CHAPTER XXV

NEW DEVELOPMENTS

HE telephoned the Blaze office, and caught Teddy Lucas just as he was starting out on an assignment.

“Oh, it’s you,” said the reporter. “Wanted to tell you something about your friend Rita which might be useful in your business. I strolled round last night to the furnished rooming house where she and her husband hung out, and they never went home at all; just beat it to the train, I suppose. Their room was just as they’d left it, and full of junk. There was a shelf full of old photographs, and one of ’em was of two young girls, sisters I should say; at least, they were both dark. One’s evidently Rita herself, as she may have looked ten years ago, and the other, unless I’m very much mistaken, is the lady that the sob sisters are interviewing this morning!”

“Not Kitty Legaye?”

“That’s the one. Oh, and I poked about the files for you this morning. The Blankley Daredevils were a riding and shooting show that did small time in the East until a year ago. Then it bust up, and the company scattered. Blankley seems to have been a crook, for the reason for the smash-up was that he was arrested and sent to jail for six months! Quite a nice, snappy little story—what?”

“Are you going to write it?”

“Not my line. I’ve turned it over to a chap on the news staff!”

“I noticed that you didn’t make much out of last night.”

“My editor cut out most of it; thought I was giving Coyne’s theater too much advertising. Well, that’s all I had to tell.”

“Where is that photograph?”

“I swiped it. Send it up?”

“Please! And I’m no end obliged.”

“That’s all right.”

Barrison walked out of the booth more astonished than he had ever been in his life. In all the speculations he had made in his own mind concerning this twisted and unsatisfactory case, it had never occurred to him to connect those two women. Kitty Legaye and Marita Blankley! He recalled the two faces swiftly, and saw that there was a faint resemblance, though Rita’s was far the harder and more mature. He would not swear that she was the older, though; little ladies like Kitty rarely looked their age. Kitty and Rita! The more he thought of it, the more astounding it seemed. Of course, the first thing to do was to locate Wrenn. But how? He wondered if Willie Coster could help him.

He got Willie’s address easily enough from the theater, and went to call. He found him a little wan and puffy-eyed, but quite recovered, and amazingly cheerful for a man who has only been sober a few hours!

“Wrenn?” he repeated. “How should I know? He’d scarcely be staying on at Mortimer’s hotel, I suppose?”

Barrison explained that Mortimer’s rooms and effects were in the custody of the police, and that the old valet would not be allowed near them in any case.

“I don’t believe that he’s left town,” Willie said, “and I’ll tell you why. He wasn’t at all well fixed for money. I don’t believe Mortimer ever paid him any wages to speak of; whatever it was that held them together, it wasn’t cash. He’s touched me more than once, poor old beggar!”

“You! Why you?”

“I don’t know,” said Willie simply. “People always do!”

Good little fellow! Of course, people always did.

“And you think he’d come and borrow money from you, if he meant to leave town?”

“I’d not be surprised.”

And, as a matter of fact, he did come that very day and for that very reason; and Willie, having ascertained his address, gave it to Barrison over the wire.

“I feel rather rotten about telling you, too,” he added. “I don’t know what you want him for, and the poor old guy is awfully cut up about something—scared blue, I should say. Say, Barrison, you don’t suspect him, do you?”

“Lord, no! But I think he knows who did it.”

Willie grunted uncomfortably. “Well, treat him decently,” he urged.

“I’m not exactly an inquisitor in my methods, you know,” Jim told him. “How much money did you lend him, Willie?”

“Only a ten spot,” said Willie innocently.

Barrison laughed and said good-by.

Within the hour, he was at the address given him by Coster. It proved to be a shabby, dingy little lodging house east of Second Avenue, and the few men whom the young man met slouching in and out were as shabby and dingy as the place, and had, he thought, a furtive look. Sized up roughly, it had a drably disreputable appearance, as though connected with small, sordid crimes and the unpicturesque derelicts of the underworld.

In a dreary hall bedroom on the third floor, he finally found Wrenn.

The old man opened the door with evident caution in response to Barrison’s knock, and when he saw the detective, his face became rigid with a terror which he did not even attempt to conceal. Mutely, he stood back and let the visitor enter, closing the door with trembling hands. Then, still speechless, he turned and faced him, his anguished eyes more eloquent than any words could have been. Jim was touched by the man’s misery. He could guess something of what he must be suffering on his daughter’s account.

“Don’t look like that, Wrenn,” he said kindly. “I’ve only come to have a talk with you.”

The old man bent forward with sudden eagerness. “Then,” he faltered, “you’ve not come to tell me—of—her arrest, sir?”

“No,” said Barrison; “I don’t even know where she is. Sit down, man; you look done up.”

Wrenn sank onto the bed, and sat there, his wrinkled face working with emotion.

“I was afraid you’d arrested her, sir!” he managed to say, after a moment, in broken tones.

“You had been expecting that?”

He nodded. “I’ve known that the—the police were bound to find out some time that she’d been in the theater that night, and I knew what that would mean. She would come, though I tried so hard to prevent her! She would come!”

“Wrenn,” said Barrison deliberately, “it’s a pretty tough question to put to you, but—did she shoot Mortimer?”

Wrenn looked at him with haggard eyes. “Before God, Mr. Barrison,” he said earnestly, “I don’t know, I don’t know! I didn’t see her shoot him, but—I know she meant to.”

“You know that!” exclaimed Barrison.

“I know that she had threatened him more than once, and—it was her pistol. You knew that, sir?”

“Yes, I knew that. Go on!”

“I’d better tell you the whole story, sir. I’m getting old, and it’s weighed on me too long—too long! If you don’t mind, sir, I’ll go back to the beginning.”