barrison elucidated a good many mysteries and showed the way in which several rich men had disappeared from the face of the earth. The trapdoor was not in any sense a secret one; it had been seen by half a dozen policemen during the energetic investigations of Ferrati and his establishment which had gone on from time to time ever since it had become generally known that men who subsequently disappeared had been “last seen dining at Ferrati’s.” But the explanation had been so simple and there had been so little attempt, seemingly, at subterfuge or evasion, that the law had been put off the scent so far as that trapdoor was concerned.

The room in which it was situated was a kind of pantry, and directly under it was a part of the cellar. Like many restaurant keepers, he had bought an old country house and made it over into a resort. Thrifty Italian that he was, he had made as few and as inexpensive alterations as possible in the actual structure of the building, and had found it cheaper to put in a trapdoor and a ladder than to build a complete staircase reaching to his cellar. This was the explanation that he gave the police, and it was probably true, and was assuredly logical.

What became apparent now, however, was that the trapdoor had served other ends than that of legitimate café service. What could be easier than to inveigle a man into the room and get rid of him through the cellar door? As for the disposal of the body, that, too, was quaintly provided for and covered by Ferrati’s business. Every morning, just at dawn, the restaurant garbage was carted away. It was not difficult to carry other and more ghastly things away at the same time; and the road is lonely at that hour. A couple of discreet henchmen could quite easily drop something over the cliffs in the direction of the river. But, after all, this was a secondary matter for the moment.

The great thing was that they knew now who had fired the seventh shot. It only remained to find out how it had been done, for even after Kitty had admitted it, the thing seemed impossible from the facts which they had securely established.

She did not in the least mind telling them about it. She told her story with simplicity and directness. In her curious, calculating little head there was not the slightest trace of regret or remorse for what she had done. Barrison, watching her, remembered his talk with Wrenn, and seemed to descry in the daughter the same strange bias he had noted in the father; the same profound selfishness, the same complete absence of conscience where her own wrongdoing was concerned. It also appeared clear that only one person had ever sincerely touched the heart of either of them, and that was the man who was dead.

There was one thing that Kitty did truly grieve for, and that was Mortimer’s death. Whether it was because she had loved him, or because in losing him, she had lost the chance of marrying and so squaring her somewhat twisted and clouded past, would never be known to any one but herself. That she did grieve, however odd it might appear, was certain.

The detectives exchanged glances of wonder as they realized how simple the case had been from the very first, once given the clew. As for the clew itself, Barrison had had it once, but had lost it. It was, as he had at one time suspected, that red evening coat. It had left the theater exactly when it was supposed to have left; only—it was not Kitty who had worn it!

It was the morning after the episode at Ferrati’s, and Lowry was holding an informal inquiry. None of them who were present would ever forget it—nor the enchanting picture which the self-confessed murderess presented as she sat there with a poise that her situation could not impair, looking exquisite in the swathing black which she wore for the man whom she had herself killed!

Inspector Lowry was, for once in his life, totally at a loss, absolutely nonplused. To Barrison, and the other men who knew him well, his blank amazement in the face of the phenomenon represented by Kitty Legaye was, to say the least of it, entertaining.

At last he remarked, still staring at her as though hypnotized: “It is a most remarkable case! Miss Legaye, if you feel the loss of this man so deeply—and I am convinced that you do, in spite of the paradox it presents—why, if you don’t mind, did you shoot him?”

She flashed him a scornful glance. “Shoot him!” she repeated vehemently. “You surely don’t suppose for one moment that I meant to shoot him?”

“But——” the inspector was beginning.

“Shoot him!” she rushed on, with a different emphasis. “Of course I didn’t! It is the sorrow of my life that it turned out in that horrible manner. No; it was that Merivale woman whom I meant to shoot! He was making love to her, and I couldn’t stand it! I aimed at her, but—but—I suppose he was closer to her than I thought, and—it happened!”

She bit her lips and clenched her small hands. They could all see that it was only with the greatest difficulty and by the most tremendous effort that she was able to control the frenzy of her rage and despair over that fatal mischance.

“At that, I hadn’t planned to kill even her,” she went on, after a moment or two. “Not then, at any rate. But when the opportunity came, sent straight from heaven as it seemed,” said this astounding, moralless woman most earnestly, “I simply could not help it.”

“Suppose you tell us what actually happened.”

“Why not, now? What I told him”—she looked at Jim Barrison—“was all quite true up to the point where I stopped at Alan’s door and heard my sister’s voice. The rest, of course, was different. What I really did then was to wait, listening to the struggle and quarrel inside until I could make out that my—my father was succeeding in separating them. The door opened and Marita almost staggered out, with her waist all torn and her hair half down. She looked dreadful, and I was so afraid some one would see her.

“At the same second I saw the pistol lying just inside the door. Alan said: ‘Shut that door!’ Neither he nor my father had seen me. I bent down quickly and, reaching in, picked up the pistol. The next second my father had shut the door very quietly and quickly, for no lights were to be shown in the theater.

“I still had no real intention of using the thing that night. I just picked it up, acting on an impulse. Besides, I didn’t think that my sister was in any state to handle it then; so I kept it, and did not give it to her. Then I pulled off my evening coat and made Marita put it on.”

“One moment, with Inspector Lowry’s permission,” Barrison interrupted. “All that must have taken time, Miss Legaye, and there were people all around you. I myself was only a short distance away.”

“You were standing up stage,” she informed him tranquilly, “and the stairway going to the second tier of dressing rooms masked Alan’s door from where you were. As for the time, it took scarcely a minute; it happened like lightning. Such things take time to tell about, but not to do.”

“And in giving your sister your wrap, you were trying to shield her, and were moved by sisterly affection?” suggested the inspector sympathetically.

“Indeed I was not!” snapped Kitty resentfully. “I never had the least affection for my sister! I was moved by the fear of a lot of talk and scandal. I wanted to get her out of the theater, and out of my life entirely, and the quickest way I could think of was to give her my coat and send her home in my taxi.”

“Why did you not go with her?”

“Haven’t I told you I wanted to get rid of her? I didn’t think of anything but that for a moment, and then—then something else came over me, after she had gone.”

Her tone had changed. It was plain that she was no longer merely narrating something; she was living it again. She was again stirred by what had stirred her on that fateful night; no eloquence in the world could have made her hearers so vividly see what she saw, nor so gravely appreciate what she had felt, as the expression which she now wore—a terrible, introspective expression, the look of one who lives the past over again.

“Sybil Merivale was waiting for him at the top of the little flight of steps, and—I had the pistol still in my hand. Even then I was not perfectly determined on killing her. I hated her and I feared her, but I had not planned anything yet. There was a dark scarf over my arm; I slipped that over my head so that it shaded my face from any chance light, and I slipped across the few feet of distance and stood just below her, close by the steps.

“Then Alan came out of his room. There was no light, for he had had them put out, of course, according to Dukane’s directions, for the dark scene which was almost on. I stood so near that I could have touched him as he went up two steps and stopped, and laughed under his breath and spoke to her.”

Again she fought for self-control, and again she won it, though her face looked older and harder when she began to speak once more.

“He was trying to make love to her, and she would have nothing to do with him.”

“Didn’t that make you hate her less?” queried Lowry, being merely a man.

“It made me hate her more! She was throwing aside something which I would have risked anything to get! I went mad for the moment. Then the shots began, and it was pitch dark. I—I found myself lifting my hand slowly, and pointing it. I knew just where she was standing. It seemed to me I could scarcely miss. When I had heard what I thought was the fifth shot, I fired. I suppose I was excited and confused, and counted wrong. I meant my shot to come at the same time as the last shot; that would have given me a longer time to get away. As it was, she screamed, and I was sure I had hit her. And I was very glad!

“But I had no time to make sure. There was commotion and confusion, and I had to get away. I did not dare to go out through the stage entrance where there was a light. I knew my way to the communicating door, and I took a chance that the lights would not go up until I was through it. I brushed past the man who was supposed to guard it, in the dark, but I suppose he was too excited to notice. I got through and ran down past the boxes to the front of the house. People were already beginning to come out, and there was a lot of confusion. I had my dark scarf over my head, so I easily passed for one of the women in the audience who had turned faint and wanted air. I walked quietly out of the lobby and hailed a taxi. That’s all.”

“What did you do then?”

“I went home—to my hotel. I didn’t go in by the front way, but through the side entrance, and slipped into my room without meeting any one. I sent out for some chloral, for I knew I could not sleep without it, but I would not let my maid see me, for she would have noticed that I was without my coat.”

“And the coat?”

“Marita sent it back to me in the morning before Maria came to the door. I put it on a chair by the window so that it would seem to have been rained on that way. When the boy brought it, it was pouring outside, and the wet had soaked through the paper wrapping.”

There was a short silence. The mystery was solved. It was curious to think that this small, black-clad figure was the criminal. Yet—when one looked deep into Kitty’s eyes, one might discern something of her Mexican mother’s temperament and her time-serving father’s selfishness which could explain her part in this tragedy.

“And did you still believe that it was Miss Merivale that you had killed?” asked Inspector Lowry.

“Yes; I believed it until that man”—again indicating Jim—“came to me in the morning and told me of Alan’s death. It was a frightful shock.”

“I should imagine that it might have been,” remarked the inspector thoughtfully. “And when did you decide that it was—er—advisable—to get rid of him?” pointing to Barrison.

“Yesterday afternoon, when he told me that you were bringing my sister back, and that he was going to have an interview in a short time with the boy who had done her errands. I knew then that he would soon learn too much. It was that boy who brought me the red coat the morning after Alan’s death, and I did not want him to talk.”

“But surely you did not think that investigations would stop just because you had got Mr. Barrison out of the way?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t reason about it very clearly,” she said. “I had been under a good deal of strain, you must remember. All I thought of was that he was on my track, and that the sooner I put him where he couldn’t harm me, the better for me. So far as any one else was concerned, I suppose, if I thought of them at all, I thought that it was worth a chance. I’ve got out of some pretty tight places before now; I’m always inclined to hope till the last moment.”

“I am afraid, Miss Legaye,” said the inspector seriously, “that you have come to that last moment now.”

She glanced at him, and she had never looked more charming. “Sure?” she said, in her prettiest, most ingénue way. “I haven’t been before a jury yet, you know, and—and men usually like me!”

The inspector was red with indignation. But more than one of the men present suppressed a chuckle at his rage and Kitty’s composure.

“Why,” asked Jim, “did you sign Miss Templeton’s name to that decoy telegram of yours?”

Kitty shrugged her shoulders. “I certainly couldn’t sign my own, could I?” she rejoined calmly. “And she’d been suspected at the beginning. She seemed a good one to pick.”

There was not much more to clear up, but Barrison was on the point of putting one more question when an officer came in and whispered to the inspector.

“Bring them in,” he said at once.

The new arrivals were the Blankleys, accompanied by the detective who had found them in Indianapolis. They looked frightened, but Lowry quickly relieved their minds and assured them that they would only be required as witnesses.

The meeting between the sisters was curious. Seeing them together for the first time, Barrison saw the resemblance plainly, though Rita looked more Mexican than Kitty, and was, he knew, far the better woman of the two.

“Well, Kit?” said she quietly, almost compassionately, but Kitty looked straight in front of her, and neither then nor at any other time deigned to recognize her existence.

Barrison prompting the inspector, the latter turned to Marita and held out the letter which Jim had turned over to him the day before, the note which both he and the younger man had accepted as conclusive evidence of her guilt.

“Did you write this, Mrs. Blankley?” he asked.

She glanced down the page and nodded. “Certainly,” she responded; “when I returned the coat Kitty had lent me.”

When they read it over, they found that its wording was innocent enough. It was only Kitty’s evil ingenuity which had twisted it deliberately.

“Did you really hate me as much as all that, Kit?” asked Marita, almost in wonder, but Kitty said never a word, and did not even look in her direction.

A little later, Jim Barrison was bidding Inspector Lowry good-by.

“The inquest is to-day,” remarked the inspector, who was smoking very hard and looking very bland and satisfied. “And we won’t have to have any ‘person or persons unknown’ verdict this time! Found the murderer inside of forty-eight hours! We didn’t do so badly, eh, my boy?”

Barrison dropped his eyes to hide an involuntary twinkle at the “we.”

“Splendid, sir!” he declared cordially. “Good-by! I’m off to make a few extra inquiries—of a strictly personal nature.”