CHAPTER XVI

A SCARLET EVENING COAT

IT was a real faint. They had a good bit of difficulty in getting her out of it.

There wasn’t much room in Jim Barrison’s mind for anything except self-reproach. He knew that the tidings of Mortimer’s murder had come upon Kitty Legaye like a stroke of lightning. She had no more been prepared for it than she would have been prepared for the end of the world. He had an idea that the end of the world would, as a general proposition, have affected her much less. Barrison was no new hand, and not too soft-hearted or gullible; and he knew that what he had looked upon that morning was sheer, absolute shock and grief, unlooked for, terrible, devastating.

Poor little Kitty, with all her frivolities, had bigness in her. As she struggled back into the gray world, she obviously tried to straighten up and steady herself. The terror was all the time at the back of her brown eyes, but she was doing her best to be game, to be, as she herself would have expressed it, “a good sport.”

Of course, she wanted particulars, and he gave them to her, feeling like a pickpocket all the time. Papers were obtained, and she was induced to take coffee with brandy in it, and—at last—she broke down and cried, which was what every one had been praying for since the beginning.

Probably never in his clear-cut, well-established career had Jim Barrison experienced what he was experiencing now: The sense that he had brought unnecessary suffering upon an innocent person, and brought it in a peculiarly merciless and unsportsmanlike way. He felt savage when he thought of that “tip” of Miss Templeton’s—or did he, really? He was obliged to confess to himself that, where she was concerned, he would be almost sure to discover approximately extenuating circumstances!

It was partly to soothe his own aching conscience that Jim forced himself to ask a few perfunctory questions.

“You don’t mind?” he asked Kitty.

“Naturally I don’t,” she said, trying not to cry, and choking down coffee. “You’ve been awfully kind, Mr. Barrison. If there’s anything I can do to help, please let me. You know”—she looked at him in a sudden, piteous way—“I had expected to marry Mr. Mortimer. Maybe you can guess what all this means to me? Will you tell me what you wanted to know?”

“For one thing,” he said, “we want to establish as nearly as we can when the murderer—the murderess, as we think it was—entered the theater. Old Roberts says that he went out through the alley to the street to get you a taxi——”

“Dear old thing!” she whispered.

“Yes; he is a nice old sort. He made it very clear that it was only his devotion to you that induced him to leave his post. Well, it seems almost certain that some one passed him, and perhaps you, in the alley last night. You don’t remember seeing even a shadow that might be suspicious?”

She shook her head thoughtfully.

“No, I don’t,” she said. “But I was in a hurry, and wasn’t looking out for anything of that sort. Roberts knows I was in a hurry?” She spoke quickly.

“Oh, yes. He says you were in a hurry, and not feeling well. The point is, did you see anything at all on your way to the taxi?”

“Nothing. I was only thinking of getting home and to bed; it had been a horrid evening.”

Now, of course, the obvious thing for Jim Barrison to do then was to take his leave. More, it was manifestly the only decent thing for him to do. He had proved conclusively that Kitty had not expected the news of Mortimer’s murder; in addition, she had declared that she had noticed no one on her way out to the taxi the night before. On the face of it, there was nothing further to be found out here. And yet, after he had got to his feet and taken up his hat, he lingered. As a matter of fact, he never was able, in looking back afterward, to tell just what insane impulse made him blurt out suddenly:

“Miss Legaye, you were wearing a red wrap last night, weren’t you? Something quite bright, scarlet?”

She looked up at him faintly surprised. “Why, yes,” she answered, “you saw it yourself, just as I was going out.”

Jim hesitated, and then said something still more crazy: “Would you—do you very much mind letting me see it—now?”

She stared at him in undisguised astonishment. “Certainly,” she said, rather blankly. “Celine, will you bring my red evening coat, please?”

The maid did so at once; it flamed there in the gray light of that rainy morning like some monstrous scarlet poppy. Barrison lifted a shimmering, brilliant fold, and looked at it.

“It’s a gorgeous color!” he said, rather irrelevantly.

“Scarlet!” whispered Kitty, in a strange tone. “And to think I was wearing that last night. I do not believe that I shall ever feel like wearing scarlet again! You are going, Mr. Barrison?”

“Yes; you have been very patient with me, and very forgiving for having been the bearer of such bad news. Good-by. I won’t even try to express the sympathy——”

“Don’t; I understand. Mr. Barrison, why did you want to see this coat?”

“It was just an impulse!” he declared quickly. “You forgive me for that, too?”

She bent her head without speaking, and the two men went away.

“Tony,” said Jim Barrison, when they were in the street once more, facing the wet blast, “it’s no lie to say that facts are misleading.”

“It’s no lie to say they very often mislead you!” retorted Tony, somewhat acidly. He felt the loss of sleep more and more, and was fretful. Also, he was hungry. “What wild-goose chase are you off on now?”

“None; I’m going round in circles.”

“You said it!”

“It’s a fact,” continued Barrison, unheeding, “that the little woman back there was genuinely shocked and upset by hearing of Mortimer’s death.”

“Rather!”

“But it is also a fact—also a fact, Tony—that that evening coat of hers is damp this morning, and it didn’t begin to rain till after midnight!”